Men in suits dutifully guard a door. They can’t go in behind their boss — the facility behind the door is too covert, the activities within too clandestine, maybe classified. Reporters huddle before the suits, phones at the ready, waiting for someone to emerge.
Then it happens: Speaker Mike Johnson is done in the restroom. The door swings open. His guards surround him, and reporters race along, putting a quick damper on the speaker’s physical relief.
Duly elected members of Congress are constitutionally required to be human, and all humans are biologically required to pee. On voting days, a member who chooses to do so in the nearest suitable facility puts themselves in the path of the horde of people who desperately want information from them.
Aside from the Republican cloakroom — which provides lawmakers with cheap hot dogs and grilled cheeses — the members-only bathrooms off the House floor, adjacent to the lavish Speaker’s Lobby, are some of the only places near the floor where lawmakers are out of view from the Hill’s many nosy reporters (though The Washington Sun once witnessed Fox News anchor Sean Hannity make a brief stop inside).
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The air of exclusivity hovers over the facilities. Outside the bathroom doors, flanked by two portraits of long-gone, deceased speakers, a crystal chandelier hangs with chains of beads that stay busy catching and reflecting light. Like the rest of the halls surrounding the House floor, the ceilings are covered with ornate neoclassical details. And, on voting days, just as dependable as the chandelier hanging are the reporters leaning against the adjacent stairwell’s marble railing.
Those doors have seen many impromptu press conferences take place right outside. Members say inside, the restrooms are entirely normal, with minimal issues (except in April, when one toilet in the men’s restroom profusely leaked into the hallway, and water seeped through the floor onto the one below).
Still, members know that running off the floor to use the restroom during a long vote series means they’ll inevitably have to cross the strategic chokepoint essential to Hill reporting.
When Democratic black sheep Rep. Jared Golden of Maine — notorious for avoiding the press during votes — helped Republicans pass a rule on Sept. 1, a Washington Sun reporter saw him enter the restroom, waited for his exit and asked whether he informed leadership of his apostasy beforehand (the answer was a resounding “no”).
Some members said they’re resigned to the unavoidable reality of facing the bathroom stakeout. “It’s a fait accompli. It’s a part of life,” said Rep. Jake Ellzey (R-Texas), who said he doesn’t get mobbed enough to mind.
“You guys have the right to hang out anywhere you want to, and it just so happens that’s where that thing is,” Ellzey added.
Between members, the hallway has a cordial culture. When members traverse the hallway and spot their buddies leaving the bathroom, they can be seen offering handshakes, back pats and fist bumps. Sometimes, like young women at a bar, they exit the room together in couples or groups, laughing to themselves about whatever they were discussing inside.
One House Democrat, granted anonymity to speak candidly about his colleagues’ hygiene, told The Sun that many male members who use the restroom by the chamber — generally, like men using any bathroom — don’t wash their hands.
“I wouldn’t shake hands with anyone that comes out of the bathroom,” the lawmaker said.
Besides worrying Congress’ attending physician, the alleged lack of hand-washing might cause unease among leadership in both parties, given their concerns about member sickness and attendance, since Republicans have a slim majority this Congress.
Rep. Mike Kennedy (R-Utah), a freshman, admitted it’s a smart place for reporters to stand.
“If you’re looking at the physiologic necessity of having to go to the toilet at some point, you’ll capture most people around the floor if you sit out there,” said Kennedy, a family physician.
That didn’t make it any less bizarre for him when he started his job at the Hill, though: “It’s weird. There’s a bunch of ladies hanging out by the men’s bathroom,” Kennedy added, laughing.
Freshman Rep. Mike Haridopolos (R-Florida) said it was a “new experience” for him, since press wasn’t allowed around the restrooms in the Florida state Senate, where he worked before. “I hope we don’t stink up your place,” he said. (The hallway is only occasionally stinky.)
But other lawmakers are now pushing to bar reporters from that hallway altogether. Rep. Mark Alford (R-Missouri) said “there’s a movement underway” to keep the press out of the Speaker’s Lobby hallway next Congress.
Even when lawmakers escape to their members-only bathrooms, though, it’s not like any groundbreaking bipartisan compromises get worked out at the sinks.
“You have Republicans and Democrats in there, so it sort of constrains a lot of talk,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska), who’s retiring from Congress. Besides, as Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pennsylvania) pointed out, the acoustics of the bathroom don’t seem suitable for low-key legislative dealmaking — “You have so many other places, the cloakroom, the floor. Think about it: It echoes in there; you really can’t whisper.”
The men’s room used to have one convenient luxury, according to retiring Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee), who said as recently as around 10 years ago, the bathroom had a “nice fellow” who would shine members’ shoes for tips between votes.
While little politicking seems to go on behind the doors, bathrooms have been at the center of a major political fight this Congress. After the chamber was set to receive its first transgender member in November 2024, Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Delaware), House leadership acted to ensure that she would be banned from using the women’s restroom. And the same month McBride took office, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) reportedly complained to House security about “a guy” in the members-only women’s restroom, according to reporter Billy House. (She later admitted she was mistaken.)
The women’s restroom next to the House floor is also a remarkably recent addition: It was only added in 2011, nearly 100 years after the first-ever woman served in Congress. Before, women members had to run through Statuary Hall to relieve themselves.
The proximity of the bathrooms has led to some confusion, though.
“A lady congressman that was a freshman happened to walk into the wrong one, thinking that it was the women’s room and realized somewhat quickly, let’s just say, that the infrastructure was not appropriate for the ladies’ restroom,” Rep. Russ Fulcher (R-Idaho) said.
The particular demographic makeup of the Republican House majority can guide where reporters go when they’re looking for information from the people who, at least for now, hold the most power. Standing next to the men’s restroom makes sense: Only 30 of the GOP’s voting members are women, and only one is a chair of a major committee, according to the House Republicans’ website.
The average age of the 21 male Republican chairs is 62, when Americans can begin receiving Social Security retirement benefits. Aging is known to make bladders stiffer and make their muscles weaker, meaning older people tend to have to pee more.
Appropriations Chair Tom Cole, 77, is a case in point. While Cole’s office serves as another nearby hideout for Republicans, especially those who partake in cigar smoking, it doesn’t have its own bathroom. Oklahomans who want to hear from their most powerful congressman, or reporters who need updates on appropriations bills or negotiations, depend on his deliberate treks back and forth between the floor, the bathroom and his office for a chance to catch him.
Whether lawmakers are longtime veterans of the chamber, or fresh-faced newly elected members, the architectural reality of the bathrooms seems widely understood: There’s only one entrance, and it’s the same as the exit.
“If we go in there, we gotta come out. So I mean, it works,” said Rep. Jimmy Patronis (R-Florida), a freshman.
And Patronis, looking on the bright side of risking being confronted every time he exits the restroom as part of his daily life at work, had the highest of compliments to share about it.
“I’m in the restaurant business. Clean bathrooms are important. And so for me to notice, it means they’re doing the right thing,” he added. “[The Capitol’s bathrooms] are always clean. This one here is. Now, nothing special about it. I don’t know what the ladies’ rooms look like.”
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