A sitting United States senator stood in a Fantasyland gift shop during a federal shutdown and bought a bubble wand. Two weeks later, back in the Capitol, he raised a hand to block a camera and walked past the question in silence. Lindsey Graham has survived two Trump impeachments, a run for president, and twenty-three years in the Senate by talking. He could not talk his way past a TMZ producer holding a photograph of him at Disney World.
That was Monday. It was also day one of TMZ’s new Washington bureau.
Three producers arrived on Capitol Hill this week as Congress returned from a two-week recess. The Department of Homeland Security has been partially shut down for nearly eight weeks. TSA workers have missed paychecks. And while that was happening, members of Congress flew to Las Vegas, Edinburgh Castle, and the Magic Kingdom. TMZ asked its readers to send photos.
Graham’s went viral — four million views on X alone. Senator Ted Cruz got the same treatment the same day, asked whether he stood with President Donald Trump or Pope Leo XIV in their public feud over the Iran war. Cruz said he was confident they could both speak for themselves and kept moving.
Bridget Todd thinks TMZ’s Washington bureau might matter more than the skeptics think.
TMZ has done this before. To the NFL
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Todd, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and host of the iHeart podcast There Are No Girls on the Internet, argued this week that anyone writing off the Washington bureau is missing what the outlet has already done elsewhere. In February 2014, TMZ Sports published casino security footage of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice dragging his unconscious fiancée, Janay Palmer, out of an elevator.
The NFL gave him a two-game suspension. In September, TMZ published the second video — the punch itself. The Ravens cut Rice the same day. The league suspended him indefinitely. Roger Goodell brought in a former FBI director to investigate his own office. The NFL rewrote its personal conduct policy from the ground up: six games for a first domestic violence offense, a lifetime ban for a second, applicable to every employee of the league.
The most powerful sports organization in the United States had its conduct code rewritten by a tabloid website.
TMZ did not invent the Ray Rice story. Law enforcement had the tape. The NFL had the tape. Everyone with a professional obligation to act on it had chosen not to. What TMZ did was put it in front of the public and refuse to let it die.
Graham blinked in two weeks
In case you didn’t see the bubble wand ⬇️ https://t.co/Q8INyvyIlw pic.twitter.com/zTzx5auiTM
— TMZ (@TMZ) April 13, 2026
The Capitol Hill operation is less than a week old, and the pressure is already working. When TMZ first caught Graham at Disney World, the senator had a prepared line: “I voted seven times to fully fund the government. Call a Democrat.” That defense survived one news cycle. Two weeks later, confronted with the same photograph by the same outlet, he had nothing. The Sunday-show playbook — deflect, blame, pivot, smile — depends on the press corps letting you move on. TMZ does not move on.
The institutional response has been quieter, and faster. Per Politico’s Inside Congress newsletter, the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee is coordinating with congressional offices on how to engage. Staffers have been told not to freelance. Some aides are reportedly mapping alternate routes through the Capitol to keep their members out of the producers’ line of sight. A Republican staffer told Courthouse News that colleagues have openly discussed how much TMZ might pay them for information about their own bosses.
Three producers with cameras have rearranged the floor plan of the Capitol in less than a week.
Congress does not have a Roger Goodell
Here is where the NFL precedent gets complicated. The league is one organization with a commissioner who can rewrite the rules over a weekend. Congress is five hundred and thirty-five members, two parties, and no one with the authority to change anyone’s behavior from above. The only accountability mechanism Congress actually has is an election.
Representatives Tony Gonzales and Eric Swalwell both resigned on Tuesday amid separate misconduct allegations. Online, the credit went immediately to TMZ. It shouldn’t have. The San Francisco Chronicle broke Swalwell. Gonzales had been under scrutiny for months. The TMZ effect, to the extent it exists yet, is atmospheric — a new outlet in town raising the temperature on stories that were already lit.
TMZ founder Harvey Levin has already named a target.
Levin launched a political project last fall called OWTA — short for “Out With Their Asses” — calling on voters to reject incumbents in the 2026 midterms. He has blamed both parties equally. He has told reporters the Washington bureau’s coverage will be “sometimes fun, sometimes intensely serious” and that lawmakers should not expect it to end.
It took six months for a tabloid to rewrite the NFL’s rulebook. The midterms are six months away.