Even as Minnesota Senator Al Franken resigned over allegations of forcible kissing and groping, he made it clear that he did not feel he’d done anything wrong. “I know in my heart that nothing I have done as a senator—nothing—has brought dishonor on this institution. And I am confident that the Ethics Committee would agree,” he said in a speech on the Senate floor, adding that “some of the allegations against me are simply not true” and others happened “very differently” than described. Republicans, seeing Franken’s ouster as a tactical move by Democratic leadership to put pressure on Donald Trump and Roy Moore, warned of a slippery slope.

Weeks later, Franken’s Democratic colleagues are beginning to agree. “What they did to Al was atrocious, the Democrats,” West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin told Politico, arguing that they had thrown a sufficiently remorseful man under the bus. “Here’s a man, that all he said [was], ‘Take me through the Ethics Committee. I will live by whatever decision and I will walk away thinking about this opportunity I’ve had while I was here. But you find out if I’m a predator.’” Senator Patrick Leahy, who issued a statement calling for Franken to step down, has reportedly said in private that he regrets his choice. (Leahy declined to comment.) And a third senator said that Democrats “acted prematurely, before we had all the facts . . . In retrospect, I think we acted too fast.” As paranoia builds in Washington, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle seem to be backing away from the Franken precedent, worried that they will be next.

In recent weeks, rumors have circled the Capitol about a mammoth story in the works that will name as many as 30 congresspeople as sexual harassers. “I am hearing The Post has a list of 40-50, evenly split between the parties, that have had sexual harassment charges,” one lobbyist texted Politico, while at least four lawmakers have asked reporters from the publication whether the story—which is allegedly brewing at The Washington Post—is real.

If such an exposé is realized, it will almost certainly become a political cudgel; just last week, conservative trolls targeted Chuck Schumer and Richard Blumenthal with false reports of sexual harassment. “You want to have a welcome environment to report abuse—you don’t want to deter victims,” said Senator Lindsey Graham. “But you’ve got to have enough due process and scrutiny to make sure it’s accurate.” Kristin Nicholson, a former Democratic chief of staff urging reform of the sexual harassment reporting process on Capitol Hill, added that “members who have high-profile elections coming up or just are really out-front on a particular issue are now feeling like they may be targets.”

Alabama Senator elect Doug Jones seemed to draw a similar line in the sand over the weekend, when he told reporters that Donald Trump should not step down over the sexual assault allegations against him. “I don’t think the president ought to resign at this point,” he said, adding, “we’ll see how things go, but certainly those allegations are not new, and he was elected with those allegations at front center.”

Franken’s resignation does little to threaten the immediate balance of power in the Senate: his replacement, Tina Smith, is a Democrat, and Jones’s victory seemed to herald a blue wave in the 2018 midterms. But the fact that Jones’s victory looked statistically certain in hindsight, as well as the fact that most Alabama voters said the sexual assault allegations against Moore did not factor into their vote, may have caused Democrats to wonder whether Franken’s political sacrifice was worth it, particularly as it seems to have glanced off the White House. In the aftermath of Franken’s resignation, Trump was asked what he thought of the former senator’s speech, which called him out as an alleged sexual abuser. “I didn’t hear it,” the president replied.