A former congressional staffer has built a verified, anonymous review platform that lets Capitol Hill aides rate the lawmakers they work for, and the early results put mostly Democratic offices at the bottom of the list.
David Tennent, founder of Capitol CNCT, launched the tool called "The Scoop" on July 20. It works like a Glassdoor for Congress: current and former staffers log in with their House or Senate email addresses, submit reviews of the offices where they worked, and those reviews go live after Capitol CNCT screens them for authenticity. Within a week, verified ratings had already begun sorting congressional offices into winners and losers.
The platform arrives at a moment when Capitol Hill's workplace culture is under sharper scrutiny than it has faced in years. Congress has no centralized human resources department for members' offices. Each lawmaker runs a small fiefdom with little outside oversight of how staff are managed, paid, or treated. Tennent said he wanted to change that by giving young aides a resource that didn't exist when he worked on the Hill.
The early rankings skew in one direction. Fox News Digital reported that the five highest-rated House offices belong to Reps. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y.; Abe Hamadeh, R-Ariz.; Brendan Boyle, D-Pa.; Michael Rulli, R-Ohio; and Robert Garcia, D-Calif. On the Senate side, the top five are all Republicans: Sens. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Todd Young of Indiana, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Eric Schmitt of Missouri, and Kevin Cramer of North Dakota.
The five lowest-rated offices across both chambers, by contrast, are all run by Democrats: Rep. Don Davis of North Carolina, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, Rep. Julia Brownley of California, Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, and Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado.
Fox News Digital reached out to all five of those offices. None responded.
Tennent noted that Republican offices are almost twice as likely to be reviewed as Democratic offices so far. Most offices still have only a handful of ratings, so the rankings could shift as more staffers participate. But the early pattern is striking: the lawmakers who talk most about protecting workers and holding institutions accountable are the ones whose own employees gave them the worst marks.
Tennent said his biggest concern in designing the platform was preventing it from becoming a weapon for partisan retaliation. He described the verification process in an interview with Fox News Digital:
"We verify the office in which they've worked. We sift through all reviews before they go live to our platform to make sure that staffer has actually worked in that office."
That screening layer matters. Without it, a tool like this could easily become a dumping ground for political grudges. Tennent acknowledged the risk directly:
"My biggest fear was just creating like a political retribution platform, right? Where you can just go on and destroy people without any evidence or verification that you've been a part of that process."
Capitol CNCT uses background screening beyond simple email verification to confirm a reviewer actually worked in the office being rated. Tennent said the goal is constructive pressure, not public shaming.
The platform went live during a stretch of months that saw multiple congressional offices rocked by misconduct allegations. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., and Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, both resigned in April after staffers came forward with accusations of sexual misconduct. In Swalwell's case, those accusations included allegations of rape. The allegations against both members remain unproven, but the resignations were real.
Those departures were not isolated. Multiple congressional offices have faced misconduct allegations this year, and the House Ethics Committee has examined sexual misconduct claims against at least one other lawmaker. The pattern has raised an uncomfortable question: if Congress has no real HR infrastructure, who protects the twenty-somethings answering phones and drafting memos?
The problem extends beyond criminal-level misconduct. Sen. Ruben Gallego reportedly had sexual relationships with House staffers during his time in the lower chamber, a pattern that underscores the power imbalance between lawmakers and the young aides who depend on them for career advancement.
Rep. Nancy Mace responded to the wave of scandals by introducing legislation to ban House members from sexual relationships with staff. That bill acknowledged what the review platform is designed to address from the other direction: Congress polices everyone's workplace but its own.
Tennent told Fox News Digital the timing was coincidental but useful:
"We happened to be able to launch it right in this timeframe where this congressional ethics or lack of morality discussion is really hitting its high pitch."
Staff dysfunction is not limited to misconduct cases. High turnover and toxic office culture have plagued multiple offices in recent years. Sen. John Fetterman's office saw its chief of staff resign amid ongoing staff departures, a sign that the problems Tennent wants to surface are not confined to any single scandal.
Tennent framed the platform as a tool for improvement, not punishment. He said he hopes poor ratings will function as a wake-up call for members and their chiefs of staff:
"Our hope is that if a chief of staff or a member sees that their office is very poorly rated, that over time they're gonna go, 'Oh, this is a wake-up call for me. Let me implement some strategies to boost office morale, to change how we communicate with each other.'"
Whether that hope is realistic depends on whether lawmakers care what their staff think, or whether they view junior aides as disposable. Congress has operated for decades on the assumption that young people will tolerate long hours, low pay, and difficult bosses for the privilege of a Hill résumé line. The Scoop bets that transparency can change the calculation.
The platform also fills a gap that Congress itself has refused to close. Private-sector employers face OSHA complaints, Glassdoor reviews, and state labor boards. Members of Congress face none of that. Each office is its own island, and a staffer who reports mistreatment has nowhere to go except the press, or the exit. The scandals involving members from both parties this year, including Democrats rallying behind a Maine candidate despite a sexting scandal, show how reluctant political parties are to hold their own accountable when the cost is a seat.
Tennent described his broader motivation simply:
"I wanted to create something that gave a little bit more transparency to the process and help staffers find the best opportunities available."
The early data is thin. A handful of ratings per office is not a scientific survey. But even in its first week, The Scoop produced a result that should make the lowest-rated offices uncomfortable: five Democratic offices at the bottom, none willing to talk about it, and a growing public record that future job candidates can check before they sign on.
Congress writes the labor rules for every business in America. It might start by following a few of them itself.
