Nevada lawmaker, son take $24K group trip to London
Rep. Susie Lee and her son took a group-sponsored trip to London worth nearly $24,000 in June.
Nevada’s Democratic congresswoman visited the United Kingdom for an International Issues Conference sponsored by Center Forward, a bipartisan advocacy group, between June 15 and June 19. Center Forward spent $23,868 for both her and her adult son to attend, according to Lee’s travel disclosure form detailing the trip.
The House Committee on Ethics approved of the trip, according to a June 10 letter from its chairman, Michael Guest, R-Miss., and ranking member Mark DeSaulnier, D-Calif.
Lee and her son stayed an extra four days after the conference, which she paid for with her own money, according to the letter from the House Committee on Ethics.
Of Nevada’s four U.S. representatives, Lee was the only one to attend a Center Forward-sponsored trip in at least the last five years, though other members sent their staff to similar conferences. Nevada’s representatives have attended other group-sponsored foreign trips. Both Rep. Steven Horsford and Rep. Dina Titus, for instance, went on a trip to Kenya in 2023 sponsored by the Aspen Institute and the Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation.
In her travel disclosure form, Lee said that as a member of the House Committee on Appropriations, she will gain insights into how the U.S. government is appropriating funds for energy, water and defense.
“Of course I would attend a bipartisan educational opportunity alongside my House Republican and Democratic colleagues, approved by the House Committee on Ethics and at no cost to the taxpayer,” she said in a statement to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
She added that she’ll work with anyone to get results for Nevada and said “bipartisan relationships built through programs like these” is how she helped stop a land grab proposal in Nevada and pass legislation to lower health care costs and housing costs.
Lee brought her son on the trip because members are allowed to bring a plus-one on the programs, according to a Lee spokesperson.
London conference
Lee joined at least eight other members of Congress on the London trip, including Reps. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa.; Nikki Budzinski, D-Ill.; Andrew Garbarino, R-NY; Joe Neguse, D-Colo.; Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa.; David Joyce, R-Ohio; David Valadao, R-Calif., and Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, according to a LinkedIn post from Center Forward.
The annual conference brings together a “bipartisan group of pragmatic policymakers and influencers from various industries and organizations to focus on common-sense solutions,” according to Center Forward’s description in Lee’s travel disclosure.
Lee and the other attendees stayed at the IHG London Park Lane, a five-star hotel costing $400 per night, according to her travel disclosure form.
Lee’s chief of staff, Lauren Toy, also attended the conference, which cost Center Forward $7,689, according to Toy’s travel disclosure form. The Committee on Ethics also approved Toy’s trip.
According to the trip itinerary provided in the travel disclosure form, conference attendees met with senior officials from the Office of the Prime Minister, spent an afternoon at the Houses of Parliament, visited the U.S. Embassy and watched the Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London.
The delegation also took a tour of Salesforce, a cloud-based software company, and met with representatives from Apple to talk about digital privacy and “regulatory issues” faced by Apple and other technology companies. They also toured the headquarters of Sky Studios, a media company.
Center Forward does not publicly disclose its funders, according to the investigative newsletter Sludge, which reported on members of Congress attending the trip.
The organization’s political action committee donated heavily to candidates in 2024. Lee received $75,000 from the Center Forward Committee in the 2024 cycle, according to Open Secrets. The committee’s 2024 election donors include Chevron and ConocoPhillips.
Center Forward representatives did not return a request for comment.
2024 Lisbon trip
This wasn’t the first Center Forward-sponsored trip Lee took with one of her children. In June 2024, she took her daughter to a ethics committee-approved conference in Lisbon, Portugal, according to a 2024 travel disclosure.
That trip cost Center Forward $3,450, according to the travel disclosure. She stayed at The Ivens Hotel, a $300 per night hotel.
They stayed three days longer than the conference and paid for it at Lee’s personal expense, according to the travel disclosure.
For that conference, she met with Portuguese governmental and business officials regarding international trade, health care, workforce, manufacturing and energy, according to her travel disclosure.
Her positions on the House Committee on Natural Resources and the House Appropriations Committee were listed as reasons to attend the trip, saying they “enable her to provide critical insight during conversations regarding climate initiatives and agreements with Portuguese elected officials and business leaders.”
In Portugal, she toured Cubotonic, a laser cutting technology company, where she learned how they’re connected to the US electronic vehicle market. The attendees also toured a cancer research center, the Portuguese Parliament and the Museum of Contemporary Art, according to the itinerary.
Toy, Lee’s chief of staff, also traveled to Lisbon for the conference, costing Center Forward over $14,800, according to her travel disclosure form. That was also approved by the Committee on Ethics.
Contact Jessica Hill at jehill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jess_hillyeah on X.