A Week of Scandal, Reckoning and Resignations in Congress

What It Covers

NYT congressional reporter Michael Gold examines how two members of Congress — Republican Tony Gonzalez and Democrat Eric Swalwell — resigned within an hour of each other amid serious sexual misconduct allegations, and what their departures reveal about Congress's willingness to self-police versus protect its political majority.

Key Questions Answered

• •Congressional self-policing threshold: Expulsion requires a two-thirds House majority and has occurred only six times in U.S. history. The George Santos case in 2023 established that the House can accelerate ethics investigations when political will exists, clearing the two-thirds bar on the third attempt after an ethics report documented campaign finance fraud and personal misuse of funds.
• •The "political pairing" dynamic: Congress demonstrated it acts on misconduct primarily when partisan balance is preserved. The Swalwell-Gonzalez situation only gained expulsion momentum once one Democrat and one Republican were simultaneously implicated, allowing members to remove both without shifting the House majority — revealing accountability as politically conditional rather than principled.
• •Speaker majority math blocks accountability: Speaker Mike Johnson's resistance to expediting Gonzalez's discipline stemmed directly from a razor-thin House majority where losing even one vote jeopardizes major legislation. Recognizing this dynamic helps explain why admissions of rule-breaking — Gonzalez explicitly acknowledged violating the 2018 House rule banning member-staff relationships — do not automatically trigger swift institutional consequences.
• •The 2018 House staff relationship rule: Congress passed an explicit rule in 2018 prohibiting members from engaging in romantic or sexual relationships with their own staff. Gonzalez admitted violating this rule after a coercive relationship with an aide who later died by suicide. Despite the admission, leadership defaulted to slow ethics committee process rather than immediate disciplinary action.
• •Resignation as accountability escape hatch: Both Gonzalez and Swalwell chose their own exit terms rather than facing a House expulsion vote. This pattern — where accused members resign before a formal vote — allows individuals to frame departure on their own terms, avoids creating an official expulsion record, and relieves colleagues of casting a politically difficult vote while leaving criminal investigations unresolved.