A Congresswoman With Dementia Stopped Coming to Work. The DC Press Corps Never Noticed.
15th March 2025
Politico, a Voice of the Crust.
The story broke in December, shortly before Granger’s long-planned retirement, and was confirmed several days later by Granger’s son, who acknowledged “dementia issues” in a Dallas Morning News interview. As the news ricocheted around the political world, a Texas website with an editorial staff of 10 was credited with a massive scoop — while the Capitol Hill press corps was pilloried for supposedly taking its eye off the ball.
Given that the U.S. Capitol is one of the few buildings in America where the reporting corps hasn’t been totally devastated, it was a confounding miss. Granger wasn’t a nobody. She’d been in office for over a quarter-century, and had been the top Republican on the Appropriations committee until last April. Her face was familiar both to her colleagues and the reporters who roam outside the House chamber. Curiosity might also have been triggered by the fact that she’d voluntarily stepped aside from a plum position that most members of Congress would have to have pried from their hands.
Now Biden doesn’t seem so exceptiona.