Members of Congress who stop showing up face zero consequences. They hold the seat, draw the paycheck, and keep the office — even when they can’t do the work.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and former Senate majority leader, suffered a serious medical emergency three weeks ago that left him hospitalized. His office has declined to provide details. Since then, dueling reports describe him as both working from the hospital and, according to a Trump confidante, brain dead.
What happens next is often nothing.
In the summer of 2024, Rep. Kay Granger, a Texas Republican, disappeared without explanation. Reporters visiting her offices found locked doors, covered windows, and unanswered phones. For months, her district went unrepresented.
“We then received a tip from a Granger constituent who shared that the Congresswoman has been residing at a local memory care and assisted living home for some time after having been found wandering, lost, and confused.”
Lost, confused, institutionalized — and still drawing a congressional salary. She never went to Washington.
Members of Congress have medical privacy rights. But their constituents have a right to be represented.
The conflict between those competing rights keeps coming up.
South Dakota Republican Karl Mundt had a stroke in 1969. He stopped showing up to the Senate but refused to resign. The seat stayed his until he retired in 1973 — leaving South Dakota with half its representation in the upper chamber for four years.
Mundt’s case echoed Sen. Carter Glass, a Virginia Democrat in the 1940s who took his last Senate oath at his Lynchburg home in carpet slippers. After two years of unbroken absence, he was urged to resign. He offered no public response.
More recently, Rep. Tom Kean, a New Jersey Republican, stopped coming to work for four months without explanation. When he returned to the House, he announced he had been hospitalized for depression.
Rep. Frederica Wilson, a Florida Democrat famous for her colorful hats, missed more than 40 votes before announcing she had skipped work to recover from eye surgery.
Not participating in deliberation while serving in deliberative bodies. Not providing representation while holding office in a representative government.
To change that, Congress would have to act.
You can see how likely that is.
