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Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s announcement on November 21 that she would resign her House seat on January 5 surprised a lot of observers in Georgia and in Washington, D.C. In some respects, she’s quitting at a high point of her political career. She was one of four House Republicans whose persistence in demanding a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act forced Donald Trump into a humiliating about-face that showed the limits of his power over the congressional GOP. She was ahead of the curve in demanding that Republicans deal with the Obamacare premium price spike caused by their refusal to extend subsidies that expire at the end of the year. Now Trump himself is reportedly about to release a proposal to address this problem, which he was refusing to acknowledge as recently as last week. Additionally, temperature readings of her congressional district showed that the president’s un-endorsement of MTG, and his invitation to a primary challenge, didn’t produce any rebellion against her back home in northwest Georgia. And more generally, her complaints that Trump has abandoned his own America First principles this year represent the first real threat to his hegemony from within the MAGA movement.

So why quit now, at the moment when she has transformed herself from an object of ridicule to a power player of interest to people in both parties?

The most obvious reason is that MTG’s day job in the U.S. House pretty much sucks. She’s a junior member of the House Republican Caucus who has alienated Mike Johnson and the rest of the leadership. The odds have never been good that the GOP will hold onto control of the House in 2026. And those odds have gone down dramatically in the last few weeks thanks to a 2025 off-year election debacle and a less-than-successful Trump bid to rig the landscape via gerrymanders. House Republicans in the minority in 2027 would have no real function other than singing hymns of praise for Donald Trump in his last two years in office, which MTG really can’t do anymore now that he’s labeled her a “traitor” and a “lunatic.”

So does that mean she’s running for higher office? Not necessarily. Like very few other politicians (AOC being an exception), Greene has achieved incredible national celebrity as a House member without having any notable legislative accomplishments (other than her role in the Epstein-files saga). She is a fundraising dynamo with a national donor base. One Republican parallel might be Sarah Palin, who quit her day job as governor of Alaska soon after her unsuccessful vice-presidential candidacy made her a celebrity with a firm base on the right wing of the GOP. MTG, like Palin, has the freedom to do — or not do — pretty much anything she wants. Yes, had she chosen to run for another empty House term in 2026, she would have likely prevailed over whatever loyalist follower Trump might have lured into a primary challenge. But why bother, and why risk the possibility of failure?

Greene is notoriously unpredictable. She may pause her political career for a bit (she’s a relatively youthful 51) to see what happens. At the moment she retains a hardcore MAGA following even while attracting new interest from Democrats, so she’s well positioned to move in any number of directions.

Perhaps she will take another look at the U.S. Senate race that Trump reportedly talked her out of earlier this year. The three major Republican candidates in that race (Congressmen Buddy Carter and Mike Collins, along with former football coach Derek Dooley) have already spent large sums bashing each other and swearing eternal fealty to Trump. A Greene candidacy could wrong-foot the field. More plausibly, she could run for governor of Georgia. Incumbent Brian Kemp is term-limited, and the two most prominent GOP candidates (former Trump fake elector and Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones and the Trump-defying secretary of State Brad Raffensperger) are poised to tear each other apart. Democrats have no real front-runner for the gubernatorial nomination and some of their candidates might be as problematic as Greene in a general election. MTG aside, Georgia Republicans have proved remarkably willing to reject Trump’s marching orders, as exhibited by the massive primary wins by Kemp and Raffensperger in 2022 against Trump-recruited foes.

MTG could even take a look at a 2028 presidential bid, though she’s denied any interest in that gig. Even if she takes a break from electoral politics, she’s already guaranteed herself continued prominence for a while as a symbol of bigger things, as NPR’s Michael Fowler observes:

Marjorie Taylor Greene is a canary in the coal mine for the state of the Republican Party. The Republicans suffered defeats up and down the ballot in this month’s elections. Economic headwinds are not in their favor. And Greene has put a very visible dent in the previously impenetrable armor that is Trump’s control over the GOP and its future. There was always going to be questions about what a post-Trump Republican Party would look like. We’re now just seeing that sooner and messier than Republicans would’ve hoped for.

MTG’s erratic nature and manifold vulnerabilities may render her a flash in the pan, but I wouldn’t bet on it. The Palin analogy is instructive: The former governor remained in the national political picture for a long time after she lost the vice-presidency and then quit the only major position she had ever held. She ran for Congress and lost narrowly as recently as 2022. We may have Marjorie Taylor Greene in our lives for quite some time, even if she never runs for governor, senator, or president. That’s pretty good for a politician who won her first race for public office just five years ago after parachuting into an open congressional district and making herself a national symbol of the insane but powerful QAnon cult (which she has more recently repudiated). She’s leaving her crappy day job just in time to keep a vast array of options open. For all we know, she could reconcile with Trump. Best of all, from Greene’s point of view, we don’t know what she’s going to do, but we’re still taking about her.

MTG Quits Her Lousy House Gig But Not the Spotlight

MTG Quits Her Lousy House Gig But Not the Spotlight