At the beginning of President Trump’s second term, if you had told me there would be an uprising in the Republican-controlled Congress against sexual misconduct within its ranks, I would have given you serious side eye. If you had said that push would be led by a small band of MAGA women targeting alleged bad actors in both parties, I would have demanded you get your head examined. Yet here we are.
Representatives Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace and Anna Paulina Luna drove the resignation last month of two of their colleagues accused of misconduct: Tony Gonzales, a Republican from Texas, and Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California. Last fall, Ms. Boebert, Ms. Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene, then still a representative, provided key votes to compel the Justice Department to release its files on the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein — despite Mr. Trump’s pressuring them to back off. These women, along with Representative Kat Cammack of Florida, the founder of the Republican Women’s Caucus, have been pressing to punish Representative Cory Mills, a Florida Republican who has been subject to a restraining order at the request of an ex-girlfriend.
The last time this issue shook Capitol Hill, in the #MeTooCongress moment of the first Trump administration, Democratic women led the charge, until partisan polarization and backlash killed the momentum. Since then, the G.O.P., dominated by MAGA machismo, has only grown more antagonistic toward women’s rights and more indulgent of men behaving badly.
This is precisely why Ms. Luna et al. are the best equipped to usher in a #Me2.0 in Congress. Their established MAGA-ness gives them the credibility to push leadership on awkward issues. And they are less likely than more moderate colleagues to be dismissed as scolds or man-haters. If these crusaders want to do more than merely pick off a few bad apples, this political moment offers them a rare opening to make progress on one of Congress’s ugliest, most entrenched cultural problems.
Doing so could serve them politically. If anyone knows how to grab the spotlight and keep outrage alive, it’s MAGA lawmakers. All the better for their iconoclastic brand, their status as disrupters, if they visibly annoy their party’s establishment.
Ms. Luna clearly takes pride in prodding leadership. Along with targeting sexual misconduct, she is one of the House’s loudest advocates of a ban on congressional stock trading.
“I’ve been calling out both parties for it, and I won’t stop,” she said of her accountability campaign in an interview well before the Swalwell scandal broke. (Mr. Swalwell has denied the assault allegations against him.) She compared herself to a “Jiminy Cricket” perched on colleagues’ shoulders. “I always am giving them correct advice.”
Ms. Luna is mindful of the need to push back against criticisms of the G.O.P. as anti-woman. “We do represent a lot of women, businesswomen, young women, stay-at-home moms, et cetera,” she told me. When they learn of misconduct allegations, “and it’s not dealt with accordingly, it’s a poor reflection on the party.”
The accountability crew is working across the aisle to advance their cause — a rare and politically touchy move in these polarized times. A heartbeat after news about the Swalwell allegations broke, Ms. Luna was coordinating with Representative Teresa Leger Fernández, the head of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, to oust both him and Mr. Gonzales. (The latter first denied then admitted to having an affair with a staffer who later died by suicide.) “We worked closely together over that frantic weekend” organizing expulsion resolutions, Ms. Fernández told me. “We think we had the votes, which is why we think they both resigned.” Last Wednesday, Ms. Fernández and Ms. Cammack announced a new bipartisan effort to expand and improve protections against misconduct.
Being outspoken comes with political risk. The original #MeToo surge brought down lawmakers from both parties. But in September 2018, the movement became absorbed into the nation’s most heated, high-stakes political brawl: Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination fight, dominated by allegations that he sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford in the early 1980s.
Republicans hardened against the movement. Even some Democrats began wondering if it had gone too far. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the Democrat from New York, was the first senator to call for her colleague Al Franken, the Democrat from Minnesota, to step down over allegations many people considered slight. In political circles, Mr. Franken’s ouster became shorthand for the movement’s overreach, and Ms. Gillibrand became a target of grumbling in her own party. During her failed presidential bid in 2020, her campaign lamented that lingering resentment over the Franken episode had damaged her fund-raising. In more recent years, the senator has kept a lower profile on the topic — as have most lawmakers.
The MAGA women face their own challenges. Most notably, they tap-dance around President Trump’s disturbing record when it comes to women. Ms. Mace, Ms. Boebert and Ms. Luna recently told The Times’s Annie Karni that they do not believe the many and varied accusations of sexual misbehavior that have been leveled at Mr. Trump — which presumably includes his being found liable of sexual abuse in court. And while their beef with the Justice Department over the Epstein files displeased the president, the women did not directly attack him.
They may well feel compelled to give Mr. Trump a pass to preserve credibility with their team. Ms. Greene went all in on her feud with the president and wound up resigning her seat in January. This dynamic complicates — but does not rule out — their core goal: changing the toxic culture in Congress. “There is a sense of entitlement and untouchable-ness, if that’s a word, that comes over some members,” noted Jackie Speier, a former Democratic House member from California who pushed through the #MeToo reforms in 2018.
High-profile campaigns to expose misbehaving members help crack that aura of privilege. There has been a renewed focus of late on misconduct allegations, including the House Ethics Committee’s investigation into Representative Chuck Edwards, a North Carolina Republican, who has been accused of inappropriate conduct toward young staff members. (He has denied wrongdoing.)
So far, Republican leaders seem most interested in tightening enforcement. Among the top reform ideas with bipartisan support being discussed: overhauling the House Ethics Committee. “It’s set up to take forever,” said Ms. Speier, who served on the committee. “They need to come up with a swifter way of moving through these complaints.”
More broadly, the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights has been recommending for decades that Congress establish whistle-blower protections comparable to those in the executive branch.
And there is widespread agreement that reporting incidents should be easier. “It is so complicated for a woman to know where to go,” said Ms. Fernández. Why, she asked, doesn’t Congress have a hotline for sexual assault and misconduct? “A single number you call where somebody is going answer the phone, and they’re on your side.” Ms. Speier, who has been consulting with Ms. Fernández and other former colleagues, noted that there are also apps on the market that could facilitate anonymous reporting.
Now is the time to push. Republicans are anxious about their president’s widespread unpopularity, and party leaders cannot afford to be seen as protecting congressional wrongdoers. Especially in a high-stakes election year. Reformers have leverage — if they keep the heat on.
I asked Ms. Luna if she worried about alienating her colleagues or leaders or getting labeled a bad team player.
“No. I’m cool with being Jiminy Cricket,” she insisted. “Everyone loves Jiminy Cricket. He saves Pinocchio.”
