Last week, during the House Republicans’ first attempt at impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro, GOP Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee was seen screaming at GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin. The former wanted the latter to toe the party line and support the resolution, and the latter wouldn’t budge.
Five days later, Gallagher surprised the political world by announcing he wouldn’t seek re-election to Congress. Five days after that, the lawmaker who screamed at Gallagher announced he no longer wants to serve on Capitol Hill, either. Roll Call reported:
Tennessee Rep. Mark E. Green, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, will retire at the end of his term, becoming the fifth committee chair to not seek reelection this year. Green’s announcement comes the day after the House voted, 214-213, to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, culminating an effort that Green led over several months.
The Republican congressman’s press statement noted, “Today, with the House having passed H.R. 2 and Secretary Mayorkas impeached, it is time for me to return home.”
Of course, H.R. 2 was an inconsequential messaging bill that’s gone ignored in the Senate. Similarly, Mayorkas’ impeachment will be easily discarded in the upper chamber.
Or put another way, what Green characterized as accomplishments were largely meaningless partisan stunts.
The Republican added, “Our country — and our Congress — is broken beyond most means of repair.” Evidently, Green will try to help put things right by leaving public office.
For those unfamiliar with the outgoing congressman, the Tennessean has a curious professional background. In 2017, Donald Trump tapped Green — at the time, a GOP state senator — to serve as his secretary of the Army. As regular readers might recall, the political world soon learned about Green’s strange beliefs: He’d argued that being transgender is a “disease,” promoted creationism, criticized public health care programs for interfering with Christian evangelism, and raised some strange concerns about Victoria’s Secret catalogs.
A Slate report added that Green also “agreed with a questioner that President Obama is not a citizen and he refused to answer whether the former president is really a Muslim.”
As this information came to light, even some Senate Republicans raised concerns about his nomination, deeming the Tennessean a bit too radical to be confirmed, and on a Friday afternoon in May 2017, Green quietly withdrew from consideration.
A year later, he was elected to Congress. After the 2022 midterm elections, GOP leaders thought it’d be a good idea to put him in charge of the House Homeland Security Committee, where he launched a crusade to impeach Mayorkas without evidence of high crimes.
Now, the congressman is preparing to walk away from Capitol Hill altogether. He has quite a bit of company. An Axios report added, “Green joins House Appropriations Committee Chair Kay Granger (R-Texas), Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), Financial Services Committee Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), and House Select Committee on China Chair Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) in announcing they won’t seek re-election.” Circling back to our earlier coverage, House Republicans have long imposed term limits on committee chairs, requiring chairs to give up their gavels after six years. This has contributed to the party’s retirement troubles: Members who’ve been forced to step down after leading a committee for six years have routinely decided to simply leave Congress altogether rather than start over on another panel. But some of the chairs who are retiring, including Green, have only led their respective committees for one year. The assumption was that these lawmakers, gavels in hand, were just getting started. Instead, they’re headed for the exits — and adding to the bipartisan exodus from Capitol Hill. Traditionally, there have been large numbers of retirements when members were worried about losing. This year, I continue to believe there have been large numbers of retirements because members are worried about staying in an institution that appears incapable of working under Republican control. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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