Rep. Nancy Mace is moving ahead with an effort to censure and strip a fellow Republican of his committee assignments in a rare intraparty escalation.
The South Carolina Republican came to the House floor Wednesday afternoon to roll out a measure to formally rebuke Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) over his alleged ethical violations and to remove him from the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees.
A vote is expected as soon as Wednesday night on the censure resolution. Republicans are expected to offer a motion to set the matter aside.
It comes the day after Democrats threatened to force a vote on their own measure to censure Mills — if Republicans were successful in censuring Del. Stacey Plaskett. But Democrats stood down after Republicans fell short in efforts to kick the Virgin Islands Democrat off the House Intelligence Committee following revelations she was texting the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during a 2019 House Oversight Committee hearing.
The series of events on the House floor sparked accusations from some Republicans that there was a backroom deal between the two parties to facilitate a detente. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries demurred at a press conference Wednesday when asked if he’d cut such a deal, instead re-upping threats to bring forward more censure resolutions against Republicans as partisan tensions boil over across the chamber.
“Democrats are not going to unilaterally disarm, and there’s a long list of Republicans worthy of censure. Not enough time in the legislative calendar if Republicans want to go down this road of censuring members,” Jeffries said.
Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, one of three House Republicans who voted with all Democrats against the Plaskett censure resolution, said some rank-and-file members tried “to talk me into” voting “yes” but that he “didn’t talk to leadership about the matter.”
A spokesperson for Speaker Mike Johnson didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry, nor did Mills.