Centrist Democrats are celebrating a new group of eight female veterans joining the House of Representatives.
"Meet the badass service women heading to Congress," Michigan Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin wrote in a Nov. 9 social media post that included a graphic with the words, "Service women are fighting back."
The new group represents an expansion of a trend that started in the last Democratic midterm election wave. In fact, one of the new members was first elected then.
Rep.-elect Elaine Luria, D-Virginia, was first elected to Congress in 2018, after serving for 20 years in the U.S. Navy before retiring as a commander, along with Naval Academy graduate and helicopter pilot Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, former CIA officer Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and former U.S. Air
Force captain Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania. Slotkin was also sent to Congress from Michigan that year after working as a CIA analyst, touring Iraq and working in White House and Pentagon national security roles. All were Democrats.
Earlier in 2026, Slotkin and Houlahan were among the six Democrats who went viral for a video telling troops not to obey illegal orders. On Truth Social, President Donald Trump called that action “seditious” and said it could be “punishable by DEATH!”
Luria lost her Virginia Beach-area swing district seat in 2022, but now she will return to Congress after taking her seat from Rep. Jen Kiggans, the Republican who had beaten her.
The former and future Virginia congresswoman, Luria, will be joined by a new crop of servicewomen heading to Congress, all of whom flipped Republican seats.
In South Carolina, Nancy Lacore, a former Navy Vice Admiral, was fired by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth after 35 years of military service, but flipped outgoing Republican Rep. Nancy Mace's Charleston district over a Republican challenger.
Rep.-elect Rebecca Bennett was inspired by Sherrill, a fellow former Navy helicopter pilot, and Spanberger to run against New Jersey Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr.
National security officer Cait Conley defeated New York Republican Rep. Mike Lawler. JoAnna Mendoza, the first woman Marine elected to Congress, beat Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani in Arizona, and ex-Air Force officer Kristina Knickerbocker won over Republican Rep. Mike Turner in a reliably red Ohio district.
Army veteran Jessica Killin prevailed over Republican Rep. Jeff Crank in Colorado, while in a neighboring Colorado district, former Navy Rear Adm. Eileen Laubacher ousted MAGA firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert.
They join other women in Congress with military experience, including Houlahan, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Florida, and Rep. Maggie Goodlander, D-New Hampshire.
While Luria was out of Congress, Slotkin was elected to the Senate in 2024, even as Trump carried her state. In 2025, Spanberger was elected governor of Virginia and Sherrill won the governor's race in New Jersey.
"You're like, 'OK, if they can do it, so can I,'" Bennett told USA TODAY about Sherrill and Spanberger's wins in 2018. "They were kind of what gave me the confidence to be able to just try to do this as, you know, kind of a political outsider."
Introducing the 'Hell Cats'
During Trump's first term, Luria, Sherill, Slotkin, Spanberger and Houlahan were cast as a more moderate bunch of incoming congresswomen, contrasted by the media with progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's "Squad," which also included Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.
While the Squad all represent safe Democratic House districts, the ex-service members have demonstrated an ability to win in swing districts and statewide races.
This cycle, a new group of women banded together and formed the "Hell Cats." Bennett in New Jersey, Arizona's Mendoza, Conley in New York and Maura Sullivan, a former Marine captain who lost in the New Hampshire primary, were members in a quartet that shared a group chat on the commercial messaging app Signal, according to The 19th News, and discussed strategy.
Sullivan lost her primary to Stefany Shaheen, the daughter of New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, but the rest of the candidates faced Republican incumbents in their general election matchups.
And while the Squad draws headlines for promoting progressive policies like the Green New Deal and feuds with the Democratic establishment, such as Tlaib not endorsing then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race, the ex-service members have cut a more moderate path.
A nonprofit that ranks members for bipartisan efforts put Spanberger at fifth, Slotkin at 12th and Sherrill at 50th, out of the 435 House members, in the 117th Congress from 2021 to 2023.
In Sherill's and Spanberger's 2025 gubernatorial campaigns, they emphasized their national security backgrounds and cruised to victory in their Democratic-leaning states.
This cycle, Conley faced off against New York Rep. Lawler, who tried to brand himself as one of the most moderate members of Congress, even after Trump campaigned with him. Conley's messaging on affordability and national security prevailed in a district that had reelected Lawler in 2024, despite simultaneously favoring Harris over Trump.
Lacore in South Carolina flipped her district by 1 percentage point, after Mace – who this cycle ran for South Carolina governor and lost in the primary – turned it red in 2020. In 2024, Mace beat her Democratic opponent by 16 points.
In New Jersey, Bennett succeeded in a swing district that Trump won in 2024 but Sherrill carried for governor in 2025. Bennett avoided her opponent's mental-health-related absence from Capitol Hill in the spring, instead focused on Kean Jr.'s voting record in support of Trump and her own time as a naval helicopter pilot.
Why so many Democratic women with military backgrounds run
VoteVets, an organization that works to give veterans a bigger say and supports Democratic veterans, supported the women veteran candidates in the 2026 cycle.
Kayla Williams, senior adviser to VoteVets and an Army veteran who deployed to Iraq in 2003-2004, said that women veterans are appealing candidates because they come not only with their service experience, but also juggling home and family lives and being grassroots Americans who can relate to everyday challenges.
"Candidates like this come to public office with a unique perspective that no one else has, and it resonates," Williams told USA TODAY in an email.
Williams slammed Hegseth for comments about women in military combat roles, saying, "Despite everything Pete Hegseth wants you to believe, women are on the front lines of defending America every day around the world and, like myself, have been deployed to war."
Still, the new group of Democratic women veterans flipped seats by often-tight margins, which might put their seats in play in a more favorable year for Republicans. Laubacher leads Boebert by less than 1 point in a district that hasn't been represented by a Democrat since 2011.
More hawkish stances on national security can be risky in Democratic primaries. Sullivan, the veteran "Hell Cat" who lost her primary in New Hampshire, was slammed by her opponent for campaign spending on her behalf from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Slotkin has also been criticized by fellow Democrats. In 2025, the Progressive Caucus of the Michigan Democratic Party complained that she "more closely aligns herself with Republicans than her proclaimed constituents" in a social media post.
But some of the servicewomen are eager to confront Republicans over national security. On Nov. 12, Conley posted a clip in which she called Hegseth a "harm" to national security and pledged that, "if the 119th Congress won’t impeach him, the 120th Congress will."
Conley told USA TODAY that, despite their shared military background, when they talked at congressional orientation, "the biggest focus for our group, and really the broader freshman class, is lowering costs and rooting out corruption."
"In the pledge that all of us made to our constituents was to get in here and to get stuff done," Conley told USA TODAY. "That's the background we bring, right? We come from worlds where talk is cheap. Action is everything and we are a results-oriented group of leaders."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: These 8 Democratic women with military experience flipped GOP House seats
