2026-02-20 05:56:03
On January 31, federal agents fired tear gas into a crowd of civilians, clergy, and children gathered outside the ICE building in Portland, Oregon. Witnesses say, and video shows, that the demonstration was largely peaceful before the gas was deployed. In the weeks since, a federal judge moved to restrict the use of these chemical munitions at the site following reports that agents used them against demonstrators who posed no imminent threat.
Under the second Trump administration, displays of force against protesters have become increasingly common. So it’s important to know which chemicals are being deployed against those exercising their First Amendment rights—because they’re not benign.
Tear gas, the most widely deployed crowd-control weapon, can cause more harm than temporary irritation. Beyond burning eyes and skin, it has been linked to corneal ulcers and menstrual cycle disruptions, with some reports suggesting possible associations with miscarriage.
But tear gas is just one type of chemical used by federal agents for crowd control.
On January 24, federal agents used hexachloroethane smoke—more commonly known as HC—on protesters at the same Portland ICE facility where they would tear gas children just a week later. According to medical experts, HC is “demonstrably more dangerous” than tear gas. The smoke releases zinc chloride, which can cause chemical burns, acute respiratory distress, and pulmonary edema at high concentrations. Safety data from the manufacturer also warns of potential long-term risks, including organ damage and cancer with repeated exposure.
The US Army has been moving away from HC use in training for decades due to health risks to soldiers, replacing it with less toxic alternatives. Yet spent HC canisters have been documented at protests in Portland—including during the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Past reports linked exposure to symptoms ranging from vomiting and hair loss to prolonged appetite loss and significant weight decline.
As the Department of Homeland Security continues deploying these chemical agents, serious questions remain about their safety and the long-term health effects for those exposed—including DHS’s own officers.
2026-02-20 05:02:14
In the run-up to the inaugural Board of Peace meeting, which began about 40 minutes late on Thursday at the recently renamed Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace in Washington, representatives from over 40 countries jammed out to a mix of disco, ’80s hits, and Sinéad O’Connor classics.
“Does everybody like the music?” the president asked. “It’s good music.”
It was a joyful playlist with a much darker purpose.
Authorized by the UN Security Council last November, the board is supposed to be a temporary international force that coordinates reconstruction efforts in Gaza. But its charter, released in January, makes no mention of Gaza and leaves open the possibility of wielding power anywhere in the world.
“We’re going to make Gaza very successful and safe,” Trump said at the conclusion of the meeting. “And we’re also going to maybe take it a step further where we see hot spots around the world.”
Even U.S. allies think the whole thing is just a slush fund that positions the president as a global chairman able to sidestep accountability. But Trump wasn’t bothered.
Trump’s playlist—full of pride, happiness, and perseverance—functions more as an attempt to frame global atrocities as hope. You can check out the president’s songs below.
“Y.M.C.A” by Village People
Despite the early controversy, the disco hit has become a staple at MAGA rallies, so no real surprise here.
You Don’t Own Me by Lesley Gore
“You don’t own me / Don’t try to change me in any way.” Playing a song often regarded as a feminist anthem may be ironic for an organization that ignores Palestinian people’s sovereignty.
“You’re the One That I Want” by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John
This tune, from the 1978 film of the musical Grease, is just too upbeat to feel appropriate here.
“Burning Love” by Elvis
An overwhelming, uncontrollable level of romantic desire (for power).
“Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley
I’m not “crazy” because you all say I’m “out of touch.” I’m actually “crazy” because “I just knew too much.”
“Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor
Where Trump is Rocky Balboa in Rocky III, a former champion who overcomes all the odds to achieve personal victory.
“Fun, Fun, Fun” by The Beach Boys
I’m having so much fun! Aren’t you?
“Gloria” by Laura Branigan
Gloria breaks down into feelings of paranoia. Hmm.
“November Rain” by Guns N’ Roses
They may have noticed how long and sprawling this ballad is because the track ended early.
“Nothing Compares 2 U” by Sinéad O’Connor
O’Connor once refused to perform in Israel, saying, “nobody with any sanity…would have anything but sympathy for the Palestinian plight.”
“Please, Please, Please” by James Brown and The Famous Flames
An artist known for his dynamic live performances. I’m unsure if this accurately describes the world representatives at the Board of Peace meeting.
“If I Can Dream” by Elvis
A song that draws parallels with Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. “There must be peace and understanding sometime / Strong wind of promise that will blow away the doubt and fear.”
“Time to Say Goodbye” by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman
The operatic vocals of Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman are commonly played at memorial services and funerals. Ominous.
“Burning Love” by Elvis
The final song was a repeat. It seems like they were on shuffle for too long.
2026-02-20 01:01:59
On a rainy evening in early May, several armed ICE agents in tactical vests closed in on a small red sedan at a gas station in South Nashville. The driver, a frightened 55-year-old Salvadoran man named Edgardo David Campos, gripped the steering wheel while bystanders took out their phones and began recording video. As agents pulled the driver side door open, one of them placed his hand on his holstered pistol. An onlooker yelled, “Do you have a warrant? Let him go!”
The agents soon dragged Campos from his vehicle, handcuffed him, and forced him into the back of an unmarked black SUV. He remained silent, with an expression of bewilderment and terror, as the growing crowd called out to him and the arresting officers.
Nearby, the Tennessee state trooper who had pulled him over stood watching, his squad car parked behind the red sedan. One of the bystanders shouted questions at him, wondering why he had stopped Campos in the first place. Another woman demanded the trooper’s name and badge number, before asking, “Where are you taking him?”
The trooper remained silent. “I don’t have to give you anything,” an ICE agent responded to the crowd. Within minutes, the agents and state trooper drove off, leaving Campos’ car abandoned at the gas station.
By now, the scene has become familiar in communities across the country. The federal siege of Minneapolis—in which masked deportation forces from multiple agencies terrorized immigrants, clashed in the streets with community members, and killed observers Renée Good and Alex Pretti—was the latest in a series of attacks on blue states, including previous high-profile campaigns in Los Angeles and Chicago. Democratic governors like California’s Gavin Newsom and Illinois’ JB Pritzker have lashed out at President Donald Trump and his administration, claiming that it is illegally occupying states and violating the Constitution.
For nearly a week in early May, state troopers roved the city’s Latino neighborhoods at night, with ICE officers riding shotgun and undercover vehicles following behind.
But in Tennessee, where Republicans hold a supermajority in both state legislative chambers, many elected officials have welcomed ICE with open arms. GOP Gov. Bill Lee and other state leaders have touted their close working relationship with White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s deportation campaign. As part of this collaboration, they have paired state police with ICE agents, deployed national guard, and green-lighted the federal occupation of Memphis under the “Memphis Safe Task Force,” which, as Mother Jones’ Samantha Michaels reported, residents compared to living in “a war zone, with helicopters circling over neighborhoods, National Guard officers patrolling downtown, and unmarked law enforcement vehicles in the streets.”
Campos’ arrest was part of a May operation in Nashville, dubbed “Operation Flood the Zone,” that could become a template for future incursions into Democrat-run cities in Republican-controlled states. For nearly a week in early May, state troopers roved the city’s Latino neighborhoods at night, with ICE officers riding shotgun and undercover vehicles following behind, leaving fear and panic in their wake. During the operation more than 600 vehicles were stopped, and ICE claimed that nearly 200 residents were arrested.
State troopers used pretexts such as bent license plates, unlit temporary tags, and dark window tints to pull people over, so that ICE, which can’t make routine traffic stops, could check their immigration status—and bypass constitutional and legal protections in the process. During the stops, some ICE agents carried assault rifles and “window punches,” in case a driver refused to roll down their window.
As the operation unfolded, Nashville’s Democratic city leaders, who had not been notified in advance, scrambled to understand what was happening. Anguished families searched for missing loved ones, children were left alone at home because their parents never returned, and terrified families went hungry for fear of leaving the house and being targeted. Businesses watched their sales plummet and clients disappear.
Zulfat Suara, a Nashville council member at large, said that as the operation unfolded, “lives were thrown into shambles. There was no due process; people weren’t allowed to see their attorneys. And we didn’t know what was going on.” An immigrant herself from Nigeria, Suara was the first Muslim to be elected to Nashville’s city council in 2019. Since the May ICE operation, she said, she now carries her US passport with her wherever she goes because Black and brown people are being deliberately targeted. “You just have to fit the profile,” she said.
Nine months after the state and federal operation, Nashville residents are still searching for answers about who was taken, and the role that Tennessee played in targeting residents. Meanwhile, across the state, Memphis is still occupied by more than 1,500 federal agents who are working alongside hundreds of state troopers and National Guard. City leaders and residents in both Democratic-led cities said they have been stonewalled by the state and the White House.
To investigate the toll ICE’s operations had in Tennessee, Mother Jones joined forces with Lighthouse Reports, the Nashville Banner, NewsChannel 5, Nashville Noticias, and the Institute for Public Service Reporting in Memphis. We analyzed hundreds of Tennessee Highway Patrol reports and dozens of hours of dashcam and bodycam footage; examined thousands of pages of ICE deportation data, criminal court documents, and school enrollment data; and spoke with deported immigrants and their families. We set out to reveal for the first time what happened to the people picked up in the May dragnet in Nashville and to learn more about how ICE collaborated with state troopers. (The Nashville police department does not currently collaborate with ICE.)
State leaders and ICE claimed the operation was about public safety, but, according to our analysis, only one-quarter of those arrested had any type of criminal record.
We found that more than 90 percent of the drivers stopped on the first night in Nashville—the heaviest day of arrests during the operation—were either Black, Latino, or Middle Eastern. We also found that state police and ICE mainly targeted South Nashville, the most ethnically diverse area in the city, and made traffic stops based on racial profiling. State leaders and ICE also claimed that the operation was for public safety reasons, but, according to our own analysis, only one-quarter of those arrested had any type of criminal record. Additionally, troopers ignored drivers breaking traffic laws, choosing to help ICE identify people to stop instead. Our analysis also showed that ICE arrested fewer people than it claimed after the operation.
During some traffic stops, people protested that they already had appointments with ICE to adjust their immigration status but were arrested anyway. In one case, an ICE agent told the husband of a woman who had an upcoming appointment that the reason for her arrest during the traffic stop was that “people didn’t show up for their appointments,” and that appointments were how “the previous administration did things.” At least 18 people arrested in Nashville were released, including several who were first sent to detention facilities in Louisiana and had to pay expensive immigration bonds. In the wake of the operation, we also heard stories of declining school enrollments and economic losses for immigrant-owned businesses in South Nashville.
“It felt like we were being hunted.”
ICE did not respond to our requests for comment. In a statement, Tennessee Highway Patrol responded that it “conducts lawful traffic stops based on observed violations of Tennessee law and does not engage in enforcement actions based on race, ethnicity, language, or national origin.”
“They kept claiming that this operation was about getting criminals off the street,” said Suara of THP and ICE. “Instead they were picking up people involved in churches, people that had never committed any crime. Good people just trying to make ends meet.”
Nearly every night from May 3 to May 10, at least eight state police vehicles would exit highway patrol headquarters near the Nashville airport with an ICE agent in the passenger seat—and ICE agents in undercover vehicles trailing behind—to trawl Nashville’s immigrant communities until dawn.
“It felt like we were being hunted,” said Jazmin Ramirez, a community organizer with the nonprofit Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC). “If you look Latino, you run the risk of being pulled over.”
We watched more than 50 hours of Tennessee Highway Patrol dashcam and bodycam footage taken from the first night, when approximately 47 arrests were made. The footage, much of it previously unviewed, was obtained through a public information lawsuit filed by TIRRC. Much of the released footage is redacted, with the faces of the troopers and ICE agents blurred and segments of their conversations muted. Despite the redactions, which are being challenged in court by TIRRC, ICE agents and state police can be heard on multiple occasions racially profiling drivers to target for stops. In one instance, a trooper pulling over a car with four Latino men in it says to the ICE agent next to him, “This might fill us up. They’re definitely not English speakers.” On a separate occasion, a trooper runs a license before immediately handing it to an ICE agent. “Check him, he doesn’t speak any English,” he says. Yet another trooper tells an ICE agent in a different video, “Nolensville’s always gonna be good,” referring to a road that runs through an area with immigrant-owned businesses. There’s also footage of a highway trooper and ICE agent commandeering a Nashville police officer’s traffic stop after noticing that the driver is Latino. When the ICE agent asks whether Nashville police are aware of the operation, the trooper answers, “They have no idea.”
After finding the man’s ID, one agent notes that he’s the manager of a local Mexican restaurant. “The guacamole is never going to taste the same,” the agent laughs.
The footage captures troopers and agents competitively tallying up the number of people they could detain. “There’s six,” a trooper says of a traffic stop. “Another six,” the ICE agent sitting next to him says jubilantly. “Two juveniles…the driver doesn’t speak English,” the trooper says, handing him the driver’s license to check. The ICE agent responds, “The good news is we have MVM, which they’ll remove family units,” referring to a controversial private security firm that transported children during family separation in the first Trump administration.
In nearly every traffic stop we reviewed, a state trooper was accompanied by at least five ICE agents. During one stop, an ICE agent walks up to a car holding an assault rifle; in another traffic stop with a middle-aged woman alone in a minivan, an agent places his hand on the pistol in his holster. In some cases, agents would not allow drivers to call relatives to notify them they were being detained. “We’re not letting anyone know they’re in immigration custody,” one agent tells a state trooper after the driver begs to call a relative to come pick up his vehicle. “You all want to help me search this car?” the trooper asks the ICE agents, after placing the driver in the back of his squad car. After finding the man’s identification, one of the agents notes that he’s the manager of a local Mexican restaurant. “The guacamole is never going to taste the same,” the agent laughs. They proceed to leave the man’s abandoned vehicle in front of a Cricket mobile phone store. In many of the arrests, ICE agents drive off in the detained people’s vehicles, only to later leave them at commercial strip malls.
Throughout the operation, administration leaders like Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made claims that their “targeted enforcement” with state police had captured “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens in Tennessee.” In a press release, ICE said it had detained 196 people—95 of whom had a criminal conviction—during the weeklong operation.
Our investigation found these claims to be largely false. By matching ICE data with police reports and the names provided by the agency in its May 13 press release, we determined that at most 159 people were detained by ICE in the Nashville area, not 196—and that of those 159, only 40 had been convicted of a crime, not 95, as ICE claimed. The most common reason for a past conviction was a DUI, followed by traffic offense and forgery.
And instead of the “worst of the worst,” as Noem claimed, the majority of people arrested were in the process of adjusting their immigration status, or like many of the Venezuelan immigrants caught in the operation, previously had temporary protected status, which provides recipients with a legal work visa. The Trump administration revoked protective status for Venezuelans, despite court challenges, in early 2025.
Mike Holley, an attorney with TIRRC who represented some of the people detained during the operation, said he heard from many who had pending immigration court cases but were arrested anyway. “They were deliberately taking people who were the worst candidates for deportation,” he said. “People with ties to the community who were already in the system and have no criminal record. During ordinary times they would probably have released someone like that.”
“It was incredible to watch a city that’s so vibrant and full of people come to a standstill.”
Holley said it was clear that THP was racially profiling people from the footage he viewed of the first night of the operation. Holley called them “roving immigration patrols” and said they violated the pretextual stop doctrine and the Constitution. “This all goes back to the equal protection clause of the Fifth and 14th Amendments,” he said. “Tennessee has a parallel under the Tennessee Constitution…Even if you can stop someone pretextually for not using a turn signal, it can’t be based on race. You can’t just sit out there and say, ‘I’m gonna stop every Black person that doesn’t use their signal.’ But that’s what they chose to do. And that’s not allowed.” (Following Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurrence to a Supreme Court ruling in September, in which the court okayed the use of race by immigration officers as a proxy for immigration status, this brand of profiling became known as a “Kavanaugh stop.”)
In this case, however, it was largely Nashville’s thriving Latino community that was targeted, not its Black residents. Analyzing the ICE deportation data for the weeklong enforcement operation, we found that the overwhelming majority of people arrested were Latin American, with most being from Mexico and Guatemala, followed by Honduras, Venezuela, and El Salvador. At least seven people from the Middle East were also arrested during the dragnet, including people originally from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.
Ramirez said it was startling to see the busy streets of Nashville empty out as the enforcement operation continued in immigrant communities. “It was incredible to watch a city that’s so vibrant and full of people come to a standstill,” she said. “There was just this fear in our community, and this hyper-alertness. Every vehicle looked suspicious.”
In late October, city council member Terry Vo pointed out the MAPCO gas station in South Nashville where she’d witnessed Campos’ arrest. “It still haunts me,” she said.
That night, Vo had been driving around with Zulfat Suara and other city council members who are members of the Metro Council Immigrant Caucus to understand whom the state troopers and ICE were targeting. Vo pulled into the gas station to discover Campos surrounded by armed agents, with volunteer monitors from Music City MigraWatch yelling at him not to open his door.
“There are probably many more Edgardos out there that nobody knows about, right?”
As we pulled into the gas station, she pointed to a parking space in front of the convenience store. “That’s where they left his car,” she said. “At the time, we didn’t know who he was, who his family was.” Vo said the police and ICE left Campos’ car unlocked, and the council members searched it for contact information. “We didn’t know his name. We didn’t know anything about him. At that point, we handed it over to community advocates, who were eventually able to notify his family.”
Vo shook her head, visibly frustrated. “It was sad,” she said. “He’s an older man in the later years of his life and a very devout person. I often think, ‘Could I have done better?’” she asked. “I think if the community had not been there that night to record and watch, we wouldn’t even know he was taken. And there are probably many more Edgardos out there that nobody knows about, right?”
Holley said lawyers at TIRRC scrambled to reach people in detention, like Campos, during the operation, but they were moved quickly from one jail to the next in Tennessee and then to Louisiana or Texas, with no way to contact legal help and limited communication with family members. “A lot of people agreed to deportation before there was even a chance to talk with them,” Holley said. “They were either gone or had already signed something.”
The question of what happened to Campos and to the dozens of other people detained over those seven days has remained an open one for city officials like Vo, advocates, and members of the community. ICE and other state authorities have refused to say. The operation and its impact have remained a black box.
To provide answers, we analyzed ICE deportation data and Tennessee Highway Patrol incident reports. In Campos’ case, according to the THP, he was marked down as a “stopping violator.” This is the only reason stated in at least 90 percent of the Tennessee Highway Patrol traffic reports we analyzed from the Nashville operation.
After being taken into ICE custody, Campos was sent to the Putnam County Jail, 80 miles east of Nashville. After three days, he was transferred further east to the Knox County Detention Center. Like many people picked up during the operation in Nashville, Campos was transferred within days from Tennessee to Louisiana. Our investigation found that as of mid-October 2025, according to the most current publicly available ICE deportation data, 121 people were deported and 15 people were bonded out after being sent to Louisiana. An additional 12 people still remain in jail.
On May 16, Campos was sent to the Jackson Parish Correctional Center, in Jonesboro, Louisiana, which is run by the private LaSalle Corrections and has been cited for numerous violations of human rights and state detention standards. After nearly a month, he was deported to El Salvador on June 13.
ICE removal data lists Campos as a “threat level 1 convicted criminal for Fraud and Impersonating,” considered the most serious level of conviction. According to police records, Campos was charged in 2008 for a DUI. ICE’s removal charge, however, for fraud and impersonating, is based on a 25-year-old conviction for a fake ID and no driver’s license. (Undocumented immigrants cannot obtain driver’s licenses legally in Tennessee.)
“The pain had become too much,” Campos’ wife told us. “Who deserves this?”
After community advocates located Campos’ wife, Martha, she told them that her husband had been on his way home the night he was detained from mass at Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe Catholic Church in South Nashville. “I’m shattered because one doesn’t expect a blow this devastating,” she said in an interview with Nashville Noticias.
After Campos’ arrest, the Diocese of Nashville advised parishioners in a public bulletin to stay home. Many churchgoers never returned, said Martín Ochoa, a longtime parishioner at Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. Ochoa said Campos and his wife had donated toys to the church’s annual Christmas collection for years. This year, the donation never came.
In a brief conversation at the church, Martha confirmed that her husband had been deported to El Salvador and said she did not want to speak further about the ordeal. “The pain had become too much,” she said. “Who deserves this?”
“I find it really interesting,” said Vo, “this narrative that was laid out that ‘We’re only going after the criminals,’ which made people feel comfortable that they wouldn’t be targeted—like, ‘Oh, they’re not coming after me. They’re only going after the bad people,’” she said. “But that was a farce. They’d pull you over, then look you up, thinking, ‘Oh, maybe we’ll catch somebody.’”
Five months after the dragnet, families gathered in North Nashville for Shwab Elementary School’s Halloween festival. The sun had finally come out, and parents watched as small children in costumes drew with crayons and others ran happily across the playground.
According to Principal Cheryl Bowman, the school’s student population is 56 percent Latino. Bowman said Shwab was still struggling to convince immigrant families that their children would be safe from ICE agents at school. These days, she said, they were lucky to get 100 people to attend a school function, about half of what they’d been accustomed to in the past. “We’ve done a lot of footwork going to families’ homes,” Bowman said, “and they’re just afraid to send their kids to school.”
“There are a lot of four-year-olds sitting at home.”
In fact, for the first time in her nine years at Shwab, the school’s pre-K program didn’t have a waiting list. The school was doing outreach to try to fill its two pre-K classes. “This is the first time since I’ve been here that we’ve had low enrollment,” Bowman said. “There are a lot of four-year-olds sitting at home.”
Because of the decline in enrollment, Bowman said she had had to let a teacher go and lost $140,000 in federal funding. Things got so bad during the May enforcement operation, she said, that teachers volunteered to drive students to school, because their parents were too afraid to leave their homes. “We just did what we had to do, because they needed to come to school,” she said.
Bowman said many families had left the school, either moving to other parts of Tennessee with less ICE presence or leaving the state altogether. “We’re family here, and it’s just very hurtful,” she said.
As school enrollment plummeted, businesses also suffered. In South Nashville, not far from where Campos was dragged from his car, Ishaq Albdi, whose family owns a string of grocery markets catering to Latinos, said sales had declined by 20 percent. “It has definitely hurt our business,” he said.
Customers asked for deliveries, because they were too afraid to leave their homes, he said. “There were people who would come in regularly. These were long-term customers,” he said. “And now they’re gone, and we don’t know if they were deported.”
This year’s legislation will require teachers, judges, social workers, and others to report undocumented immigrants to ICE and the state’s immigration division.
Several months later, in January, Tennessee Republicans introduced a slate of anti-immigrant bills, written in consultation with the White House’s Miller, that are designed to make the lives of immigrants even more inhospitable—yet another example of the state’s eagerness to lead the way on draconian deportation policies. During the last legislative session, Republican leaders created an immigrant enforcement office and declared that public records from the agency would remain confidential, including programs funded with federal tax dollars. This year’s legislation will require teachers, judges, social workers, and others to report undocumented immigrants to ICE and the state’s immigration division. Schools could also be required to verify immigration status for children attending school and either exclude them or charge tuition if they are undocumented. Another bill would allow state troopers to check the immigration status of out-of-state drivers passing through the state. And state or local officials who share information about ICE officers will face a felony charge and removal from office, an apparent response to Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s release of public documents naming some of the ICE agents involved in the operation last May.
Jazmin Ramirez, the TIRRC community organizer who has been commuting from Nashville to Memphis to help families there, said immigrants would not be deterred by the state’s draconian laws. “We were preparing for this as a community, but we were hoping it wouldn’t come,” she said. “We’re also not surprised that they’re here. In many ways, Tennessee has been a testing ground for a lot of these things.”
Nashville’s immigrant community is still paying the price. On a sidewalk near the Latino supermarket, a handful of day laborers regularly congregate, hoping for a day or two of wages. One man, who said he had lived in Nashville for 22 years and asked to remain anonymous, said ICE had come and taken people away from there in May. Months later, workers were still coming to the location because they needed to work to survive, he said, but they were afraid. “There are less people here now waiting for work,” said the man in Spanish. “But we are still here, because we have to work. We just hope they don’t come back.”
Araceli Crescencio contributed to this report.
This story was produced as part of a collaboration coordinated by Lighthouse Reports, in partnership with the Institute for Public Service Reporting, the Nashville Banner, Nashville Noticias, and NewsChannel 5 Nashville.
2026-02-19 23:11:45
Over the past few months, I’ve spoken to more than a dozen people who know Rep. Cory Mills, watched hours of court testimony, and reviewed hundreds of pages of public records to piece together the rise of a Florida Republican now plagued by numerous scandals. What I heard and saw was often shocking. To a degree I’ve never encountered as a reporter, the congressman turned out to be widely loathed, both in Washington and by former close associates.
Mills was first elected to Congress in 2022. In 2024, he easily won reelection. He’s now running again and, come November, voters in his solidly Republican district may send Mills to Washington for a third time.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump gave him his “Complete and Total” endorsement. Trump called Mills a “Successful Entrepreneur” and “Bronze Star recipient.” My investigation—along with work by independent journalist Roger Sollenberger and Notus—calls into question the basis of both those claims.
Mills’ office did not respond to an interview request sent last month. His office also did not reply to a detailed list of questions sent by Mother Jones last week.
Below are five takeaways from the reporting.
Mills, who is 45, served in the Army from 1999 to 2003. He spent a few months of that time in Iraq. Adam Ehrhardt, a medic who once served directly under Mills, provided a damning assessment of his former noncommissioned officer. “I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire,” he told me of Mills.
Ehrhardt’s disdain is shared by many of the private military contractors who later worked with Mills in the Middle East for the company then known as DynCorp. Jesse Parks, a Navy veteran and retired cop, described Mills as a “grade A jackass.” Parks added: “He’s a schmuck bordering on being a douchebag.” (There are many other stories from former Mills associates in our larger piece.)
The political news outlet Notus reported last year that multiple Army veterans have accused Mills of obtaining a Bronze Star through stolen valor. I found further support that Mills falsely claimed to have saved the lives of multiple fellow soldiers, as well as substantial evidence that Mills has severely exaggerated his military credentials on numerous occasions.
Five people told me Mills claimed to have been an elite Army Ranger during a years-long period that spanned roles in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Washington, DC, area. Service records recently released on the Army’s Freedom of Information Act Library show no sign of Mills having been a Ranger. When I asked the Army whether Mills had ever attended Ranger training or been assigned to a Ranger regiment, an Army official said he only attended a special operations forces selection program in 2002. Mills did not complete the course, the official added.
Mills has also represented himself as a former JSOC member, an acronym for the group that oversees much of US special operations forces. “At no point in time was he ever certified or associated with any type of special operations, Rangers, or anything like that,” Ehrhardt told me. “Ever.”
Before running for Congress, Mills started an international arms distributor, often called Pacem Solutions. Court records I reviewed show that the company’s business relied heavily on selling high-explosive grenades to Middle Eastern governments. Those records also show that Pacem is now trapped under more than $66 million of debt as it battles foreclosure in Florida.
To make up for its losses, Pacem sued the Small Business Administration in 2023 to try to get millions of dollars of Covid-era relief funding that it had been denied after failing to repay millions in debt. A federal judge ruled against Pacem in the case, and an appeals court upheld the decision last year.
Late last year, Pacem indefinitely furloughed many of its workers in Florida. One of those workers told me he lost his livelihood shortly before Christmas. Mills, meanwhile, spent part of the holiday season attending a White House party with Trump featuring the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.
In 2023, members of Congress traveled to Ireland, partly to attend a Navy-Notre Dame football game. Two congressional sources I spoke to told me they’ve heard from multiple people that Mills punched someone under the influence of alcohol while in Ireland. One of the sources said they have heard that Mills “sucker punched” someone, then ran away like a “coward.”
Asked about Mills’ alleged conduct, a US Navy spokesperson referred questions to Mills’ office, which did not respond to an interview request or request for comment.
In early 2025, DC police responded to a 911 call reporting an alleged assault at Mills’ apartment. A police report stated that Mills “grabbed [his girlfriend], shoved her, and pushed her out of the door.” Soon after, Sarah Raviani, the then–27-year-old co-founder of Iranians for Trump who made the allegation, retracted her claims.
After the 911 call made headlines, Lindsey Langston, the girlfriend Mills shared a Florida home with, ended their relationship. Mills went on to send so many threatening messages to Langston that a Florida judge placed a restraining order on him in October.
2026-02-19 23:11:36
Over the past few months, I have spoken to over a dozen people who know Rep. Cory Mills. Nearly everyone, I found, dislikes him. Some outright despise him: “repulsive and vile,” “schmuck,” “little bitch.” Others were more formal. “I have no use for people with no honor,” an Idaho firearms instructor who worked with Mills in the Middle East told me. The most blunt was a veteran who once reported to Mills in the Army. He told me of the congressman from Florida: “I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire.”
In our divided age, Mills—a bearded 45-year-old man fond of fabric-straining shirts—is the rare unifying figure in politics. Members of both parties have tried to censure him. Republican Rep. Nancy Mace called Mills a “disgrace” and moved to kick him off his committees in the House last year. (She was supported by MAGA Reps. Lauren Boebert and Anna Paulina Luna.) Congressional Democrats have moved to censure him three times.
Mills’ detractors can flip through a Rolodex of scandals and red flags. Just in 2025: A woman called 911 about alleged domestic violence by Mills, former associates came forward to claim Mills hired sex workers while on a “rescue mission” abroad, fellow veterans told the press that Mills earned a Bronze Star through stolen valor, and an ex-girlfriend (not the woman who called 911) sought and received a restraining order against Mills.
The congressman has publicly pushed back on some of these scandals. The domestic violence allegation was later retracted, and Mills has defended his military record while also saying he is “not in position to dispute different recollections during chaotic wartime events.”
The congressman also has business problems. Before his election, Mills co-founded an international arms company that court records show made most of its money selling grenades in the Middle East. Trapped under tens of millions of dollars of debt, the company is now in foreclosure proceedings. Mills still maintains a major stake in the firm, despite House committee assignments that pose a direct conflict of interest. Mills sits on the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees. He’s also a part of the Intelligence and Special Operations Subcommittee for Armed Services—a position that gives Mills access to classified national security briefings.
John Sipher, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who worked for the CIA for nearly three decades, described Mills as a textbook example of someone who poses a counterintelligence threat. “He’s got financial problems; he’s got problems with dishonesty and ego,” Sipher explained. “If you were giving a security briefing,” Mills could be a case study of “all the things not to do,” he said.
I asked the congressman’s office for an interview last month. Mills’ office never responded. His office also did not respond to a detailed list of questions sent last week.
Given his behavior and record, there is bipartisan concern in Washington that Mills could pose a national security threat, according to a congressional source. The information reported about Mills, they said, makes him vulnerable to malign actors and honeytraps. If the congressman were hired as a staffer, he would need to pass a background investigation to have access to classified information, they explained. “There’s just no way he would qualify,” the source said, adding that they have never heard any Democrat or Republican defend the congressman behind closed doors.
Mills’ personality has not done him any favors, either. Both online and off, he radiates insecurity. His Instagram feed is filled with try-hard posts. (One of many examples: a gym mirror selfie in which Mills suggests that he prefers peace but is prepared to fight “if troubles must come.”) This posturing extends to real life, too. At a congressional hearing, he once joked that it would take nine of his Democratic colleagues for it to be a “fair fight” against someone like him.
Mills insinuates that this hypermasculinity is backed up by a coveted credential: being a veteran of US special operations forces. But there is nothing in his military record to support that claim in any meaningful way. An Army official told me in response to a request for comment that Mills’ personnel files show him only attending—but not completing—a special forces qualification course. As one person who knows Mills explained, “He’s a fake alpha male.”
Despite his many scandals, come November, Mills could be elected to a third term in a district that President Donald Trump won easily. The House Ethics Committee is now investigating him, but it is a process that can be drawn out for months or more. In the meantime, Mills will face voters with Trump’s “Complete and Total Endorsement.” The immediate reason that Republicans have backed him is simple: The GOP wants to protect its slim majority in Congress. But it is also a testament to how much scandal doesn’t matter in Republican politics today.
For this piece, I reviewed hundreds of pages of documents, combed multiple court filings, and interviewed 18 people who have known Mills, from his youth to the present. Those who have interacted with him expressed a mix of bemused outrage and unadulterated disgust about his rise to power. They were incredulous at the idea of him serving in Congress. But they were not surprised by his various scandals. The general picture of Mills that emerged was of an aggressive, bullying, and untrustworthy man. Politicians are often considered smarmy. But to a degree I’ve never experienced before as a reporter, Mills has left behind a trail of former close associates willing to speak out against him on the record.
Mills tells his life story in four easily digestible acts. He was born into a broken home, served honorably in the Army, left and made his fortune in business, then returned to service by running for Congress. Only the first part is true without major caveats.
Mills was born in 1980 and largely raised in Auburndale, Florida, a small city about an hour south of Orlando. His parents were teenagers. His father, Christopher, spent nearly all of Mills’ childhood incarcerated, along with much of Mills’ adulthood. His mother faced legal troubles related to methamphetamines, according to court records. As Mills tells it, he learned the value of a “traditional nuclear family” thanks to grandparents who took him in and prevented him from becoming a “statistic.” He signed up to join the Army in 1998, then reported for duty after finishing high school the next year.
Since entering politics, Mills has summarized his four years of military service with three phrases: “Army 82nd Airborne,” “Iraq/Afghanistan Veteran,” and “JSOC Member” (the acronym for the Joint Special Operations Command, the elite group that oversees much of US special operations forces). Whether those claims were true was initially unclear to me. Then I spoke with Adam Ehrhardt, an Army veteran who now owns a gun store in North Carolina.
“I wouldn’t trust him with nothing. He’s always been that little liar. I mean no one—no one—likes him.”
Ehrhardt told me that he served with Mills for the large majority of the time that the congressman spent on active duty. Both were medics assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division. For some of that time, they lived in the same barracks at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. After being made a sergeant, Mills was in charge of Ehrhardt.
Ehrhardt made a point of defending Mills from insinuations by some critics that he may have never deployed to a war zone. That was not true, he said. Mills went to Iraq for a few months in 2003. It was this initial commitment to getting the facts straight that made Ehrhardt’s broader assessment of his former noncommissioned officer particularly brutal. It is hard to overstate Ehrhardt’s contempt for his former sergeant.
“I wouldn’t trust him with nothing. He’s always been that little liar,” he said. “I mean no one—no one—likes him.” Ehrhardt described Mills’ need to lie as “pathological.” He said of their time in Iraq: “My interactions with him—and most everybody’s—was just trash.”
Mills’ current congressional bio says he “served with” JSOC. But Ehrhardt stressed that “at no point in time” was Mills ever a part of Army special operations forces. That is supported by Mills’ service records. The Army official said Mills “attended Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS) in 2002 but did not complete the course.”
After a few months in Kuwait and Iraq between February and June 2003, Mills left the Army. He earned an associate’s degree from Florida State College, then was lured by the lucrative world of private military contracting. In 2005, he deployed with a company then known as DynCorp to Afghanistan before transferring to Iraq. (Despite describing himself as an Afghanistan veteran, Mills never served there while in the military.)
Of all the people Mills has wronged, it was former colleagues at DynCorp who have gone the furthest out of their way to expose him. Many of Mills’ DynCorp colleagues had top-tier military backgrounds. The future congressman did not. Instead, Mills made things up, according to four former contractors I spoke with.
Will Kern, a former Marine scout sniper, said Mills claimed not only to have been an elite Army Ranger, but also an Army-trained sniper and special operations forces-qualified medic. (A DynCorp bio for Mills shared with me by one of his former colleagues lists him as having those qualifications—none of which appear in his military records.)
Mills’ bio and behavior did not add up to Kern, but he tried not to ask too many questions. Maybe, Kern thought, Mills wasn’t a fraud but “just a fucking weirdo.” Some of Mills’ other DynCorp colleagues were more charitable. Paul Sovitsky wrote a letter, which Mills has shared online, that describes the congressman as a “tactically and technically sound operator” who did an “outstanding job” on many “high threat missions.” It makes Sovitsky one of the closest things Mills has to a validator. But Sovitsky also made it clear when I called him that he was “no Cory Mills fan.” After noting that humility is the greatest virtue, he described Mills as his “own worst enemy and best self-promoter.”
Jack Jordan, a former Ranger and DynCorp contractor, had a similar view of Mills. He initially saw his younger colleague as being smart, personable, and athletic. But his estimation of Mills declined as they spent more time together in Iraq. On missions, he said, Mills often seemed not like a former special forces operator, but a person playing one in a movie. Jordan came to see Mills as someone who had a fundamental character flaw: He did whatever he thought he could get away with, not what he thought was right.
Like others, Jordan remembered Mills telling him that he was a Ranger. When we spoke, he still thought there was probably at least some truth to the claim. When I told Jordan I’d seen nothing in Mills’ service records to support that, he seemed surprised that Mills would have been quite so brazen. Jordan’s understandable credulity underscored a key component of Mills’ rise: a long-standing willingness to exploit the basic decency we show in trusting one another. (Mills’ congressional office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)
James Lang, another former Army Ranger, similarly remembered Mills representing himself as a fellow Ranger when they worked together in Afghanistan. As did Jesse Parks, a Vietnam veteran who described Mills getting called out on the lie by an actual former Ranger while they were in Iraq. “Seriously called out,” Parks added. “Like, ‘Say it again and you’re gonna go home in need of medical attention.’”
Only one of the seven former DynCorp colleagues I interviewed pushed back against the idea that Mills falsely claimed to have been a Ranger. Unlike most of his former colleagues, he agreed to be quoted only on condition of anonymity. He also said he was speaking to me because Mills wanted him to.
In the interview, the former contractor questioned how his and the congressman’s former colleagues recalled so many details about events that happened years ago. I put that question to Parks. Why did he remember Mills’ actions so well? “Well, number one,” Parks replied, “when you’re a Grade A jackass and you do dumb shit and you make everybody look bad, you get remembered.” He summed up Mills by placing him on a bespoke continuum: “He’s a schmuck bordering on being a douchebag.”
Parks and Kern told me that Mills’ time at DynCorp ended abruptly after the company and State Department required additional proof of contractors’ military qualifications. Parks, who supervised the team Mills belonged to in Iraq, said contractors were given months to get that documentation. Despite this, Mills failed to provide it. He remembered giving Mills an ultimatum in 2009: Supply proof of his military record by that evening or be sent home. “He just looked at me,” Parks said.
Soon after, Parks said he got a call from Mills’ shift leader saying that he had disappeared and that his weapons were lying on his bed. As Kern put it, “That little bitch left the US Consulate in the middle of the night because he knew he was busted.” (Mills has denied his former colleagues’ account, saying he left Iraq early “because I wanted to go home with a nice girlfriend.”)
It would not be the last time Mills would be accused of fabricating key parts of his military record to advance his career.
In the early 2010s, following his sudden departure from DynCorp, there was little reason to think Mills was headed toward much success. He was, at that point, a divorced man in his early 30s facing multiple personal financial problems. In 2011, a lien was placed on him for more than $13,000 of unpaid federal taxes, according to Florida records. Soon after, another lien was filed in Washington, DC, for more than $33,000 of overdue federal taxes.
At the time, Mills was working for a US government contractor in Virginia. Mills once again portrayed himself as an ex-Army Ranger, according to a former colleague. The former colleague also remembered another story about Mills.
In 2014, Mills was on the verge of marrying his second wife, Rana Al Saadi, an Iraqi immigrant who had previously worked for the US State Department as a cultural adviser. The former colleague recalls that Mills strongly suggested at the time that he had converted to Islam as part of the relationship. Former DynCorp colleagues have also said they remember Mills saying he’d converted, and Virginia records show that Mills and Al Saadi were married in Virginia by an imam.
“I was really fucking mad because it felt like my medic was the hero and this guy is stealing the tin off of his chest to advance his own political career.”
Mills’ reported conversion to Islam has been seized on by right-wing critics who sometimes post fake photos of him in traditional Muslim garb. Mills has since said he was married by an imam only to make it easier for his wife to travel back to Iraq. And the congressman now makes a point of highlighting his Christian faith. He has likened his entry into the political arena to the prophet Isaiah telling God to “send me!”
Shortly before his second marriage, Mills left the contracting firm. He launched his own business with Al Saadi—Pacem Solutions—the same month. At first, the firm could have been mistaken for another DC-area company selling services to NGOs and government clients. But it has since become clear that the heart of the business was different. Pacem, court records show, was an arms dealer specializing in selling grenades abroad.
In 2015, a spinoff company called Pacem Defense was formed in Virginia. That year, as previously reported by Business Insider, records show that Pacem was part of a $228 million arms deal with the Iraqi government. As the independent journalist Seth Hettena reported, Pacem boasted on its website about sending an “international customer” more than 2 million 40mm explosive rounds designed to be shot from grenade launchers.
The massive 2015 grenade deal with Iraq coincides with a dramatic shift in Mills’ financial position. Soon after the deal went through, he purchased a home in Virginia for more than $1.3 million. Less than two years later, the couple bought a mansion in the state for more than $4 million, according to public records. When the couple later tried to sell it, a listing boasted that the roughly 11,000-square-foot home included a 1,500-bottle wine cellar, a “posh cinema,” and a “new pool with spa.” It was a major upgrade from the DC apartment Mills had been living in a few years before.
“You marry the first time for love,” Jordan, the former DynCorp co-worker, recalled hearing Mills say near the time of his first divorce in 2008, “and the second [time] for money.”
Mills has framed himself as a successful businessman. But Pacem’s story is hardly flattering.
I initially discovered Pacem’s severe financial problems due to an ironic move from Mills’ company: It demanded government aid that multiple courts have since found it did not deserve. Specifically, Pacem sued the Small Business Administration in 2023 for millions of dollars of Covid-era federal funding that it claimed to have been wrongfully denied. To defend itself, the SBA filed a host of internal Pacem bank documents in federal court. The documents show that Mills’ arms business was hemorrhaging millions in cash throughout 2018 and 2019. They also make clear that Mills’ company was in disarray when he decided to fail up to Congress.
In the documents, Mills and Pacem can be seen repeatedly trying to convince their lender that better times and massive profits were just around the corner. Most of the money was supposed to come from grenade deals with Saudi Arabia and Iraq that Pacem said kept getting delayed. In April 2020, Pacem told its bank that good news was potentially on the horizon because Saudi Arabia might need ammunition to sell to a partner in the Middle East. As an internal bank update put it: “Situation with Yemen ([Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] will be supplying ammunition) may increase M430A1 [grenade] quantity.”
This implied Pacem was planning to profit from a horrific military campaign. Amnesty International found that attacks in Yemen by a Saudi-led coalition were responsible for “a long string of potential war crimes.” For Pacem, the calculus appeared simpler: more war, more money. (Pacem officials did not respond to a request for comment.)
At the time, Mills had also recently begun laying the groundwork for his political career. In November 2019, shortly after initially failing to pay back his company’s government-backed loan, Mills started spreading money around the Republican Party. In one two-day period, he made 20 separate contributions totaling nearly $100,000. It was the first time he’d ever made federal political contributions, according to public records.
The only law Mills has passed renamed a post office in his district.
The vast majority of the money went to the National Republican Congressional Committee, then–House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and a political action committee affiliated with GOP leadership. Within weeks of donating to McCarthy, Mills started writing a foreign policy column called “Middle East Downrange” for the right-wing outlet Newsmax. As part of an apparent bid to build a public persona, Mills also started appearing on the outlet’s cable channel as a talking head, where he was introduced as a “decorated US Army combat veteran,” Pacem’s founder, and a “Mideast analyst.” With the benefit of hindsight, it appears to have been an obvious attempt to grease the wheels for an impending campaign.
Mills’ donations and media commentary gave the impression of a moneyed man on the rise. In reality, he was facing increasingly severe financial trouble. On March 31, 2021, Pacem and its lender entered a “forbearance agreement” after identifying five “immediate and uncurable events of default.” According to court records, Pacem still owed $4.65 million of its $5 million loan, and Mills’ and Al Saadi’s mansion, which served as collateral for the loan, was in jeopardy of foreclosure if they couldn’t find a way out.
One day later, on April 1, the initial paperwork for Mills’ congressional run was filed with the Federal Election Commission. “I’m tired of people in politics not being transparent,” Mills said in announcing his bid. “It is time to restore transparency, accountability, and to be what you are, a representative of the people, not a representative of your party.”
On the campaign trail, Mills cut a wholesome image. In one radio interview with a pastor, he framed his run as a simple continuation of a life of service. When it came to his business, he suggested that Pacem primarily supported US law enforcement. And in response to a question about his family, he volunteered that he was married with two kids and talking with his wife about having a third.
“We want a little girl,” Mills explained. “A girl just lights up the house.”
It sounded nice, but according to Florida court records, Mills had already begun a relationship with a woman nearly two decades his junior, who would later seek a restraining order against him.
Mills tried to play up a hero image despite his rocky personal life during the campaign. In the summer of 2021, he announced what was billed as a “rescue mission” to save a family stuck in Afghanistan. The effort allowed Mills to make the rounds on Fox News, where he cast himself as the competent foil to a feckless Biden administration. But independent journalist Roger Sollenberger, who has covered Mills extensively, recently uncovered a more unsettling side of the journey. Three sources told Sollenberger that Mills hired sex workers multiple times while in Tbilisi, Georgia, en route to Afghanistan. “It was every night,” one of the sources said.
They worried that Mills’ behavior posed a security threat. “This shit was so fucking bananas that I had trouble computing,” a person who was in Georgia with Mills told Sollenberger. “I’ve been in a lot of weird places and seen a lot of weird stuff, [but] I have never seen anything as aggressively blatant as him.”
None of these transgressions came out during the primary. Instead, Mills made national news in an ad that responded to a report that one of his companies had sold tear gas used against Black Lives Matter protesters. In it, Mills glorified his company’s work as he pumped rounds out of a grenade launcher. Then he went directly to camera with the punchline: “If the media wants to shed some real tears, I can help them out with that.”
In a red district, Mills positioned himself as a Trump loyalist. He claimed to have spoken at “the first” Stop the Steal rally and argued that President Joe Biden was not the legitimate president. Still, he was not actually the most right-wing candidate in the primary. That distinction went to a rival named Anthony Sabatini, who was endorsed by former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and later made headlines for defending his decision to quote the late Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.
In contrast to Sabatini’s pure MAGA, Mills mixed Trumpian rhetoric with an older GOP archetype: the Ronald Reagan-quoting businessman. Like Republicans of yore, he often appeared most comfortable talking about being a “constitutionalist” and boasting about supposed private-sector credentials. As he put it in one interview: “I’m a job creator—not a job seeker. I know what it’s like to sign the front of the check, not the back of the check.”
That was misleading at best. Initially during the campaign, Mills did not seem to have that much money to throw around in support of his campaign. (His first two loans to his campaign totaled only $1,500.) Then Pacem struck a deal with a Canadian firm that markets itself as a resource for companies with “poor financial performance.” Under the arrangement, a Canadian debt fund would pay off the balance on Pacem’s $5 million SBA loan, while also giving Pacem access to large amounts of additional cash. Soon after, Mills made a $200,000 loan to his campaign. He would end up loaning more than $1.8 million of “personal funds” to his campaign during the primary. (FEC commissioners voted in 2024 to dismiss a complaint that alleged Mills’ campaign self-funding came from loans to Pacem.)
The reality of Mills’ business problems was not known during his initial campaign. In the August 2022 primary, Mills—whose personal loans to his campaign came to more than Sabatini’s entire budget—prevailed by 14 points. In November, he won the general election handily. Soon after, he headed up to New York to be honored at a black-tie Republican gala alongside another new member of Congress, George Santos.
Mills alienated people from the start in Washington.
Four days after being sworn in, the new congressman celebrated the departure of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Twitter with a joke about her husband. “Finally one less gavel in Pelosi’s house for Paul to fight with in his underwear,” he wrote around 3 a.m., referencing the attack that nearly killed Pelosi’s husband. Two weeks later, he sent fellow representatives inert versions of 40mm grenades stamped with a GOP elephant. The response from across the aisle was a mix of disbelief and disgust. “Not even George Santos could make this stuff up,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) wrote, presumably unaware of just how many similarities there were between the two Republican freshmen.
Despite his initial antics, Mills maintained a relatively low profile for most of his first term. But behind the scenes, he reportedly engaged in behavior that concerned aides and colleagues. Two congressional sources were told that Mills joined a group of legislators in Dublin in 2023, in part to watch a Navy-Notre Dame football game. The sources heard from multiple people that Mills drunkenly punched someone on the trip. One of the sources said they heard that Mills “sucker punched” someone while in Ireland before running away like a “coward.” (Asked about Mills’ alleged conduct, a Navy spokesperson referred questions to Mills’ office, which did not respond to an interview request or request for comment.)
During his first term, FEC records also show Mills’ campaign using donations to pay for luxury hotels across the country. That included $1,696 at the Venetian in Las Vegas; $4,000 at the Phoenician in Scottsdale, Arizona; more than $10,000 at hotels near Mar-a-Lago in Florida; and $5,711 at a Fairmont in Puerto Rico. All the while, Mills’ company was sinking deeper into debt.
Mills’ legislative record was less impressive than his travels. One of the few times he made news was for filing articles of impeachment against Biden in May 2024. The justification was that Biden had threatened to withhold some weapons if Israel invaded Rafah in Gaza—a policy that Mills absurdly depicted as a corrupt “quid pro quo” by Biden. The only Mills legislation that has ever become law renamed a post office in his district.
By the time Mills’ reelection campaign geared up in 2024, his more observant critics were already on to him. Jade Murray, a conservative businesswoman in Florida, had set up a website detailing Mills’ many apparent fabrications about his military service with the help of some former DynCorp contractors.
Mills fought back in a 2024 Florida newspaper article that ran under the headline, “With Congressman Cory Mills facing accusations of stolen valor, Army confirms medals.” As part of the article, Mills produced a form authorized by retired Brig. General Arnold Gordon-Bray, who recommended him for the Bronze Star. The recommendation claimed that Mills came to the aid of two comrades “while under intense enemy fire” during a battle in Iraq. It added that Mills “applied emergency life saving medical care to both” soldiers at “great risk to his own life.”
Since then, the story of the Bronze Star has fallen apart. Joe Heit, one of the men whom Mills claims to have helped, told the outlet Notus last year that Mills “didn’t save my life.” When I spoke with Heit in January, he told me that it was impossible for Mills to have saved him for a simple reason: He did not sustain any life-threatening injuries during the battle. What really happened, Heit said—and reporting from the Washington Post from 2004 backs up—was that a bullet went through his helmet but did not enter his skull. Before it became clear that he had suffered only minor injuries, the platoon’s medic, Alan Babin, rushed to Heit’s aid. Babin was shot and nearly killed trying to save Heit.
That’s what so angered Heit when he first learned that Mills was claiming to have saved both his and Babin’s lives. “I was really fucking mad because it felt like my medic was the hero,” Heit explained, “and this guy is stealing the tin off of his chest to advance his own political career.”
Heit said Mills’ claims were especially bizarre for another reason. Heit told me he has no memory of ever meeting the congressman. Chris Painter, Heit’s platoon sergeant, corroborated Heit’s account based on his experience at the battle. “I can pretty much confirm 100% Cory Mills was not up at the bridges at the location of…everything,” he told Notus via text last year. Gabriel Gowell, another member of Heit’s platoon, told me he has no memory of seeing Mills before or after the battle, though he added it would have made sense for Mills to have come to help exfiltrate Heit and Babin, given his role with the headquarters company.
Rosie Babin told Notus that her son, who has had over 70 abdominal surgeries and five brain surgeries to treat the grievous wounds he suffered in Iraq, has no memory of the battle. It leaves Mills as the only alleged witness of his own broadly refuted claims of valor during the battle. (“I was on the ground,” Mills has said in defense. “It was a chaotic day and understandable that others may have different recollections of events.”)
Mills’ Bronze Star recommendation form also states that, during a second battle, the future congressman bounded forward under “murderous enemy fire” to rescue a third comrade. The story is dramatic: It claims that after Sgt. First Class Joe Ferrand was “grabbed by an enemy insurgent,” Mills “threw himself at the enemy insurgent and subdued him, saving the life of SFC Ferrand.”
The problem for Mills is that Ferrand has sworn the heroic tale is made up. It is “false and a [f]abrication,” Ferrand said in a handwritten statement I reviewed that has been shared with congressional investigators. “The act never took place. The event never happened.” (When Notus first reported on Ferrand’s letter last year, Mills said he “was on the ground, but I’m not in position to dispute different recollections during chaotic wartime events.” Ferrand did not respond to a request for comment.)
Further suspicion is raised by text at the bottom of Mills’ Bronze Star recommendation. The form dates the document to April 2021 or later—about 18 years after the events it describes. Gordon-Bray, the retired general who Mills says put him up for a Bronze Star, told me he authorized the form to be signed on his behalf. He remembered doing so long after the events in question, but did not recall the year. Gordon-Bray also said he did not review its contents and had no personal knowledge of the acts claimed in it.
Recently published documents from Mills’ personnel file in the Army’s Freedom of Information Act Library shed further light on what happened. In March 2024, the Army changed Mills’ service records to correct an anomaly: He had not received a Bronze Star, according to the records, but his discharge papers showed him getting one. So, the Army deleted the Bronze Star from his records and replaced it with the lesser Army Commendation Medal that Mills did actually receive in 2003. Then, in June 2024, there was another change. The congressman was given a Bronze Star in place of the Commendation Medal, apparently based on the now broadly refuted award nomination form sent on his behalf. (Mills has previously declined to say when the recommendation was submitted; an Army official did not respond to an inquiry about when the form was received.)
Despite the holes in the congressman’s story, Mills survived the initial efforts to impeach his character, winning his August 2024 primary by more than 60 points. From there, he floated toward another easy general election victory. His rise was captured in a fawning pre-election conversation in which right-wing host Glenn Beck began by calling Mills a “superhero,” as well as the “Captain America of Congress” and the “real-life Batman, Superman.”
After seeing Mills’ oceanfront patio in the background of his video feed, Beck went on to ask Mills with awe, “How did you get so rich?” The property is identifiable as a $12,000-per-month rental that Mills moved into in 2024. Unusually for a congressman, Mills has never owned property in his district, according to public records. He previously lived in another property in the district that was marketed online as a temporary rental.
Around this time, there was more good news for Mills. Not only did he get reelected, but Trump won for a second time and opened up a Florida Senate seat by picking Marco Rubio for secretary of state. Mills told reporters in the state that he would almost certainly try to fill it. A Politico article noting his likely Senate bid didn’t mention any red flags or scandals standing in the way.
At the start of his second term, Mills appeared to be on the rise within the GOP. His personal life was another matter. By early 2025, the congressman was separated from his second wife and sharing a Florida home with Lindsey Langston, his long-term girlfriend who had recently been crowned Miss United States. (The two began dating in 2021, when Mills was in his early 40s and Langston was 22.) They had discussed marriage and the potential for having kids of their own, Langston later testified.
But according to Langston, Mills was also in a darker place than his public image suggested. She later recalled that Mills had FaceTimed her crying and saying that “he didn’t want to be here anymore.” Texts and images he sent showed him drinking and indicating that “the bourbon’s not working,” Langston later testified. In one video he shared Mills was “cleaning a firearm and drinking alcohol,” according to testimony from his former partner. (Langston’s attorney did not respond to interview requests.)
Eventually, Langston concluded that Mills was “mentally unstable” and feared for his well-being enough to call his staff to conduct what she has described as a wellness check. She’d been to his DC penthouse apartment and knew that he had “access to a balcony,” as well as access to “loaded weapons at all times.”
As Langston tried to help Mills, she believed that they were in a monogamous relationship. But in late February 2025, Langston saw news reports from Washington that shocked her. Police had responded to a 911 call reporting an alleged assault at Mills’ penthouse in the city. The call had been made by Sarah Raviani, a then–27-year-old co-founder of “Iranians for Trump” who was described in the media as Mills’ “live-in girlfriend” in DC.
A police report reviewed by NBC 4 stated that Mills had “grabbed [Raviani], shoved her, and pushed her out of the door.” The police report also said Mills had instructed Raviani to lie about the alleged incident. (Two days later, DC prosecutors declined to charge Mills with misdemeanor assault after Raviani retracted all allegations against the congressman.)
Soon after, Langston ended the relationship, according to court records. But even after they stopped dating, Mills repeatedly threatened Langston and said he would kill anyone she dated, according to court records and testimony. He also wrote multiple menacing messages to Langston between May and June 2025. “May want to tell every guy you date that if we run into each at any point. Strap up cowboy,” Mills wrote. Multiple times, he implied potentially sending videos of sexual content recorded during their relationship to a future partner: “I can send him a few videos of you as well[.] Oh, I still have them” and “Thank [sic] again for the videos.” Langston reported Mills’ threats to police in Florida, then filed for a restraining order against Mills in August.
In early and late September, Langston and Mills testified in the case. The video recordings of the hearings, which run over three hours in total, provide a rare opportunity to observe a sitting member of Congress being grilled under oath. The general impression they leave is of a cornered man making dubious—if not definitively false—claims while maintaining a posture of “Who, me?” innocence.
In arguing for the restraining order, Langston’s attorney stressed that she’d asked Mills to stop contacting her 11 times. The often wrenching testimony from Langston made clear that she had suffered severe distress as a result of Mills’ misconduct. “Please help me. Someone please help me,” Langston pleaded in tears. “Because I don’t know what to do and I’m scared. I don’t know what to do anymore.”
Mills, by contrast, nonsensically described his threatening behavior as being part of a “reconciliation” or “unwinding” process with Langston. When it came to sending videos, he told his lawyer that he’d been thinking of sending Langston’s future partners a clip of her wearing an apron in their kitchen—not anything explicit. The warning that people she dated should “strap up, cowboy” had nothing to do with guns in Mills’ telling. It was, he claimed, a common expression in the rodeo world. It came to him because he’d previously competed as a rider, Mills said. (There is no public record of the congressman competing in rodeos.)
Under cross-examination by Langston’s lawyer, Mills’ credibility truly imploded. In a memorable exchange, the congressman could not accurately answer questions about his own marital status.
“When [were] divorce proceedings filed?” a lawyer asked. Mills claimed that the divorce “hadn’t been filed yet.” The lawyer asked again, “When, if at ever, has your divorce proceedings been filed?” Mills finally responded: “Well, they still have not [been] filed.” This was a trap. Langston’s lawyer was holding his divorce paperwork in her hand.
There should be little doubt that Mills knew he was (and is) in divorce proceedings—and thus testified falsely under oath. Virginia court records show his lawyer responding in detail to Al Saadi’s divorce complaint seeking primary custody of their son weeks before Mills claimed in Florida court that nothing had been filed.
Nor were the relationships with Raviani and Langston the only ones that Mills reportedly pursued. As part of the proceedings, Langston’s attorney suggested that Mills “sprinkled in a relationship” with a third woman. Republican congressional candidate Gregory Kunkle has also claimed that Mills was involved with a fourth woman, former Rep. Mayra Flores, who is running against Kunkle in a Texas primary this year. Kunkle has said Mills called him directly to threaten to “get involved” in the primary if he continued to talk about the alleged relationship. (Flores’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)
In October, a Florida judge ruled that Mills had harassed and subjected Langston to “dating violence” via cyberstalking after finding the congressman’s testimony about the explicit videos not “to be truthful.” He placed a temporary restraining order on Mills that prohibited him from contacting Langston for the remainder of 2025.
Last November, it looked like Mills’ past had finally caught up with him.
Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican who has a number of her own scandals, had come to loathe him. The feud stemmed in part from Mills’ decision not to back Mace in censuring Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) last year. Since then, Mace has gone after Mills viciously—including by sharing doctored images of him wearing a Muslim prayer cap and a military jacket overflowing with fake medals.
Mace’s main line of attack was a censure motion that would strip Mills of his committee assignments. Instead of censuring Mills, the House voted to send the matter to the Ethics Committee, which is now investigating Mills on an open-ended timeline. Its investigation covers a wide range of potential misbehavior, including campaign finance law violations, sexual misconduct, and improper solicitation of gifts.
As the committee proceeds, Pacem faces a potential existential crisis, too. Its Canadian lender has now submitted a complaint in Florida court to foreclose on the company’s manufacturing and training facility in the state. A filing in the case states that Pacem owes more than $66 million. Nearly half of that is unpaid interest. Pacem has defended itself by arguing, in part, that a foreign company gaining control of the “weapons of war” at its Florida manufacturing facility poses national security concerns. Its lender has replied by calling Pacem’s argument “immaterial, impertinent, [and] scandalous,” adding: “Enforcement of a mortgage and guaranty following default does not violate public policy.”
Mills has tried to distance himself from Pacem. A lawyer for the company told Sollenberger last year that Mills has “formally stepped back from any role in the management” of Pacem entities. In August, Mills stated in his congressional financial disclosure in August that his various corporate holdings are now managed by the “CM Blind Trust.”
Kedric Payne, vice president and general counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, said it does not make sense for Mills to report owning specific percentages of companies on his financial disclosure form while also claiming those assets are in a blind trust. “If you can see what your holdings are, it is not a blind trust,” he explained. “But more importantly is that this blind trust does not appear to have been approved by the Ethics Committee.”
“I’ve never seen any member of Congress call something a blind trust on their financial disclosure report that wasn’t a blind trust,” Payne added. “That’s a very large red flag that something is not right.”
The congressman’s reelection funding is also unusual. Since late March, nearly half of the money raised by his two campaign funds has come from donors with Arab surnames, most of whom appear to be Syrian American. Together, the more than 80 donations they made total more than $200,000. The first tranche of donations came a few weeks before Mills traveled to Syria in April; the second soon after he left.
Saurav Ghosh, director for federal campaign finance reform at the Campaign Legal Center, noted that while the uptick in donations from one group is “peculiar,” there is an “above-board” explanation in which Mills is simply being rewarded for taking stances supported by some Syrian Americans.
But the trip still raises concerns about conflicts of interest beyond campaign finance law. Unlike other members of Congress who have recently been to Syria, Mills has not submitted a report to Congress about a second trip that he took to Syria in September. Also, unlike those members, Mills arrived in Syria as the co-founder of an arms company that was in desperate need of cash and that might one day wish to sell weapons in the country. He also sits on two congressional committees that will help determine the nature of the relationship between the United States and the Syrian government that took power after the fall of Bashar al-Assad in 2024.
As Pacem struggled, the firm indefinitely furloughed many of its production workers late last year. When I spoke with one of those employees in December, he told me that he was blindsided and that he had not known his employer had been in financial distress for years. He said he and his colleagues weren’t eligible for severance because they’d been furloughed instead of laid off. He was looking for a new job and facing the unpleasant reality of being out of work just before the holidays.
Mills was having a more glamorous holiday season, attending a White House Christmas party featuring entertainment by the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.
In photos Mills posted on X to document the “honor” of attending, he stands next to smiling Cabinet secretaries. In another, he appears solo in front of a Christmas tree, joined only by the company of a gold-rimmed champagne flute. “Thank you, President Trump,” Mills wrote, “for a beautiful evening.”
2026-02-19 20:30:00
I was doomscrolling again. It was a fall evening in 2023, and I found myself sucked into a stream of posts about our collapsing climate: droughts causing billions in Dust Bowl–style crop damage, Florida’s worst-ever coral bleaching, a record melt in Greenland.
To distract myself, I picked up The Lost Cause, the latest sci-fi novel from author Cory Doctorow, a friend and fellow nerd. To my deep surprise, it stirred something unexpected: a feeling of hope.
At first glance, the novel’s backdrop is an absolute bummer. It takes place in America several decades from now, when rising seas have destroyed entire coastal towns and millions of climate refugees wander around homeless. Small farmers work as sharecroppers for Big Agriculture. The West is choked with forest fires so ferocious that Californians take hits from oxygen cans.
And yet, clean tech has gotten remarkably better. Solar panels are so cheap and powerful that they can be used to heat concrete kilns and build entire buildings carbon-neutrally. A progressive president’s Green New Deal guarantees universal employment, including jobs relocating entire coastal cities inland, away from the rising, voracious oceans. The heroes—SoCal resident Brooks and his twentysomething friends—spend their days doing on-demand work (solarizing schools, building high-density housing) and chill out at night, drinking artificial bourbon they brew in a bioreactor. While clean energy is abundant, so is political strife: MAGA-esque forces, armed to the teeth, violently oppose waves of climate “refus” arriving from fire-wrecked Oregon. When Brooks and his crew decide to build refugee housing anyway, their clash with right-wing old-timers gets nasty and violent fast—complete with cross burnings.
If you want to nudge people toward a better tomorrow, start with art.
So, not exactly a utopia. But what enchanted me about the book was its vibe of possibility. Here was a world where climate change had gotten worse, but people were adapting—cleverly using tech to rebuild communities that would generate far fewer emissions and far less waste than before. It was a glimpse of a new destination.
Sci-fi has always offered this, right? Heady alternatives to everyday realities! But for the past few decades, a big chunk of sci-fi had gravitated toward dystopia. The “cyberpunk” movement imagined technology and capitalism run amok—overcrowded, skyscrapered cities; enervated populations jacking into virtual reality realms; governments sidelined or incinerated. There were some notable exceptions: Novelists Kim Stanley Robinson and Ursula K. Le Guin, for example, imagined people living in closer harmony with nature or in worlds without capitalism. But they were outliers. The aughts, which brought us a second Iraq War, the Great Recession, and increasingly volatile natural disasters, also set the scene for astoundingly bleak bestselling young-adult series such as The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Maze Runner. Winter was coming, and as far as many sci-fi writers could prognosticate, humanity was unlikely to rise to the challenge.
Dystopic tales of the future can be valuable, showing us what might happen if we let malignant trends go unchecked. But for me, man, those warnings have long since sunk in. I wanted pointers to a path forward. Which is why I’ve become so intrigued with solarpunk.
Doctorow’s book is part of a sci-fi trend that’s gained traction in recent years, picking up on the threads Le Guin and Robinson laid down. Solarpunk poses a fascinating question: What would a world that had seriously tackled climate change look like?
Many solarpunk thinkers told me their first encounter with the idea, though he didn’t coin the term, was a 2014 essay by Adam Flynn, an American writer and public health strategist, titled “Solarpunk: Notes toward a manifesto”—his contribution to the Arizona State University sci-fi collaboration Project Hieroglyph.
“We’re solarpunks because the only other options are denial or despair,” Flynn wrote. Artists and activists needed to envision “ways to make life more wonderful for us right now, and more importantly for the generations that follow us…Imagine permaculturists thinking in cathedral time. Consider terraced irrigation systems that also act as fluidic computers. Contemplate the life of a Department of Reclamation officer managing a sparsely populated American southwest given over to solar collection and pump storage.”
Other writers were, it turns out, having similar thoughts. They were deeply worried about climate and weary of sci-fi’s doomerist turn. They wanted art that elucidated a way forward, so they set about creating fictional glimpses of a sustainable future. In a duet of novels, Becky Chambers sketched out a world where humanity had survived climactic collapse—the robots became self-aware and politely fled into the wilderness—and then figured out how to exist in a better balance with nature: Her characters live in skyscrapers engulfed with vines, ride e-bike camper vans powered by solar panel coatings, and have abandoned swaths of their world to the wild.
In Sarena Ulibarri’s 2023 novel Another Life, a communal society runs solar desalination plants that irrigate Death Valley. The 2018 Brazilian short-story anthology Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World includes a classic hard-bitten-detective whodunit set in a world where homes have biodigesters that turn kitchen scraps into fuel.
Solarpunk often depicts technology deployed not to conquer nature, but to complement it—sometimes in deeply weird ways. In the story “Thank Geo,” whose author goes by the moniker BrightFlame, humanity has wired trees with probes that let people talk to them.
The solarpunk community’s interests extend beyond literature, though. Some of the greatest ferment is online, where everyday folks cram into themed subreddits, Tumblrs, and Substacks, posting their mood-board images of a better future. Some of it is fantasy—solar airships with grappling hooks hovering over vertical farms—but more often, the posts involve solarpunkish things already happening: people planting guerrilla wetlands in aqueducts, solar-powered root cellars, “agrivoltaic” farms where sheep graze beneath industrial photovoltaic arrays. Broadly speaking, as Ulibarri put it to me, solarpunk depicts “a future that I might actually want to live in.”
Solarpunk characters are flawed, despite the genre’s optimism: “As a society, we have not become suddenly worthy of utopia.”
I have often assumed, naively, that societal transformation depends on explicitly political discourse. People write manifestos and policy papers, and political movements and parties build on and promote those ideas. But the world of solarpunk operates on the same understanding that propels Steve Bannon: Politics is downstream of culture. If you want to nudge people toward a better tomorrow, start with art. The point, said Jay Springett, a writer who co-manages a popular solarpunk Tumblr, is to give people “permission to imagine a future.”
Another way of thinking about it, Doctorow told me, is to follow philosopher Daniel Dennett’s argument that “fiction is an intuition pump.” When reading a novel, Doctorow explained, you might “kind of mentally rehearse what you should do when bad things happen, so in that moment you’re not paralyzed—like a fire drill.”
A lot of apocalyptic literature would prime us with terrible intuition: how to survive in a Hobbesian everyone-for-themselves scenario of neighbor slaughtering neighbor for scarce fuel and food. Novels like The Lost Cause bolster a competing notion: that surviving and thriving in the face of climate-driven disruption happens only if people band together and rely on sustainable technologies.
One intriguing aspect of solarpunk culture is that it feels proximal—achievable. The tech is scaled up, but much of it involves innovations we possess now, like solar panels, wind turbines, 3D printers, passive cooling systems, and recycling (on steroids). “One of the key tenets of solarpunk is that you don’t need to wait for new technology,” explained novelist and teacher Cameron Roberson. We don’t need unobtainium or warp drives—just political will.
Indeed, solarpunk often depicts societies and groups that have strayed from capitalism—or hierarchical governments of any sort. Decision-making is often racked with the bitter internecine squabbles for which nonhierarchical groups are infamous. But things work…more or less? Doctorow jokes that part of the thought experiment in The Lost Cause is: “What would it be like to have a space program or a skyscraper that you made like you made Wikipedia? It would have all the fights; it would have all the frustrations—but also, it would be a skyscraper!”
This anti-capitalist turn is probably the most speculative aspect of solarpunk. A popular adage is that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Solarpunk flips that on its head: If you’re going to imagine the world not ending, maybe you need to imagine a new economic system.
At its weakest, solarpunk can get treacly, with societies too well adjusted to seem believable and denizens as amiable as Winnie-the-Pooh. The most interesting stories, to me, are ones in which we tackle climate change but are still terrible to one another. In 2022’s The Peacekeeper, Chippewa novelist B.L. Blanchard imagines a contemporary North America that was never colonized. Native populations have all the mod cons—smartphones, etc.—but are still so nature-oriented that they lean hard into clean tech. Emissionless public transit abounds and huge mirrors along the Great Lakes reflect sunlight onto massive solar panels. But their world isn’t free of misdeed; The Peacekeeper is a murder mystery, complete with a tormented detective.
As novelist Roberson puts it, we can save the world and still lose ourselves. In his forthcoming novel, a noir tale, the tech is clean and the souls are dirty. “Government is still government, people are still people, criminals are still criminals,” he told me. “As a society, we have not become suddenly worthy of utopia.”
Solarpunk, by now, has adopted some weary sci-fi cliches and added a few of its own. Domed cities! Grandpa explaining to the grandkids how everything fell apart! 3D printers that seem to be able to manufacture, well, anything! Even real-world corporations have picked up on the subgenre’s gauzy imagery. Yogurt-maker Chobani released an animated commercial in 2021 depicting a farm serviced by moss-covered androids and pole-mounted raincloud generators. Solarpunk forums argued hotly about whether this was a) corporate greenwashing; b) a sign that their vision could appeal to a wider public; or, more likely, c) both.
There are political crossovers, too. On an Instagram Live in 2023, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she was a big believer in solarpunk—the yet-unsuccessful Green New Deal package she championed did, in fact, contain the very blend of energy policies and economic reforms (job guarantees, universal health care, progressive taxation) that solarpunks fantasize about.
“To go, in less than 10 years, from Tumblr, where you and I found it, to having people in the halls of power endorse your cultural project, that’s pretty good,” said Andrew Dana Hudson, who penned a series of solarpunk stories. “We built an entire cultural architectural aesthetic around powering things with gasoline and coal,” he added. Now artists and writers need to make the alternative just as sexy and appealing.
The time seems ripe. Theodra Bane, a professor at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, has taught a solarpunk class for three years now. Far more students apply to get in than she can accommodate. Roughly a third, Bane said, will say something along the lines of, “I don’t know what solarpunk is, but the course description led me to believe that it is a positive, optimistic class—and I need optimism right now.”
