‘Missing’ GOP congresswoman not seen for six months finally found living at dementia care home
A Republican Congresswoman who has been “missing” for the past six months has finally been found.
Rep. Kay Granger has served as the representative for Texas’s 12th Congressional District since 1997.
However, she suddenly disappeared from the public eye around July this year, when she cast her final vote against an amendment to reduce the salary of Deputy Assistant Administrator for Pesticide Programs to $1.
A curious reporter at the local Dallas Express newspaper did some digging on Granger’s whereabouts and has finally been able to give her constituents some answers.
[...]We then received a tip from a Granger constituent who shared that the Congresswoman has been residing at a local memory care and assisted living home for some time after having been found wandering lost and confused in her former Cultural District/West 7th neighborhood.
The Dallas Express team visited the facility to confirm whether Granger was residing there and to inquire about how she planned to vote on the spending bill. Upon arrival, two employees confirmed that Granger is indeed living at the facility.
https://wcbm.com/national-headline/missing-gop-congresswoman-not-seen-for-six-months-finally-found-living-at-dementia-care-home/Open linkView original on fedia.io
To be fair, dementia is not much of a hindrance for making GOP policies.
Quite the opposite, it's almost a requisite at this point
It's not cognitive dissonance if you can't remember what your values were to begin with.
Worked for Reagan
It’s working for Biden as we speak.
"We think there is no nefarious cause of the drones"
Her voters would still vote for her
gotta own them Lib's
tbf a magic 8 ball would do a better job
It's not a hindrance for either party. Did you watch the first presidential debate?
I'm not sure if the people downvoting you didn't watch the debate or are so tribal that they're offended by legitimate criticism of Biden
It's not even criticism, really.
It's just an observation, no different than looking up and saying the sky is blue.
Truthfully, though, this is a criticism of both parties. Trump is clearly brain-damaged too, and he showed is several times during the campaign. The difference is he's still able to behave as expected, more-or-less, where Biden is not.
It appears like angry and demented is sustainable branding. You can keep getting paid as a politician long after your mental acuity has flown the coop.
wush
Don't get mad at me. I'm not the one who fielded a brain-damaged presidential candidate.
Still not sure which you're referring to here
TBH, me neither.
Gotta love that a functioning brain is no longer a requirement to be president.
Texas GOP sees this as an absolute win
Gottem.
Shouldn't something like that be reported when it happens? She's an elected official. Her seat has effectively been empty for at least six months now.
It's a small shit in the toilet-tub that is the current political state, but come on.
Overall, some has to sign off on her going into the facility. Assuming it's one of those locked in so they don't wander out type places. You would have to make that person some sort of mandatory reporter. Which I guess you could, but you would then essentialy require them to dig into a person's past, when currently thier job is just to ascertain the person's current mental state. Really this is the job of the legislature to track if she is showing up for work and declare her chair empty if not. Oregon has a rule that if you miss ten days of session in a row, you can't run again. This was to prevent walk outs. But it would also serve your purpose. But state legislatures aren't in session most of the time. So you would still get a big gap. But if it is not in session, the person's absence doesn't really matter.
Did you not read any of the other comments before replying with this, or the article, or even the title? Im confused how you think this person is some random lady. Everything you said has already been addressed by multiple people.
I was not aware of a requirement to read all other comments before replying to one. If your offended that I did that, well, good luck in life.
Ah yes, choosing willful ignorance. Smart.
Thanks, my mom says so too. Though it really was sarcasm.
To be fair, much patient care happens without knowing what the patient actually does or did for a living. Sometimes it comes up organically, sometimes doctors, nurses, caregivers ask, and sometimes it never comes up.
If the patient is what we would call a “poor historian” which is a typical thing that is found with dementia care patients (do you know where you are right now? And they really don’t, so deep dives don’t occur past the how oriented to present reality is this patient, beyond those generic determination questions, when they fail.)
So let’s say she has no family. Shows up in hospital, doctors determine dementia, she’s stable and it’s time to go, physical and occupational therapy in conjunction with the MD determine a lack of safety to going home alone so it’s now decided for this patient to go to a care home, and she goes to a care home. Who then, inside the care home, says: oh, maybe I should call the Texas legislature about this random patient of whom I know nothing personal, never mind HIPAA.
How would they know? How could they talk if they did, given HIPAA?
Or there is a relative making decisions by phone who never thinks, oh, maybe I should call her boss and tell them. They just miss that part in the midst of everything else.
She has staff. Anyone with dementia bad enough to be in a care facility would have been showing clear signs for a while. At no point did the staff think to check or do anything for the past 6 months? What have they been doing while she's been in there?
SOMEONE knew she was there and has been actively hiding that fact for 6 months.
True when it comes to the facility staff. But Congresspeople also have Congressional staff. Those people should’ve reported it, and should be held accountable for not. Which isn’t a law that I know of and of course won’t happen, but it should.
Sure, absolutely that can and does happen.
But this is not a hypothetical situation. She has family. She has friends. She had an entire staff that worked for her. She is not only a public figure she is a part of the US government. She represents a portion of the US population. Everyone that knew her all decided not to tell anyone what was going on, for a very long time.
I definitely believe that could be part of it.
Edit: this is completely wrong, I misunderstood her position. This is insane.
It should be noted that she is not a part of the US government, she is part of the Texas government. They are separate things.Does delaying the announcement that she is vacating at all increase the chance that another GOP follows her? Cuz then, that would be why. If not, then probably just covering an embarrassing secret.
Imagine not showing up to your job for 6 months and people just going, "hmmm, I wonder where they are."
I'm pretty sure the most important among them have known but were colluding in hiding it from the public.
They clearly cared a lot about her. She must be a very nice person.
How the fuck does a Senator go missing for SIXTH FUCKING MONTHS and no one bothers looking for them.
People from her office absolutely knew where she was, they just didn't bother telling anybody else.
She is in Congress, not the Senate - so there’s a couple hundred more of them in general, and not all of them turn up to work every day.. so it’s not hard to lose one for 6 months and not notice.
Especially when they’re Republicans, since they do sweet fuck all most days anyway.
where do I put my resume?
Find out who’s funding your current representative, and see if you can ass kiss even harder!
Ewwww gross
Her aids were probably running the show for years. What happens with these congress critters is that they create a support network around themselves to do the real work while they campaign for the next election. It gets to the point that the congress member themselves becomes superfluous. If it goes on long enough, they fall into dementia, but the aids don't want to start over again with someone new, so they just tote their boss around from time to time like Weekend at Burnie's. It happened with Dianne Feinstein. It's probably happening with Mitch McConnell.
ftfy
Probably, but I haven't heard much from him in a while. In my defense, if he has done something terrible recently, a lot of terrible things have been happening. It's hard to keep track.
Now that the election is over, I'm also willing to throw Biden on the pile. More then a few times in the past few years, he's done things that remind of me of my old, conservative acquaintances. Biden pardoning the Kids for Cash asshole cemented that.
People say "Pardoning Hunter ruined his legacy."
Pardoning Hunter was the right thing to do. The Republicans hounded him when they realized they had no real dirt on Biden, and basically got him via an unhonored plea deal for a crime that not even Joe Q. Public would get convicted for. Hunter was only convicted because his last name was Biden.
Pardoning the "Kids for Cash asshole" as you put it, was a rubber stamp affirming that Joe Biden only cares about the people on HIS side of the on-going class war. It cemented that if Hunter was in the same situation but not named Biden, he wouldn't have given a shit. And THAT destroyed his legacy, at best he was the "Good Cop" in a "Bad Cop, Good Cop" game, and need I remind you both cops are trying to convict you, even if they know damn well you didn't do that shit.
Also with Biden
Also with Trump, Regan... the list goes on.
Now that the election(and America) is over, I'm willing to openly agree with Biden being in mentally not there. Gerontocracy always lead to a decline in a nation.
If it's acceptable to have a minimum age to vote or hold office, it should also be acceptable to have a maximum age. Retired senior citizens shouldn't get to decide matters such as worker's rights or environmental issues.
I agree completely
She apparently did make at least one appearance during the
sixthsix months for whatever that's worth (sourced from her Wikipedia page)"Government is broken"
She’ll be the 2028 president
She's a she. Doesn't have a chance.
She doesn’t know that
Ooooooh, I like it! It's like The Truman Show, except way dumber.
Sorry, American CEO Musk will have eliminated that unnecessary office by then.
And really, it wasn't generating very good revenue for the shareholders any more. The board suggested going in a new direction.
This seems like a pretty important job to not just shuffle the person doing it into an old folks home! Like come on!
Literally a limited number per state. Even an midmanager would get called for running out of PTO way before then.
We need a maximum age for politicians. At all levels. And term limits. At all levels.
And a god damn attendance record.
My kid's school told me flat out that if a kid misses too many school days, they will be left behind.
So these "politicians" get paid and don't even have to show up?
Weirder still the ones that do show up tend to cast votes of absentees with sticks they proudly carry around for just that age or somehow both accepted and legal.
Okay. Make it happen then.
Suuuuper helpful response.
Let's talk about that woman later. Wtf is going on in Texas?? "An amendment to reduce the salary of Deputy Assistant Administrator for Pesticide Programs to $1" what did that person do that they put that on the agenda? Why is it possible to set a salary that low?
From what I see his name was Jake Li and he was attempting to safeguard endangered species against pesticides. So... His position is now vacant. Guessing Texas couldn't stand for it
He/they released this, so maybe I would have to more digging to gain further understanding.
https://texasfarmbureau.org/epa-releases-final-endangered-species-herbicide-strategy/
Edit: it appears he was "brought in" to that position when Biden entered office, and he is moving to the Department of Interior's fish and wildlife division. I suspect that they knew the upcoming and current cuts to the EPA would thin them out and the Fish and Wildlife department is less likely to be gone after, as that's who you get your hunting/fishing etc licenses from. I imagine the establishment that gives out licenses to shoot animals for fun, isn't likely to be targeted by Republicans
I can see your angle on not hurting the licensing agency, but I could also see it as a tactic to make it all so inoperable that licenses effectively become unnecessary. A temporary order to not enforce licenses starts making it normal. It's a stretch.
Unlicensed hunting leads to culling to much of a species in an area and ultimately it dying out. For the most part, even the dumb hunters understand if you kill to many this year hunting, there won't be anything to hunt moving forward. So they wouldn't want to chance not having the ability to hunt anything anymore I imagine. Same thing goes for the fishing and such. Though invasive species such as lionfish should be open season year round. But that is commonly done with diving gear, nets and spears usually because they have poisonous spines on them. (They do taste delicious though). They started an annual lionfish contest at a place I lived at about 7 years ago, so they had enough to feed everyone who came.
I'd be more concerned with sadistic tourist trophy hunters. Stuff like the multi-millionaires doing illegal African game hunts, but the local multi-hundred-thousandaires instead. But yeah, let's hope there's enough sensible hunters to help maintain any deregulation issues. And all this is IF it's even at risk.
But who fuckin knows. You'd think clean air would be a safe bet to maintain as a positive, but big oil is getting their way both with the government and the propaganda to convince society it's a masculine right to stroke the gas pump cock.
Realize that's she's a US house member, not a state legislature member. They were trying to defund the EPA in general by reducing salaries for individuals to $1 and it wasn't just Texas.
Which is funny, because both Texas and Oklahoma ignore the EPA anyway. The Oklahoma turnpike authority is trying to pollute Norman’s drinking water, and build a turnpike through land that endangered toads live on. They aren’t conducting any sort of environmental impact assessment, because Oklahoma gave them permission not to. Texas has probably hundreds, if not thousands, of improperly shut down oil wells which spew all kinds of pollution.
Who's been doing her job since then? There is no way that can be legal. I'd bet the farm the same thing is happening to Mitch McConnell. No way that old bag of dust and bones is competent enough to do his job.
The interns have been accepting all the bribes and spending it on beer.
Don't tell mom
the babysitter's deadthe Congresswoman's senileI’d watch this movie
We already are
I don’t wanna live it … just watch it
Heyheyhey! In America we call those "bribes" free speech for corporations. Bribes are illegal.
As a rep, her only job is to vote. She hires staff to carry out other responsibilities.
Granger never let a little thing like legality stop her. Why start now?
As I recall, she had a lot of mounting legal troubles over the Ft. Worth billion-dollar flood control project, which apparently funneled taxpayer cash to her son. And then there was that whole trip to Russia to meet with Putin on July 4th thing.
Oh, she was one of those.
bet she gets relected
She'll primary Trump, if such a concept exists in four years.
Of you read the article, she is already being replaced in January by a republican candidate.
Is this what they mean by Reaganism?
Why not have a cut off age?
That would put everyone voting for it out of a job.
Asking people with power to give up that power willingly almost never works, unfortunately.
Not asking, making it the rule
But that's the problem - they make the rules and they're not going to make up rules to their own detriment.
Have we tried insisting firmly? Asking rhetorically because no we haven't
Great thinking!
I'll just check exactly who makes the rules, one second...
Man, you won't believe this, but the old hags that would have their careers end are the same ones in charge of systemic changes.
Who would have thought.
Don't vote for the old people
We were going to implement one... but then we all got dementia.
Hmm I see. Her generation continues to be an utter fucking embarrassment when it comes to politics.
Why the fuck is she still getting a paycheck?
Because she's in a hospital and that shits expensive in the US.
Hopefully your employer can't just fire you if you get sick?
Lmao
Pretty sure Congress members get universal single payer healthcare for life
Okay, spoke out of turn... They get insurance like any other gov employee... Their mostly just all on Medicare
I’ve encountered 90 year olds that can walk, maybe even run circles around 50-60 year olds, mentally and physically.
That said, this is something we keep seeing. Feinstein was painful to see, and a clear example of what should never be allowed to happen. We need an age cap.
A policy like that is also ethically sound in that, and I’ve heard this floated before in multiple places, in that the politician will then have to sit back as an outsider and look at the impact of what they did.
As is, our politicians are free from that in being able to die in office or retire to dementia care instead of FEELING the impact of what they’ve done, or pointedly not done, while in office.
Age cap: 70. Done. You can run if you’re going to turn 70 in office, let’s be generous, but once you’re over 70 you can no longer run for an office.
Enforced retirement of judges for the same reason. Hit 70, you finish or transfer the cases you’re working on and when that’s done you’re done. Who knows how much inertia is fueling a waxing/waning cusp of Dementia judge when there’s no real focus on this across the many courtrooms of the country.
But I’ll probably be accused of ageism here. It’s a nice way to solve ethics problems, infirmity problems, and add in a soft cap term limitation.
I got accused of ageism before for saying the same that there should be mandatory retirement for public officials. However, the most convincing argument I heard for letting elders to still run for public office is that their accumulated experience, knowledge and wisdom could still be of great dispense for the public. Noam Chomsky is still doing well despite in his 90's, for example.
But Chomsky did not get it right with his genocide denialism on Cambodia and Yugoslavia. He may have great insights, but his ego seems to have been entrenched on downplaying atrocities of other anti-Western countries simply because they are anti-America. And then there is also the time when Chomsky basically brushed aside his association with Jeffrey Epstein, by telling the interviewer to mind his business. It's not a proof in and of itself, but it's very suspicious.
You can share your wisdom and be of great value to the public without being in public office.
At some point, though, you've gone from useful adult into honored elder, and while I'm not suggesting we put them all on ice floes, they shouldn't be running the country, especially since more than a few of them clearly don't even know which country they're in, let alone how to run it.
If you can't walk, are having strokes, have developed dementia, and generally just sit around staring at the wall like my cat, perhaps it's time to gracefully retire and go spend the rest of your life doing conferences and speaking engagements and whatever the hell else you want, not trying to legislate.
There's also a common problem of no career path for politicians after holding some of the higher offices. It's either be reelected or elected to a higher position. I think it's more or less present in most countries.
It's especially obvious with US presidents, none of them held any other office after being president. Even previous younger ones.
I kinda have two responses here, so uh, here's both of them:
Well, by the time this is an issue, odds are you've been a career politician anyway and don't need another job. This is just old people who refuse to retire because they like the power and trappings more than they care about doing their job.
By the time they MUST retire, these ghouls have stolen sufficient money that it doesn't matter, and sticking around is just them refusing to give up the power and feed their greed even more.
Both seem equally reasonable and applicable to the problem.
Don't most politicians have degrees even if unrelated to politics? They could fall back to the career relating to their degrees or at least close to it. There are some, however, who don't have college degrees or trade before becoming a politician. Bernie Sanders haven't had a proper career and did many jobs before becoming a politician.
Although if the politician retires at ripe old age between 60-70, they could live off the pension anyway.
Tie it to the federal retirement age, which is currently 67.
Even better: politics should not be a career, serve one term and that's it.
70 is the age of the young blood
at least they didn't reelect her for 2025-26
Only because she decided not to run again lol
Are you not running for office again congresswoman?
"Who are you?.. What office?"
You heard it here first folks, The congresswoman is still deciding if she will be running for office, back to you Terry.
I'm not entirely sure that stopped Feinstein from being reelected.
She had competition in every election she was in, actually. I was curious.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_history_of_Dianne_Feinstein
Americans desperate after missing out on the best presidential candidate
Let me guess, Granger continued to collect her paycheck while "missing."
sounds like she's clearly just getting in touch with the local population
My question is "How did they tell she was demented?"
GOP Congresswoman
Yeah, it's a tautology
So? I'm MUCH Happier with my Tax Dollars going to HER Salary then to Feeding Starving American Children!
Salaries for these folks is minuscule compared to expenses of War. Focus on what matters.
That's right! Her salary should go to help pay for the war! /s
Sorry is this the onion or not
This community is for articles that you would think are from The Onion because they're so crazy, but these articles are in fact genuine.
Back on the other website, someone once joked that surely /r/theonion+nottheonion must be the same as /r/all
The sum of all human knowledge isn't Wikipedia, it's the combination of two books:
Glad she's in a place that helps her. Her family did well.
Except for hiding her condition from her constituents. Do you want her voting on the Spending Bill when she doesn't even remember where she is?
(To be fair, it would be hard to tell you're not in Congress when you're surrounded by your fellow Alzheimer's patients.)
That might be what he meant, good on her family for seeing she has dementia and getting her away from her job
But not telling anyone so she keeps her income, or her family does. Since she won’t be remember what’s missing.
this is why health reporting requirements should be made publicly available prior to election, imo
Persons that knew the situation and did not attempt due diligence to notify Congress should be culpable
Some presidential candidates ripen before the election. Its natural.
If only more GQP congresspersons were like her.
Dont take amphetamines to fit into that old red dress
Be excited, be, be excited!
She's only 81, which is kind of young to be suffering that level of dementia. She has been diagnosed with Covid at least once. I wonder if that is related.
My dad died of dementia when he was 83. He was in a nursing home for a year before he died.
It was before COVID.
I'm sad to hear that. Yes it happens but it's not really common from what I can tell. Currently theory about Alzheimer's is that it is also caused by sustaining viral infections earlier in life.
Alzheimer's is not the only form of dementia. My father did not have Alzheimer's, he had frontotemperal dementia.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/frontotemporal-dementia/symptoms-causes/syc-20354737
This can happen to anyone.
81 is current average US female life expectancy. Where would you suggest people 'get old'?
we were talking about dementia, not "getting old". 81y life expectancy means if you look at the cohort of females born 81 years ago, about half of them will have already died, heart disease being the biggest cause. The relevant question is how many of them (both the dead and living ones) will have had bad enough dementia to have needed to be in a care home for it specifically? I don't mean for mild forgetfulness, occasional senior moments, etc.
81y (actually 80y per 2021 table, https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html ) is the life expectancy at birth. For a 80yo US female, life expectancy from the same table is 9.38y. So the ones who are still alive at 80 still have some "gas in the tank". My mom is up there in age and she needs a lot of assistance getting around etc, but it's mostly physical issues.
She is in a "adult community" (i.e. apt. complex for old folks) and I spend a lot of time there seeing her. I see tons of over-80's there. A few really do have serious dementia, but most are at other levels of independence with many rolling around in wheelchairs while still mentally present. Dementia care is a different thing and it's not that common for someone who is "only" 81 to need it.
My mom at 81 was still mentally quite sharp. She's slowed down since then but it's mostly mobility and sleeping a lot. President Biden seems to have some dementia issues but again, they aren't severe enough that he needs to be in a care home for it.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dementia_caregiving
Risk increase for vascular dementia is 65.