Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., is the third member of Congress to announce his resignation this week, saying that he had discussed surrogacy with two female subordinates.<\/p>\n
“Given the nature of numerous allegations and reports across America in recent weeks, I want to first make one thing completely clear. I have absolutely never physically intimidated, coerced, or had, or attempted to have, any sexual contact with any member of my congressional staff,” Franks said in a statement. “However, I do want to take full and personal responsibility for the ways I have broached a topic that, unbeknownst to me until very recently, made certain individuals uncomfortable. And so, I want to shed light on how those conversations came about.”<\/p>\n
Franks’ announcement that he would leave Congress at the end of January comes on the same day that Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., said he would step down and days after Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., resigned \u2014 both after allegations of sexual misconduct.<\/p>\n
In his statement on Thursday, Franks detailed how he and his wife had “long struggled with infertility” and suffered three miscarriages. They had twins through a surrogate, but subsequent attempts to have another child by either adoption or another surrogate fell through.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Also, is it me or is this all progressing alphabetically?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
That is the question. Probably both, but the latest powerful male stepdown argues for the latter. Check it out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28514,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5047,5026],"tags":[5055,5056,5054],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trent_Franks_Congress_Reproductive_Success.jpg?fit=1600%2C984&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-7pT","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28513"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28513"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28575,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28513\/revisions\/28575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}