A congressman’s ex got a protective order against him. His boss has little to say about it | Arwa Mahdawi

The party of family values strikes again

Meet Cory Mills, a Republican congressman representing Florida. He is rabidly anti-abortion, incredibly anti-immigration, and obsequiously pro-Trump. Earlier this year, perhaps in a desperate bid to get Dear Leader to notice him, he introduced a bill, dubbed the “DON-ument Act”, which would make the wall on the US-Mexico border a national monument.

In the great tradition of Republican congressmen from Florida (hello, Matt Gaetz!), it turns out Mills may also be a misogynistic creep. On Tuesday, a Florida judge granted a protective order against Mills at the request of his former girlfriend, Lindsey Langston, the reigning Miss United States. Langston, who is 19 years younger than 45-year-old Mills, told authorities she started a romantic relationship with the lawmaker in 2021, when Mills was still married but reportedly separated from his wife.

According to Langston, after the breakup, Mills threatened to release nude images of her and harm any future boyfriends. The congressman has called the allegations “false” and hasn’t been charged with a crime, but, according to the New York Times, the judge said he did not find Mills’ “testimony concerning the intimate videos to be truthful” and granted an order restricting Mills from going within 500 feet of his ex’s residence or referring to her on social media. The court found that Langston “has reasonable cause to believe she is in imminent danger of becoming the victim of another act of dating violence”.

Langston reportedly ended their relationship in February. That month also saw news reports that Mills was being investigated for an alleged assault on a 27-year-old woman called Sarah Raviani. This wasn’t his wife, if you’re trying to keep track. Rather, according to WRC-TV in Washington, who obtained an earlier version of the police report, Raviani was his “significant other for over a year”. When the authorities turned up she had bruises on her arm and that same police report, according to USA Today, “states Mills instructed the victim to lie about how she obtained bruises on her arms”. Raviani told the Daytona Beach News-Journal her bruising was caused by a medical condition and Mills, who has denied wrongdoing, was not arrested or charged with anything.

Mills doesn’t just seem to have issues with these romantic partners; he seems to have quite a few problems meeting his financial obligations. Earlier this year the Republican was accused of failing to pay $85,000 in rent. His landlord tried to evict him after he failed to pay his monthly $20,833 rent between March and July. Most congressmen get paid $174,000 a year so I can understand why he struggled to pay an annual rent that was far higher than his salary. Mills, for his part, blamed an online payment problem for the issue and said he ended up paying his back rent later. The claims against him were dismissed.

Poor old Mills always seems to get blamed for problems that are absolutely not his fault. He is also facing an investigation by the House ethics committee over allegations he held contracts with the US government while in Congress, in relation to a weapons company he founded a decade ago. So far, this investigation doesn’t seem to have had much impact on his career.

We hear all the time about how the GOP is the party of law and order and family values. What, you might be wondering, do Mills’s colleagues have to say about all his run-ins with the law? Not much!

“You have to ask Representative Mills about that,” said Mike Johnson, the House speaker, when asked about the allegations against Mills this week. “He’s been a faithful colleague here. I know his work on the Hill. I don’t know all the details … Let’s talk about things that are really serious.”

Yes, let’s talk about things that are really serious, shall we? Because clearly being investigated for allegedly assaulting one girlfriend and then allegedly threatening to release sexual videos of another girlfriend aren’t serious at all. Certainly nothing that might disqualify someone from being a politician in a country that is led by an adjudicated sexual predator.

From Matt Gaetz to Mills to Pete Hegseth to Roy Moore, the list of people in Trump’s orbit accused of sexual misconduct seems to grow by the day. And yet, funnily enough, a common theme among Republican men accused of sexual misconduct is that it’s trans people who are the real threat to women. “We must stop the lefts attack on women,” Mills wrote on X in 2022. “We must stand to protect women from biological males competing unfairly,” Mills wrote in another X post. If Mills is what Republicans “protecting” women looks like, I think I’ll pass.

Costa Rica’s president limits abortion to life-threatening cases

Fulfilling a promise he had previous given religious conservatives, President Rodrigo Chaves has limited abortion access to situations when the mother’s life is in danger. Before running for president in 2022, Chaves worked at the World Bank, where he was accused of sexually harassing various women and was eventually sanctioned for misconduct. He has denied the allegations. Seems like he would fit in well with the Republican party.

Virginia Giuffre on her abuse at the hands of Epstein and Maxwell

“So many young women, myself included, have been criticised for returning to Epstein’s lair even after we knew what he wanted from us,” Giuffre writes in her posthumous memoir, an extract of which is published in the Guardian. “But that stance discounts what many of us had been through before we encountered Epstein, as well as how good he was at spotting girls whose wounds made them vulnerable. Several of us had been molested or raped as children; many of us were poor or even homeless. We were girls who no one cared about, and Epstein pretended to care … And then, he did his worst to them.”

TikTok watches are desperate for a Crock-pot cauldron

There’s been a lot of toil and trouble brewing on WitchTok recently, after Crock-Pot apparently reneged on its promise to make a slow cooker in the shape of a cauldron. Not very sensible to get on the bad side of internet witches; they have quite the track record.

Kim Kardashian is now selling a thong with a built-in pubic wig

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I’d love to hear what the ghost of Wilde has to say about this. You know it would be pithy.

Queer and trans immigrants allege forced labor and sexual assault in Ice facility

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The week in pawtriarchy

Chicago’s Roscoe Village is home to a funny-looking shape in the sidewalk that looks like a rat fell at high speed from outer space into wet concrete. The ro-dent, known as the Chicago Rat Hole or “Splatatouille”, has become something of a viral sensation and tourist attractions. Turns out, however, that no rats were harmed in the making of the hole. Rather, after conducting a serious scientific inquiry, a team of researchers now believes there’s a 98.67% chance the hole was actually made by a squirrel. It’s a sad tale, but at least that poor squirrel made its mark on the world.

• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist