A record 36 House Republicans have announced they will leave Congress at the end of their terms in Washington, a wave of departures that is reshaping power calculations on Capitol Hill ahead of the 2026 midterms and testing Speaker Mike Johnson's ability to hold together an already fragile majority.
The news came after months of mounting strain inside the House Republican Conference. Since the US elections of 2024 and the launch of what many in Washington are already calling a Trump 2.0 era, Republicans have been governing with a razor-thin margin in the lower chamber, frequently paralysed by internal feuds and procedural brinkmanship. Against that backdrop, senior members and relative newcomers alike have begun heading for the exits, citing gridlock, personal pressures and a sense that the job has simply become untenable.
