WASHINGTON — During the House’s long 54-day shutdown recess, lawmakers in both parties begged Speaker Mike Johnson to call them back into session.
Now that they’re back, some members are already at each other’s throats and openly defying leadership, while others can’t wait to return home for the holidays.
In just the past 48 hours, members of the House have tried to force votes to formally rebuke individual colleagues four times for alleged bad behavior. Resolutions like that used to be rare, but they’ve become a symbol of the bad blood flowing through this toxic Congress.
One of them succeeded. On Tuesday, the House voted for Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s resolution to rebuke fellow Democratic Rep. Chuy Garcia for what she called election subversion.
The same day, the House rejected a resolution censuring Del. Stacey Plaskett, a Democrat from the Virgin Islands, over her communications with Jeffrey Epstein during a congressional hearing. That resolution was authored by GOP Rep. Ralph Norman, who is running for governor in South Carolina.
One of his opponents in that race, Rep. Nancy Mace, on Wednesday brought up her own censure resolution, this one against a fellow Republican, Rep. Cory Mills of Florida, for his alleged misconduct with women and other issues. (Mills has denied wrongdoing.)
Earlier, Democrats had moved to censure Mills but backed off when the Plaskett censure failed.
“I think four censure resolutions in a week says it all. It’s not good for the institution,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told NBC News on Wednesday. “The mob mentality is not healthy.”
“It’s insanity. They want to convict and sentence people, and then send it to Ethics for investigation. Ass backwards,” added another House Republican lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly about colleagues. “This is Mace and Norman using their positions for publicity at the expense of the institution.”
After the Plaskett vote went down in flames, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo. — a member of the Freedom Caucus that was spearheading the censure — began wagging her finger and lashing out at her GOP colleagues in an F-bomb-laden tirade.
“It was multiple F-bombs,” said one Republican who witnessed it on the floor. “At least one of them that I heard clearly was, ‘What the f--- am I doing here?”
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., made a brief speech on the floor after the vote, accusing the leadership in both parties of “cutting backroom deals” to protect their own members, which they’ve denied. After Luna made her point, another member was heard whooping and telling Luna: “Get it, girl!”
Luna then wrote on social media that Mills, a fellow Florida Republican whom she was once close with, is “having lots of issues and should NOT seek re-election.”
Then she trained her fire more directly at Mills. After he posted a statement on social media but disabled the comments on Wednesday, Luna quoted the post and wrote: “Turn your comments on, Mills… Stop bulls----ing the American people and Florida residents. Get your crap together, not in Congress.”
The Ethics Committee said Wednesday it voted to create a subcommittee to investigate Mills. Mace's push to censure Mills stalled when lawmakers voted 310-103 that evening to send it to the Ethics panel.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., summed up the week this way: “Those who were happy warriors came back happier than ever, and those who were unhappy warriors came back madder than ever. And I think what those 54 days did is it sort of created people going more the way they were going.”
Count Rep. Tim Burchett in the “madder” camp.
The Tennessee Republican declared on social media that he was “ticked off” by the lack of serious commitment to a congressional stock trading ban. The House Administration Committee held a hearing on Wednesday exploring potential policy options to crack down on the practice, but some members want to move faster.
