House Democrats move to punish GOP Rep. Cory Mills in censure escalation
House Democrats are moving to formally reprimand Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) in response to a GOP lawmaker’s effort to censure Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.).
Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) is proposing to rebuke McIver and remove her from the House Homeland Security Committee after she was charged with assault following a May scuffle outside a New Jersey immigration facility. The House is expected to take up the measure Wednesday.
McIver has denied wrongdoing and vowed to fight the federal assault charge, which Democrats have denounced as partisan.
Mills, meanwhile, has faced a spate of ethical issues including an since-withdrawn allegation of assault and an ongoing legal dispute over a previous relationship. He also faces an ethics investigation into allegations he benefited from federal contracts while in office. Democrats are targeting his north central Florida district and have sought to turn the ethical controversies into a campaign liability.
Censures have become increasingly common in recent congressional history, with the House GOP moving this Congress to reprimand Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) for disrupting President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress. Three other House Democrats faced censure in the prior Congress.
Disciplinary resolutions are some of the few legislative moves available to the House minority — or individual lawmakers — to circumvent majority leadership because censure motions and other moves related to discipline are “privileged,” allowing them to bypass committees to be considered on the House floor.
The Congressional Black Caucus has led Democrats’ effort to defend McIver and is pushing the move against Mills.
“LaMonica is not afraid to fight for her constituents. The Congressional Black Caucus is not afraid to fight for her,” Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), the CBC chair, said in a Wednesday statement. “Our defense of Congresswoman McIver, and our work to hold Mr. Mills accountable are both in service of this Caucus’ relentless pursuit of justice.”
House members voted Wednesday to officially establish a new panel to investigate the events around the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
It’s the latest chapter in the Republican effort to rewrite the history of the events at the Capitol on that day, when a violent mob stormed the building as lawmakers attempted to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election in favor of Joe Biden over Donald Trump.
House Democrats ran their own Jan. 6 committee when they held the majority, where they convened public hearings and released a report detailing Trump’s efforts to circumvent the election results and his failure to stop his supporters from taking over the complex.
Language to create the new, GOP-led select subcommittee was buried in a larger “rule” that included a host of other provisions, including a formal approval of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. It will fall under the purview of the House Judiciary Committee and be chaired by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), who will, in his new role, have unilateral authority to issue subpoenas.
He plans to use his gavel to review security and intelligence failures around the attacks; many GOP lawmakers have blamed then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for allowing the Capitol to be breached in the first place and have in general downplayed the significance of the event.
Loudermilk will preside over a group of eight lawmakers to be appointed by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.); Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) will be able to consult on at most three of those members. In an interview, Loudermilk said he was sending Johnson his picks, and while the list had not yet been finalized, he pointed to Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) as a potential selection.
Nehls is a former sheriff who helped Capitol Police stave off rioters who tried break onto the House floor during the siege. Then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had initially made Nehls one of his picks to sit on the Democratic-led Jan. 6 committee, but withdrew GOP participation after Pelosi refused to seat his other selections, including the current Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
Asked how the previous Jan. 6 committee will inform the new panel’s work, Loudermilk said the goal was to create a report that more accurately reflected the events at the Capitol that day.
“The evidence is irrefutable that there was more politics than there was truth in that,” he said of the previous panel’s findings. “What we saw in the initial investigation, there was a lot more politics involved in decision-making than there ever should’ve been.”
Loudermilk will be required to produce a final report of the subcommittee’s finding by the end of 2026.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) served on the Democratic-led Jan. 6 committee and will be an ex officio member of the new panel in his capacity as the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.
In a statement, he said the Republican-chaired panel will present an opportunity “to examine the constantly growing criminal records of all the hundreds of violent felons, cop-beaters and white nationalists who Donald Trump pardoned and released onto our streets on his first day in office.”
Some House Republicans joined every Democrat in voting to sink an effort to censure Rep. LaMonica McIver over her involvement in a chaotic May scuffle outside an immigration detention center.
Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) forced the vote to formally reprimand McIver and remove her from her position on the House Homeland Security Committee, a handful of his GOP colleagues had little appetite for moving forward with the punishment.
Five Republicans — Reps. Don Bacon and Mike Flood of Nebraska, Dave Joyce and Mike Turner of Ohio and David Valadao of California — joined every Democrat in voting to table the measure, while two Republicans — Reps. Andrew Garbarino of New York and Nathaniel Moran of Texas — voted present.
“I think it’s best to let Ethics Committee finish its report,” Bacon said.
A spokesperson for Turner said after the vote the Ohio Republican inadvertently voted to kill McIver’s censure; the incorrect vote did not change the outcome.
Several Democratic officials, including McIver and Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Rob Menendez, were attempting to conduct an oversight visit of the Newark, New Jersey, facility when federal agents arrested the city’s mayor.
Federal prosecutors abandoned a charge against the mayor, but acting U.S. Attorney Alina Habba then charged McIver with offenses that come with a maximum sentence of 17 years in prison. Habba accused McIver of slamming a federal agent with her forearm, “forcibly” grabbing him and using her forearms to strike another agent.
McIver denied wrongdoing, with her lawyers explaining that an “unnecessary, reckless, and disproportionate escalation” by federal agents led to “chaos and a serious scuffle involving a great deal of physical contact.”
The McIver censure resolution prompted Democrats to threaten retaliation, with some members introducing a measure earlier Wednesday to censure Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) over a litany of © Politico
