Anna Paulina Luna

Overview

Anna Paulina Luna is the Republican congresswoman from Florida’s 13th district, in office since January 2023 and the first Mexican-American woman elected to Congress from Florida (Times Now). She is an Air Force veteran who arrived in Congress with a reputation for confrontation — and then, in 2025, did something none of her profile pages talk about: according to Nicki Minaj’s own account in Time magazine, Luna was the elected official who actually picked up the phone when one of the world’s biggest pop stars said she was frightened, connecting her with federal law enforcement and private security after a swatting incident. Minaj says that moment is what finally turned her into an open Trump supporter (BuzzFeed).

The swatting call that changed Minaj’s politics

Minaj told Time in May 2026 that her Los Angeles home was hit by a string of swatting attacks in 2022 and 2023 — fake emergency calls that send armed police to a target’s door (BuzzFeed). Frightened, she says she reached out to California Governor Gavin Newsom and even requested a meeting. She says she never heard back: “He just completely ignored me, with all the money I spent in taxes” (BuzzFeed). Newsom’s office pushed back when contacted by Entertainment Weekly, with a representative saying the governor had “nothing to do with this” (Morning Honey).

After another swatting incident in April 2025, help came from an unlikely direction. Republican congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna reached out to Minaj and connected her with a private security group and federal law enforcement (Morning Honey). BuzzFeed’s account of the Time interview puts it plainly: “Congressperson Anna Paulina Luna contacted her, put her in touch with federal law enforcement officials, and arranged access to her private security team” (BuzzFeed).

The response landed hard. “I was shocked,” Minaj told Time. “I’d never seen anyone in politics treat me that way.” And: “That’s what made me say that I don’t care to keep this a secret anymore” (BuzzFeed). She had, she said, privately supported Trump for years but feared the music industry’s backlash: “It’s been ingrained in everyone’s brain in the music business that we are supposed to be a Democratic family. I just knew they would not like me supporting Trump.” Since then she has called herself Trump’s “number one fan” and appeared at conservative events including Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest (BuzzFeed).

This profile treats the episode as Minaj’s own account, as reported by Time — the events are hers to tell, and her office’s view of it has not been published. But on the public record, Luna’s intervention is the single most consequential constituent service of her career: it converted a long-private sympathy into the most high-profile celebrity MAGA conversion of the cycle.

From the Air Force to the declassification task force

Luna was born May 6, 1989, in Santa Ana, California. She served in the U.S. Air Force from 2009 to 2014, earning the Air Force Achievement Medal, then graduated from the University of West Florida with a Bachelor of Science in biology in 2017. After her service she moved into conservative activism, serving as director of Hispanic engagement for Turning Point USA in 2018. She took her House seat in January 2023 after winning the 2022 midterms (Times Now).

In February 2025, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer appointed her to chair the “Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets” — a panel tasked with pushing out federal records on the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., plus the Epstein files. Luna and Comer wrote to the State Department, the Department of Energy and the CIA for documents on the origins of COVID-19; the NSA was alerted for the JFK, MLK and RFK assassination files; the Pentagon for 9/11 records; and the Justice Department for Epstein documents (Times Now). Announcing the task force, Luna said: “The American people deserve the truth. We’ve been kept in the dark for far too long” (Times Now).

The proxy-voting standoff

Luna’s biggest legislative fight of 2025 was also her most unusual: proxy voting for new parents in Congress. Her effort to let House members vote remotely for up to 12 weeks after the birth of a child set off a standoff with Speaker Mike Johnson that left the House paralyzed for a week after Johnson failed to quash her discharge petition (Akron Beacon Journal).

The resolution was a compromise that sidestepped the constitutional objections to remote voting. Luna announced on X that she and Johnson would formalize “live/dead pairing” — a practice dating to the 1800s — letting an absent member (a new parent, someone bereaved, or an emergency case) find a member on the opposite side of an issue who would abstain, effectively offsetting the missing vote. “Thanks to POTUS and his support of new moms being able to vote when recovering from child birth,” she wrote (Akron Beacon Journal). But her bipartisan co-leaders — Representatives Sara Jacobs, Brittany Pettersen and Mike Lawler — opposed the deal, with Jacobs saying it “falls short of that goal” of supporting new parents and “silencing new parents and perpetuating the status quo” (Akron Beacon Journal).

The 2026 fight for a third term

Luna is seeking a third term, facing Democratic nominee Leela Gray, a retired Army brigadier general who once ran communications work against terrorist propaganda. The seat is drawn heavily Republican: Luna won it by 10 percentage points last time, redistricting pushed it another 1.5 points toward the GOP, and the district voted Trump by a 13-point margin in 2024 (FOX 13). She has backed the Trump administration’s record, calling the “Big Beautiful Bill” the legislation she was happiest to vote for because of its tax impact. Her broader public profile rests on three projects: investigating supposed UFO encounters, pushing a ban on congressional stock trading, and punishing members of Congress who commit sexual harassment (FOX 13).

Gray released an internal poll showing her leading by five points; Luna answered on X with a screenshot of her 2024 opponent making a similar claim and the caption that Gray was “down over eight points.” University of Virginia congressional handicapper Kyle Kondik said the race leans Luna (FOX 13).

What this profile does not claim

This profile presents the Nicki Minaj swatting story as Minaj’s own account in Time magazine, not as independently verified events — no other source read in full independently confirmed the incidents, the Newsom outreach, or Luna’s intervention, and Luna’s office has not publicly responded to the account. It does not assert Luna’s 2025 departure from the House Freedom Caucus, which was reported over the proxy-voting clash but was not read in full from a qualifying source. It does not cover the SHRED Act or the 2024 VP-pick prediction-market allegation, both seen only at snippet level. Election and polling claims are as of September 2026 reporting, not predictions.