Republicans are heading into the midterms defending four House seats they should never have had to think about. Donald Trump won every one of them comfortably in 2024. None of them are in play over taxes, or immigration, or the economy.

They're in play because of how the men holding them behaved.

Axios reported Wednesday that four scandal-plagued House Republicans have turned races that should have been gimmes into unexpected battlegrounds — forcing their own party to spend time and money it doesn't have to spare. Three of them are still on the ballot. One quit this week.

Here's who they are, and what they're accused of.

Cory Mills — and the Florida Republicans backing the other guy

Cory Mills represents Florida's 7th District, which Trump carried by 13 points. He is under an active House Ethics Committee investigation. The committee announced in May that it had "authorized more than 20 subpoenas, collected thousands of documents and contacted dozens of witnesses" looking into whether Mills "may have violated various rules, laws or other standards of conduct." The allegations span domestic abuse, stolen valor and financial misconduct. He denies all of it. He is also, as we wrote last month, the subject of a Justice Department criminal investigation — which he has called "a desperate lie" from his political opponents.

What's new this week is that his own party has stopped waiting for the investigations to finish.

On Wednesday, two fellow Florida Republicans — Reps. Mike Haridopolos and Anna Paulina Luna — endorsed Mills' primary challenger, former local TV anchor Ryan Elijah, and said they "urge our fellow Republicans to join us in supporting him." Haridopolos went further: he planned to attend the Mills–Elijah debate that night and sit next to the challenger's wife.

Mills' answer was to hold up his endorsements like a receipt:

"I'm the only candidate in this race endorsed by President Donald Trump. Not once, not twice, but three times."

That's true. It's also true that Trump endorsed Haridopolos and Luna too — and they're campaigning against him anyway. When the president's own endorsement is the strongest thing you can say for yourself, and the other people holding that same endorsement are working to replace you, the endorsement isn't the point anymore.

The money says the same thing. Mills raised about $60,000 last quarter. Elijah raised roughly $300,000. The Democrat, Navy veteran and former NASA official Bale Dalton, raised nearly half a million. The primary is Tuesday, August 18, and CNN reported that some top Republicans are privately hoping Mills loses it.

Dalton put the case against Mills in one sentence: "Why would I want someone representing me in Congress who I can't even talk to my kids about because of the violence against women?"

Max Miller — defiant, and losing his own party

Max Miller holds a suburban Cleveland district Trump won by 11 points. His ex-wife, Emily Moreno, has accused him of a pattern of abuse; their 2-year-old daughter turned up with a fractured collarbone she blames on him. Miller denies everything and has sued her for defamation.

He then did something unusual: he asked the House Ethics Committee to investigate him, saying he had nothing to hide. It agreed the same day — and opened a probe into domestic violence and illegal drug use.

Since then he has refused every off-ramp. He went live on X for 15 minutes to attack his ex-wife's mental health and promise he's winning in November. He sat with CNN's Jake Tapper on Tuesday and said no, flatly, to every version of the question:

"People have asked me, what are you going to do? Are you going to drop out of this race? Are you going to resign? Are you going to get out before the deadline? And my answer to you, Jake, is no."

Republicans watching that interview were not reassured. One GOP strategist texted CNN, "I mean what the absolute f*** was that." A House GOP aide texted, "epic disaster."

Trump expressed doubts to Miller that he can win, according to Axios — and CNN reported he stopped short of telling him to withdraw when the two spoke Monday. Miller's own former father-in-law, Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno, has publicly said he shouldn't serve. Meanwhile Jim Jordan went on television and called the whole thing "a family matter", said he hopes Miller wins reelection, and suggested we should all pray for the family.

Miller has until next week to come off the ballot. Republicans are drawing up contingency plans in case he does.

Chuck Edwards — the one who quit

Chuck Edwards is the reason the other three are national news this week. On Monday, a bipartisan House Ethics Committee found he violated House rules on sexual harassment and hostile workplaces in his treatment of two young women on his staff, and recommended the full House censure him. His campaign's response that day was to call the report a "complete exoneration."

Two days later, he quit the race — citing prayer and reflection, with no apology and no mention of the two women. Trump had won his western North Carolina district by 9.5 points. Sabato's Crystal Ball had already moved it to "toss-up" before the ethics report even came out. Republicans now have about three months to pick a new candidate and introduce him to the district, against a Democrat, farmer Jamie Ager, who outraised Edwards nine to one last quarter.

Edwards is what the other three are being measured against — and, according to CNN, House Republican leaders began privately working to convince him to quit within hours of learning what the ethics report said.

Andy Ogles — the investigation that went away

Andy Ogles is the fourth. In August 2024, the FBI seized his cell phone as part of a federal investigation into his campaign finances — specifically, that his 2022 campaign reported a $320,000 personal loan from Ogles to himself, and his attorney later said only $20,000 had actually been transferred.

He was never charged. In May 2026, the Justice Department agreed to promptly return his phone and destroy everything it had pulled from it and his Google account — effectively ending the probe. Ogles credited the Trump Justice Department with "righting this wrong."

The case being dropped is not the same as the case being answered. The Office of Congressional Ethics had already reviewed the loan and found Ogles may have violated federal law, and that he may have created "the appearance that his campaign had more money than it did." A federal investigation into the same $300,000 gap simply stopped asking. And it left him weak enough that Democrats' top recruit in the district, Columbia Mayor Chaz Molder, now has a three-to-one fundraising advantage over a sitting Republican congressman in a district Trump won.

What the party is actually upset about

Read what Republicans said this week and notice what's missing.

Speaker Mike Johnson wouldn't publicly pressure Miller — he said the ethics investigation "needed to take its course." Privately, party leaders raced to talk Edwards out of running. Privately, they're hoping Mills loses a primary so they don't have to deal with him. A GOP operative summed the whole thing up to Axios: "If all four of them are on the ballot, it's a lot more of a pain in the ass."

A pain. Not a disgrace — a logistics problem.

The complaint isn't the conduct. It's the polling. Nobody moved on Edwards until a bipartisan panel put it in writing and a censure vote was scheduled. Nobody is asking Miller to go because of what his ex-wife described; they're asking because Trump doesn't think he can win. And the strongest thing anyone in the caucus said out loud came from a House Republican who would only say it anonymously — that Mills, Miller and Edwards should all drop out of their races, because "we must lead by example."

That's the standard. Not "this is wrong." This is going to cost us seats.

The bottom line

Four districts Trump carried comfortably — North Carolina's 11th by 9.5 points, Ohio's 7th by 11, Florida's 7th by 13. Four incumbents whose own leadership is quietly working around them. Not one of these races turned competitive because voters suddenly changed their minds about tax policy.

Voters in Florida's 7th get to weigh in first, on August 18. Ohio's 7th and Tennessee's 5th get their turn in November. The people in those districts didn't create this problem. All four of these men have been in Congress since January 2023, and their party's main concern about them now is arithmetic.

We deserve better.

Source

This post is based on reporting from Axios, CNN, and Fox News. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images.