By Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN
(CNN) — GOP Rep. Mark Green, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, announced Monday that he intends to leave Congress after the House votes again on President Donald Trump’s sweeping domestic policy package.
“It is with a heavy heart that I announce my retirement from Congress. Recently, I was offered an opportunity in the private sector that was too exciting to pass up,” the Tennessee Republican said in a statement Monday. “As a result, today I notified the Speaker and the House of Representatives that I will resign from Congress as soon as the House votes once again on the reconciliation package.”
Green will be resigning in the middle of the 119th Congress, and his term was set to end after the 2026 midterm elections. Green said in the statement there will be a special election to replace him.
His departure will leave the GOP with a slimmer majority in the House. The current party breakdown in the House is 220 Republicans and 212 Democrats, with three vacancies from heavily Democratic districts.
A former Tennessee state senator and an emergency physician, Green was first elected to Congress in 2018. He became chairman of the Homeland Security panel in his third term in 2023, and he led House Republicans’ impeachment of former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Green is also a retired Army flight surgeon. He was involved in the raid that captured former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and he interrogated him after his capture, according to his House biography.
In 2017, Green was Trump’s pick to be Army secretary in his first term, but he withdrew his name from consideration following a backlash after his past controversial statements on LGBT issues, Islam and evolution resurfaced.
Green reversed a decision to retire last year after he received encouragement from multiple Republicans, including then-candidate Donald Trump, to stay in Congress.
“Mark Green has had lots of options because of his political talents, and the great job he has done as a Congressman, but given the fantastic work he’s doing as Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, I hope he runs for Re-Election to the U.S. House of Representatives,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after Green said he wouldn’t run.
When first announcing he wouldn’t run for reelection in February 2024, Green said he had accomplished what he set out to do in Congress, pointing to the House voting to impeach Mayorkas, an effort he helmed from his committee, and a sweeping GOP border security bill that did not move forward in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Asked after his first announcement what it said about the state of the House Republican Conference, Green argued that any dysfunction is due to the slim margins in the House.
“The other side votes their ideology, and it makes it very hard to get stuff done with a thin majority,” he said in February 2024. “That’s just the way that is. What we need to do is win more seats, and have a bigger majority, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
This story has been updated with additional details.
CNN’s Piper Hudspeth Blackburn contributed to this report.
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