Nancy Mace, the South Carolina Republican congresswoman, usually tells her employees that she’s a self-taught coder—only one facet of how Mace presents her tech experience, as befits her position in shaping the GOP’s insurance policies on expertise and work as chair of the Home subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Data Expertise, and Authorities Innovation.
“I might say [it was] a minimum of a weekly remark, if not day by day,” says one among a number of former Mace staffers who spoke with WIRED. One other discovered her excessive regard for her expertise considerably at odds together with her demonstrated skill. (Like all of the staffers WIRED spoke with, they requested anonymity as a result of they worry reprisal from their former boss.)
A principal—and weird—use to which Mace put her expertise, in accordance with former staffers, was establishing burner accounts on quite a lot of social media platforms to watch what folks have been saying about her and bolster her picture. In addition 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 might be doing to assist the constituents.”
“It will 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 record of questions on the programming languages wherein she is proficient and what sorts of gadgets she makes use of for coding.
Mace, who employees mentioned as soon as recognized as a “by no means Trumper,” has turn out to be one of many president’s staunchest allies on Capitol Hill. She’s prepared to go to extra excessive lengths than lots 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 folks from utilizing bogs in federal buildings that align with their gender identification slightly than organic intercourse. (This laws, Mace confirmed, purposefully focused Consultant Sarah McBride from Delaware, the primary brazenly transgender member of Congress.) She additionally has a guiding hand on expertise coverage; earlier this 12 months, for instance, she reintroduced a invoice she beforehand cosponsored in 2023, the Modernizing Authorities Expertise Reform Act, which, if handed and signed into legislation, would require a sweeping audit of legacy federal IT techniques.
Not too long ago, 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 in opposition to her ex-fiancé, South Carolina businessman Patrick Bryant, whom she accused of bodily assaulting her and of possessing pictures of “underage women” in an explosive ground speech in February. Throughout 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 ground, she could also be sheltered by the Structure’s speech and debate clause, which protects lawmakers from lawsuits associated to their legislative actions.)
