Administration

House braces for next wave of potential expulsions focused on Cherfilus-McCormick, Mills

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by Mike Lillis and Emily Brooks - 04/19/26 5:00 PM ET

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by Mike Lillis and Emily Brooks - 04/19/26 5:00 PM ET

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House lawmakers are bracing for the next wave of expulsions.

Former Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) avoided the boot only by quitting their seats in the face of allegations of sexual misconduct with staffers.

Now, the expulsion battle is poised to enter its second round, as lawmakers in both parties eye plans to remove Florida Reps. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D) and Cory Mills (R), who are both accused of violating campaign finance laws, among other offenses.

“If they’re doing this s‑‑‑, then they need to go,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) said.

The debate is set to erupt Tuesday, when the Ethics Committee is scheduled to make its disciplinary recommendations in the case of Cherfilus-McCormick, who is accused of stealing millions of dollars in Federal Emergency Management Agency funds to help finance her campaign. The Justice Department filed federal charges last November, and an Ethics subcommittee earlier this month found she violated 25 rules of congressional standards.

Cherfilus-McCormick has denied any wrongdoing, saying she’s the victim of a partisan witch hunt by the Trump administration. But even many Democrats are ready to push her out the door given the Ethics findings.

“The Ethics Committee has the material,” Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.) said. “So I think it needs to move quickly.”

“We’re moving if the Ethics Committee brings it to the floor,” echoed another Democratic lawmaker, who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic.

Yet those same Democrats are also demanding the expulsion of Mills, who is the subject of a separate Ethics investigation into allegations of “dating violence,” campaign finance violations and using his perch in Congress to steer business to the weapons and defense companies he continues to operate. (He has denied the charges.)

The Democrats are arguing the importance of parity: Like offenses demand like consequences.

But the unspoken political dynamic underlying the debate is that, in a House with razor-thin margins, neither party wants to advantage the other by expelling only one of their own — a concern that’s generated support for the idea of pairing the removals. That was the case with Swalwell and Gonzales, and now it’s the case with Cherfilus-McCormick and Mills.

The complication with that strategy is that the Ethics Committee is much further along with the investigation into Cherfilus-McCormick, which formally launched in December 2023, than it is with the probe into Mills, which was initiated in November 2025.

The Ethics sanctions for Cherfilus-McCormick will be formalized Tuesday. Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) has already filed his expulsion resolution. And Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has made clear he thinks she’ll be quickly removed.

“The facts are indisputable at this point, and so I believe it’ll be the consensus of this body that she should be expelled,” Johnson told reporters this week. He was much less committal about Mills, saying only that he wanted to see more details from the Ethics investigation.

The different timetables have created a dilemma for Democratic leaders, who are running on a midterm message of anti-corruption and want to be seen honoring the conclusions of the Ethics Committee, a rare panel on which membership is split evenly between the parties. So far, they’ve declined to say how they’ll approach a vote to expel Cherfilus-McCormick.

“I trust the members on the Ethics Committee who have done the work and dug in here and respect their decision on this,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told reporters Thursday. “We will react when they put something out.”

Yet Democrats are also pressing hard to ensure that, if Cherfilus-McCormick is expelled, Mills is treated similarly.

“Why the hell are we waiting so long for Cory Mills?” Leger Fernández asked. “This is sexual violence he’s been accused of, and there seem to be incredibly credible reports. Let’s get that before us.”

Leger Fernández, the head of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, had joined Luna in leading the charge to oust Swalwell and Gonzales before they resigned. She suggested she’s ready to support the expulsion of Cherfilus-McCormick, based on the Ethics recommendations, but also wants assurances that the House has an opportunity to vote on Mills’s removal, even if the two resolutions are not directly linked.

“I don’t know that they have to come up together, [but] they need to