Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
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On Tuesday, another scandal-plagued congressman will face a verdict from Florida’s Republican voters.
Rep. Cory Mills’ record includes accusations of stolen valor, a restraining order from an ex, a House Ethics investigation, a reported Department of Justice investigation, and more. He’s been rejected by several members of his own party, but still has a February endorsement from President Donald Trump.
Mills spent some of the final days of his campaign texting Mother Jones reporter Noah Lanard about several of the scandals he is facing, including his relationship with a woman who was just out of high school when he was in his 40s, who reportedly later described the relationship as “exploitative.”
“Adults are entitled to date in an attempt to find their person,” Mills texted Noah. "I find it sick that you and others obsess over my dating life."
If he wins, it will be a testament not only to the power of a Trump endorsement but also to a Republican Party that has turned the other way when it comes to allegations of misconduct.
Read Mother Jones’ extensive reporting on Mills here: motherjones.com/politics/2026/08/cory-mills-florida-primary-ryan-elijah-donald-trump
Video by Garrison Hayes and Noah Lanard
Produced by HyoJung Kim and Peter Berger
--
For more award-winning independent reporting, visit Mother Jones: motherjones.com
Facebook: facebook.com/motherjones
Twitter: twitter.com/motherjones
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► For more, visit Mother Jones: motherjones.com
On Tuesday, another scandal-plagued congressman will face a verdict from Florida’s Republican voters.
Rep. Cory Mills’ record includes accusations of stolen valor, a restraining order from an ex, a House Ethics investigation, a reported Department of Justice investigation, and more. He’s been rejected by several members of his own party, but still has a February endorsement from President Donald Trump.
Mills spent some of the final days of his campaign texting Mother Jones reporter Noah Lanard about several of the scandals he is facing, including his relationship with a woman who was just out of high school when he was in his 40s, who reportedly later described the relationship as “exploitative.”
“Adults are entitled to date in an attempt to find their person,” Mills texted Noah. "I find it sick that you and others obsess over my dating life."
If he wins, it will be a testament not only to the power of a Trump endorsement but also to a Republican Party that has turned the other way when it comes to allegations of misconduct.
Read Mother Jones’ extensive reporting on Mills here: motherjones.com/politics/2026/08/cory-mills-florida-primary-ryan-elijah-donald-trump
Video by Garrison Hayes and Noah Lanard
Produced by HyoJung Kim and Peter Berger
--
For more award-winning independent reporting, visit Mother Jones: motherjones.com
Facebook: facebook.com/motherjones
Twitter: twitter.com/motherjones
Instagram: instagram.com/motherjonesmag



![Is Zach Lahn REALLY MAHAs Farm Hero?
Zach Lahn, Iowa’s Republican nominee for governor, depicts himself as a populist farm-country hero.
He’s one of a slate of candidates put forward by the Make America Healthy Again movement, which has grown frustrated with Washington’s permissive attitude toward pesticides, food additives, and other health-related threats.
Lahn presents himself as an outraged farmer who doesn’t want to be a politician and is running on promises to take down Big Ag—a rare Republican take in a state politically defined by agriculture. But much of his background paints a different narrative.
He wasn’t raised as a farmer. Lahn didn’t register to vote in Iowa until October 2024, barely meeting the state’s two-year residency requirement for gubernatorial candidates. He says he moved to his family’s Iowa farm from Kansas in 2023, but the Daily Beast recently reported that he never claimed the house as his primary residence.
“At his core, [Lahn] is an all-star, major league political operative,” one expert on Iowa politics and agricultural antitrust policy said.
Some Iowa insiders suspect Lahn recognizes MAHA’s political power in farm country and the edge it gives him. Will it be enough to propel him to the governorship?
Read the full story here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/08/zach-lahn-maha-iowa-rob-sand-governor-big-agriculture-glyphosate-monopoly-agribusiness-rfk-jr/ Is Zach Lahn REALLY MAHAs Farm Hero?](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YqaImcMT5FQ/mqdefault.jpg)





![We Got Max Miller’s Old High School Yearbook
We got ahold of Max Millers high school yearbook—and it brings back an old allegation. (Which Miller denies.)
For the past few months, Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) has been embroiled in a growing list of scandals and allegations of harm. Miller’s ex-wife, the daughter of Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), has accused the Republican congressman in legal filings of being an absentee father, abusive husband, and having a history of violence and misconduct towards women dating back to his high school days. Miller has repeatedly denied these allegations.
As Abby Vesoulis reported in July:
For instance, one of [Emily] Moreno’s legal filings in their ongoing child custody case asked Miller to comment on the accusation that he pushed a female peer down a set of stairs during his high school years. “Why did you not pursue a defamation lawsuit against [redacted] for alleging you pushed her down a flight of stairs? Miller’s response: “OBJECTION; relevance, scope of admissible evidence.” According to Politico’s 2021 report, “Miller pushed a girl out the door of his room and she fell down some stairs after he became enraged when she resisted his attempts to touch her, according to three people who were there and many more who heard about the incident in the aftermath.”
Miller categorically denied to Politico that the altercation took place. But reached for comment this month, the woman in question told Mother Jones that while the event “happened 20 years ago,” it remains “one of the more traumatic nights of my life.”
Vesoulis recently traveled to Ohio where she and our producer got a chance to speak with Miller directly following a family court hearing between him and his ex-wife. While visiting, Vesoulis made a stop at the public library in the town that Miller grew up and attended high school in. She wanted to see if there was anything more to be learned from his old high school yearbooks.
Were going to flip through all these yearbooks and we could find nothing, says Vesoulis, sitting in one of the librarys study rooms. We could find something interesting.
Interesting, indeed. Heres what she saw. We Got Max Miller’s Old High School Yearbook](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_hOoCU53jBg/mqdefault.jpg)
