Nancy Mace, the South Carolina Republican congresswoman, usually tells her employees that she’s a self-taught coder—only one side of how Mace presents her tech experience, as befits her position in shaping the GOP’s insurance policies on know-how and work as chair of the Home subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Data Know-how, and Authorities Innovation.
“I’d say [it was] at the very least a weekly remark, if not day by day,” says one in all a number of former Mace staffers who spoke with WIRED. One other discovered her excessive regard for her expertise considerably at odds along with her demonstrated skill. (Like all of the staffers WIRED spoke with, they requested anonymity as a result of they concern reprisal from their former boss.)
A principal—and weird—use to which Mace put her expertise, based on former staffers, was organising burner accounts on a wide range of social media platforms to observe what individuals have been saying about her and bolster her picture. Additionally they declare she requested that staffers make their very own burner accounts to defend her on-line.
“We needed to make a number of accounts, burner accounts, and go and reply to feedback, saying issues that weren’t true—even Reddit boards,” a former staffer says. “We have been congressional employees, and there have been precise issues we may very well be doing to assist the constituents.”
“It could be a slap within the face to taxpayers throughout the nation for me to spent [sic] time on their dime commenting on my bosses [sic] private life,” Sydney Lengthy, Mace’s communications director, writes in an e-mail to WIRED. “The one relationship the Congresswoman cares about is her one with South Carolina. She is married to her job and that’s all of the media ought to care about.” Mace’s workplace didn’t reply an in depth listing of questions on the programming languages during which she is proficient and what kinds of units she makes use of for coding.
Mace, who employees mentioned as soon as recognized as a “by no means Trumper,” has change into one of many president’s staunchest allies on Capitol Hill. She’s prepared to go to extra excessive lengths than a lot of her colleagues to assault Trump’s enemies and achieve ample consideration on-line within the course of, like introducing a decision to cease transgender individuals from utilizing loos in federal buildings that align with their gender identification relatively than organic intercourse. (This laws, Mace confirmed, purposefully focused Consultant Sarah McBride from Delaware, the primary overtly transgender member of Congress.) She additionally has a guiding hand on know-how coverage; earlier this yr, for instance, she reintroduced a invoice she beforehand cosponsored in 2023, the Modernizing Authorities Know-how Reform Act, which, if handed and signed into regulation, would require a sweeping audit of legacy federal IT techniques.
Lately, Mace confirmed a “bare silhouette” of herself throughout a Home subcommittee listening to on surveillance as a part of a operating string of allegations she has made towards her ex-fiancé, South Carolina businessman Patrick Bryant, whom she accused of bodily assaulting her and of possessing pictures of “underage ladies” in an explosive flooring speech in February. Through the speech, she alleged three different males had dedicated varied different crimes, together with sexual abuse, intercourse trafficking, and taking movies of sexual acts with out their consent. Bryant and the three different males have denied Mace’s accusations and didn’t reply to requests for remark from WIRED. (As a result of Mace’s feedback have been made on the Home flooring, she could also be sheltered by the Structure’s speech and debate clause, which protects lawmakers from lawsuits associated to their legislative actions.)
