THE 19th | On Capitol Hill, survivors push for change as Congress confronts its own misconduct

This press release from Representative Madeleine Dean (D-PA) was published on 2026-04-29 and titled "THE 19th | On Capitol Hill, survivors push for change as Congress confronts its own misconduct". It focuses on taxes and touches on the environment.

THE 19th | On Capitol Hill, survivors push for change as Congress confronts its own misconduct

By Grace Panetta They came to lobby against online sexual abuse and found lawmakers wrestling with abuse within their own ranks. For four years running, policy experts and survivor advocates with RAINN, the nation's largest anti-sexual violence advocacy organization, have come to Capitol Hill for a day of lobbying. This year, their annual advocacy day came amid a reckoning over sexual misconduct in the halls of Congress. As survivors gathered Monday evening at a hotel in downtown Washington for a panel discussion and to prepare for their advocacy day, news broke that two House members accused of sexual misconduct, Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California and Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas, announced they would resign from Congress amid a bipartisan push to expel them. It represented a swift and stunning fall for both - and underscored the culture of silence surrounding sexual misconduct in Congress. RAINN staffers, around 40 survivor advocates from over a dozen states and Tay Lautner, a registered nurse, mental health advocate and podcast host, arrived on Capitol Hill the next day as lawmakers grappled with the fallout. "What a day, what a week," Rep. Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania said in addressing the group at a breakfast Tuesday. "Two congressmen are out," she continued. "I am furious. Furious that it takes this long, furious we have a culture that silences those kinds of behaviors, and furious that these women have to come forward in shadow, sometimes for their own protection." "I'm here to say with you, we will be change makers," Dean said in concluding her remarks. "And it's not just legislation. We must change our culture." Gonzales dropped his reelection bid in March after the San Antonio Express-News reported on his inappropriate relationships with staff members, one of whom is now deceased. Swalwell dropped out of the California governor's race Sunday and later resigned from Congress after the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN released reports days earlier on assault allegations against him. He has apologized for what he said were errors in judgment but has denied all of the accusations of sexual assault, with his lawyer calling them "a calculated and transparent political hit job." Scott Berkowitz, RAINN's president and founder, said in an interview that he was glad to see the resignations but that it shouldn't have taken so long. "This stuff has got to stop happening, and when it does happen, we've got to do something about it a lot quicker and not wait for victims to come forward to a reporter," he said. "We've just got to change the way things are done here." Some survivor advocates said they learned about the Gonzales and Swalwell resignations for the first time at the Tuesday breakfast. "I heard about that for the first time when they announced it at the front, and I haven't even had time to check my phone," said an advocate named Katie. "I think it just speaks to how prevalent this issue is, and how it's everywhere in every room in every part of the country." She and other survivors who spoke to The 19th are identified by only their first names to protect their privacy. "I feel like the last several years have been just reckoning after reckoning," said Anna, another survivor advocate. "It never ends, and I don't know that it ever will, because we know that the majority of people who perpetrate these crimes are people we know and people we trust." But in what can be a sharply divided political climate, bipartisan coalitions in Congress have mobilized behind survivors. Two women lawmakers - a Democrat and a Republican - prepared resolutions to expel Gonzales and Swalwell, spurring their resignations. Last year, three Republican women sided with Democrats to compel the release of files connected to the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. And advocates secured a major victory last spring with the passage of the Take It Down Act , which made distributing nonconsensual intimate images, including AI-generated explicit deepfakes and so-called revenge porn, a crime. But to advocates, the continued proliferation of tech-enabled sexual abuse and misconduct scandals in Congress shows how little support and resources there are for survivors. Brooke Nevils, a writer and author of "Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe," joined the advocacy day to lobby for federal funding for the national sexual assault hotline, which is operated by RAINN and has not received federal funding in years. In writing her book, Nevils found that survivors often don't have a safe, confidential place to go to process what happened to them, a crucial service the RAINN hotline provides. "RAINN is the difference between life and death for a lot of these victims," she said. "It is the only place they can go." Nevils knows what it means to come forward about an assault by a powerful person. In 2017, she was a producer at NBC when she reported "Today Show" h