House Paid Astonishing Sum to Make Sexual Harassment Claims Disappear

The federal government secretly used your tax dollars to settle sexual harassment claims against House members for decades.

According to documents from the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights and Republican Representative Nancy Mace, who recently forced the release of those documents through a subpoena, the federal government paid out more than $338,000 from 2004 to 2017 to secretly settle sexual harassment claims against six House members or their offices. The following year, Congress banned the federal government from paying off settlements for sex pests.

Mace said she plans to release the records publicly “once we confirm that personally identifiable information of victims and witnesses has been properly redacted.... Accountability is not a threat,” she said. “It is a promise.”

According to Mace’s calculations, those implicated include former Democratic Representatives Eric Massa ($115,000) and John Conyers ($77,000), and Republicans Blake Farenthold ($84,000) and Patrick Meehan ($39,000), whose misconduct was already public but not the exact sums. Less public settlements included an $8,000 payout on behalf of the late Democratic Representative Carolyn McCarthy’s office and a $15,000 payout for former Republican Representative Rodney Alexander. Alexander claimed the settlement had to do with accusations against one of his staffers at the time, while a former McCarthy aide did not respond to a query from Politico.

These payouts—which have received even more scrutiny in the wake of allegations of misconduct against former Representatives Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales—demonstate the massive lack of accountability for members of Congress. Our leaders are hiding behind our money instead of actually having to acknowledge their misdeeds.

The war in Iran has done very little damage to the country’s nuclear capabilities, according to U.S. intelligence assessments.

So far, America has been at war with Iran for more than nine weeks and spent at least $25 billion in the process. The regional conflict has damaged strategic alliances, stalled global trade, and thrust the world into an energy crisis due to the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz. It has also killed thousands of people.

And yet assessments of Tehran’s nuclear program remain largely unchanged from roughly a year ago, when Donald Trump ordered strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear sites, hitting Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan on June 22.

Prior to the June attack, U.S. analysts believed that Iran had the capacity to build a nuclear bomb within three to six months, according to three sources familiar ‌with the matter that spoke with Reuters Monday night. Afterward, U.S. analysts estimated that the attack—internally referred to as Operation Midnight Hammer—changed the Islamic Republic’s nuclear timeline back to about nine months to a year.

That estimate is still the same, according to Reuters’s unnamed sources.

Since February 28, the majority of U.S. and Israeli attacks have focused on hitting conventional military targets in Iran. The stagnant timeline suggests that such a strategy is not effective at diminishing Iran’s nuclear capabilities. To do that may require the destruction or removal of Iran’s remaining stockpile of highly enriched uranium, or HEU, reported Reuters.

Iran lacked a single bomb’s worth of uranium in 2018, three years after former President Barack Obama brokered the Iran Nuclear Deal to limit the country’s enormous uranium stockpile. But that changed when Trump withdrew the U.S. from the pact and imposed a series of tough economic sanctions against the Middle Eastern country.

By 2025, Iran had curated an 11-ton stockpile of enriched uranium, the whereabouts of which remain largely unknown. The total HEU stockpile could create as many as 10 bombs if fully enriched, according to a 2025 assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Trump has previously stated that his primary objective in the war was to completely eliminate Iran’s nuclear capabilities, but his administration has not been consistent in relaying its mission progress to the general public.

In the immediate aftermath of Operation Midnight Hammer, Trump and his administration claimed that Iran’s nuclear production was set back by multiple “years.” Yet former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent suddenly resigned over the issue in March, writing in his resignation letter that he could not “in good conscience” support the war in Iran because the country “posed no imminent threat to our nation.”

Another Republican governor is refusing to bend to Donald Trump’s demand to rig their state’s elections in his favor.

South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, a longtime Trump ally, is not preparing to call a special legislative session to redraw his state’s congressional map mid-decade, his office told Palmetto Politics.

McMaster’s office told the outlet that he had been in communication with the White House following the Supreme Court’s decision to gut the Voting Rights Act last week, but the governor’s office rejected the idea it was being “pressured” by the Trump administration. His office insisted that it was part of “ongoing coordination” with the White House and the talks were simply part of the “regular communications” the governor enjoys with Trump.

Shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision, McMaster suggested that it could be worth reviewing South Carolina’s congressional map, noting that it had been upheld as recently as 2024. “In light of the Court’s most recent decision on the Voting Rights Act, it would be appropriate for the General Assembly to ensure that South Carolina’s congressional map still complies with all requirements of federal law and the U.S. Constitution,” he wrote in a post on X.

South Carolina currently has six Republicans and one Democrat in the House of Representatives.

Last week, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, another Republican, also said that he wouldn’t pursue mid-decade redistricting in light of the recent Supreme Court decision. Meanwhile, Trump has continued to threaten red states that refuse to rig their elections in his favor.

Republicans are now trying to get $1 billion in taxpayer funding for President Trump’s ballroom.

Senator Chuck Grassley, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, included a request for the funds in a reconciliation package released Monday night. The $1 billion would go to the Secret Service for “security adjustments and upgrades” related to the ballroom’s construction. An additional $30.7 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and $3.5 billion for Customs and Border Protection were also included in the budget item.

In a statement Monday, Grassley said, “Republicans won’t allow our country to be dragged backwards by Democrats’ radical, anti-law enforcement agenda.

“The Senate Judiciary Committee is taking action to help provide certainty for federal law enforcement and safer streets for American families. We will work to ensure this critical funding gets signed into law without unnecessary delay.”

The reconciliation process allows for a simple majority in the Senate, meaning that if there is no Republican opposition, Trump will get the ballroom funds. It’s quite an increase from the $400 million in tax dollars that Senate Republicans asked for last month, and from the zero dollars from taxpayers that Trump promised. But he must have his ballroom, whether the American people want it or not.

President Trump is still beefing with Pope Leo XIV, accusing the first American pope of “endangering a lot of Catholics,” on The Hugh Hewitt Show on Monday.

Trump attacked the pope unprovoked after Hewitt said perhaps the pope could speak up about China’s detention of Hong Kong billionaire Jimmy Lai.

“Well, the pope would rather talk about the fact that it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.… I don’t think that’s very good,” Trump said. “I think he’s endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people, but I guess, if it’s up to the pope, he thinks it’s just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”​

It’s clear that Trump has been extremely bothered by the pope’s very measured criticism last month, and consumed with this one-sided beef ever since. Trump is claiming that Pope Leo is “endangering” Catholics because he wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Pope Leo XIV never said anything close to that. Instead, he simply criticized Trump’s war on Iran and his genocidal threats accompanying it, and the president has been crashing out since, calling him “weak on crime” and putting words in his mouth to cope.

The White House is forecasting a rough November for congressional Republicans.

In private briefings, attorneys at the White House Counsel’s Office are preparing executive branch staff for a blue wave in the 2026 elections, The Washington Post reported Monday.

The 30-minute briefings feature a PowerPoint presentation detailing how congressional oversight works and best practices for handling it, reported the Post. Other components of the past-due education involve guidance on how to respond to congressional inquiries in a timely manner.

“It’s obvious to everyone that it’s very likely,” one attending official told the Post. “It was a sober-eyed conversation.”

A White House official said that the meetings were “nothing new” and that the counsel’s office has provided oversight guidance to relevant stakeholders since Donald Trump returned to office.

Yet multiple sources that spoke with the Post explained that recent meetings with the office were acutely focused on the midterms and their fallout.

Trump, who was once a golden ticket for the Republican Party at the ballot box, has in his second term cooked up a litany of issues, any one of which could be a death knell for conservatives come November.

In the 15 months since he returned to America’s highest office, Trump has launched the U.S. into a war with Iran, sparking a global energy crisis that has raised the cost of living pretty much everywhere. He also invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its leader, Nicolás Maduro, axed thousands of staffers from the federal government and crippled some government agencies, and used his office to target his political opponents.

He has hobbled America’s press, sowed doubt and distrust in the country’s democratic elections, undermined the judiciary system, pardoned hundreds of people who served his personal interests—such as those who attacked Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021—imposed nonsensical tariffs on U.S. trading partners, aggressed America’s international alliances, abused the purpose of executive orders, and endorsed violent immigration policies and detention centers that have been compared to concentration camps, among other issues.

His lagging popularity has been reflected in nationwide polls: 62 percent of Americans disapprove of the president, according to an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll published Friday, a growth of two percentage points since the poll was previously conducted in February.

Despite the cost of his own influence, the president has placed enormous pressure on his party to win, well aware of the consequences that await him if they don’t.

“You got to win the midterms, because if we don’t win the midterms, they’ll find a reason to impeach me,” Trump said in January. “I’ll get impeached.”

President Donald Trump derailed his own speech Monday to insist how mentally healthy he is, following new poll data showing that a record high of Americans think he’s lost his mind.

“I feel the same as I felt 50 years ago, I don’t know,” Trump told the audience at a small-business summit at the White House.

“I’ll say, ‘I’m not feeling well’—well, someday, I might say that to you, and you’ll be the first to know. Actually I won’t have to say it, because you’ll be able to see it, just like you did in the last administration,” Trump said.

Americans have already been seeing Trump’s apparent cognitive decline: A recent poll found that 59 percent of Americans don’t think Trump has the mental acuity to serve as president, and 55 percent think he is not in physical shape to do so.

Trump continued ranting about his pitch to require candidates for office to take cognitive tests. “No president has ever taken one except me, and I’ve taken three of them. And I’ve aced each one,” he said.

Trump went on to describe the test, which sounds a lot like the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a 10-minute assessment designed to identify signs of dementia or Alzheimer’s. It is not a test for intelligence.

“You know the first question is very easy. They always show the first question, it’s: You have a lion, a bear, an alligator, and a—what’s another good—a squirrel, OK? Which is the squirrel?” Trump said, claiming the questions got increasingly complex.

He then veered into a tirade against California Governor Gavin Newsom before resuming his point. “I think everyone in this room is brilliant, but nobody’s gonna get all 30 questions correct. Nobody. ’Cause when you get to those last questions they’re pretty hard, you got to be pretty sharp.

“One doctor said, ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever seen anyone get all questions right.’ That’s a doctor, who does this stuff for a living. And I did it three times. So, I don’t know. I think I’m done with those days, I’m tired of taking those tests,” Trump said.

Trump segued again, insisting on the importance of picking an intelligent leader during times of war. He went on to claim that his military campaign in Iran only lasted six weeks, though the Strait of Hormuz has been closed for more than two months; that the Vietnam War lasted 19 years, even though the U.S. was only really involved for eight; and that the war in Iraq was 10 or 12 years long, when, again, it was really only eight.

A federal judge on Monday apologized to Cole Allen, the alleged White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooter, for what his lawyers described as “excessive restrictions on his liberty that serve no justifiable purpose.”

Cole Allen, who stormed into the Washington Hilton last month, was placed on temporary suicide watch upon arriving in jail in Washington, D.C.—even as he did not appear to be suicidal. He was also placed in a “safe cell,” a padded enclosure extremely similar to solitary confinement, made to wear a restrictive vest, and was only allowed out of his cell to speak to lawyers or receive medical attention.

His treatment in jail has been worse than that of the January 6 rioters, warned Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui, who oversaw many of their cases.

“The Jan. 6 defendants all were moved to the [Central Treatment Facility],” Faruqui said. “Pardons may erase convictions but they do not erase history.… He’s being treated differently than anyone I’ve ever observed.

“He can be both kept safe and treated with dignity. Right now, it’s not working. I think it’s legally deficient and ultimately if the DOC can’t do it, I’ll speak to the U.S. attorney’s office,” Faruqui continued. “I know they have other facilities they can contract with. If you all cannot handle it, we’re going to have to reassess that with the marshals and the Department of Justice.”

Insecurity about the midterms is rising—and Republicans are shoving some of the blame onto House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Concern is spreading that Johnson has “lost control of his conference,” creating an environment that is unlikely to pass meaningful legislation before the November elections, The Hill reported Monday.

North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer warned that the caucus’s relentless infighting has hurt the GOP brand, potentially sinking both chambers of Congress.

“It’s not like these things are hard. That’s the thing,” Cramer told The Hill. “I feel like the Senate has teed up things fairly easily for them, even to the point where if they don’t like it, they can blame us. And they still haven’t taken the opportunity to actually govern, and I do think it’s hurting the brand. The House is rowdy.”

Johnson barely kept the party afloat last week amid what Texas Representative Troy Nehls aptly dubbed “hell week.” “We can’t really agree on much of anything,” Nehls said on Capitol Hill Wednesday.

Republicans in the lower chamber struggled to tackle high-priority GOP issues such as extending the government’s warrantless spying powers, passing the farm bill, and funding the Department of Homeland Security. Votes stretched on for hours, and committee hearings flew off the rails. But the squabbles—and the dissent—persisted.

“We’re moving from one fire drill to the next every single week, and then half the time it feels like, why are we even here?” one House Republican told MS NOW on Friday.

Some of the bluster followed weeks of intraparty protests, in which members of the House GOP adamantly opposed bills introduced and passed by their Senate colleagues. Yet House Republicans were all too willing to bend as the clock ticked down to deadline on various policy issues, prompting scorn and criticism from the upper chamber.

“It’s like a wreck over there,” one Republican senator told The Hill on the condition of anonymity, noting that their mainstream GOP colleagues in the House shared their frustration.

“They don’t know if they’re coming or going. Everybody is fighting,” the senator said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has tapped a top New York Democrat to lead redistricting efforts in the state after the Supreme Court handed the Republican Party a major advantage for the upcoming midterms.

Jeffries directed Representative Joe Morelle, the former majority leader in the New York state assembly, to meet with state leaders in order to redraw congressional districts “for the balance of the decade,” the two said in a joint statement Monday. New York currently has 19 Democrats and seven Republicans in the House of Representatives.

This directive comes less than a week after the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 along party lines in Louisiana v. Callais to effectively dismantle Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race. The court’s conservative majority raised new hurdles for those seeking to prove a racial gerrymandering claim, and gave its blessing to those who would claim partisan gerrymandering as a legal defense.

Within hours of the decision, New York Governor Kathy Hochul had already signaled that she supported a redistricting effort in her state. “The Supreme Court has been chipping away at our elections for years. It is clearly carrying out Donald Trump’s will with this decision,” she wrote on X Wednesday. “New York has always led the fight for voting rights and we’ll lead again. I’m working with the Legislature to change New York’s redistricting process so we can fight back against Washington’s attempts to rig our democracy.”

Jeffries’s order was also given in response to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis implementing a map that his own office specifically drew in order to capture four more Republican seats in time for November’s midterm elections. Meanwhile, Trump has continued to threaten red states that refuse to rig their elections in his favor.