Congress

Republicans quietly fret about ‘disturbing’ Cory Mills allegations

Published

11 months ago

August 6, 2025

Rep. Cory Mills has recently faced accusations that he has benefited from federal contracts while in office, that he assaulted a onetime girlfriend in his Washington apartment and, just this week, that he threatened another ex with the release of nude videos.

So far, the drumbeat of tawdry allegations has raised eyebrows in Washington, but it has not translated into any overt effort to sideline the two-term Florida Republican.

GOP leaders in the House and in his home state appear to be betting that Mills’ various messes will sort themselves out without blowing back on the party more broadly — and potentially threatening its hold on power.

President Donald Trump won Mills’ district by 12 points last year, and Mills himself won reelection by a slightly higher margin. Because national party operatives view his seat as safe, there is little incentive for GOP leaders to engage as the accusations swirl. A spokesperson for Speaker Mike Johnson did not return a request for comment.

Mills, 45, has denied wrongdoing in the contracting matter, which is now under a House Ethics Committee review, as well as the new claims of personal threats first made in a July police report and made public this week. The third incident was resolved after the ex-girlfriend who initially told police in February that Mills had assaulted her withdrew the allegation.

In a statement Tuesday, Mills said the latest accusation was a “political attack” concocted by a political rival, “all to score political headlines.”

“These claims are false and misrepresent the nature of my interaction,” he said. “I have always conducted myself with integrity, both personally and in service to Florida’s 7th District.”

While Republican leaders appear poised to give Mills space, plenty of others see a potential political mess in the making — starting with House Democrats, whose campaign arm recently put his seat on their list of “Districts in Play” for the midterms despite the bearish 2024 results. At least three Democrats have already announced they plan to challenge him.

“Floridians deserve leaders who protect people, not threaten them,” said Noah Widmann, one of the three. “Cory Mills is unfit to serve.”

Among House Republicans, quiet concerns have been brewing for months about whether Mills’ behavior could give Democrats a real opening. Some of his GOP colleagues are wondering if they should start looking for another candidate to back in the district, according to three Republicans granted anonymity to describe private talks.

“What if he is arrested for real?” said one of the three, a member.

Another House Republican, also granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter, said other controversies — including an allegation of unpaid rent that Mills dismissed last month as a misunderstanding with building management — have also surprised lawmakers.

A recent NOTUS report questioned whether Mills has been honest about his military service for which he was awarded a Bronze Star; Mills acknowledged “different recollections during chaotic wartime events” but said he was entitled to the honor. And as House Ethics probes his businesses’ contracts, which concern the sales of weapons or other equipment, Mills continues to sit on the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees.

“And then this whole other issue is disturbing,” the lawmaker said about the new accusations of personal threats.

Those are rooted in Mills’ relationship with Lindsey Langston, the 2024 Miss United States. She told authorities last month that Mills contacted her multiple times threatening to release nude images and videos of them having sex and harm her future romantic partners after she broke off the relationship earlier this year, according to a police report obtained this week by Blue Light News. The report said Langston shared messages with Mills backing up her claims.

The Columbia County, Florida, sheriff’s department forwarded the report to the state Department of Law Enforcement for investigation. The agency confirmed Wednesday it received the request but declined to comment further.

Langston’s allegations have been complicated by the involvement of Anthony Sabatini, a hard-right former Florida legislator who ran against Mills in 2022 and is now serving as Langston’s lawyer.

Mills suggested this week that Sabatini was engaged in a political vendetta, but the attorney said Wednesday that he no longer lives in Mills’ district and has no plans to seek his seat. The evidence of Mills’ actions speaks for itself, he said.

Sabatini said he plans to take Langston’s allegations directly to the House Ethics Committee, which he said has “the independent authority to investigate this on its face.” A spokesperson for the panel declined to comment.

“If they don’t do it, it’s only because [of] the margins,” he said.

Meanwhile, in Florida, conversation has surrounded just what Mills’ future in GOP politics might look like. One top Republican operative in the state said, even before the latest reports, Mills had been “extremely frustrated” in the House and “there are people out thinking about running for the congressional seat” if he does not run for a third term.

“He didn’t know if he wanted to continue in Congress,” said the operative, who was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Mills first won his seat in 2022 after post-Census redistricting created new GOP-friendly lines for the 7th District, stretching from Orlando’s north suburbs to the Atlantic coast — prompting Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy to retire.

His campaigns in both 2022 and 2024 were run with the aid of James Blair, a GOP consultant who now works as a deputy chief of staff for Trump and plays a key role in pushing the president’s agenda on Blue Light News.

Earlier this year, Mills was talking openly about running for the Senate seat that was vacated by Marco Rubio when he resigned to become secretary of State. But Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody instead, and Trump likely snuffed out any chance of a successful primary challenge by endorsing her late last month for next year’s special election.

In his statement, Mills said he would “remain focused on serving my constituents and advancing America First policies” and had no plans to comment further on Langston’s allegations.

“My team and I will fully cooperate to ensure the truth is made clear,” he said.

Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.

Congress

Moderates beware: Mamdani coalition portends a dramatically different Democratic Party in NYC

Published

3 hours ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

NEW YORK — A coalition powered by Mayor Zohran Mamdani expanded the left’s reach Tuesday, winning younger voters across racial and ethnic lines and once again upending conventional wisdom about elections in New York City.

A series of hotly contested congressional and state elections pit a slate of Mamdani-backed democratic socialists and progressives against establishment candidates who, in several cases, differed little on policy aside from U.S.-Israel relations.

The results were staggering.

Midterm election cycles in deep-blue New York City tend to be sleepy affairs. Both this year and in 2022, just over 500,000 people cast ballots, less than 20 percent of eligible voters. But turnout within a congressional district spanning Upper Manhattan and the Bronx increased by roughly 50 percent between 2022 and Tuesday, with more than 66,000 voters heading to the polls.

In another seat covering parts of Brooklyn and Queens, turnout more than doubled from 2022, though state and federal elections were held on different days that year and the seat was not competitive, which would have reduced the number of voters going to the polls.

Congressional candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America were able to replicate the mayor’s success by winning younger Latino voters in Brooklyn and a majority of Black voters in Harlem. Combined with the DSA’s base in relatively wealthy neighborhoods, the result charted the far left’s broadening appeal and a potential reorientation of the electorate that will influence races for years to come.

“This was a big wave for DSA and they did a good job capitalizing on it,” said Evan Roth Smith, a pollster with Slingshot Strategies. “The question now is: Was this a wave cycle that will abate, or is it the start of the takeover?”

Much of Mamdani’s base is concentrated in the so-called “commie-corridor,” a series of neighborhoods along the Brooklyn-Queens waterfront filled with young, educated and affluent voters who’ve propelled several DSA candidates into office. They went gaga over Mamdani’s candidacy and, as Tuesday’s results show, will turn out for candidates he supports.

The area was crucial to Assemblymember Claire Valdez’s crushing 56-38 defeat of Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.

“The factor that felt most significant to me were all of these New Yorkers who got activated and politicized in the mayor’s race last year who were looking for the next fight,” said Andrew Epstein, a political adviser to Mamdani who worked on Valdez’ campaign. “Those people didn’t go away. And they want to keep going.”

Valdez also won several heavily Latino areas that were expected to break for her opponent.

Reynoso was born in Brooklyn to Dominican parents and just a few years ago was a City Council member representing Bushwick, a long-gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood that’s home to Latino families and young hipsters. Valdez was born in Texas, moved to New York City in 2015 and served in the state Assembly for just one term before launching her Mamdani-backed bid for retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat.

She ended up winning areas of Bushwick by even greater margins than the total results — in some election districts winning upwards of 80 percent of the vote.

“You don’t win the district by 35 points if you don’t have broad advantages across age and demographic groups,” said Michael Lange, an election analyst and Mamdani supporter who has tracked several contested races with extreme granularity. “Is she blowing him out of the water with Hispanic voters under 50? I see tons of evidence that the answer is yes.”

The age advantage was the common thread across several other races.

In Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, for example, younger Black voters in Harlem were key to Darializa Avila Chevalier’s win over Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus who had built a small political empire in the district.

While gentrifying, the neighborhood remains a seat of Black political power and is home to younger households who tend to rent. That particular demographic is a strong indicator of why Mamdani won the area in 2025, even as he lost the Black vote overall to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose support was concentrated among older Black homeowners in Brooklyn and Queens.

While Espaillat never healed a rift with the Black community in upper Manhattan opened during his election in 2016, which contributed to his weak performance, Avila Chevalier demonstrated Tuesday that a significant share of voters there were not just supportive of Mamdani the person, but of the broader political movement he’s now leading.

Overall, she edged out Espaillat with Black voters 48-46, according to an analysis from The New York Times, which charted demographic breakdowns for several contested races.

Three winning congressional candidates endorsed by Mamdani — including former city Comptroller Brad Lander in Brooklyn, who unseated incumbent Dan Goldman — share several similarities. They won younger, college-educated and wealthier voters by huge margins, in several cases by 30 points or more, and lost lower-income voters to incumbents or candidates affiliated with incumbents — a sign that the movement seeking to boost struggling New Yorkers has not won them over.

While the DSA was able to win three state races without the support of Mamdani — a testament to the organizing prowess of the left that was essential to reactivating the mayor’s coalition — there were limits to the city’s leftward shift.

Rep. Grace Meng won her reelection race, though she only vanquished challenger Chuck Park by 14 points, an uncomfortable margin for an incumbent of her stature. Park, who ran to Meng’s left, was boosted by a huge turnout in Woodside, Queens, a multiethnic neighborhood that went heavily for Mamdani in last year’s mayoral race.

Elsewhere in the Bronx, however, incumbents remained strong. Rep. Ritchie Torres handily won reelection with 72 percent of the vote, though it was a low-turnout affair more consistent with an uncompetitive midterm. Nevertheless, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries touted the results — even as he watched a series of his endorsed candidates fall to the DSA in Brooklyn, his home borough, in a preview of the intraparty battles to come.

“In some higher-income districts, there was an outsized focus on the Middle East. In other districts, for instance, in the South Bronx, Ritchie Torres ran against somebody who was heavily critical of his position on Israel, and he won by fifty points,” Jeffries told MS NOW on Wednesday.

Congress

Divisive Israel vote to be discussed on Sunday House Democrats call

Published

4 hours ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

An anticipated vote on cutting off U.S. military aid to Israel is among the subjects House Democrats are slated to discuss on an unusual teleconference Sunday evening.

Six people granted anonymity to describe private caucus plans confirmed the member call, which has not been publicly announced. Two of them said it would involve an amendment that would block aid to Israel and other appropriations matters.

Democrats are likely to be sharply divided on an amendment drafted by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to a fiscal 2027 spending bill funding the State Department and foreign aid programs. Massie is proposing to end Israel aid and cut the overall foreign military aide program by $3.3 billion.

House Republicans have not yet announced a vote on that bill, but two other people granted anonymity to describe GOP planning said it is likely to be added to the floor schedule next week. The House Rules Committee voted last week to set up debate on Massie’s amendment.

Senior Democrats want to talk through member concerns and strategy on the Sunday call, according to one of the six people.

The call comes just days after three outspoken critics of U.S. aid to Israel swept hotly contested House primaries in New York City, ousting two incumbents.

Meredith Lee Hill and Riley Rogerson contributed to this report.

Congress

House panel subpoenas Leon Black, escalating tactics in Epstein investigation

Published

5 hours ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Oversight Committee slapped Leon Black with two subpoenas in the middle of his transcribed interview about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein — after Black refused to answer questions about potential non-disclosure agreements he had with women tied to the late, convicted sex offender.

Oversight Committee Chair James Comer announced the issuance of the subpoenas — for the NDAs and for Black to reappear for a formal deposition July 16 — after the first hour of Black’s interview had concluded with the billionaire investor insisting he would not discuss the terms of those agreements.

Black had initially agreed to appear voluntarily, but under the terms of a deposition, his testimony will be videotaped and under oath.

“We believe that information is vital to our investigation,” Comer, a Kentucky Republican, told reporters Friday. “We want to know, was Jeffrey Epstein involved in the NDAs? … Was he involved in awarding [of] funds to the women for the NDAs? What was the reason for the NDAs?”

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the panel, seconded Comer’s decision to force a deposition to compel information that he also described as central to the panel’s ongoing Epstein probe — a rare moment of bipartisanship in an investigation that has been plagued by partisan bickering.

“There’s no question that as soon as this interview started, that the witness was not going to answer critical questions,” he told reporters.

After Black had already departed from the closed-door interview, his lawyer, Susan Estrich, said that Epstein “had no involvement with any NDAs, whether they exist or not,” and said her client has never abused a woman.

“They made a premeditated political decision to serve him with subpoenas after less than an hour of questioning, and before they even asked a single question about his legitimate payments to Epstein,” she said, referring to members of the Oversight panel. “This was nothing more than a planned political stunt.”

Estrich represented the late Fox News chairman Roger Ailes when he was facing sexual misconduct accusations. Black has also battled his own allegations of sexual assault, though he has denied the accusations — along with having had knowledge of Epstein’s wrongdoing over the course of their relationship.

Several Democrats who attended the interview were aghast at Black’s lack of cooperation. Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico told reporters that more than one of Epstein’s accusers had previously accused Black of committing sexual misconduct against them, too.

“Before Mr. Black left the interview, he admitted that he lived close to Epstein,” Stansbury said. “He often dined at his house. He went over for breakfast, for happy hours, attended impromptu dinners with world leaders, with academics, with scientists.”

Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) alleged that Black “gush[ed] poetically about how smart and how great Jeffrey Epstein was” and accused him of walking out on the committee.

The bipartisan desire to get more information from Black comes as the committee’s Epstein investigation is set to hit the one-year mark in July, after Oversight Committee Democrats — frustrated with the Justice Department’s refusal to release the so-called Epstein files — forced a bipartisan vote to facilitate the publication of relevant materials.

That vote jumpstarted a congressional probe that has led to interviews with more than a dozen witnesses, including ex-Attorney General Pam Bondi, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates.

Comer has also asked acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to speak with his panel in the coming weeks, after Bondi accused him of being at the tip of the spear in overseeing the eventual release of the Epstein files in compliance with a law Congress passed in December.

Members will have more to ask Blanche following the Justice Department’s admission on Thursday that the DOJ had been violating the law Congress passed last November requiring the public release of the vast majority of government records relating to Epstein.

A federal judge gave Blanche one week to release certain names and other information that DOJ initially redacted from the millions of pages of the Epstein files — or provide a more detailed explanation for withholding them.

Critics believe the department has been seeking to protect powerful people implicated in Epstein’s crimes — including potentially President Donald Trump, who has not been charged with wrongdoing and has denied misconduct.