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Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, has been living in a retirement facility, a source told Fox News on Sunday. The source also denied a local news report that he was in a memory care facility.
Granger, who retires at the end of this congressional mandate, has remained largely absent from the Capitol in recent months, having last voted on July 24. He was not present in more than 54% of the votes this year.
The Dallas Express investigated the 81-year-old congresswoman’s absence, releasing a report Friday that cited a constituent in her district who said Granger was living in a Texas memory care facility. The report was later picked up by other media outlets.
Fox News spoke with a source in Granger’s office who denied that Granger is in a memory care unit. The source told Fox News that Granger is in a retirement facility where memory care is provided, though not in the memory care unit.
HOUSE APPROVES FUNDING BILL WITH JUST HOURS UNTIL GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN
Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, leaves the House Republican caucus meeting at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington on Wednesday, May 10, 2023. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Granger released a statement to Fox News, saying he has been confronted “Health Challenges” and is “deeply grateful for the attention and concern” over the weekend.
“As many of my family, friends and colleagues have known, I have been navigating some unforeseen health challenges over the past year,” Granger said in the statement. “However, since early September, my health challenges have progressed making frequent travel to Washington difficult and unpredictable. During this time, my amazing staff has stood firm, continuing to provide exceptional constituent services, as they have done for the past 27 years.”
Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, speaks during a news conference with fellow Republican members of the House of Representatives on Capitol Hill July 21, 2020 in Washington, DC (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
Granger, who did not seek re-election for the next term, has served in the House since 1997. She previously served as the first female mayor of Fort Worth, Texas.
Although Granger has apparently not voted since July, she returned to the Capitol in November for the unveiling of her portrait as chair of the Appropriations Committee and a reception that followed. Speaker of the House Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise spoke at the event.
A senior Republican source told Fox News that Granger did not resign earlier because of the thin paper GOP House Majority.
“Frankly, we needed the numbers,” the source told Fox News.
The slim majority presents a challenge for the speaker of the 119th Congress, in which attendance at the vote it could be the difference between success and defeat for Republicans.
Fox News has reached out to Johnson’s office for comment.
Granger’s long absence was criticized by Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., in a post on X.
“Kay Granger’s long absence reveals the problem of a Congress that prizes seniority and relationships over merit and ideas,” he wrote. “We have a sclerotic gerontocracy. We need term limits. We need to get a lot of money out of politics so a new generation of Americans can run and serve.”
Khanna was one of the few lawmakers who previously criticized what he called the “gerontocracy”. In May 2023, he asked Democratic Rep. Dianne Feinstein, then 89, to resign as her own health problems kept her away from the Capitol. Feinstein died months later in September 2023.
