On March 4, 2026, Texas Congressman Tony Gonzales went on a conservative radio show and admitted he'd had an affair with a woman who worked in his congressional office. He called it a "mistake" and a "lapse in judgment." Four months earlier, asked about the rumors in public, he had called them "completely untruthful."

The staffer, Regina Santos-Aviles, died in 2025 after setting herself on fire. Her widower released texts in which Gonzales asked her for a "sexy pic" and kept going after she told him he was "going too far." The House Ethics Committee opened an investigation into whether Gonzales "engaged in sexual misconduct towards an individual employed in his congressional office."

Gonzales said he would not resign. And the most powerful Republican in the House agreed with him.

"I don't think it's time"

Nine days before that admission, Mike Johnson was asked whether Gonzales should step down. Here is what the Speaker said:

"I think we have to wait for more of the facts to come out, and I don't think it's time to call for resignation."

He went further:

"If the accusation of something is going to be the litmus test for someone being able to continue to serve in the House, you'll have a lot of people would have to resign or be removed or expelled from Congress."

Some rank-and-file Republicans did speak up. Lauren Boebert called on Gonzales to step down. Anna Paulina Luna said "this is really disgusting to see." Brandon Gill said Gonzales should quit the race because "America deserves better."

Johnson said none of that. Johnson had endorsed Gonzales.

Here's what finally moved leadership, and it wasn't the conduct. Gonzales made his admission the day after the March 3 primary — a primary he came in second in. In Texas you need more than half the vote to win a primary outright, and neither man got there, so Gonzales was headed to a May runoff against a challenger who had just beaten him.

Two days after that result, leadership moved. Barely. They asked him to withdraw from his re-election race, and, as the Texas Tribune noted, pointedly did not ask him to give up his seat. NRCC chair Richard Hudson spelled out the arrangement: Gonzales should quit the runoff "while focusing on his family and serving his constituents for the remainder of his term."

Serving his constituents. That was the deal. Give up the campaign, keep the vote.

The math, not the misconduct

Gonzales kept that vote for another five weeks. He gave it up on April 13 — and not because Republican leaders finally found their conscience.

He quit the same evening Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell did, both of them staring down expulsion resolutions their colleagues had drafted. A Democrat, Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, wrote the one aimed at Gonzales. Luna wrote the one aimed at Swalwell. Each man was given until 2 p.m. to quit or face a vote.

CNN reported the reason it worked out that way: the numbers had to come out even. One Republican and one Democrat meant no net change to Johnson's razor-thin majority. Before the Swalwell allegations surfaced, GOP leaders had asked Gonzales not to run again but hadn't pushed him out of Congress — they couldn't spare the vote.

Fox News laid out the same arithmetic for the four members then facing expulsion: two Democrats, two Republicans. The parity is what made anyone willing to move. As Fox put it, with a majority that tight, Republicans "may not want to cede power to Democrats if the House expels a GOP Member."

That's the standard. Not what a member did. Whether removing him costs a seat.

Same podium, two answers

The morning after those resignations, Johnson stood in front of reporters and was asked about the two members still on the list — Democrat Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and Republican Cory Mills.

On the Democrat, he had a clear answer:

"I have been a zealous guardian of due process around here. I do think certainly on Cherfilus-McCormick, the Ethics Committee has gone through all of its processes, and they found some alarming facts. I think the facts are indisputable at this point, and so I believe it'll be the consensus of this body that she should be expelled."

On the Republican, in the same remarks, he said he'd be looking into the status of the Ethics Committee's investigation.

To be fair to Johnson: an ethics subcommittee had already proven 25 of 27 counts against Cherfilus-McCormick, and she was under federal indictment. She denies wrongdoing. That's a further-along process than Mills's.

But notice what the Speaker's rule actually produces. When a process finishes on a Democrat, he announces the verdict for the whole chamber. When a process is open on a Republican, the openness of the process becomes the reason to say nothing — and there is always a process, and it is always open. Mills is still in Congress. He's one of four scandal-plagued House Republicans who have turned safe seats into real races.

"The key word there is allegation"

Which brings us to right now.

Max Miller, the Ohio Republican, is accused by his ex-wife of throwing hot water on her and of shoving her against a wall, according to court filings reviewed by CBS News — and, in an account she gave police, of holding a gun to her head. Their 2-year-old daughter turned up with a fractured collarbone. Miller denies all of it. Last week he asked the House Ethics Committee to investigate him, and within hours it agreed — opening a probe into domestic violence and illegal drug use.

Asked about it, Johnson said this:

"The key word there is allegation. We have a process here. The House Ethics Committee works on those things."

Two days later he said more, and it was worse:

"There's all sorts of domestic events going on with 435 members of Congress all the time, it's not my business to get engaged in it."

All sorts of domestic events. A gun to a head is a domestic event. It is not the Speaker's business.

He isn't alone in the dodge. Jim Jordan called the same allegations "a family matter" and said he hopes Miller wins. Trump's own political team told Ohio Republicans to stop pressuring Miller to leave the ballot. The people who did break with Miller — Sens. Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted — are both from Ohio, and Moreno is the accuser's father.

What the same party sounds like when it's a Democrat

Hold Johnson's "zealous guardian of due process" next to how his party talks about people on the other side.

Maine Democrat Graham Platner had a chest tattoo widely recognized as a Nazi symbol. He told the Associated Press he got it during a night of drinking in 2007 while on leave from the Marine Corps in Croatia, that he didn't know what it was, and that he'd had it covered up. The National Republican Senatorial Committee turned it into a months-long campaign — press release after press release, from October 2025 through the following summer.

Then a former girlfriend accused him of forcing her to have sex in 2021 — a claim he called "categorically false" — and his own party did what Johnson's has never done. Platner suspended his campaign in July and formally withdrew days later. The executive director of the Maine Democratic Party said on television that quitting "was the right thing to do" and that the allegations "were very real and they were very credible."

He is not in office. He never was. He had no vote to protect and no majority to preserve.

The day after Platner announced he was quitting, the NRSC's official statement on the race was this, in full:

"Maine Democrats elected a rapist Nazi to be their nominee for Senate, and regardless of who they anoint next, Susan Collins will be re-elected in November."

No process. No waiting for facts. No 435-members-have-domestic-events. For a private citizen with no vote to protect, the Republican Party's campaign arm went straight to "rapist Nazi."

And then look who they nominated

Here's the part that should end the argument.

The challenger who beat Gonzales on March 3 was Brandon Herrera, a gun YouTuber. He finished first, but under 50%, so the two were set to meet again in a May runoff. The split tells the story: Gonzales led 45% to 40% among people who voted early, before the affair had fully come out, and lost election day 49% to 36% once it had. When Gonzales quit the runoff, Herrera became the Republican nominee in Texas's 23rd District without another vote being cast.

During their 2024 primary fight, Gonzales called Herrera a "known neo-Nazi." Herrera says that's false: "I am not, nor have I ever been a neo-Nazi."

What's documented is on his own channel. Jewish Insider catalogued it in April 2024: a 2022 video showing off a Nazi submachine gun set to "Erika," a Nazi marching song, in which he calls the weapon "the original ghetto blaster" and mock goose-steps and salutes; a 2020 video on Nazi guns scored with more Nazi marching music; and years of Sons of Confederate Veterans videos, including one where he appears in full Confederate uniform.

The party's response to all of that was to endorse him. Within days of Gonzales quitting, Trump endorsed Herrera, calling him a fighter for the MAGA agenda. So did Boebert — the same member who'd wanted Gonzales gone over the affair — and Mary Miller of Illinois.

The Democrats' campaign arm has since put the seat on its target list, citing Herrera's "disturbing history of extremism, violence, and antisemitic rhetoric." This is a district Trump won by 15 points. It's competitive now because of who Republicans picked — the same candidate who called a child a slur to insult mothers who organize against gun violence.

The standard

Put it in order.

A Democratic Senate candidate with a covered-up tattoo and a denied accusation: rapist Nazi, said in writing, by the party's official Senate committee.

A Republican congressman who admitted an affair with his own employee, a woman who later killed herself: not time to call for resignation — and please stay for the votes.

A Republican congressman accused in court of holding a gun to his wife's head: the key word there is allegation, and anyway, not my business.

A Republican nominee with Nazi songs in his back catalog: endorsed by the President of the United States.

Mike Johnson is not confused about right and wrong. He can state a verdict for the entire House when it suits him. He simply applies one rule to people who cost him nothing and another to people whose votes he needs. That is not due process. That is a headcount.

Source

Gabby Birenbaum, The Texas Tribune, "Rep. Tony Gonzales, forced into runoff, admits to affair with aide who died by suicide" (March 4, 2026). Photo via The New Republic.