The Frank
Home
Today's Fastrack
About
Subscribe
Photos: Dem Senator Murphy Cuddling with Journalist Tara McGowan

Photos: Dem Senator Murphy Cuddling with Journalist Tara McGowan

author
author

The Frank Staff

The Frank Staff.
[email protected]
@TheFrank_com
The Frank Staff
author

The Frank Staff

The Frank Staff.
[email protected]
@TheFrank_com

Invalid Date

·

0 min read

Share options

Email
Facebook
X
Telegram
WhatsApp
Reddit

Sen. Chris Murphy was spotted at a Washington, DC, watering hole on a date with a progressive media mogul and strategist who’s boosted his efforts as a leading anti-Trump politician in Congress — just months after the Connecticut Democrat announced he and his wife were separating.

Murphy, 51, was caught “cuddling” with Courier Newsroom publisher Tara McGowan, 39, last Monday by the bar at the Red Hen, located just one mile north of Capitol Hill in the district’s Bloomingdale neighborhood, a source told The Post, sharing a photo of the pair’s romantic rendezvous.

The source said Murphy wrapped his arm around McGowan’s shoulder at one point, and the two were “being cutesy” while scanning the menu together for rustic Italian fare.

The cozy outing took place the night before President Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress, which the senator sat out.

The Democratic lawmaker is apparently still married to his wife, Cathy Holahan, a lawyer based in Washington, as neither has filed for divorce in Connecticut or DC, per public court records. The couple announced they were parting ways last November.

A DC Dem insider told Semafor that McGowan is having a love affair with the senator — and shared a selfie of them on her private Instagram last week with the caption “not postponing joy.”

As of Monday morning, McGowan had deactivated her X account.

Murphy and his wife met at the University of Connecticut’s law school, married in 2007 and have two children together. They revealed their separation in an email first reported by the Hartford Courant after the 2024 election.

“After much reflection and discussion, we have decided to separate as a couple,” they wrote in a Nov. 15 missive to a close group of friends after 17 years of marriage.

“We do so with deep care and respect for each other, and with a focus on continuing to be friends and loving, collaborative parents to our boys whom we adore.

“This was a difficult decision, but we believe that it is right for us, and we are going to move onto this new path the right way,” they added. “We will continue to support each other personally and professionally. And we hope you all will stay connected with both of us.”

McGowan was until last year married to Michael Halle, a fellow Dem strategist and former senior adviser to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. He also served on the presidential campaigns of Buttigieg, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

The Courier founder and publisher filed for divorce in May 2023, citing “irreconcilable differences,” and the marriage was dissolved the following year in April, Rhode Island state court filings show.

A self-described “childless woman voter,” McGowan has used her personal platform and position for years at the digital outlet to promote Murphy, retweeting his TV appearances and touting his “pro-democracy” stances and policy priorities on gun control, immigration and foreign relations.

“Beyond original newsletters, podcasts + social video series, COURIER’s new national vertical will publish video opinion pieces from prominent pro-democracy leaders fighting for our rights and freedoms, like this call from U.S. Senator @ChrisMurphyCT to ban assault weapons in [America],” she reposted one of the outlet’s X messages in November 2023, two months after her final divorce proceeding hearing.

“Republicans wanted — demanded — border legislation. Democrats, led by @ChrisMurphyCT, negotiated a bipartisan deal,” stated another Feb. 7, 2024, X post by Courier featuring a video interviewing Murphy.

“Now, because of Trump’s hold over the GOP, the bill is dead. Here is Murphy on why you should never again believe Republicans when they talk about the border.”

Murphy has emerged as a leading voice of Democrats’ resistance to Trump, sounding the alarm in an interview with the New York Times last month that his party’s “political brand is fundamentally broken, the rule of law is disintegrating and a lot of people still don’t know what Trump’s actual agenda is.”

More recently, McGowan had been constantly reposting his X account’s videos as well as TV hits.

“Trump sides with dictators [because] it legitimizes his plan for America: A Russian-style kleptocracy where the rich steal from us to enrich themselves,” Murphy said in a post sharing a March interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Dana Bash, which was retweeted by McGowan.

Critics of Courier — which was founded in 2019, is backed by Acronym and has since been acquired by McGowan’s latest venture, Good Information, Inc. — have charged that it’s a liberal dark money outfit “masquerading as a news outlet,” though the FEC unanimously dismissed a complaint claiming that.

At least one former Courier employee dished to NOTUS last March, however, that the purpose of the eight-newsroom outlet, positioned in several key swing states, “was to get persuadable voters engaged with unassuming content” on their social media feeds before linking out to “political persuasion content.”

The for-profit news organization — funded by the liberal billionaires George Soros and Reid Hoffman — is also one of several lefty pop-up groups that McGowan has founded since the first Trump administration.

In 2017, she co-founded Lockwood Strategy, a political campaign firm that helped Virginia Democrats retake the state legislature within two years. Digital ads rolled out by Lockwood also helped clients such as Planned Parenthood and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.

McGowan the same year also set up a political action committee, PACRONYM, which raised more than $18 million to oppose Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, per federal election campaign filings, and a left-wing 501(c)(4) called ACRONYM.

Both raked in millions from dark-money donors — with the latter becoming infamous as the primary investor in a glitchy app that botched vote results during the 2020 Democratic Iowa caucuses, delaying the tally for days, the Intercept previously reported.

Share options

Email
Facebook
X
Telegram
WhatsApp
Reddit

US-China Trade War Paused with 90-Day Tariff Cuts

May 12, 2025

2 min

Emmanuel Macron 'Cocaine' Conspiracy Erupt After Kyiv Meeting

May 12, 2025

2 min

Meet Russell Vought: Trump Official Who Is Taking Over DOGE from Musk

May 12, 2025

3 min

Newark Airport Suffers Third System Outage in Less Than 2 Weeks

May 12, 2025

2 min

Republicans’ Partial Tax Plan to Cost $5 Trillion

May 12, 2025

2 min

Diddy Case in Danger as Key Witness Remains Awol on Eve of Trial Start

May 12, 2025

5 min

DHS Investigates California Program Giving Illegal Aliens Cash Assistance

May 12, 2025

2 min

White House Says Trade Deal Reached with China

May 12, 2025

4 min

Trump to Sign Executive Order to Cut Drug Prices by Up to 80%

May 12, 2025

2 min

Zelensky Agrees to Meet with Putin in Turkey on Thursday

May 12, 2025

2 min

Trump to Accept Luxury Jet from Qatar to Use as Air Force 1

May 12, 2025

4 min

Hamas to Release Israeli-American Hostage Edan Alexander

May 12, 2025

4 min

NC College Student Killed by ‘Career Criminal’ as She Slept

May 12, 2025

2 min

Elizabeth Holmes’s Partner Raises Millions for Blood-Testing Startup

May 12, 2025

3 min

ICE Attacked During Arrest of Violent Illegal Immigrant

May 12, 2025

2 min

Actor John Cleese Suggests Hanging Stephen Miller ‘By the Neck’ — Deletes Tweet

May 11, 2025

1 min

DOGE Deactivates Over 500,000 Credit Cards

May 12, 2025

2 min

Diddy Trial Drama: Star Witness Vanishes Ahead of Testimony

May 11, 2025

1 min

Zelensky Responds to Putin’s Counterproposal: Ceasefire, Then We Talk

May 11, 2025

3 min

Ocasio-Cortez Not Ruling White House Bid Out

May 11, 2025

4 min

  • Today's Fastrack
  • About
  • Contact
  • Policy & Terms
  • Recaptcha