Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna was on her way off the House floor on June 15 when she saw Mike Turner of Ohio headed her way. She steeled herself for a tough exchange. Less than 24 hours earlier, Turner and 19 other Republicans had blocked Luna’s resolution censuring California Democrat Adam Schiff, the MAGA-world villain who led Trump’s first impeachment. Undaunted, Luna had mobilized a backlash by right-wing firebrands Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk, and an activist known as DC_Draino who labeled Turner and the other GOP dissenters the “Coward 20,” publishing their Congressional office phone numbers and triggering a wave of irate calls and social media harassment.
Turning to face the bulky ten-term veteran who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, a defiant Luna, 34, paused near the back doors of the House chamber. But as Turner started engaging her in discreet chitchat, it quickly became clear that he wasn’t picking a fight. He was looking to surrender. “We really want to censure Schiff,” Turner told the Florida freshman. “How can we work together?”
If Luna was surprised, she was also prepared, pulling from her purse a revised censure resolution that would force a House Ethics investigation into Schiff but that dropped an unprecedented $16 million fine. Sitting in her House office moments after the conversation with Turner, Luna exhibited a studied swagger. “I am telling you: I am persistent, and I am not kidding, censuring is going to happen.” Six days later, Luna forced another House vote to censure Schiff. This time, it passed 213-209. Not a single Republican voted against it.
The resolution was a milestone for Luna, marking her emergence from the mass of recently arrived GOP insurgents. To some, she’s a dangerously effective new version of the millennial MAGA politician ready to tear down the institutions of government in pursuit of an ultraconservative revolution. To others, she’s something more, the vanguard of a potentially significant turn in American politics. Luna is less a politician who parlayed her seat in Congress into a huge online following—like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—than the other way around: the first social media influencer to parlay an online audience into a seat in Congress.
