Congress

‘Substantial reason to believe’ Tony Gonzales had sex with his staffer, House probe finds

Published

4 months ago

March 4, 2026

Congressional investigators have found “a substantial reason to believe” that Rep. Tony Gonzales had a sexual relationship with a subordinate — an apparent violation of House rules.

Blue Light News exclusively reviewed the report made by the nonpartisan Office of Congressional Conduct and delivered Wednesday to the House Ethics Committee, which has separately announced it is investigating the matter. The board of the OCC— an independent investigative body of the House — recommended in a 6-0 decision that the Ethics panel, which handles member disciplinary matters, further examine the allegations against Gonzales, a Texas Republican.

The OCC report and announcement from the Ethics Committee comes as Gonzales faces a 12-week runoff campaign to keep the Republican nomination for the south Texas seat he has held for three terms. He narrowly trails challenger Brandon Herrera in the latest returns from Tuesday’s election but neither candidate is on track to win an outright majority, setting up a May 23 runoff.

Gonzales has denied wrongdoing and resisted calls from within his own party to resign as details of his relationship with the former staffer, Regina Santos-Aviles, continue to emerge. She died by suicide after setting herself on fire in 2025.

Responding to the Ethics Committee announcement Wednesday, Gonzales said, “I welcome the opportunity to present all the facts to the committee. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the OCC finding.

Tom Rust, staff director for the House Ethics Committee, declined comment, as did William Beaman, a spokesperson for OCC.

The OCC investigation found “a substantial reason to believe that Rep. Gonzales engaged in a sexual relationship with an employee of the House of Representatives who was working under his supervision,” according to the report viewed by Blue Light News.

In one exchange with a fellow staffer, known as Witness 1, Santos-Aviles texted: “I had an affair with our boss and I’m fine. You will be fine.” The staffer, in an interview with the OCC, described personal conversations with Santos-Aviles wherein she described text messages with Gonzales that “were sexual in nature, that were romantic in nature.”

In another part of the report, a screenshot of a message that was originally sent by Santos-Aviles’ husband to another Gonzales staffer said, “Just a heads up this is [Santos-Aviles’] soon to be ex husband I just wanted to inform all of you that we will be getting divorced after my discovery of text messages and pictures, that she’s been having an affair with your boss Tony Gonzales for some time now. Feel free to reach out if you want more of an explanation.”

While the OCC can’t issue disciplinary actions, its investigative reports have served as roadmaps for the Ethics Committee, which conducts its own probes. In opening its own inquiry Wednesday, the panel said it would examine allegations that Gonzales “engaged in sexual misconduct towards an individual employed in his congressional office” and “discriminated unfairly by dispensing special favors or privileges.”

Speaker Mike Johnson, navigating a tight GOP majority, said last week that he wanted to see how the election played out and that Gonzales was entitled to due process. While the findings from the OCC are significant, it could take months or years for the Ethics Committee to finish its own report and recommend any discipline.

Johnson told reporters after the Ethics Committee announcement that he would let the process “play out.” A spokesperson, Taylor Haulsee, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the OCC finding.

Gonzales, who is married with children, is alleged to have pursued a sexual relationship with Santos-Aviles and tried to coerce her into sending explicit photos, according to text messages published by the San Antonio Express-News and other publications, some of which are referenced in the OCC report. Blue Light News has not independently reviewed the messages.

House rules prohibit members, such as Gonzales, from having “a sexual relationship” or engaging in “unwelcome sexual advances” with their staffers.

The Ethics Committee’s deliberations are usually shrouded in secrecy, and it sometimes takes years to deliver any sort of conclusion. Allegations that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) accepted improper gifts relating to the 2021 Met Gala, for instance, were not ruled upon until 2025, when she was instructed to repay the fair market value of the ticket of her guest, her designer gown and other gifts associated with the event.

Similarly, the Ethics panel took several years to issue a report on a 2020 stock trade made by the wife of Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) that was alleged to have been done using nonpublic information. Kelly was scolded in 2025 by the committee for not fully cooperating with the investigation with a strongly worded letter of disapproval and Kelly and his wife were advised by the committee to divest of any stock holdings in Cleveland-Cliffs, the company at issue.

In the Gonzales investigation, three witnesses, identified only as Witness 1, 2, and 3, were interviewed by OCC for the inquiry. Blue Light News was unable to identify and independently interview the witnesses.

Gonzales, his Chief of Staff Cesar Prieto, and two other staffers, Brittney Smith and Alfredo Arellano III, all refused to cooperate with OCC, according to the report. The office recommended that the House Ethics Committee subpoena them.

Prieto and Smith did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An attempt to reach Arellano on LinkedIn was unsucessful.

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

Congress

Senate Republicans exclude Democrats’ food aid demand from farm bill

Published

8 hours ago

June 23, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Republicans’ farm bill proposal rejects Democrats’ demands to delay a planned shift of some food aid costs to states, according to three people familiar with the plans — jeopardizing hopes of winning bipartisan support for the package.

Democrats say they will oppose a farm bill that doesn’t push back a requirement that will soon force some states to pay for some Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, a provision included in the domestic policy megalaw Republicans passed last year.

Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman (R-Ark.) gave Senate staff and industry representatives a private preview of his farm bill text Monday afternoon ahead of a planned public release of the discussion draft at 2 p.m. Tuesday, according to the people, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss the not-yet-public plans.

Boozman will need some Democratic support to guarantee the bill can clear the 60-vote threshold on the Senate floor.

A GOP spokesperson for the Agriculture Committee said Boozman had “developed a discussion draft that can earn the bipartisan support needed for Senate passage.” The spokesperson added that Boozman will continue talks with senators and industry representatives while “finalizing text and moving toward a markup.”

The draft legislation also excludes some Republican and agriculture industry priorities, such as provisions that would allow year-round sales of E15 fuel and block states from creating certain animal welfare and pesticide labeling laws, according to the three people.

Senators from both parties are already eyeing how they might amend the bill to include their priorities. That could muddy the legislation’s path forward by generating a number of conflicts during the committee’s markup ahead of a potential floor vote on the package.

Some GOP senators whose state budgets would be hard hit by the change have privately indicated that they would support delaying the provision, which is set to begin October 2027.

Those senators and anti-hunger advocates argue the SNAP cost-share plan will kick people off the program and lead to benefit cuts. Democrats also note that many states will already receive delays or exemptions to the cost-share requirement due to high or low payment error rates.

Boozman said in an interview last month that he was “open to listening” to Democrats’ argument, but contended it could complicate his efforts to craft a budget-neutral bill.

The Senate’s version largely mirrors the House’s, which passed with 12 Democratic votes in April. Boozman is aiming to mark up his bill between the chamber’s Fourth of July and August recesses.

Congress

Senate Republicans say it’s time to give Trump a reality check

Published

8 hours ago

June 23, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Donald Trump is about to come face to face with one of his frequent punching bags: Senate Republicans.

They might just be in a mood to punch back.

The president was invited to GOP senators’ Wednesday lunch to push for his No. 1 priority, the GOP election bill known as the SAVE America Act. But several outgoing Republicans who have clashed with Trump said Monday they will be there to deliver a reality check: The bill isn’t passing, and it’s time to move on.

“I’m going to be there front and center,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told reporters. “It will be important if it actually is a constructive exchange of different opinions, and hopefully we can all get on the same page. Right now, we’re not in a great place.”

Cornyn, who recently lost his bid for a fifth term to a Trump-endorsed challenger, reiterated the votes just aren’t there to pass the elections bill: “I’ve been around here long enough and been through enough battles and counted enough votes to know that it doesn’t just magically occur, no matter how much you wish it would happen.”

Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) — who are also departing the Senate in part due to Trump — said Monday they, too, will be at the closed-door lunch and urged Trump to turn the page on the SAVE America Act.

“I’m a co-sponsor, but it doesn’t have the votes, and so it’s time to talk about something else,” said Cassidy, who also lost to a Trump-backed primary opponent.

Trump was invited to the Wednesday lunch by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who oversees the weekly gathering as GOP steering committee chair, at a tenuous moment. Senate Republicans have grown frustrated with Trump’s fixation on the elections bill, are openly questioning parts of his Iran deal and worry that his habit of blindsiding them with sudden policy U-turns is making it harder to preserve their majority in November.

Scott’s invitation comes as the elections bill has emerged as a perennial headache for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, whom Scott informed of the invite after it was extended. Thune and other members of the GOP conference insist it doesn’t have the votes to pass and have begged Trump to focus on more attainable priorities.

Same goes, they say, for other Trump demands — killing the 60-vote filibuster threshold for legislation, for instance, and ending the “blue slip” practice of giving home-state senators a say on some presidential nominees.

“None of those are going to happen here, and we need to be honest with the president,” Tillis said. “So why don’t we spend more time being productive about how we communicate, when we communicate, and get some of these very pressing issues done?”

But Trump has shown he will not relent, especially on the SAVE America Act — a bill that would impose new proof-of-citizenship and identification requirements for U.S. voters in its base form, with the president demanding still other controversial provisions added on top of that.

In a Truth Social post late last week, Trump name-checked Thune and urged the Senate to nix the filibuster and approve the bill: “Anybody who doesn’t want to Terminate the Filibuster is a FOOL, a very stupid one, at that!”

Several GOP senators, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have objected to the precedent the bill would set by nationalizing election procedures. Test votes on the bill have not garnered more than 48 supporters, though a narrower bill focused on voter ID won 50 votes. That’s still far short of the 60 votes needed to defeat a certain Democratic filibuster.

Asked late last week about Trump’s comments, Thune said a majority of Senate Republicans have long-held views against nixing the filibuster.

“It’s not a question of what I want to do or don’t want to do,” he said. “It does always come back to the math. And … there just aren’t the votes to do it.”

Thune said Monday that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if the election bill comes up but predicted it would be a “back and forth” between Trump and GOP senators over multiple subjects, including the brewing Iran deal and the stalemate over a key surveillance law and future of the director of national intelligence post.

He added that “hopefully” the discussion would include “celebrating some of our successes, talking about the path forward.”

The GOP election bill has become a consistent friction point within the party and within the Senate GOP conference. Senate Republicans largely support the bill but believe the party needs to turn its focus to Democrats, rather than fighting each other, with just months to go until the midterms.

Republican senators have kvetched for months about how they believe Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is setting unrealistic expectations for the bill’s passage. Lee posted on X over the weekend that he spoke with Trump and “he’s as convinced as I am that we can get this done if the Senate’s willing to do the hard work.”

Cornyn called out Lee Monday, saying that he “is contributing to this fantasy that somehow it’s going to happen.”

Lee responded that the election bill isn’t a fantasy but “a plan to avoid a nightmare — one that’s coming soon unless we act.”

Senate Republicans agreed to take up the voting bill earlier this year, in part after leaders privately reassured wary GOP senators that the debate wouldn’t result in an attempt to skirt the 60-vote filibuster. But the weekslong debate failed to break the stalemate on the bill, and Senate Republicans ultimately placed it on the back burner as other legislative deadlines piled up.

Conservatives, however, hadn’t forgotten about the bill, and now they want the Senate to continue to vote on it.

Scott — who came in third in the leadership contest Thune won after the 2024 election— sent a letter to his fellow Senate Republicans Monday, a copy of which was obtained by Blue Light News, saying that he wanted to have “robust conversations” this week about what the party should be focused on before the midterms. That, he said, should include voting on the SAVE America Act or narrower voter ID legislation.

“We need to make a clear distinction as to who the good guys are and who the bad guys are,” Scott wrote in the letter. “We need to show voters that we are listening to them and will fight for their priorities whether any Democrats vote with us or not.”

Congress

Senate passes housing affordability bill

Published

10 hours ago

June 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate on Monday overwhelmingly passed a long-awaited bipartisan housing bill, which is expected to set the legislation on a glide path to President Donald Trump’s desk for signature as soon as this week.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which passed 85-5 and contains almost 60 individual provisions, aims to tackle housing affordability and boost housing supply and homeownership. Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) voted “no.”

The legislation now moves on to the House, which could take up the bill for final passage as soon as Tuesday.

The legislation has become a pillar of Congress’ overall response to affordability concerns that have emerged as a key issue this midterm election year.

Despite broad, bipartisan support for the bill in both the House and Senate, the two chambers went back and forth on the legislation for months. Primary friction points developed over language establishing new restrictions on large Wall Street investors purchasing single-family homes, a ban on the Federal Reserve issuing a digital currency and a slate of community banking deregulation initiatives, among other measures.

The bill was able to move forward last week after the four lawmakers leading the legislation — Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) and ranking member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) — came to an agreement. The White House also announced support for the final version of the bill, which contains Trump’s top priority of limiting Wall Street’s footprint in the housing market.