The resignations of Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell and Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales in April for allegations of sexual misconduct involving congressional aides raised serious questions about the workplace culture on Capitol Hill.

Two female lawmakers from opposing parties agree that the current system is woefully inadequate and it’s time to launch an internal task force aimed at combatting sexual harassment and misconduct, NOTUS has learned.

Reps. Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico and Kat Cammack of Florida — the chairs of the Democratic Women’s Caucus and Republican Women’s Caucus, respectively — plan to create an anti-sexual harassment “task force,” Cammack told NOTUS. The goal: to make recommendations by summer recess about how to overhaul how the House handles sexual misconduct allegations, including boosting the anti-harassment training members take each year.

All House members and staff are required to complete a virtual workplace rights and responsibilities training every year. A senior congressional aide told NOTUS the training contains “information on the prevention of all forms of harassment, discrimination and retaliation.”

But Cammack called the training “laughable.”

“People will put on a video and walk away. We’re just checking a box,” she continued.

Leger Fernández agreed: “I’ve taken the workforce training. I’ve noted how I believe it’s insufficient.”

“It doesn’t explain not only what you’re not supposed to do, but why you’re not supposed to do that,” Leger Fernández added. “We have to get to a place where everybody understands that the women who are on the Hill are there because they got elected, or there because they have applied and been hired because of their brilliance, because of their commitment.”

“They’re not there because they’re sexual objects,” she told NOTUS.

The training, she continued, should look to “switch a perception of women that has been going on for decades. We’re not in the 1950s, we’re not in the 1930s. We’re in a place where you need to recognize that women are your equal.”

Top staffers in four congressional offices — two Republicans, two Democrats — alternately described current House anti-sexual harassment training as “weak,” “perfunctory,” “pathetic,” “a joke.”

“Of course there should be more done. Everybody agrees this behavior has to stop,” said one high-ranking House staffer who spoke to NOTUS on the condition of anonymity.

Notably, the House Administration Committee’s workplace training requirements for all House employees do not explicitly state that information regarding sexual harassment or misconduct must be included in the trainings. Nor does it specify that members taking the training must learn how to report a complaint to the House Ethics Committee or the Office of Congressional Conduct, only “an overview of the reporting process of the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights.”

Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have “blessed” the anti-sexual harassment task force, Cammack said.

A spokesperson for Jeffries did not explicitly comment on the task force, but said that the minority leader has met with Democrats on the Ethics Committee and with the Democratic Women’s Caucus about reforming the House ethics process. Similarly, a spokesperson for Johnson also did not comment on the task force, but said the speaker has met with the Republican Women’s Caucus about “potential reforms to ensure that Capitol Hill is a safe place to work for women and all staff.”

House Minority Whip Katherine Clark is working with the Democratic Women’s Caucus on details, a source close to Clark confirmed.

One goal of the task force: Creating a system where people can report sexual harassment “without fear of retaliation or effectively being blackballed,” Cammack said.

“The culture really lends itself to an environment where people can engage in this type of behavior without repercussions,” Cammack said of sexual harassment allegations in the House. “We don’t think that accountability should begin and end with expulsions. That behavior shouldn’t exist in the first place. We need to prevent this type of behavior from being tolerated. Period.”

Following the resignations of Swalwell and Gonzales in April, the House Ethics Committee released a rare statement encouraging “anyone who may have experienced sexual misconduct by a House Member or staffer” to report it to the committee. It also revealed that it had initiated 20 investigations related to allegations of sexual misconduct by House members since 2017. However, it identified only 15 of the lawmakers.

NOTUS identified previously unreported investigations about a complaint filed against Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards of North Carolina for an alleged affair with a former staffer; allegations that Democratic Rep. Alma Adams of North Carolina engaged in an inappropriate relationship with an employee; and accusations against Democratic Rep. Jim Costa of California that he made inappropriate advances to two congressional interns. All three lawmakers have denied any wrongdoing.

Instead of sanctioning a member or conducting a broader probe, the House Ethics Committee has occasionally required that members take anti-harassment training. For example, while the committee ultimately dismissed the case against Costa, it did require that the congressman take special training as a result of its informal investigation, according to a person familiar with the committee’s deliberations at the time.

But some lawmakers argue the House needs to be more proactive in order to prevent incidents in the future. One House Democrat, who was granted anonymity to address private conversations, told NOTUS that some members have been floating the idea that anti-sexual harassment trainings be conducted in person instead of just over the computer.

“You do it online and I just don’t think that’s as effective. It’s one of the issues we’ve brought up. It needs to change,” the lawmaker said. “There’s an ad hoc group of women members who have been communicating with each other.”

Leger Fernández said that having the training live over Zoom makes it so that it is “not easily retraceable” because members can’t go back to the review training after they attend it.

The training “should be longer, it should be more thorough, it should be in-person, it should be available at all times, so that if somebody says, ‘I wonder if I should have done that,’ they can say, ‘I’m going to look at that training again.’”

House Democrats are already having conversations about how they would investigate sexual misconduct allegations in the chamber if they gain the majority after the midterms, as NOTUS previously reported. Rep. Jim McGovern, the top Democrat in the House Rules Committee, told NOTUS in April that when lawmakers consider the rules package that will govern the House in the following Congress, Democrats will look to “to figure out how we can tighten things up here, how we can do better.”

For nearly a decade, the Senate has featured what many lawmakers consider to be stronger and more overt sexual harassment training and accountability policies.

The Senate Anti-Harassment Training Resolution of 2017 — passed around the time Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota resigned amid allegations he sexually harassed a woman — mandates that senators and key Senate staffers complete workplace harassment training each congressional session.

This training specifically addresses “sexual harassment and related intimidation and reprisal” and “recognizing and responding to harassment and harassment complaints.”

Heads of Senate offices are also required to ensure lower-level Senate staffers complete similar sexual harassment trainings.

There’s also a public reporting component to this training, per the 2017 anti-harassment resolution: Senate offices “must certify, at the end of every Congress, whether individuals required to be trained have completed such training during that Congress.”

In practice, that means every member of the Senate — from top leaders like John Thune and Chuck Schumer, to newer members such as John Fetterman and Katie Britt — must sign and submit an anti-harassment training certification letter for publication on the Senate’s website.

So, too, must individual Senate committees and Senate offices such as the sergeant-at-arms, chaplain and even the vice president of the United States, given his or her official role as president of the Senate. The disclosures become public after the completion of a two-year Senate session, so Senate disclosures for the 119th Congress won’t be available until early next year.

“Each chamber is really running their own show,” Cammack acknowledged.

In the House, a resolution adopted by the House Administration Committee under the current Congress required the chair of the committee, Republican Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, to submit a report on members’ compliance with the training by January of this year to be printed on the Congressional Record. As of Tuesday, no such report has been published.

A spokesperson for Steil declined to comment on the report explicitly, but said that all House Republicans finished their training in 2025.

Rep. Joe Morelle, the top Democrat in the House Administration Committee, told NOTUS he was unaware of the report’s status, but added that as the end of the calendar year gets closer, he will personally call House Democrats who have not completed the anti-harassment training.

“I make sure that every one of my members hears from me before the end of the calendar year just to say, ‘Hey, you are one of the last handful that needs to do it,’” Morelle said.

The House should closely study what Congress’ upper chamber has done, said Tim Stretton, the director of the congressional oversight initiative at the Project on Government Oversight.

“At the very least — the very least — they should match what the Senate is doing,” Stretton said.

At times over the years, the House Ethics Committee has admonished members for what it considered problematic behavior related to workplace relationships and offered formal notifications.

For example, during a 2014 investigation into allegations of sexual harassment against then-Rep. Alcee Hastings, a Democrat from Florida, the committee urged lawmakers and House staffers to “scrupulously avoid even the impression of a workplace tainted by sexism.”

In 2018, while investigating an aide to then-Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina for allegations he harassed female staffers, the committee wrote: “Members should never tolerate sexual harassment or any other discriminatory conduct in their offices, or give even the slightest impression that such conduct is acceptable in the congressional workplace.”

But these directives were buried deep in congressional reports, and they didn’t carry the weight of a law or rule. The House Ethics Committee declined to comment for this story.

Some outside groups are having conversations with lawmakers about what steps to take to change the anti-sexual harassment training.

Sarah Jane Higginbotham, the codirector and cofounder of the National Women’s Defense League, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to preventing sexual harassment in the workplace, told NOTUS the group recommends that training take place “with regularity,” that it be “accessible in multiple ways, whether that’s a combination of in person and/or virtual,” and that “there be teeth in the policy, that there be ramifications” for those who do not complete the training.

Higginbotham presented Maryland as an example of a state with mechanisms to promote participation in anti-harassment training. Maryland state lawmakers are required by law to complete anti-sexual harassment training every two years, and the state General Assembly publishes a list of lawmakers who did and did not complete the required training.

“Failure to take the training can result in a range of responses from counseling from the presiding officer to loss of some privileges, namely interns and paid staff,” Higginbotham added.

“There’s a lot that can be done that doesn’t exist, and I also think that all that needs to be done with a lens to the very unique workplace that Congress is and what makes it so challenging a place to address sexual harassment,” Higginbotham said. “State and federal governments should be doing a better job.”