Here’s Some Of The Names You Know That Will Not Be Back Next Congress

More than a dozen legislators are already confirmed to not return to the next Congress as voters prepare to elect all 435 members of the House and a third of the 100-seat Senate in November.

As of Saturday, 57 members of the House and 11 senators have announced they are not seeking reelection — in addition to four House members and two senators who have lost renomination in their respective primaries. Here is a list of some of the more widely recognized members of Congress who will not be part of the 120th Congress, set to take office in January 2027.

Mitch McConnell — Retiring

Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, 84, who has served in the upper legislative chamber since 1985, announced in February 2025 he would not seek reelection to an eighth term. McConnell’s 41-year tenure includes service as both the Senate’s majority and minority leaders. The longtime lawmaker led the GOP Senate Conference for 18 consecutive years before stepping down in January 2025, when he was succeeded by now-Senate Majority Leader John Thune.

McConnell, during his final Senate term, has at times broken with President Donald Trump, including criticizing his tariff and trade policies and voting against adding the SAVE America Act to a funding package in April. The senator’s leadership also received widespread criticism from his more conservative colleagues following the 2022 midterm cycle during which Republican Senate candidates strongly underperformed expectations.

Trump-backed Republican Kentucky Rep. Andy Barr handily won the May 19 GOP nomination to succeed McConnell. Barr is the heavy favorite in the general election due to the state’s strong Republican lean.

Nancy Pelosi — Retiring

McConnell is not the only former Congressional leader not returning to the next Congress after a tenure starting in the 1980s. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 86, announced in November 2025 she would not run for a 21st term representing San Francisco.

The California Democrat led her party’s House Caucus for 20 years, from 2003 to 2023, serving as speaker for eight: from 2007 to 2011 and from 2019 to 2023. She served a two-year term as speaker under Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Trump, and Joe Biden.

Pelosi in recent years has come under scrutiny for a series of stock trades she made while in office. Observers alleged the former speaker engaged in insider trading, an accusation she denies. Pelosi’s net worth grew by a factor of 23 times during her time in Congress.

Jerry Nadler — Retiring

Democratic New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, 78, a prominent Trump foe, announced in September 2025 he would not run for reelection in the 2026 midterms. Nadler, who has represented a New York City-based seat since 1992, chaired the House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2023 and served as a House manager during Trump’s first impeachment.

Steny Hoyer — Retiring

Democratic Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, 86, who served as House Majority Leader during both of Pelosi’s speakership tenures, announced his retirement in January. Hoyer took office in 1981 and is the longest-serving Democrat in the House.

Interestingly, Hoyer and Pelosi endorsed different candidates in the crowded Democratic primary to succeed the 45-year incumbent in the deep-blue Maryland district. While Hoyer is backing his former aide, State Delegate Adrian Boafo, Pelosi is throwing her support behind Harry Dunn, a former U.S. Capitol Police officer who testified before the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 which existed during Pelosi’s speakership.

Steve Cohen — Retiring

Democratic Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen, 77, became the latest victim of GOP-friendly redistricting on May 15 after he announced he would not seek reelection, citing his state’s newly redrawn congressional map. Republicans redrew the map following the Supreme Court’s landmark April decision severely limiting race-based gerrymandering, which had seemingly been the basis for the existence of Cohen’s old seat.

Cohen, who is white, has represented a majority-black seat based in Memphis since 2007 and has been the sole Democratic congressman from Tennessee since 2023. While former Vice President Kamala Harris won his old Ninth District by 43 percentage points in the 2024 presidential election, the newly redrawn seat voted for Trump by 21 points, according to data from Dave’s Redistricting App (DRA).

The Tennessee Democrat made headlines in 2019 when he ate a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken at a House Judiciary Committee in an effort to cast then-Attorney General Bill Barr as a “chicken.”

Thom Tillis — Retiring

Two-term Republican North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, 65, announced he would not seek a third term in June 2025 — just hours after Trump threatened to back a primary challenger against him. The news followed Tillis coming out in opposition to the president’s signature legislation, the One, Big, Beautiful, Bill Act (OBBBA). Days later, the senator became just one of three members of the GOP conference to vote against the OBBBA.

In January, Tillis announced he would oppose any and all of Trump’s nominees to the Federal Reserve due to the administration’s criminal investigation into then-Chair Jerome Powell. The North Carolina Republican, however, eventually reversed course and voted to confirm Powell’s successor, Kevin Warsh, on May 13.

The race to succeed Tillis between Trump-backed GOP nominee Michael Whatley and Democratic nominee former Gov. Roy Cooper, is, at the time of writing, rated as “Lean D” by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

Tommy Tuberville — Retiring (running for governor)

Republican Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, 71, is not seeking a second term in the upper legislative chamber but instead is running in the open race to become the Yellowhammer State’s next governor. He handily won the Republican nomination May 19 and is the heavy favorite against the Democratic nominee, former Sen. Doug Jones, whom he unseated in 2020.

Before transitioning to politics, Tuberville served as a football coach for four decades, including ten seasons as the head coach at Auburn University, located in eastern Alabama. During his Senate term, he is perhaps best known for his placing of holds on key military promotions for ten months in 2023 in protest of the Biden-era Pentagon’s taxpayer-funded abortion policy.

The GOP primary race to succeed Tuberville in the Senate will go to a June 16 runoff between Trump-backed Rep. Barry Moore and former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson.

Ryan Zinke — Retiring 

Republican Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, 64, announced in March he was not seeking reelection. Zinke notably served as Trump’s original Secretary of the Interior during his first term and has served in the House since 2023, having previously served from 2015 to 2017. The congressman’s First District is the less Republican of Montana’s two House seats. Cook rates the open race to replace him as “Likely R.” Zinke was the first former Navy SEAL to be elected to the House.

Elise Stefanik — Retiring after dropping her run for governor

Republican New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, 41, is not running for a seventh term in the House. The upstate New York lawmaker briefly ran for the Empire State’s governorship but dropped out following Trump’s decision to not endorse either her or her primary opponent at the time. The former GOP rising star, who is associated with the more hawkish wing of the party, cited “spending precious time with my family” in her stunning December 2025 decision to exit electoral politics. She is the mother of a young son.

The congresswoman’s retirement announcements came months after Trump pulled her nomination to become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, citing concerns the GOP might lose her House seat — which he won by 21 points in 2024 — in a special election. Stefanik made history in 2014 when she became the youngest woman ever elected to the lower legislative chamber, a record broken by Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez four years later.

Nancy Mace — Retiring to run for governor

Republican South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, 48, is not seeking reelection to the House but is instead running to be her state’s governor. She is an underdog to win the June 9 primary, according to recent polls. To make the lawmaker’s path to the governor’s mansion even more complicated, Trump endorsed one of her opponents, Republican South Carolina Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, on Friday.

During her three terms representing a Charleston-area seat, Mace made headlines for both her advocacy against transgender-identifying men using women’s bathrooms and her early support for a discharge petition compelling the House to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, which Trump had initially opposed. The congresswoman also vocally supported other efforts to foster greater transparency revolving around the deceased pedophile and his child sex trafficking empire.

Dan Crenshaw — Defeated

Four-term Republican Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw, 42, unexpectedly lost his safe seat’s March GOP primary in a landslide to conservative challenger State Rep. Steve Toth. Like Stefanik, Crenshaw is also regarded as a leading member of the Republican Party’s hawkish wing and a member of the millennial generation.

Toth decisively unseated the former Navy SEAL by a 15-point margin after Trump did not endorse a candidate in the run up to the primary. The president endorsed all other incumbent Republicans seeking reelection in Texas.

Jasmine Crockett — Defeated (ran for Senate)

Firebrand Democratic Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, 45, will be without a seat in Congress come January 2027 due to her decision to give up her deep-blue House seat to run for the Senate. She lost her party’s primary by six points to State Rep. James Talarico. Crockett has oftentimes come under scrutiny for her incendiary comments, including when she referred to Trump as “Temu Hitler” and once dubbed Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, as “Governor Hot Wheels.”

John Cornyn — Defeated 

Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn’s 24-year run in the upper legislative chamber will come to an end after he lost Tuesday’s primary runoff by a 28-point landslide to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who had received Trump’s endorsement just a week earlier. In backing Paxton, Trump accused the 74-year-old Cornyn of not fighting “hard enough” to pass the SAVE America Act, of which he is a cosponsor.

Paxton’s dominant win — in which he carried all but two counties — marked a remarkable turnaround from the initial March primary in which Trump remained neutral. Cornyn narrowly finished in first place, albeit short of the majority threshold to avoid a runoff. The day after, The Atlantic reported the president’s advisers had expected him to endorse Cornyn, citing three anonymous sources. Paxton won despite allegations of corruption — which resulted in his 2023 impeachment, though he was later acquitted — and marriage infidelity.

Cornyn also received significant criticism for his stance on Second Amendment rights in 2022, when he voted for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in the aftermath of that year’s Uvalde school shooting. Then-President Biden signed the legislation, which at the time was considered one of the most significant federal gun control laws in recent American history.

Bill Cassidy — Defeated 

Republican Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, 68, was similarly denied a third term, finishing a distant third place in the May 16 GOP primary. Unlike Cornyn, however, the two-term lawmaker failed to even make his June 27 GOP runoff, which will instead be consist of Trump-backed Rep. Julia Letlow and Louisiana State Treasurer John Fleming.

Cassidy was one of just seven Republican senators to vote to convict Trump following his second impeachment in 2021. A staunch supporter of vaccines, he has also received criticism from members of the the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement during his time as chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

Al Green — Defeated 

Like Cohen, another longtime Democratic gadfly who fell victim to Republican mid-decade redistricting is Democratic Texas Rep. Al Green, 78. The congressman, who has represented a Houston-area seat since 2005, lost to four-decade-younger freshman Rep. Christian Menefee in a landslide runoff Tuesday, after a new GOP-drawn House map merged the two lawmakers’ districts.

Green became well known for his intense opposition to Trump, having mounted six unsuccessful attempts to impeach him and interrupting both his March 2025 speech to a joint session of Congress and March 2026 State of the Union. Both disruptions resulted in the lawmaker being removed from the House chamber for the remainder of each event.

Ironically, Green’s first election to Congress unsat a white Democratic incumbent in a primary after his district was redrawn to have a minority majority due to aggressive Republican-backed redistricting during the 2004 election cycle.

Thomas Massie — Defeated

Fourteen-year incumbent Republican Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, 55, lost renomination May 19 to Trump-endorsed challenger and former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein in what was the most expensive congressional primary in American history. Massie is known as a libertarian-leaning Republican and identifies with the Trump-aligned America First movement. He provoked Trump’s ire after breaking with him on a host of issues including the Iran war, the OBBBA, and the discharge petition to release the Epstein files.

Massie’s ouster came after Baby Boomers likely voted in large numbers for his opponent, according to pre-election polls, and significant out-of-state money — including millions from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — flooded Gallrein’s coffers.

Chip Roy — Defeated after running for Texas attorney general

Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy, 53, did not seek reelection to his safely red House seat, opting instead to run to succeed Paxton as the Lone Star State’s attorney general. The prominent member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus ultimately fell short in his Tuesday runoff election against State Sen. Mayes Middleton, who himself once chaired the Texas House Freedom Caucus. Paxton did not endorse either runoff candidate after his preferred successor, Aaron Reitz, came in fourth place during the March primary.

Marsha Blackburn — Likely resigning after running for governor

While Republican Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s term is not up until 2031, she is likely to not be a member of the next Congress due to her frontrunner status in her state’s 2026 gubernatorial race. The 73-year-old senator leads virtually every poll for the GOP nomination — the real contest in the deep-red state — by landslide margins. Upon her likely resignation to assume the governor’s mansion in 2027, Blackburn will be in the unique position of getting to appoint her own successor to the upper legislative chamber.

WATCH:

Eric Swalwell — Already Gone

In a matter of days, former Democratic California Rep. Eric Swalwell went from being the odds-on favorite to win the Golden State’s gubernatorial election to leaving public office in disgrace as a pariah within his own party.

Swalwell, who became a household name due to his frequent criticism of Trump, as well as his alleged relationship with a Chinese spy, stunningly resigned his House seat April 13 after multiple women accused him of sexual assault and rape. He had dropped out of the race to succeed Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom the day before, after several members of his state party called on him to do so.

Marjorie Taylor Greene — Already Gone

Although she was at one point one of Trump’s staunchest allies in Congress, former Republican Georgia Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene became on the outs with the president after his second term kicked off. Along with Massie and Mace, Greene was one of initially four Republicans to support the discharge petition to release the Epstein files, defying Trump.

In November 2025, the president withdrew his support of his former ally, alleging she “has gone Far Left, even doing The View, with their Low IQ Republican hating Anchors.” Trump went on to blast the lawmaker as a “traitor” and “Marjorie Taylor Brown,” explaining the latter as, “Green grass turns Brown when it begins to ROT!”

One week after the president pulled his support, Greene announced her impending resignation from Congress, which took effect in January. Like Massie, she identified with the America First movement and, since leaving office, has been a frequent critic of the Trump administration’s waging of the Iran war.