In a video posted to X on Friday night, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) announced she would resign from Congress in early January, just halfway through her third term. Greene explained the decision in a direct-to-camera speech from her home, saying she “has always been despised in Washington, D.C., and just never fit in” and suggesting that President Trump has tried to “destroy” her amid a a week fief between Trump and Greene over the disclosure of Justice Department files on the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.
“It's all so absurd and completely unserious,” Greene said, citing personal attacks, death threats, smears and lies that have been told about her during her five years in the House. “I refuse to be the 'battered wife' waiting for everything to go away and get better.”
In an interview with CBS News earlier this month, Greene had called Trump's approach to the Epstein files a “A big miscalculation.” Just days later, Trump – who called Greene a “traitor” and threatened to endorse a primary rival in next year's election – succumbed to an overwhelming vote in the House and signed a bill to release the files.
It is the latest in a recent series of moves: from colliding with House Speaker Mike Johnson Expiring ACA Grants to condemning American aid to Israel, which has put Greene at odds with the Republican Party leadership. While surprising, their breakup is not unprecedented. In 2020, former Senator Mitt Romney cast the only republican vote to convict Trump during his first impeachment trial. The following year, former Rep. Liz Cheney he broke with almost all his Republican colleagues to help lead the January 6 investigation. However, Greene's turn has generated a much colder responsewith many across the political spectrum questioning his motives.
What separates Greene from Cheney or Romney is a trust deficit. In politics, credibility is currencyand Greene's account is severely overdrawn. To sell conspiracy theories about “Jewish space lasers” to flip flop On a major budget bill she had not read in its entirety, years of inconsistency, exaggeration and deception have left Greene with an outstanding reputational debt. Each new claim is compared to a book of falsehoods and contradictionsand the public, like any rational lender, doubt to give more credit to Greene.
That skepticism may be justified, but it exposes how politicians have no real way to regain credibility once they lose it. When trust collapses, there is no structured process to rebuild it. Journalism offers correctionyes and offers of religion penancebut politics only offers excuses. And sorry, alone, does not repair trust.
The cost of that void is enormous. Without trust, every attempt to evolve generates skepticism. Amid this suspicion, even sincere change is costly: rethinking a political position risks both betray his followers and failing to win over critics. Growth, then, becomes politically irrational. Only a process to regain trust can break this cycle.
Fortunately, the legal system has designed one. For more than a decade, San Francisco has operated Do He Gooda restorative justice program for youth charged with serious crimes such as robbery and assault. Instead of facing court proceedings, defendants have the option to perform community service, attend counseling sessions, and pay restitution. At each stage, the program collects detailed attendance records and participation records.
more than one four year periodthose who completed Make It Right fared significantly better than those tried in court. After the first six months, only 24% had been arrested again, compared to 43% of those in the control group. That gap remained stable after a year and widened to about 27 percentage points by the end of the study. Similar programs, like the one in Brooklyn common justice and Oakland Restorative Community Conference – show comparable results.
Restorative justice does not work simply because participants complete a set number of service hours or counseling sessions. It works because completing those steps It requires thousands of small, measurable choices. that, together, make releast likely offense. The process produces a continuous behavior record– Every drug test passed, every progress report submitted, and every floor cleaning becomes concrete data. Each task is a minor act of repair, an entry in a growing book of conduct. The prison, on the contrary, collects much less information; measures time completed, not initiative shown.
A perfect record alone does not prove that someone has changed, but it does demonstrate consistent tracking. Over time, this behavior becomes predictive: The longer you continue and the more data points you produce, the more reduce the risk of returningoffense. When that risk falls below a reasonable threshold, trust returns. Probation operates in the same logic. Policy has no way of reproducing that process because it cannot accurately measure the probability of it taking place. Without that data, the decision to trust again can be nothing more than a guess.
Some will argue that applying this model to politics would leave controversial figures like Greene alone. It does the opposite. A system to restore credibility I would just bring the data to light necessary to evaluate whether future confidence is reasonable. If the data reveals a lack of effort or consistency, that failure becomes part of the record. The goal is not so much to rehabilitate politicians as to rehabilitate the trial.
The real risk is that the evidence here is predictive, not determinative. No amount of completed tasks can demonstrate genuine reform. But that's the value of scale: at worst, even insincere efforts still benefits the community They are meant to serve. The public park continues to be cleaned, the town hall continues to be held, the payment for the repair continues to be delivered. What protects the integrity of such a system is the sheer accumulation of work that makes even self-interest socially productive.
Data is the only antidote to mistrust. The challenge, then, is how to build a system that contains the largest number of microtests. Specific evidence matters less than the consistent record it produces: a steady accumulation of follow-up that makes renewed confidence a rational inference rather than a leap of faith. Until such evidence exists, whether Greene – or anyone in public life – deserves a second chance will remain a question we will be forced to answer in the dark.
Ryan W. Powers is a legal analyst who writes a weekly newsletter about democracy, dissent and the law.
