A string of freezing episodes, missed votes, unexplained absences, and at least one police report citing "early signs of dementia" have done nothing to persuade some of Congress's oldest members to step aside. Several are running for re-election this year, and the pattern raises a question that Washington would rather not answer: Who, exactly, is minding the store?
The New York Post catalogued the cases in detail, a bipartisan roster of octogenarians whose public conduct suggests they may no longer be up to the demands of the job they refuse to leave.
The facts are not subtle. And neither is the pattern: members who miss hundreds of votes, who get swindled by low-effort scams, who freeze on camera, who babble incoherently at rallies, and who then file for yet another term. Voters deserve better. So does the country.
Rep. Frederica Wilson, the 83-year-old Florida Democrat known for her pink cowboy outfits, has been absent from Capitol Hill for more than a month. She has missed over 43 votes since mid-April and skipped all of her legislative committee work during that stretch.
Her office eventually blamed "eye surgery" for the prolonged absence, but only after mounting media pressure forced a response. In the meantime, Wilson's social media accounts posted recycled photos from last year without disclosing that they were old images, an apparent effort to create the impression she was active and well.
Before vanishing, Wilson had been making increasingly erratic public remarks, including demanding "an uprising where people are taking to the streets" over immigration enforcement and urging citizens to phone Republican lawmakers with threats. That is not the conduct of a serious legislator. It is the conduct of someone who should not be wielding federal authority.
The case of Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, 88, is harder to wave away. Norton, the nonvoting delegate from the District of Columbia, is the oldest member of Congress. A police report filed last year stated that she has "early signs of dementia."
The report was filed after a group of scammers showed up at Norton's D.C. home pretending to be HVAC workers. They arrived at a time when her "caretaker/power of attorney was not at residence" and charged more than $4,000 to her credit card.
Friends and colleagues have described Norton as "unable to function independently," rarely present for committee meetings, and apparently unable to recognize people she has known for years, the New York Times reported. Norton has denied the dementia accusations. She has been in Congress since 1991 and is seeking re-election this year.
Let that settle for a moment. A sitting member of Congress has a caretaker and a power of attorney, was scammed out of thousands of dollars at her own front door, has a police report citing dementia, and is running again.
The problem is not confined to one party. Sen. Mitch McConnell, 84, the Kentucky Republican who first came to Washington in 1985, has had his own well-documented episodes. In July 2023, following a reported concussion earlier that year, McConnell stopped mid-sentence while speaking to reporters about Pentagon policy and stood motionless, staring blankly ahead for more than 30 seconds.
A month later, the same thing happened in a similar setting. McConnell only resumed speaking after staff physically prompted him. He also took a series of falls that year, at the Waldorf Astoria in D.C., during a trip to Helsinki, and at Reagan Airport.
In 2025, McConnell briefly required a wheelchair. He announced the same year that his current term will be his last. That decision, at least, acknowledges reality, something too few of his colleagues have been willing to do.
Rep. Maxine Waters, 87, is running for a 19th term representing California. That would mark 38 years in office. Last week, as the Post reported, she refused to say that 100 is too old to serve in Congress.
Waters was duped in 2017 by a pair of Russian comedians posing as the prime minister of Ukraine. They convinced her that Russia had "invaded Gabon" and was interfering in elections in the fictional country of "Limpopo." Three years later, the same duo called again, this time pretending to be climate activist Greta Thunberg's father, and fed her fabricated climate news about a made-up island called "Chongo-Chango." She fell for it again.
Earlier this year, Waters repeatedly interrupted Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a House Financial Services Committee hearing and asked the committee chair, "Can you shut him up?" This is a senior lawmaker responsible for oversight of the nation's financial system.
Rep. John Carter, the 84-year-old Texas Republican endorsed by President Trump, is seeking his 13th term. His primary challengers have not been gentle. They have described him as "half dead" and "worse than Joe Biden," and called his continued presence in Washington a form of elder abuse.
Carter holds one of the highest tallies of missed roll call votes this century in Congress, 803. Last week, he appeared to struggle reading prepared remarks at a House subcommittee hearing. When a lawmaker cannot get through scripted text at a hearing, the question is no longer whether he should run again. It is who is actually doing his job right now.
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, the 81-year-old Missouri Democrat, delivered a string of made-up words at an anti-Elon Musk rally, telling the crowd to "take your musty mullyon and musky Moscow rights to the moon, you musty moo moo." That is a direct quote from a sitting member of Congress.
Cleaver became a meme in January 2021 when he led the opening prayer for a new Congress and closed it with "amen and awoman", apparently gendering a Hebrew word that has no gender component and simply means "so be it." He has also made remarks about "dark spirits" in the Trump administration.
Cleaver has missed more than triple the median number of roll call votes for current House members. He now conducts town halls by phone rather than appearing in his district. He is seeking a 12th term.
Rep. Danny Davis, 84, the Illinois Democrat, flip-flopped on retirement before finally announcing last July that he would step down next year after three decades in Congress. He, too, holds records on missed votes and has made markedly fewer public appearances since the announcement, with increased reliance on aides.
Dr. Russell Surasky, a neurologist in Great Neck, New York, put the medical stakes plainly in comments to the Post:
"When you get 75, 80 years old, we know 50% of people show mild cognitive impairment. They may look fine reading off a teleprompter or repeating canned phrases, but behind the scenes, they're having what's called 'white matter decline' in their brain."
He added that these members "have a reduced ability to incorporate new information, which is obviously critical because that's what Congress needs to do."
Surasky did not mince words about the institutional consequences:
"Pretending that this biology of aging stops when you get to the Capitol steps isn't compassionate. It's national malpractice. Seniority can't be a senility shield. It's endangering America because they refuse to pass the torch."
Dr. Joseph Maroon, an 85-year-old University of Pittsburgh neurosurgeon, offered a more sympathetic but no less honest view of why lawmakers hold on. "You become very dependent for your identity on what you do. And fear of decline is actually a type of fear of death," Maroon told the Post. "So your work is your life, or at least the source of your identity. When it declines, you're in the process of dying, not only physically, but you're dying emotionally and intellectually."
Maroon noted that while seniors possess crystallized knowledge, wisdom, it is common for politicians and professional athletes to resist stepping away from the spotlight. "The crux of the matter is having the insight to realize that you're transitioning into another phase," he said. "But some of us trudge on regardless, trying to leave a legacy."
Kevin Munger, author of "Generation Gap: Why the Baby Boomers Still Dominate American Politics and Culture," pointed to structural forces that keep aging lawmakers entrenched. Demographic weight, financial advantages, and advances in health care have all combined to give the Baby Boom generation outsized power.
"We have the oldest Congress in history, the oldest president in history and I think this is exacerbated by campaign finance. Some of the biggest donors are also older and they give older candidates bigger weight."
That is the machinery behind the problem. Incumbency advantages, name recognition, and donor networks insulate members from accountability long after their capacity to govern has visibly eroded. Voters in safe districts rarely face a competitive general election, and primary challengers struggle to raise money against entrenched names, even names attached to people who can no longer read their own prepared remarks.
The result is a Congress where missed votes pile into the hundreds, where police reports cite dementia, where Russian pranksters can call the same lawmaker twice with the same gag and succeed both times, and where none of it triggers a mechanism for removal or even a mandatory fitness review.
There is nothing cruel about stating the obvious: a lawmaker who cannot function independently, who freezes on camera, who falls for transparent scams, or who delivers gibberish at public events is not serving constituents. That lawmaker is occupying a seat while someone else, staff, aides, donors, exercises the real power. The voters who sent that person to Washington are effectively unrepresented.
Both parties share blame here. McConnell's freezing episodes were broadcast nationally. Carter's missed votes are a matter of public record. This is not a partisan affliction. It is an institutional failure, a refusal by party leaders, colleagues, and voters to enforce basic standards of competence on people entrusted with federal authority.
Age alone is not disqualifying. Decline is. And when the evidence of decline is this public, this well-documented, and this bipartisan, the refusal to act is not loyalty or kindness. It is negligence dressed up as respect.
Congress does not need a retirement home. It needs members who can do the job, and the honesty to admit when someone no longer can.
