Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia announced on X Friday she will resign from Congress early next year, after a weekslong falling-out with President Trump and much of her party.
Her last day will be Jan. 5, 2026, Greene said.
In a statement, the hard-right congresswoman expressed frustration with her party and with the change of pace in Congress, writing that GOP leadership had refused to work on addressing health care costs, and bills that she drafted on immigration and other issues had sat “collecting dust.” She said the “legislature has been mostly sidelined.”
She also pointed to her dramatic break with Mr. Trump. The president pulled his support from Greene last week, calling her “wacky” and a “traitor” after she criticized Republicans’ handling of several issues. She has claimed that Mr. Trump was set off by her push to disclose records related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which the president previously opposed before endorsing and later signing a bill to release the records this week.
“Standing up for American women who were raped at 14, trafficked and used by rich powerful men, should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the President of the United States, whom I fought for,” Greene wrote, saying her “self worth is not defined by a man, but instead by God.”
On Mr. Trump’s threat to back a primary challenger in her deep-red district, Greene said: “I have too much self respect and dignity, love my family way too much, and do not want my sweet district to have to endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the President we all fought for, only to fight and win my election while Republicans will lose the midterms.”
“It’s all so absurd and completely unserious,” she said. “I refuse to be a ‘battered wife’ hoping it all goes away and gets better.”
In recent days, Trump’s political operation had been receiving inquiries from potential Republican contenders to challenge Greene, a GOP source familiar with the situation told CBS News.
In a statement posted to X, Georgia GOP Chairman Josh McKoon called Greene a “tireless fighter.”
“While her decision to step down from Congress effective January 5 comes as a surprise amid recent challenges, her legacy as a bold voice for the grassroots will endure,” he said.
If Greene’s resignation leaves her seat vacant, it could tighten the GOP’s already razor-thin margin in the House until it’s filled with a special election. Under Georgia state law, the governor must issue a writ of special election within 10 days of a House vacancy, and the election is required to be held 30 days after that, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Greene’s political status has been upended over the last month-and-a-half. She has broken with a president she defended for years and clashed with her party’s top congressional leaders, drawing plaudits from Democratic lawmakers who once voted to take away her committee assignments due to conspiratorial comments.
It began during the government shutdown, which was driven in part by Democrats’ push to extend a set of expiring health insurance tax credits in exchange for their votes to fund federal agencies. Republican leadership had argued the government should reopen before negotiating on health care.
Greene publicly lashed out at her party, accusing leadership of failing to come up with a plan to prevent the massive health insurance premium increases that many families could face next year if the tax credits aren’t extended. She also criticized Speaker Mike Johnson for keeping the House out of session for the duration of the shutdown.
Asked by CBS News if he found any surprise GOP allies during the shutdown fight, the top House Democrat, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, answered: “Three words — Marjorie Taylor Greene.”
Greene has also criticized the Trump administration for focusing on foreign policy rather than affordability issues at home.
And her stance on the Epstein files had conflicted with Mr. Trump’s. Greene and three other House Republicans joined with Democrats to force a vote on a bill ordering the release of government documents on Epstein, elevating an issue that animates many Trump allies, but one the president has long cast as a distraction by Democrats and “stupid” Republicans.
Greene called Mr. Trump’s position on the issue “a huge miscalculation” in an interview last week with “CBS Mornings,” arguing that the president has nothing to hide. Mr. Trump eventually came out in favor of the bill, which passed the House and Senate nearly unanimously this week and was signed into law on Wednesday.
In a Truth Social post last week, the president said Greene “has gone Far Left,” and wrote that “all I see ‘Wacky’ Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!” He argued that she was upset because he discouraged her from running in next year’s closely contested Georgia Senate race.
Greene, meanwhile, has cast her break with the GOP and the president as a product of her commitment to the “America First” agenda widely associated with Mr. Trump.
“If I am cast aside by MAGA Inc and replaced by Neocons, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Military Industrial War Complex, foreign leaders, and the elite donor class that can’t even relate to real Americans, then many common Americans have been cast aside and replaced as well,” she wrote in Friday’s statement.
— Ryan Sprouse and Jared Eggleston contributed to this report.
