Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez is 37 years old and represents a Washington district that Trump won twice in a row.
In 2025, she proposed something no one on Capitol Hill dared to say out loud: that lawmakers undergo cognitive fitness tests, with the Office of Congressional Conduct investigating cases of severe and irreversible decline. They rejected it by voice vote. She tried again in 2026 with the same result.
What no one expected was where the support came from: conservative editors and even a Republican candidate celebrated the idea as something that had been needed for years. She had previously called for Biden to leave the 2024 race because of his health. Now she insists that elections every two years are not enough as a check. “We must be willing to have these honest, frank, and difficult conversations”, she repeats, while Congress itself keeps telling her no.
