Republicans Are Standing Up to Sexual Misconduct — and Washington Should Pay Attention

For nearly a decade, the #MeToo movement was framed as a cultural and ideological battle. Supporters spoke the language of feminism, decrying cultural sexism and patriarchy. Critics on the right often dismissed the movement as one prone to excess, identity politics, or media grandstanding, often weaponized against political enemies.

But something unexpected is now happening in Washington. Some of the loudest voices demanding accountability for sexual misconduct in Congress are now Republican women. You can chart this movement to about six months ago, when Marjorie Taylor Greene had a public falling out with President Trump in response to the slow trickle release of the Epstein files, eventually ending in her resignation from Congress in January. Representatives Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert, and Anna Paulina Luna have joined the new voices leading a push for greater transparency around congressional misconduct investigations, following the scandals of their former fellow members of Congress, Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales. And Representative Kat Cammack joined her colleague Teresa Leger Fernández — chairs of the Republican and Democratic Women’s Caucuses, respectively — to launch a bipartisan initiative addressing how sexual misconduct cases are handled in Congress.