Nancy Mace, the South Carolina Republican congresswoman, typically tells her workers that she’s a self-taught coder—only one facet of how Mace presents her tech experience, as befits her function in shaping the GOP’s insurance policies on know-how and work as chair of the Home subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Info Know-how, and Authorities Innovation.
“I might say [it was] not less than a weekly remark, if not day by day,” says considered one of a number of former Mace staffers who spoke with WIRED. One other discovered her excessive regard for her abilities considerably at odds along with her demonstrated capacity. (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 abilities, in line with former staffers, was establishing burner accounts on a wide range of social media platforms to watch what folks had 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 had been congressional workers, and there have been precise issues we may very well 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 checklist of questions on the programming languages through which she is proficient and what kinds of gadgets she makes use of for coding.
Mace, who workers mentioned as soon as identified as a “by no means Trumper,” has develop 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 gain ample attention on-line within the course of, like introducing a resolution to cease transgender folks from utilizing bogs that align with their gender id, slightly than organic intercourse, in federal buildings. (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 know-how coverage; earlier this yr, for instance, she re-introduced a invoice she beforehand co-sponsored in 2023, the Modernizing Government Technology Reform Act, which, if handed and signed into legislation, would require a sweeping audit of legacy federal IT techniques.
Just 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’s made towards her ex-fiancé, South Carolina businessman Patrick Bryant, whom she accused of bodily assaulting her and of possessing photos of “underage women” 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 had 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.)
