Fury swells over 'epidemic' of vanishing lawmakers

Questions were swirling online Thursday after news that two lawmakers — a Democrat and a Republican — had mysteriously disappeared, with no word on their whereabouts.

Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) has not voted on any issue since April 17 and is currently running for re-election. And she's not the only one missing.

Rep. Thomas Kean (R-NJ), who is also running for re-election in a major swing district, has been missing from public view for two months and has stopped answering calls. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) eventually reached him and found he had been battling an unspecified "personal health matter."

It's unclear when either Wilson or Kean might return to Congress. Both have continued publishing social posts on X despite their in-person absences from Capitol Hill.

The internet weighed in on the missing congressional leaders amid questions over their absences.

"Absent since March 5 in Congress, absent from his district for months, no timeline on when he is expecting to return, no information about his health condition, but the X feed charges on in the first person," Annie Karni, congressional correspondent for The New York Times, wrote on X.

"A prominent New Jersey congressman has essentially disappeared for more than two months with no real explanation — hard to separate that from the beating local news has taken in New Jersey over the past few years. How does nobody know where he is?" Jacob Rubashkin, deputy editor of Inside Elections, wrote on X.

"There's lowkey an epidemic of missing congresspeople," political writer and comedian Ginny Hogan wrote on Threads.