Anna Paulina Luna has a knack for going viral.
In the span of a single month, the Florida Republican championed a CIA whistleblower’s theories on JFK assassination records, promised a fresh dump of classified UFO files, teamed up with MAHA activists to fight pesticide manufacturers, and openly flirted with a run to lead the Republican National Committee.
It is an eclectic agenda, but it shares a single, underlying ingredient: high-octane internet virality. At 37, the congresswoman has become one of Capitol Hill’s most aggressive practitioners of attention politics, thriving on a curated cocktail of public confrontations and MAGA-friendly internet rabbit holes.
Her approach has earned her a devoted online following and made the two-term lawmaker a rising figure in Republican grassroots politics. It has also irritated many of her colleagues, including Republicans who privately describe her as impulsive, media-obsessed and willing to outrun the facts to dominate the screen.
“I am Mike Johnson’s favorite headache,” Luna said in an interview, laughing as she referred to the speaker of the House, a Republican.
Luna entered Congress in 2023 with an already established online presence: The Air Force veteran had previously worked as a model and for Turning Point USA, the conservative group founded by Charlie Kirk in 2012 that rapidly expanded across colleges and high schools. She has built on that and, to date, she has roughly 790,000 Instagram followers and almost a million X followers on her personal account. While Luna said she rejects the label of influencer, her X account biography features a link to a 2023 profile titled: “The Influencer Who Came to Congress.”
Key to Luna’s social media prowess is her ability to identify politically explosive issues that interest the GOP base. She has pushed to oust colleagues facing allegations of unethical behavior and misconduct, while inserting herself in policy debates that have split the GOP conference. Meanwhile, in her role as chair of the House Oversight Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, she often wades into popular conspiracy theories.
Her critics chalked up her propensity to jump into fights as attention-seeking, arguing that her positions are at times contradictory or that she is willing to twist information or make claims without proof to get her message out.
“She’s very talented, but she operates out of process, and that I think institutionally is a problem,” said retiring Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Montana Republican, who described Luna as part of the change in how lawmakers follow House decorum rules that he says started during the coronavirus pandemic when members were largely virtual.
Luna says the criticism is a result of holding “their feet to the fire.” She said she is proud of her record of circumventing House GOP leadership to push her agenda, claiming more members could do the same if they knew the rules. House Speaker Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune have both been caught in the crosshairs of her actions but have refrained from publicly confronting her.
“Everything that I’ve had to do is because of operating outside of normal procedure, because they will intentionally hold your legislation back if you don’t fall in line and I refuse to give up my autonomy,” Luna said.
Her platform is powerful: Multiple House Republicans who are privately uncomfortable with her modus operandi declined to be named, pointing out that they don’t want to have her or her online allies coming after them on social media.
“While she has a large Twitter following, she’s not somebody I go to for legislative advice,” said Rep. Nick LaLota, a New York Republican.
Luna’s small group of allies on the Hill are fiercely loyal and range from conservatives to centrists. They say that she offers support even when it is politically inconvenient and argue that she has been successful at drawing attention to issues she and the American public care about.
“People may not like how she goes about things, but no one can say that she’s not effective in what she does,” said Rep. Max Miller, an Ohio Republican who described Luna as a friend.
Luna’s status as a disrupter within her party partly dates back to last year when she pushed for the House to allow proxy voting for new parents in Congress. Her push, which involved teaming up with Democrats, drew staunch conservative backlash and prompted her decision to leave the House Freedom Caucus. She says she still wants the Hill to adopt such a policy.
But there is a long list of other moments Luna has been openly at odds with or pushing members of her party.
She has long pushed for a ban on trading in Congress, arguing that members of Congress “should not be enriching themselves with insider knowledge.” She has openly worked with Democrats on populist issues, like introducing legislation with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—the New York Democrat frequently villainized by Republicans—aiming to cap credit-card interest rates.
At times, Luna’s quickness to engage online has led to its own controversy.
Last week, Luna said she was filing charges against the left-wing group CODEPINK’s co-founder, claiming she had followed her out of a House Foreign Affairs Committee and “smacked” her. CODEPINK later posted a video on X of the interaction showing co-founder Medea Benjamin had lightly touched her arm. Luna replied that Benjamin had “crossed a personal boundary that should NEVER be crossed.”
Last month, Luna amplified claims online and on television from a Central Intelligence Agency whistleblower who alleged that intelligence officials had removed boxes related to John F. Kennedy’s assassination and the MKUltra human experimentation program that were being processed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for declassification. She suggested the episode looked like an “internal coup” during a NewsNation hit—and the interview was used on social media and by other outlets to claim there had been a raid at the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s office.
Hours later, Gabbard’s press secretary publicly said claims of a “raid” were false. Luna insisted she never used the word raid and said she based it off news reports of a whistleblower account. She argued that Congress must look into such situations. She also said she met with the CIA shortly after to get their side of the story.
Days earlier, Luna leapt into a clash between MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) activists and her House GOP colleagues, promising to “BLOW UP the farm bill” over language that would shield pesticide makers from health-related lawsuits. Luna successfully introduced the amendment to remove the language from the bill. Some Republicans blamed her for MAHA activists coming after them.
Luna acknowledged the fight created bad blood. She felt she leaned in to an issue mothers agree on. Some of her colleagues argued it was an example of her fixating on something she doesn’t fully understand, just to get TV time.
“I actually have a text message from a member on the [Agriculture] committee saying that I was fighting the pesticide liability shield for attention, and that I was a damn liar,” said Luna.
A month earlier, Luna was also a frequent fixture in the news. She made headlines for her efforts to oust Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas and Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California over allegations of sexual misconduct. She threatened to move on an expulsion vote, jumping ahead of investigations being conducted by the House Ethics Committee, before the two embattled lawmakers resigned in mid-April.
“I was one of the only members of Congress willing to call my party and others and get them out,” she said.
Her critics say that her defense of women at times is incongruent and at times she pushes allegations without proof.
Luna has accused Sen. Ruben Gallego of sexual misconduct, which she says is based on other women’s accounts and that she has referred to the Senate Ethics Committee. A spokesperson for the Arizona Democrat dismissed Luna’s claims as “right wing conspiracy theories being parroted by a fringe far right member of Congress.” Gallego’s office said in April the senator proactively met with the Ethics Committee.
Luna also declined to sign the bipartisan discharge petition that forced the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted sex offender and disgraced financier, amid pressure from the Trump administration on GOP supporters to oppose the measure. Luna said she supported their release, but opposed the petition because she didn’t want to “intentionally be used in a personal fight that’s now still playing out in an election.”
She has also dismissed allegations against President Trump as frivolous or disproved. Luna said the difference is the “evidence” brought forward against the House members, “whereas we interviewed multiple people that accused the president, there was no evidence.”
While it is an “honor and privilege” to represent her district, Luna said staying in Congress isn’t her long-term goal.
“I think a lot of people want to do this for 20 years,” Luna said. “I do not want to do this for 20 years.”
Write to Olivia Beavers at Olivia.Beavers@wsj.com and Sabrina Rodriguez at sabrina.rodriguez@wsj.com
