When US federal workers were missing paychecks and the partial government shutdown entered its seventh week, Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, was doing what any responsible lawmaker would do: riding Space Mountain and carrying a bubble wand at Disney World in Florida.

Naturally, TMZ had photos of the vacationing senator on its homepage a few days later.

The celebrity tabloid empire – better known for staking out actors and artists outside restaurants, gas stations, courthouses and their palatial estates – has turned its paparazzi prowess on a new and maybe equally chaotic subject: the US Congress. And America’s lawmakers may find themselves uniquely ill-equipped for the Hollywood experience.

The outlet last week put out a public call for tips on lawmaker sightings as the partial government shutdown dragged on, leaving thousands of Department of Homeland Security employees without pay.

Graham’s Disney World excursion earned him the headline: “Living in Fantasyland as Government Shutdown Drags On.” The Senate majority leader, John Thune, Senate majority whip, John Barrasso, and Senator Ted Cruz also appeared in the outlet’s dispatches, with Cruz sitting as the lead story on the site.

But the Fox-owned TMZ doesn’t play sides: it highlighted how Seth Magaziner, a Democratic congressman of Rhode Island, is headed to a Real Housewives watch party this week during the shutdown. The outlet also photographed Robert Garcia, a Democratic California representative, at a Las Vegas casino, which he addressed on X: “Actually I don’t mind what TMZ is doing here,” Garcia wrote, noting he had been visiting his father, and blamed Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, for sending everyone home in the first place.

This is, according to Harvey Levin, TMZ’s founder and executive producer, the point. The outlet had long covered politics but was moved to up the ante, he said in a statement, after interviewing a TSA worker who was going without pay during the shutdown.

“It outraged us so much we wanted to use our platforms to show how Congress – Dems AND Republicans – have betrayed us,” Levin said in a statement. “We spontaneously came up with the idea to juxtapose members of Congress on their Spring Break against federal workers who are losing their homes, their cars, their livelihoods.”

TMZ, which was bought by Fox in 2021 for a deal estimated at $50m, has been building a presence on Capitol Hill for months with its own team (now with a producer and photographer circulating the Capitol, Levin said) conducting hallway interviews with senators and representatives. The team stopped Tim Burchett, a Republican representative of Tennessee, outside the Capitol Hill Club in February and asked about Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time show. That resulted in the headline: “Congressman Tim Burchett: Only Bad Bunny I Know Is My Late Horny Pet.”

Sara Jacobs, a Democratic California representative, compared Congress to high school in her TMZ interview – a clip that was viewed 6m times on X. Sarah McBride, a Democratic Delaware representative, told TMZ working on the Hill felt like a crossover between the Real Housewives and Traitors.

While the lawmaker hallway interviews get traction, it’s the shutdown sightings that have been soaring across social media. Graham’s Disney World wand photos were viewed more than 5m times on X, and drew responses from California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and Tucker Carlson.

Graham, for his part, told TMZ: “I voted seven times to fully fund the government. Call a Democrat.” But perhaps the bubble wand said enough.