This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. Not one year ago, Rep. Nancy Mace took her seat in the committee meeting room and peppered a friendly witness with questions she already knew the answers to. “Does the color of your skin matter when you are in the trenches, when you are in combat?” the Republican lawmaker asked a Space Force commanding officer who was fired after publicly claiming Marxist ideologies were widespread in the military.