Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has announced she will resign from the US House of Representatives in early 2026, ending a turbulent but influential spell in national politics and formalising a decisive split with President Donald Trump.
Greene, who represents Georgia’s 14th congressional district, said in a statement on Friday that her last day in office will be 5 January 2026. She presented the move as a response to what she described as her marginalisation within the pro-Trump wing of the Republican Party.
“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 a statement posted on social media.
She added that she intended to “go back to the people I love, to live life to the fullest as I always have, and look forward to a new path ahead,” confirming that she will resign her seat in January.
The announcement follows weeks of increasingly public confrontation between Greene and Trump, who until recently had been political allies. Trump, who once strongly backed Greene and inspired her initial run for Congress, has now withdrawn his support and indicated he would be willing to endorse a primary challenger against her. He has described her as “wacky” in recent comments.
Greene has in recent months broken with the president on several issues, including the release of files related to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, aspects of his approach to the war in Gaza, and the extension of subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). She has also questioned whether Trump still governs according to the “America First” agenda that defined his earlier political appeal.
Her stance over the Epstein case has been central to the rift. Greene has pressed for full disclosure of federal records relating to Epstein and his associates, and criticised attempts, including by Trump, to delay or limit publication. In her resignation statement she argued that “standing up” for women who were abused as minors should not lead to political isolation.
Greene, first elected in 2020, secured re-election in 2024 by a margin of 29 percentage points in her strongly Republican north-west Georgia district. Under Georgia law, Governor Brian Kemp will be required to call a special election in 2026 to fill the vacancy, with all candidates appearing on a single ballot and a run-off if no contender secures more than 50 per cent of the vote.
In her statement, Greene said she did not want to subject her district to what she called a “hurtful and hateful primary” driven by a conflict with the president. She wrote that she had “too much self respect and dignity” and did not wish to put her family, or her constituency, through such a contest.
The move adds to the difficulties facing House Speaker Mike Johnson, whose narrow Republican majority currently stands at 219 seats to Democrats’ 213. Greene’s departure will shrink that margin further once the vacancy is formalised. Before her resignation takes effect, a special election in Tennessee is due in December for a Republican-held seat, while two further special elections are expected early next year in Democratic-leaning districts.
Greene did not give Johnson prior notice of her decision, according to US media reports, an unusual step for a move of this scale. Relations between the two had already been strained; in 2024 she filed a motion to remove him as speaker.
Reactions within Congress have reflected both the fractures and the alliances Greene built during her time in Washington. Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who has himself clashed with Trump, said he was “very sad for our country but so happy” for Greene personally, describing her statement as unusually candid by congressional standards. Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who worked with Greene on efforts to secure publication of the Epstein files, suggested she could retain a significant role in public life in future.
Greene’s allies on the right have framed her recent positions as a recalibration rather than a departure from conservative priorities. Conservative strategist Ryan Girdusky said her recent interventions represented “a rebrand” and argued that she had handled the shift effectively. At the same time, Greene has rejected reports that she is considering a presidential bid in 2028, insisting that she has made no such plans.
Speaking after Republican setbacks in recent state-level elections, Greene attributed poor turnout to a lack of enthusiasm among voters who had been highly mobilised in 2024. “A lot of Republican voters who turned out big in 2024 feel disenfranchised right now and don’t feel motivated to go vote,” she said in one recent interview.
Her decision to stand down, however, indicates that the immediate political consequences of her dispute with Trump will be felt in Congress rather than in a future national campaign. For now, Greene has said only that she intends to return to private life in Georgia, leaving open the question of whether she will re-enter politics at a later date.
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