Jillian McLaughlin felt trapped.
“I feel like there’s no way out,” she wrote in her journal in 2024, after a year of working for former Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, as his driver and assistant.
Ms. McLaughlin, who was in her early 30s at the time, had landed in Mr. Swalwell’s orbit about a year earlier when she had been hired for a weekend to drive him to the Super Bowl. That led to a full-time job in Washington, where she became a fixture by the side of the powerful and charismatic congressman, in charge of getting him to votes on time and helping to keep his schedule running.
There were other aspects of the job that made her uncomfortable. Mr. Swalwell invited her to spend a weekend with him in Miami (she did not go). He would ask her to join in when he was out drinking with colleagues (she sometimes did, limiting herself to one drink). Late at night, the congressman would text her his feelings about his day.
Ms. McLaughlin never had a physical relationship with Mr. Swalwell, who resigned last month facing multiple accusations of sexual assault and harassment, charges he denies. But the experience soured her on Washington, prompting her to leave for good and to conclude that Capitol Hill was a toxic work environment for a young woman.
“These people are, in their personal and professional time, taking advantage of people,” she said of members of Congress. “There was no system, and no one cared.”
Mr. Swalwell may have been on the extreme end of boundary-blurring behavior fueled by alcohol, proximity to power and tribal loyalty, all of which are common on Capitol Hill. But what Ms. McLaughlin went through was not unusual.
Nearly 10 years after Congress instituted measures to crack down on sexual harassment by lawmakers and make it easier for women to lodge complaints about it, lawmakers and aides say the behavior is still rampant among Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill and often goes unaddressed.
In more than a dozen interviews over the past month, current and former lawmakers and congressional staff members — many of them women who discussed sensitive workplace conditions on the condition of anonymity — said the power structure on Capitol Hill created a culture where questionable behavior by lawmakers was common, and reporting harassment was difficult.
There is no public data available about the number of sexual harassment complaints in Congress, but confidential settlements and two recent resignations speak to what female staff members say is a broad issue with behavior ranging from lawmakers making suggestive or inappropriate comments to clear instances of misconduct.
They pointed to several factors that enable such behavior: a small workplace with a lopsided power dynamic in which the principals are highly influential and subordinates fear limiting their employment options; leaders who have political incentives to distance themselves from scandal; and a broken complaints process.
And they noted that the very nature of Congress — a place dominated by supremely confident men who are away from their families for weeks on end — lends itself to bad behavior.
“Let’s be really honest,” said Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Republican representative from Georgia. “What happens in Congress is not at all anything like what regular Americans have to go through in their places of employment. The same standards just don’t apply.”
‘A minefield’ of a workplace
Beneath the grandeur of the Capitol dome, Congress is a small and self-contained workplace, where gossip travels fast and reputations are cemented quickly.
Workplace standards vary widely across the complex. There are 535 voting members of Congress in the House and Senate, and each operates an independent office that sets its own salaries, establishes its own protocols and fosters its own culture.
The job in Washington includes an endless rotation of happy hours, receptions and fund-raisers, events that run on alcohol and are attended by interns and staff members, many of whom fear alienating someone who might be able to help them advance their careers.
Back home in district offices, many of which are tucked away in strip malls far from Washington, staff members often work one-on-one with the seemingly all-powerful boss, often with no real office support structure around them.
One person who worked in a senior position on Capitol Hill for years said the power dynamic between a congressman and a junior aide was far different from the typical boss-employee relationship in most offices, more like the one between Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase and a branch manager in Kansas.
The number of complaints about harassment are higher in district offices, people who have fielded those complaints said.
For a young woman to raise a complaint in such a situation is still seen as a major risk to her career in a place where the margins of control have grown so small that the stakes feel monumental.
“It’s just a minefield for people,” said Debra Katz, a lawyer who specializes in harassment cases and advised lawmakers on ethics changes made in 2018 in response to the #MeToo movement. “The concern is you’ll never get a reference, and the fears are absolutely reasonable.”
Earlier this month, Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, released documents showing that more than $300,000 in taxpayer money had been paid in confidential sexual harassment settlements on behalf of six former lawmakers or their offices over the course of 22 years.
The back-to-back resignations of Mr. Swalwell and former Representative Tony Gonzales, a Texas Republican who admitted to a sexual relationship with a staff member who later died by suicide, thrust the issue back into the spotlight.
Many women said the only real protection on Capitol Hill was a whisper network among staffers, who warn each other of which lawmakers to avoid.
Former Representative Jackie Speier, a California Democrat who helped push for mandatory harassment training for members and staff in the wake of #MeToo, said the fact that a whisper network remained the sole effective resource for women made it clear that the changes she urged years ago were nowhere near enough.
“That should be a wake-up call to the leadership,” she said. “They’re in the position to fix this.”
Leaders Acknowledge a Problem
Following the resignations by Mr. Swalwell and Mr. Gonzales, leaders in both parties have said that cracking down on such conduct is a priority, and acknowledged that more must be done.
Speaker Mike Johnson said Republican leaders were “looking at every potential avenue to tighten up the rules and make sure that women have an avenue to report.” He noted that he has two daughters who work on Capitol Hill.
And he and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and minority leader, on Wednesday announced a bipartisan “partnership” that would look to better address how sexual harassment claims are handled in Congress.
Still, there are institutional and political limits to what the leaders in Congress of either party have been willing or able to do. The speaker and minority leader hold significant power in their respective parties. They can strip a lawmaker of committee assignments or, in some cases, block their legislation from advancing. But they are not any lawmaker’s boss, leaving them limited in their ability to police the actions of the rank and file.
It takes a two-thirds majority to expel a sitting member of Congress, an action that many lawmakers are reluctant to take in part because it overturns the will of voters. And with the two parties trading razor-thin majorities in recent years, leaders have strong political incentives to avoid such moves no matter how serious the accusation against a party colleague.
When women’s complaints have made it to the speaker’s office in the past, the request has often been for help getting a new job, or being transferred to another office. But many of those victims are adamant that nobody can know why they are being moved.
“They want it to go away,” said one former leadership staff member who fielded many such requests. “They’re worried they’re going to ruin their reputation.”
And in the House, leaders are eager to sidestep the details and turn them over to the House Ethics Committee, the panel charged with investigating and adjudicating allegations of misconduct by members.
But the panel can take months or years to do its work. And some lawmakers have complained that it is little more than a tool for leaders to avoid accountability for members behaving badly.
“They hide behind the institution’s process, but the institution’s process is corrupt,” said Representative Anna Paulina Luna, the Florida Republican who led the charge to expel Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Swalwell.
A Troubled Complaints Process
As scrutiny of the nonpartisan House Ethics Committee’s work has intensified, it recently acknowledged in a rare statement that victims of harassment often are reluctant to bring accusations of misconduct in the first place.
That is in large part because the panel is controlled by lawmakers — their bosses’ peers — giving staff aides reason to fear that they will be tagged as troublemakers and blocked from future employment opportunities if they raise a red flag.
Back in 2018, after the #MeToo movement elicited a deluge of stories from lawmakers, lobbyists and congressional aides about harassment on Capitol Hill, members sought to improve the process.
With prodding from Ms. Speier and others, Congress revamped what had been a burdensome process for reporting harassment complaints to make it easier for victims to file claims against their bosses, and removed mandatory counseling and mediation periods that often delayed action. Members were also required to establish anti-harassment policies for their offices.
But the guidance has sizable gaps. A version of the House’s anti-harassment training for this year, viewed by The New York Times, does not directly address how staff should handle complaints against lawmakers.
The training, a series of cartoon videos that present hypothetical office scenarios, does not mention the Ethics Committee. And it does not address conduct outside the office, despite being tailored to staff members whose responsibilities extend beyond the Capitol.
A set of 15 double-sided flashcards issued to aides as part of the mandated training also illustrates a sliding scale for what is considered inappropriate behavior. One displayed a range of actions ranging from civility to crude jokes to blackmail and sexual assault, ranked on a “subtle to severe” curve that went from “appropriate” to “egregious.”
Representative Teresa Leger Fernández, Democrat of New Mexico and the chairwoman of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, has been working on creating new ways to encourage women to come forward with accusations, including a sort of “911” hotline for harassment allegations.
“There needs to be one place where someone answers the phone and says, ‘I’m on your side; I’m listening to you; we have these resources available to you,’” she said.
Ms. Leger Fernández also wants to create a faster process for investigations. She said the House Ethics Committee — which has 32 employees and a $9.3 million budget, making it one of the smallest and least-funded panels in the chamber — needed more staff to speed that work.
Accusations Continue
Under mounting public pressure, the Ethics Committee on Monday made an unusual announcement that it was continuing to review “serious and complex” allegations against Representative Cory Mills, Republican of Florida, that it began looking into in November 2025.
Mr. Mills was investigated by the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington last year in connection with a report of an assault on a woman. His former girlfriend was issued a protective order after accusing him of threatening her with revenge porn following their breakup.
President Trump has endorsed Mr. Mills, who has denied any wrongdoing, and Mr. Johnson has refused to take any punitive action against him until the Ethics Committee completes its work.
Some lawmakers, including Ms. Mace, are trying to ratchet up the pressure to get Mr. Mills expelled. But it has been difficult. Mr. Mills has drafted his own resolution to expel Ms. Mace.
“If you speak up,” she said, “you’re retaliated against.”
And more allegations have surfaced in recent weeks.
Representative Chuck Edwards, Republican of North Carolina, is also under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for inappropriate behavior with female staff members. Axios reported that he sent a handwritten note to one that said: “I only wish I could explain the joy and meaning to me for the time we spent together at the office — but especially away from it.” Mr. Edwards has denied any wrongdoing.
Representative Jim Costa, Democrat of California, also was investigated over an accusation of inappropriate contact with interns in 2020 and 2021, but the Ethics Committee ultimately dismissed the case because of a lack of evidence, according to a recent report from NOTUS. In a statement, his press secretary said that Mr. Costa had fully cooperated with the review.
In the past 10 years, at least eight House members have left office before the Ethics Committee could finish an investigation into sexual harassment or misconduct claims against them. Once a member is no longer in the House, the committee loses its jurisdiction and ends its work.
Even after Mr. Gonzales admitted to violating House rules by having an affair with a former aide, who later died after she set herself on fire, he was able to keep his seat while his case was referred to the ethics panel. Had he not resigned, there was no guarantee that the investigation would have concluded before his term ended.
Ms. Leger Fernández said there was one other way to fundamentally change the culture of Capitol Hill, albeit a much longer-term solution: elect more women.
“The more women start serving in Congress, and in Democratic leadership, that starts changing things,” she said. “We need to hire more and elect more women.”
Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times.
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