Part of: The House Ethics reimbursement investigation (2025-2026) · House Ethics Committee Investigation of Rep. Nancy Mace (OCC Review 25-5681)
Mace wants to ban members living with staff. Sources Say says former aides see a complication.
Juliegrace Brufke reported for Sources Say News that Rep. Nancy Mace introduced resolutions to bar House members from sexual relationships with employees and from living with employees, while former Mace staffers described earlier campaign and congressional arrangements they said complicate the line. Mace's office rejected the premise, saying the suggestion that she lived with staff, directed employees to stay at her home, or maintained a crash pad for federal employees is false.
Juliegrace Brufke ·
Sources Say News published Juliegrace Brufke's August 17, 2026 report on Rep. Nancy Mace's proposed House rules against members living with staff, and on former Mace aides who told the outlet her own history made the proposed line harder to draw.
The article says Mace introduced two resolutions in July 2026, one to bar House members from sexual relationships with employees and another to bar members from living with employees, with a married-couple exception. Brufke quoted Mace's public framing that "a boss and a roommate should never be the same person" and that "no staffer should ever be coming home at night to the person who signs their paycheck."
Sources Say then reported two staff-history claims, both attributed to people who worked for or were close to Mace's operation: first, that during Mace's first campaign a senior campaign aide lived in an apartment above the garage at Mace's Daniel Island home; second, that in spring 2022 a senior aide traveling weekly from the district to Washington stayed at Mace's townhouse rather than expensing a hotel. The former aide told Sources Say the D.C. setup involved basement sleeping quarters separated by a curtain and described it as "way too much contact with the boss for a work week."
Mace's office rejected the article's premise. In the statement quoted by Sources Say, a spokesperson said the suggestion that Mace lived with staff, directed employees to stay at her home, or maintained a "crash pad" for federal employees was false. The office said Mace "did not and has never lived with her staff" and pointed to public records showing examples of hotel lodging for staff travel to Washington.
The piece also included pushback from one source who described the basement as a separate private English-basement setup, and from a proponent of the bill who distinguished temporary platonic stays from the improper power dynamics the bill was intended to target.
Sources & related coverage
- Sources Say News, Juliegrace Brufke, "SCOOP: Mace Wants to Ban Living With Staff. Her Own History Complicates the Line." (August 17, 2026)
- Fox News, Elizabeth Elkind, "Nancy Mace pushes bill banning lawmakers from sex with staff" (July 30, 2026)
Read next
August 17, 2026 · DispatchMace wants a bill to ban staff from living with members. Her own staff say they lived with her.
On August 17, 2026, Sources Say News, the Capitol Hill outlet founded by reporter Juliegrace Brufke, reported that Rep. Nancy Mace's new push to bar House members from living with their staff runs into her own history. Mace introduced two resolutions on July 30, 2026, H.Res.1465 (no sexual relationships with House employees) and H.Res.1466 (no cohabitating with House employees, married couples excepted), pitching them with the line 'a boss and a roommate should never be the same person.' Multiple former Mace aides told the outlet that a senior campaign aide lived in an apartment above the garage at her Daniel Island home during her first campaign, and that in spring 2022 a senior aide was put up in the basement of her D.C. townhouse, sleeping behind a curtain a few feet from where Mace made her morning coffee. Mace's office flatly denies she ever lived with staff or maintained a 'crash pad,' and one source and a bill proponent draw a distinction between a short platonic stay in a separate space and living with a staffer.
July 22, 2026 · Dispatch"How self-loathing are they": Mace asks "how many Jews voted for Mamdani," doubles down when Piers Morgan calls it "an extraordinary charge." Israel's UN ambassador, asked twice, declines to agree.
On the July 22, 2026 episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored, Rep. Nancy Mace reacted to NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani's call for the federal government to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu by asking "how many Jews voted for Mamdani," calling Jewish New Yorkers who backed him "self-loathing," and saying she is perplexed by "this guy coming to America eight years ago from Kampala." Mamdani moved to New York in 1999, at age 7; eight years ago matches his 2018 naturalization, not his arrival. When Morgan called her words "an extraordinary charge," Mace repeated them. Later in the same episode Morgan put her quote to Israel's UN Ambassador Danny Danon twice; Danon declined to agree both times.
- March 6, 2026 · Dispatch
Exclusive: Nancy Mace claims ethics investigation is retribution for Clinton Epstein deposition
The Daily Signal published an exclusive interview with Mace where she claimed the ethics investigation was retaliation for her Epstein deposition work, characterizing it as part of a broader effort by political opponents ('the swamp') to undermine her.