FIRST ON FOX: New legislation being dropped on Thursday is seeking to bar House lawmakers from having sex with staffers after a series of exposés rocked Capitol Hill.
Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., is expected to introduce a pair of bills aimed at better defining the relationships lawmakers can have with employees of the House of Representatives, Fox News Digital is told.
One is a House resolution that would bar House lawmakers from having sex with any employee of the chamber. The other would block those lawmakers from living with House employees, except for married couples cohabitating.
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Mace told Fox News Digital, “If you’re a member of Congress, your priorities should be serving your constituents and this country, not fooling around with staff.”
And while the sex ban would apply to all members, regardless of gender, she made clear it was aimed at male lawmakers who she argued were abusing their power over female staff.
“Congress is not your personal dating pool. If you can’t do your job without hitting on staff, find another job and leave the women you work with alone,” Mace said.
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On her second bill banning lawmakers from living with staff, she said, “No staffer should ever be coming home at night to the person who signs their paycheck. It’s inappropriate, it’s a conflict of interest, and it should have been banned decades ago.”
Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., is the latest member of Congress whose reported past trysts with Hill aides were made public.
Gallego previously had sexual relationships with two House staffers, the New York Post reported. Gallego’s defenders have argued that he would not have run afoul of any rules because he was unmarried at the time and the staffers did not work for him.
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Before that, sexual misconduct and rape allegations against former Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., derailed his then-promising gubernatorial campaign and forced him to resign from Congress. Swalwell has denied those accusations but admitted to making unspecified personal mistakes in a public statement where he also apologized to his wife.
On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, was forced to resign his seat after scrutiny piled up over an affair with a staff member who later died by suicide.
And Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., is being probed by the House Ethics Committee over sexual harassment allegations himself, which Edwards has denied, Axios reported.
Mace’s bills are the latest response from Congress over the slew of scandals. Reps. Kat Cammack, R-Fla., Jeff Crank, R-Colo., Lisa McClain, R-Mich., and Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., have all endorsed limits on what relationships House members can have with staff.
Cammack and Crank have also introduced legislation imposing limits on such conduct.
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