MAGA Lawmakers Call for Sexual Harassment Transparency in Congress

“Please send help. It hurts so bad,” Regina Santos-Aviles told a police dispatcher the night she set herself on fire. Standing in her backyard on September 13, 2025, Santos-Aviles had doused herself in gasoline then used a lighter to ignite the flames, according to a fire department report. The 35-year-old mom was airlifted to a hospital in San Antonio, where she was pronounced dead.

For the four years leading up to her death, Santos-Aviles had worked as the regional director of Congressman Tony Gonzales’ district office in Uvalde, Texas. In the spring of 2024, text messages recently released by her family show, the Republican repeatedly pressured his aide for “sexy” photos and quizzed her about her favorite sexual positions, even as Santos-Aviles resisted his advances and told him he was going “too far.” 

The fallout from the subsequent affair was swift and total for Santos-Aviles. Her husband found out and broadcast his knowledge of it in a text sent to Gonzales and seven of her coworkers. She was ostracized at work, as her husband ended their 21-year relationship and moved out of their home. Santos-Aviles’ mental health deteriorated, people close to her said, even as she remained in her job until her death a year and a half later. 

In November, the Office of Congressional Conduct opened an inquiry into Gonzales’ conduct — an inquiry the Texas congressman has reportedly refused to cooperate with. Per House protocol, the findings of that investigation will remain secret, even if they are deemed serious enough to refer to the House Ethics Committee. 

The publication last week of Gonzales’ text messages with Santos-Aviles has set off a chorus of calls not just for Gonzales to abandon his reelection bid and give up his seat in Congress, but for a total overhaul of a system that protects members of Congress accused of harassing their staff, while keeping the details of that harassment hidden from public scrutiny — even when the incidents are deemed serious enough to warrant a taxpayer-funded payout.

Those calls are being led by Gonzales’ female colleagues, including Congresswomen Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), who say his behavior is illustrative of a pervasive sexual harassment problem on the Hill. 

Mace last week introduced a resolution that would force the Ethics Committee to “publicly release all reports, conclusions, draft reports, recommendations, and accompanying materials” of House members accused of violating House rules prohibiting sexual harassment. Luna and Boebert are co-sponsoring the resolution, which Mace plans to force a vote on this week.

“These people need to be called out for their behavior. I don’t care if they have an R or a D by their name. They need to suffer the consequences,” Mace tells Rolling Stone. “Women are not second-class citizens. We have rights, and we have the right to be respected by our colleagues. Women on the Hill have the right to work in a safe work environment and not be harassed in any way, shape or form.”

“One of the problems — and this is a bipartisan problem — is that when stuff like this happens, people don’t want to call out the crap in their own party,” Luna adds.

Gonzales’ texts to Santos-Aviles, Mace says, were “deeply offensive, shameful, worth a resignation — and worth questioning why this wasn’t addressed months ago, when leadership knew about it.” It’s unclear when House Speaker Mike Johnson, who endorsed Gonzales’ reelection bid in August, before Santos-Aviles death, first became aware of the congressman’s apparent harassment of his staffer or their alleged affair, but Johnson has refused to join members of his caucus as they demand Gonzales’ resignation. 

Gonzales is currently seeking a fourth term representing a swath of southwestern Texas that stretches from San Antonio to El Paso. The Republican primary for that seat is set to take place on Tuesday, March 3. Republicans presently hold 218 seats in the House, while Democrats hold 214, and three seats sit vacant. The GOP’s slim majority is further imperiled by the potential loss of Rep. Neal Dunn (R-Fla.) who, Johnson reportedly told donors on Friday, is battling a potentially fatal illness.

Mace does not share the view of her colleagues like Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) who have said politics — and protecting the Republican majority — trump any concerns about Gonzales’ behavior.

”This woman lit herself on fire — died in the most heinous way — and you’re gonna walk out of the speaker’s office and not care and say, ‘I’m not going to resign’? It’s disgusting,” Mace says.
“There are no words for this behavior.”

Johnson’s tolerance for Gonzales’ conduct, in Mace’s view, is indicative of a broader attitude toward sexual harassment in Congress. “I don’t think harassment of any kind on the Hill is taken seriously — by anybody,” Mace says. “I think the way that women are treated [on Capitol Hill] is representative of the way women are treated everywhere in our country. It’s cultural. I mean, look at the Epstein files. One accomplice went to jail with over one thousand victims, and we still can’t get the names of co-conspirators, because our government is covering it up, and has been for two decades.”

Johnson’s reluctance to release the Epstein files was a flashpoint between the speaker and women in his caucus last year. But Mace, Luna, and Boebert remain steadfast supporters of President Donald Trump, who also opposed release of the Epstein files, in which he appears, and who has repeatedly been accused of sexual harassment and been found liable for sexual assault. Asked whether the DOJ was protecting Trump by withholding interviews with a woman who accused the president of sexually abusing her, Luna says, “He’s been completely exonerated, and you can see that in the files.”

There is virtually no public transparency into sexual harassment claims lodged by congressional staffers — even as the public is footing the bill for settlements that are paid out. “If members of Congress are going to conduct themselves in a fashion that’s illegal, why should then taxpayers be responsible for paying for it? They should be required to pay for it themselves,” Luna says.

Since 1997, a dedicated Treasury account has paid out more than $19 million in claims filed by Capitol Hill employees under the Congressional Accountability Act according to a review by Rolling Stone — legislation meant to offer congressional staffers the same workplace protections that private sector employees enjoy.  

But only the scantest details are made available when that money is paid: the name of the office involved, the amount of money, and the section of the CAA allegedly violated. Last year, for example, a report from the Office of Congressional Worker Rights shows, the Treasury account paid a settlement of $98,650 to a staffer who was employed in the office of former Congresswoman Lori Chavez De Remer. The complaint was filed under Section 201 — a provision outlining protections against discrimination and harassment — but, per established protocol, no additional details of the accusation are made public. 

That case illustrates the flaws of a system that keeps details of alleged misconduct secret. Taxpayers are billed for the payout, while the details of the accusation, including the perpetrator, remain under wraps. It’s not clear who in Chavez De Remer’s congressional office was accused of misconduct, but accusations of impropriety have trailed her to a new job. Since being appointed Trump’s Secretary of Labor, Chavez De Remer has been accused of an alleged inappropriate relationship with a member of her security detail (who has been placed on leave amid an investigation by the Office of the Inspector General), while her husband has been banned from Labor Department headquarters after multiple staffers have accused him of sexual assault. 

“I think there are probably many cases like that,” Mace says. “All of it should be disclosed. It does a great disservice to women when it’s not, and when it’s swept under the rug, and ‘No big deal.’ This kind of behavior continues and goes on because no one is ever held accountable.”