XPost: alt.politics.media, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, sac.politics
XPost: talk.politics.misc, alt.society.liberalism
In 2023, a small website called The Dallas Express picked up a startling allegation: Texas Rep. Kay Granger, one of the most powerful GOP members
of Congress, was struggling with dementia.
The publication “actually got a tip from a senior staffer in her office
that she was having issues,” said Chris Putnam, the Express’ CEO. “They
got the date and location for her visiting the Brain Institute and had a reporter there and got eyes on her. They didn’t get a photograph of her.”
There wasn’t enough to go on. But the next year, the idea was still
around, even though Granger had stepped down from chairing the
Appropriations Committee and wasn’t running again. When the publication
was unable to reach the Fort Worth Republican for a story, Putnam said, “I checked roll call, and I saw that she hadn’t cast a vote since early
July.”
What followed, according to Putnam, was basic journalistic shoe-leather.
He dispatched a reporter to Granger’s district office and found the place
all but abandoned — something confirmed by a call to the property manager.
“I started making some calls personally to some of the folks that I know
in the area,” he said. “And sure enough, we were tipped off about where
she was.”
The tip: For months, she’d been living in an assisted-living facility in
Texas that also includes memory care. A reporter was sent to the facility.
“We fully expected them to just basically escort him out,” Putnam said.
“But no, they sent a representative out and they acknowledged it.”
The story broke in December, shortly before Granger’s long-planned
retirement, and was confirmed several days later by Granger’s son, who acknowledged “dementia issues” in a Dallas Morning News interview. As the
news ricocheted around the political world, a Texas website with an
editorial staff of 10 was credited with a massive scoop — while the
Capitol Hill press corps was pilloried for supposedly taking its eye off
the ball.
Given that the U.S. Capitol is one of the few buildings in America where
the reporting corps hasn’t been totally devastated, it was a confounding
miss. Granger wasn’t a nobody. She’d been in office for over a quarter- century, and had been the top Republican on the Appropriations committee
until last April. Her face was familiar both to her colleagues and the reporters who roam outside the House chamber. Curiosity might also have
been triggered by the fact that she’d voluntarily stepped aside from a
plum position that most members of Congress would have to have pried from
their hands.
There were also at least some opportunities for journalists to find out
what was happening. Granger may have been absent from votes, but she
briefly returned to the Hill for a retirement salute to her last November,
well into the period where her son acknowledged “dementia issues” and just
a month before the Express story broke.
At the chummy event, speakers included House Speaker Mike Johnson and
Majority Leader Steve Scalise, as well as Democrats Rosa DeLauro and Nita Lowey. Nobody mentioned anything awry when Granger, still an elected
official, reappeared not for an important vote but for a laudatory send-
off. During the tribute, Granger sat and looked on as her official
portrait as a former Appropriations Committee chair was unveiled before a
large audience of congressional colleagues and staffers.
Or, as reporters call them, “sources.”
And it’s not like the proximate issue was unknown. Between Joe Biden and
Dianne Feinstein, the conversation about elderly and possibly impaired politicians was already roiling Washington, which ought to have pricked up people’s radar.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/03/14/kay-granger-dementia-dc- media-00210317
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