Happy Tuesday.
While the rest of the country is already well into the workweek, Congress is just getting started. Must be nice.
But as they drag their feet on a growing list of priorities that Americans demand, from the SAVE America Act to funding the Department of Homeland Security, there's at least one thing they could get done quickly. Something simple that shouldn't drag out any longer than it already has.
Expelling Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick.
It's been nearly six months since the Florida Democrat was charged with stealing $5 million in FEMA disaster relief funds, money prosecutors say she used to bankroll the very campaign that got her into Congress. That primary campaign was won by five votes, and in a seat where that's effectively the election, it meant the seat and everything that comes with it. The salary, the staff, the offices, the travel, and the power that she's been enjoying ever since.
Republicans didn't wait around when it was one of their own. They expelled George Santos with a razor-thin majority and gave up the seat.
Now months have passed, and she is still there.
And during that time, she's been trying to cover it all up.
Her official congressional portrait already showed her sporting a roughly $100,000 yellow diamond ring—one prosecutors say she bought with the very FEMA funds at the center of the case. By Christmas, I caught her posting the same image with the ring inconspicuously photoshopped out.
Not suspicious at all.
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And when she finally had a chance to address it all publicly, she didn't exactly help herself. At an ethics hearing flanked by Carmen Sandiego, she tried to jump in and clarify things for the latest in a string of attorneys, only to have Democrats tell her to shut up before she made herself look worse.
The ethics panel later found her guilty on 25 charges.
So, what are we waiting for?
Florida Republicans Anna Paulina Luna and Greg Steube have been pushing to move this forward, and they are right to do so. Every day this continues is another day taxpayers are funding it.
But why stop there when her seat is part of the problem?
Florida's 20th congressional district isn't competitive, and it's not by accident. It's a racial gerrymander the state was forced to draw, stringing together far-flung pockets of Palm Beach and Broward across the Everglades into something that gives Democrats a guaranteed seat.
That has consequences.
It distorts the districts around it, disenfranchising voters. You're not looking at a seat that competes for support, you're looking at democracy rigged before a vote is cast.
That's not free and fair.
With the Supreme Court taking another look at how these maps are being forced across the country, Florida lawmakers are going to have an opportunity in a special session to revisit their own. Not to chase a partisan edge, but to fix something broken, to redraw lines that actually make sense, and to give more Floridians a real voice in who represents them.
That opportunity is coming. They need to take it.
But Congress doesn't need to wait.
Expel Sheila.
Today would be a great day to do it.
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