The recent resignations of two members of Congress have reignited a conversation about sexual harassment in politics nearly nine years after the peak of the #MeToo movement. And new data sheds more light on the scope of the problem — and the major barriers to reporting and addressing abuse.
The National Women’s Defense League (NWDL), a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization focused on combating sexual misconduct in politics at the state level, released its annual updated report detailing ongoing research into sexual misconduct in statehouses and — for the first time — data on sexual misconduct in Congress, shared first with The 19th, on Tuesday.
The 2025 update to NWDL’s Abuse of Power Report tracking sexual misconduct in statehouses and state executive offices, identified 162 state-level officials accused of misconduct in 424 distinct incidents since 2013. That includes six new public allegations of sexual misconduct made against state-level officials in 2025, a decline in reporting from previous years.
“We’ve got enough data that we’re separated from the #MeToo spike and then the pandemic to where we can confidently say we’ve really gone back to pre-#MeToo levels in terms of levels of reporting,” said Emma Davidson Tribbs, NWDL’s founding director. “And that reinforces, I think, what we’re seeing nationally, which is the discomfort and fear of survivors coming forward.”
At the federal level, NWDL found that 30 members of Congress from 13 states and Guam have been accused of workplace sexual misconduct while in office since 2006. But that data, the report’s authors say, only captures part of the scale of the problem. Few cases are publicly reported at all, a factor the House Ethics Committee also acknowledged in a statement Monday.
“I think that this reporting reveals far more about the lack of trust in the systems, the lack of reporting, and why that is,” said Sarah Higginbotham, NWDL’s co-founder and co-director. “It’s not really a measure of how much sexual harassment there is. It is a little bit — it of course tells us if these are the number of people who are making it this far, it’s probably three to four times that, in actuality, if not more.”
Two days after the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN reported on allegations that former Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell sexually assaulted women, including staff, he dropped out of the race for governor of California. On April 13, he and former Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas, also accused of inappropriate relationships with staff, resigned amid a bipartisan push led by two women to expel them from office.
Swalwell has apologized for errors in judgment, but has denied the allegations of assault, with his lawyer calling them a “calculated and transparent political hit job.” Another member, GOP Rep. Cory Mills of Florida, is facing a House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations including domestic violence and sexual misconduct. Mills has denied wrongdoing.
Davidson Tribbs said at the state and federal levels, there are often whisper networks and common knowledge about which lawmakers commit misconduct, but there is little accountability and few consequences. “The community inside the building knows who the dangerous people are,” she said. “It’s a whisper campaign. It’s joked about at parties.”
“This gap between everybody knowing and no action being taken is a really consistent theme that we see in pretty much every statehouse that we go to, and it’s heartbreaking,” she added. “And it speaks even more to the just impressive bravery that these women had coming forward.”
The NWDL data on misconduct in Congress drew from official government sources, including the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights (OCWR) in coordination with the House Ethics Committee and the Office of Congressional Conduct, as well as media reports.
The majority of the allegations of workplace sexual harassment against members of Congress, 77 percent, involved misconduct against congressional staff, while 9 percent involved lobbyists and another 9 percent involved those not in formal political roles. The vast majority of the lawmakers accused of workplace misconduct, 97 percent, were men. Party-wise, 60 percent were Republican, and 40 percent were Democrats.
The report also tracked allegations of sexual misconduct outside of the workplace, allegations made prior to a lawmaker serving in Congress and lawmakers accused of enabling or being adjacent to cases of sexual misconduct, totaling 137 accusations against 49 lawmakers from 21 states.
The report cautioned, however, that the data is likely a significant undercount, given that it captures only allegations that led to formal investigations or were reported publicly in the media.
Higginbotham says Congress, even after it passed a slew of reforms at the height of the #MeToo movement in 2018, represents a “perfect storm” of conditions for sexual misconduct to fester. Members wield immense power over the careers and reputations of young staff, each individual office functions as its own human resources department and the reporting process can be difficult to navigate.
“I think on the policy front and the reform front, when it comes to governance in state houses and in Congress, we’re in that second generation,” Higginbotham said. “There were a lot of reforms made, people put some things in place where there was actually absolutely nothing in place, and now we’re seeing how those work and where they don’t. And Congress is in that place.”
In a rare and lengthy public statement, the House Ethics Committee said Monday it is “dedicated to maintaining a congressional workplace free from sexual misconduct” and “strongly encourages” those with knowledge of misconduct by a House member or staffer to report it to the Committee, OCWR or the Office of Employee Advocacy.
But even with the renewed spotlight on sexual misconduct, speaking up remains costly.
“The greatest hurdle” to the Ethics Committee probing allegations of sexual misconduct, it said, “is convincing the most vulnerable witnesses to share their stories.”
That’s also the case at the state level, where only 30 percent of accused lawmakers face formal consequences, and only 40 percent resign from office, per NWDL’s updated report. While five of the state officials accused in 2025 were Republicans and one was a Democrat, allegations at the state level break almost evenly along party lines: 52 percent of those accused of misconduct were Republicans, and 48 percent were Democrats in NWDL’s research covering 2013 to 2025.
State legislatures, Higginbotham noted, “are one of the biggest and most prolific pipelines” to power and higher office. There are 23 lawmakers identified in NWDL’s research who are running for reelection in 2026, including 13 for state legislative seats and nine for Congress.
“If people want to know what they can do right now, you can not reelect them. This should be disqualifying,” Davidson Tribbs said. “And I think we’ve seen that based on the kind of public pressure that swiftly came for Swalwell, and a little slower for Gonzales.”
Threats of retaliation also present barriers to speaking out, she said. Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who resigned after an independent investigation found he had sexually harassed multiple women in office, threatened but ultimately did not proceed with legal action against one of the women who accused him of misconduct as he was preparing his unsuccessful comeback bid for New York City mayor. One of Swalwell’s attorneys sent out a cease-and-desist letter to one of the women who accused him of assault, the Los Angeles Times reported, and he’s vowed to continue to fight the allegations against him even after leaving Congress.
Davidson Tribbs and Higginbotham said they’ll be pushing for more states and Congress to pass laws protecting survivors from retaliatory defamation lawsuits, in addition to other reforms to make reporting processes fairer, increase transparency and ensure consequences for misconduct.
But they also noted some bright spots and lessons coming from the state level. In 2025, a Nebraska lawmaker accused of misconduct resigned before he was set to face what would have been a historic expulsion vote. Lawmakers in Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, Montana and Washington also passed new reforms in 2025 to improve working conditions in their state legislatures.
The bipartisan nature of sexual misconduct is part of what makes it so pervasive and entrenched in the halls of power. But it also provides real opportunities, Higginbotham argued, for lasting progress: it was a Democrat from New Mexico and a Republican from Florida who teamed up to expel Swalwell and Gonzales from Congress.
“This twists and bends how you think partisanship and politics should work,” she said. “That’s true at the state level, and it’s true at the federal level. And I ultimately think the takeaway from that is there are a lot of opportunities to make progress, because we’re not stalemated in the typical partisan gridlock on this issue.”