Summary
Texas Republican Congresswoman Kay Granger, 81, has not voted in the US House since July while reportedly dealing with dementia and living in a senior facility.
Her absence, undisclosed until media investigation, raises concerns about representation in her district and her capacity to serve.
Granger, a long-time legislator and former House Appropriations chair, announced plans to retire in 2025.
Critics argue her condition may have impacted her 2022 re-election. Local Republicans called her absence troubling amid critical votes, prompting broader debates on aging lawmakers’ transparency and governance.
Age. Limits. And mandatory retirement.
Let that be the fucking legacy of every god-damn boomer.
I’d rather have mandatory cognitive tests. Start them at fifty, since some people develop early-onset dementia. Fail a cognitive test, you’re out, regardless of age.
Nah. That’s very arbitrary. An age is a definitive and objective number, “mental capacity” is so vague, and should not ever be a thing in political offices (that’s up to voters to decide if they are “mentally capable” of doing the job). Using arbitray test like “mental capacity” are like those “literacy tests”, its make the test administrators the de facto decision maket of who gets to be in office. Not a good precedent to set.
Rules should be clear and easy to implement & enforce. Example: 65 years old mandatory retirement. Simple, straightforward.
Besides cognitive issues, after 65 you probably won’t experience the consequences your decisions in your lifetime.
Age is more arbitrary than is the result of a cognitive evaluation.
Cognitive evaluation looks like:
Bernie Sanders = Dementia
Trump = Totally fine and nothing wrong
-Sincerely, the totally unbiased psychologist
More arbitrary but less abusable. One is allied evenly to all people, regardless of people’s opinions or views. The other can be changed and manipulated in a way that knocks out political opponents.
I agree that cognitive ability is more important to me than a person’s age. I live with that observation every day with my parents. They are both around 80, and I would argue my mom is almost as sharp as she ever was; I have no concerns about her decision making. However, my dad is struggling more and more all the time; he’s shown decline for many years now and is at the point we’re not comfortable with him making many decisions or taking on complex tasks. A rule applied to one would not be equally appropriate for the other.
However, if we implement something, I would rather it be a rule that we can apply to all. I don’t trust the government to consistently and reasonably apply cognitive tests that don’t introduce bias.
At the very least, reporting debilitating medical conditions needs to be a legal requirement for holding office. It’s a national security issue.
And that legal requirement shouldn’t be applied to the congressmember, but to the office itself. There’s no way the staff didn’t know, so the entire office should carry an obligation to report, that way someone will do it.