march 2–15, 2020 | new york 45“I am leaving,” she said on the House floor, “but we have men who
have been credibly accused of intentional acts of sexual violence and
remain in boardrooms, on the Supreme Court, in this very body, and,
worst of all, in the Oval Office.”
Afterward, Massachusetts Democratic congresswoman Ayanna
Pressley handed Hill a T-shirt that read, if you’re not outraged,
you’re not paying attention. Pressley and Hill had become
friends early on, when Hill—having learned that her office had once
belonged to Shirley Chisholm and that Pressley wanted it—insisted
they switch.
Many of Hill’s Democratic colleagues remained silent. But plenty
of those who didn’t publicly stand by Hill did so privately, attending
a farewell party Underwood threw on the roof of their apartment
building. Until then, the silence on social media had been excruciat-
ing. “As a fellow politician, I understand why this is messy, and you
can’t explain it in 280 characters, and everyone from your comms
team is telling you, ‘Don’t touch this.’ But I’m here, and I feel so
alone,” Hill said, tearing up. “When they showed up, I was like,
Thank God.”
In a video posted online a few days before Hill left Congress, she
vowed to “take up a new fight” against what’s commonly called
revenge porn. She began talking with lawyers and came across an
article about her case by Carrie Goldberg, a lawyer in Brooklyn who
specializes in victims’-rights law and cyberexploitation and is often
featured in the media. Hill called Goldberg, who came to D.C. the
next day. The legal battle will likely be long and messy, and so far, the
GoFundMe to help cover Hill’s fees has raised more than $29,000.
In the meantime, the photos remain online.
Hill was the first member of Congress to be investigated under
the House rule against relationships with staffers, approved in Feb-
ruary 2018. She is also the first female member to resign amid alle-
gations of her own misconduct. But since the dawn of the Me Too
movement in October 2017, four men in Congress—including rep-
resentatives John Conyers, Trent Franks, and Pat Meehan as well as
Senator Al Franken—resigned after admitting to or being accused
of various transgressions. In November, the Ethics Committee
announced a second probe under its new rule, this time into an
alleged longtime romantic relationship between Florida congress-
man Alcee Hastings and a congressional aide whom he’d reportedly
paid more than his chief of staff for a decade.
Hill said there were rumors swirling around the halls of Congress
about plenty of lawmakers that nobody was acting on. “You know
that so-and-so is banging their staff ... You know, it’s very common,”
she said. “Look, it’s not confirmed, so I can’t say. Whatever.”
When I ask Pressley if she agrees with Hill that a double standard
was at play, she emphatically says yes. There’s a long pause before
she speaks again. “Are you kidding me?”T
he apartment that Hill and Underwood shared
until late January had the feel of a modern corporate
rental or an Airbnb that nobody actually lives in—a
place to sleep and shower on your way somewhere
else. Hill’s congressional wardrobe still hung in her
closet like a museum exhibit, reds and blues and
tweeds from some other period. There was no rug,
no photos on the wall. The closest thing to décor was
Underwood’s framed poster of Chisholm leaning against the wall
and a stack of books sent by Hill’s agent: And Then We Grew Up,
So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Rage Becomes Her, Unscrewed,
and Why Does He Do That?
Hill said she was tens of thousa dollars in debt from her
divorce’s legal fees, and her last con al paycheck was depos-
ited on December 1. So she was wa no time in launching her
comeback. Hill is simultaneously writing a book, appearing regu-
larly on TV, taking paid speaking gigs about women’s empower-ment, and starting a political pac with money from her war chest.
Some of her former staffers have distanced themselves, at
least publicly—scrubbing Hill’s name from their social-media
bios and, in the case of at least one senior staffer, removing their
time with her from their LinkedIn page. In the immediate after-
math of the photos’ release, someone in Hill’s hometown put up
posters of her in a Nazi uniform with the hashtag #WifeSwap-
penSS. Her mother received texts with those same images. A
man with a camera began parking his car outside Stevenson’s
house and trailing her and her husband when they walked out
their door. A suspicious, but ultimately innocuous, white powder
was sent to her district office.
Hill said she feared that what happened to her will deter other
young women from running for office, and her experience has
shaken some of her former colleagues. Underwood, at 33 the
youngest black woman ever to serve in Congress, tells me, “There
is extreme risk in me doing this interview with you right now.”
(Multiple Democrats contacted for this article, either directly or
through their press offices, declined or never responded to
repeated requests to be interviewed.) “There is an entire political
party armed with millions of dollars willing and ready to spend to
clip these quotes that I’m giving you right now to be used for my
political peril. And I didn’t even do anything.”in december, hill went home for the holidays. “There’s a lot
I have to heal from,” she told me before leaving. “There’s also
three years of lost time—like even phone calls I didn’t have time
for, to talk to my friends.” But the trip wasn’t a respite. Her
mother underwent surgery to relieve a buildup of fluid around
her brain. Then, on the morning of January 18, Hill found her
20-year-old brother dead on her mother’s couch from what Hill
describes as an apparent overdose (the toxicology report has not
yet been completed). They were both at home because Stevenson
was still in the hospital recovering. “I was with him the night
before,” said Hill. “I saw him in the morning, like two hours, prob-
ably, before it happened.” She said she did CPR but to no avail.
“The night before, we hung out. We talked about our plans for
the future ... I was recording our conversation, because I was,
like, I just thought it was an interesting conversation. I was like,
‘Do you mind if I record this? I feel like I might use this for some-
thing someday.’ And it was from the fucking night before.”
Hill crowdfunded the funeral and shared a link to donate on
Twitter, raising more than $15,000. (She deleted the tweet weeks
later.) After her brother’s death, she couldn’t bear to be at her
mother’s house and instead went to Malibu to stay at a home
owned by one of her former donors.
“I hate pity more than anything else, and the last several
months have led to a lot of pity,” said Hill. People ask if she’s okay,
and her family worries about her mental health. “After my
brother died, my mom and sister made me make a pact that I
would never actually do something like that, and I was like, ‘Of
course not,’ ” she said. “It was starkly clear to me once my brother
died that that was totally off the table.”
Hill flew out to D.C. for the State of the Union address, just
over two weeks after her brother’s death (members have lifetime
invitations to attend). Wearing suffragette white, as she had the
year before, as well as her congressional pin, she walked down
the halls of the Capitol with her former colleagues, passing
reporters on the way. This seemed to have been the point. Hill
was highly aware that her new path hinged on remaining rele-
vant. “The easier thing is definitely not showing up, right?,” she
told me the next day. “For me, personally, it feels really fucking
shitty. Going there and being the person where it’s like, you’re not
a member anymore, what are you doing here?”
Hill’s book advance allowed her to move into a one-bedroom