Washington, D.C. is about to look a whole lot different.
Names that have dominated the headlines for decades are packing up their offices, getting bounced in primaries, or leaving under circumstances that would make a Hollywood scriptwriter blush.
And the full list of who won’t be sitting in the 120th Congress — which takes office in January 2027 — is enough to make your head spin.
Mitch McConnell Finally Calls It Quits
U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), 84, who has served in the upper chamber since 1985, announced in February 2025 that he would not seek reelection to an eighth term. That is 41 years in the Senate. Forty-one.
McConnell’s tenure includes service as both the Senate’s majority and minority leader, and he led the GOP Senate Conference for 18 consecutive years before stepping down in January 2025, when he was succeeded by now-Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
McConnell was an establishment RINO who sabotaged conservative agenda items, colluded with Democrats to pass the Green New Deal, gun control, and corporate bailouts, and practically begged Joe Biden’s Justice Department to prosecute Trump for the January 6 hoax.
Nancy Pelosi Closes the Book on Four Decades
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 86, announced in November 2025 she would not run for a 21st term representing San Francisco. She first won her seat in 1987. The woman has been in Congress longer than some of her current colleagues have been alive.
The California Democrat led her party’s House Caucus for 20 years, from 2003 to 2023, serving as Speaker for eight of those years — from 2007 to 2011 and from 2019 to 2023, where she rammed through the TARP bailout, Obamacare, Joe Biden’s inflationary socialist spending, and masterminded the Ukraine and January 6 impeachment hoaxes against President Trump.
Pelosi, in recent years, came under scrutiny for a series of stock trades she made while in office, with observers alleging the former Speaker engaged in insider trading — an accusation she denies. Whether voters ever got a full accounting of those trades is another matter entirely.
When Pelosi announced she was retiring, Trump pronounced her an “evil woman.”
Pelosi’s career ended in failure as her scheme to wage lawfare against Trump using the January 6 Committee failed to stop Trump from winning a landslide election in 2024.
Thomas Massie Gets the Boot
Then there’s Thomas Massie, who didn’t choose to leave — he got shown the door.
Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) lost his Republican House primary, becoming the latest Republican lawmaker to anger President Donald Trump and then fall to a primary challenger backed by the president.
Ed Gallrein, a farmer and former Navy SEAL recruited by Trump, beat Massie in what became the most expensive U.S. House primary on record, with the race drawing more than $32 million in ad spending.
Massie had pushed for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, and voted against the president’s signature tax legislation. He paid for each of those stands at the ballot box.
Trump, during a campaign call for Gallrein, called Massie “the worst Republican congressman in the history of the country.”
Swalwell Out in Disgrace
Eric Swalwell’s exit from Congress is a different story altogether — and not a flattering one.
In a matter of days, the California Democrat went from being the odds-on favorite to win the Golden State’s gubernatorial election to leaving public office in disgrace as a pariah within his own party.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that a former congressional aide to Swalwell alleged a series of sexual encounters while he was her boss, including allegations that Swalwell sexually assaulted her on two occasions when she was too intoxicated to give consent. CNN also reported that three other women alleged various kinds of sexual misconduct by Swalwell, including unsolicited explicit messages and nude photos. Swalwell has repeatedly denied all of these allegations.
His resignation came amid growing calls for his expulsion from congressional colleagues and after the House Ethics Committee announced it was opening an investigation into his conduct.
In his statement, Swalwell said: “I am aware of efforts to bring an immediate expulsion vote against me and other members. Expelling anyone in Congress without due process, within days of an allegation being made, is wrong. But it’s also wrong for my constituents to have me distracted from my duties. Therefore, I plan to resign my seat in Congress.”
The same man who spent years on television lecturing the country about ethics and accountability walked out the door under a cloud of serious allegations he insists are false. Washington is funny that way.
Jasmine Crockett Swings for the Senate — and Misses
Representative Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) lost the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Texas to state Representative James Talarico.
Crockett, first elected to a Dallas-based House seat in 2022, broke out on the national stage as a progressive firebrand with her tough questioning of witnesses before the House Oversight Committee and attacks against President Donald Trump and Republicans. Her approach made her a social media darling on the left but raised real questions about whether she could win a statewide race in a state Trump carried by 13 points in 2024.
Her opponent Talarico told Politico he was “concerned” about Crockett’s assertion that she wouldn’t need to win over Trump voters and would instead seek to expand the electorate by turning out new voters. Turns out, Democratic primary voters shared that concern.
Crockett is retiring from her House seat to have run for the Senate. The seat she vacated opens a door for a new face in a Dallas-area district.
The Old Guard Democrats Head for the Exits
Pelosi isn’t the only Democrat from the old guard wrapping up a long career.
Representative Jerry Nadler (D-NY), 78, a prominent Trump foe, announced in September 2025 he would not run for reelection in the 2026 midterms. Nadler, who has represented a New York City-based seat since 1992, chaired the House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2023 and served as a House manager during Trump’s first impeachment.
Representative Steny Hoyer (D-MD), 86, who served as House Majority Leader during both of Pelosi’s speakership tenures, announced his retirement in January. Hoyer took office in 1981 and is the longest-serving Democrat in the House.
Hoyer and Pelosi couldn’t even agree on who should replace them. Hoyer backed his former aide, State Delegate Adrian Boafo, while Pelosi threw her support behind Harry Dunn, a former U.S. Capitol Police officer who testified during the January 6 hearings.
Steve Cohen Forced Out by Redistricting
Not everyone leaving had a choice about it.
Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN) announced he won’t be running for re-election after a redistricting push in Tennessee carved up his Memphis-based district.
The new district map, enacted by the Republican-led state Legislature and GOP Governor Bill Lee, divides Cohen’s majority-Black district three ways. Republicans drew the map, it passed, and Cohen had no viable path forward.
Cohen told reporters: “I don’t want to quit, I’m not a quitter. But these districts were drawn to defeat me.”
Tennessee Republicans will now control all nine of the state’s congressional districts. That’s a legitimate constitutional exercise of redistricting authority, and Democrats in blue states have been doing the same thing — California’s legislature drafted a map eliminating five Republican districts in retaliation. Both sides play this game. But only one side has been winning it lately.
Al Green Bounced After Six Impeachment Attempts
Representative Al Green (D-TX), 78, who has represented a Houston-area seat since 2005, lost to a four-decade-younger challenger in a landslide runoff after a new GOP-drawn House map merged the two lawmakers’ districts.
Green became well known for his intense opposition to Trump, having mounted six unsuccessful attempts to impeach him and interrupting both Trump’s March 2025 speech to a joint session of Congress and the March 2026 State of the Union. Both disruptions resulted in Green being removed from the House chamber for the remainder of each event.
Six impeachment attempts. Zero successes. And now, no seat in Congress. Some lessons take a while to sink in.
Marsha Blackburn Likely Headed for the Governor’s Mansion
Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is likely to not be a member of the next Congress despite her term running until 2031, due to her frontrunner status in her state’s 2026 gubernatorial race. The 73-year-old senator leads virtually every poll for the GOP nomination — the real contest in the deep-red state — by landslide margins.
Upon her likely resignation to assume the governor’s mansion in 2027, Blackburn will be in the unique position of getting to appoint her own successor to the upper legislative chamber. That is a remarkable amount of power concentrated in one person’s hands, and it speaks to just how dominant the Republican Party has become in Tennessee.
The Bigger Picture
In total, 74 congressional lawmakers and one House delegate — 44 of them Republicans — are not seeking reelection. That is a historic churn.
As of this spring, 58 representatives and two non-voting delegates have announced their retirement, making this the second-most retirements of representatives in a single election cycle in U.S. history, behind only 1992, which saw 65 retirements total.
The 120th Congress will be younger, less experienced in some ways, and shaped heavily by who President Trump chose to back in contested primaries. Gallrein replacing Massie is just one example. The president has been methodically clearing out members who crossed him, and the results at the ballot box have validated the strategy.
And for Democrats, the departures of Pelosi, Nadler, Hoyer, and Green represent the end of a generation of leadership that defined the party’s opposition to Trump across two administrations. Whether the next generation — whoever that turns out to be — has the votes, the discipline, or the instincts to do better is an open question. One that November will start to answer.
Sources: The Daily Caller, The Hill, NBC News, PBS NewsHour, CNN, Axios, NPR, CBS News, ABC News, Ballotpedia, Wikipedia (2026 House Elections)