Republican congressman absent over ‘personal health matter’, Johnson says

Tom Kean leaves a meeting at the US Capitol in June last year. Photograph: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images

A vulnerable Republican congressman who has not voted in weeks “is attending to a personal health matter”, the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said on Friday as he struggles to maintain his historically small majority in Congress’s lower chamber.

Tom Kean Jr’s New Jersey district is a top pickup target for Democrats in the November midterms, but the congressman has not cast a vote in the House since 5 March.