When an email landed in my inbox letting me know my elusive congressman Cory Mills was holding a town hall I didn’t know what to expect because my congressman has spent the last year generating headlines like he’s trapped in a crossover between “Love Island” and “Cops.” On top of that, there’s been accusations by veterans of stolen valor and ethics complaints so bad they achieved the impossible in Washington: uniting Republicans and Democrats in a place where bipartisanship is pretty much extinct. So I braced myself for something less like constituent outreach and more like a TikTok live beef. Congressman Mills did not disappoint.
Questions were written down and submitted to his staff to be prescreened, because nothing says “I’m here to do the hard work” like filtering out anything challenging. His staff read the questions out and we got off to an explosive start when he was asked about ICE — and his verbal shrug didn’t really seem to hit the mark for most of the room. One woman challenged what he said and invoked the names Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two civilians killed by federal agents during protests in Minneapolis. After some back and forth, Mills sniggered and said “I just wanna say this … ICE, ICE, baby.” There was a second of stunned silence before the room erupted in boos and jeers. I guess being mocked by your own representative is now just part of the immersive town hall experience.
Mills then shifted to an important reminder that our political discourse has become too heated. He urged both Republicans and Democrats to tone down the rhetoric. This was a powerful message, delivered shortly before he challenged a veteran to a boxing match on stage. I thought that contrast really helped it land. Instead of fighting for his constituents, it looks like Mills prefers just to fight them.
Next on Mills’ town-hall to-do list was telling us he’d self-reported all of the ethics issues against him, which sounds impressive until you check and see the referral actually came from the Office of Congressional Conduct, an independent watchdog.
When my question was read out about whether the almost $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts in HR 1 (the so-called Big Beautiful Bill) would mean people with disabilities, like me, would lose the services that keep them out of institutions, the congressman’s answer took a detour through California’s state budget and ended on fraud. California’s state-funded decisions have nothing to do with federal Medicaid matching dollars, but that detail seemed lost on Mills. I was asking him for the simplest possible reassurance, that no Floridian would lose services solely because of his vote and his response was fraud.
For people like me whose lives depend on Medicaid, it revealed just how casually existential questions can be waved away when you don’t actually understand the system you’re voting to cut. While millionaires like Mills are getting massive tax cuts, ordinary Americans are losing access to health care. Medicaid funding will be slashed and disability services are going to be put on the chopping block and cutting health care isn’t just cruel, it’s mathematically illiterate.
JJ Holmes can’t use his own voice but uses a computer program to give voice to the plights of Floridians with disabilities, traveling to Tallahassee and elsewhere as an outspoken advocate for disadvantaged populations. For that reason, he was one of two people and one group honored by Orlando’s Christian Service Center on Friday.
What he clearly doesn’t understand is when people lose insurance, they don’t stop getting sick, they just stop going to the doctor. They wait until small problems become emergencies, then they show up in the ER, where treatment costs 10 times more. And when they can’t pay, hospitals don’t quietly absorb the loss, they pass it on to everyone who does have insurance. So congratulations, fiscal hawks, you didn’t save money. You just made health care more expensive for the people who were already paying.
After the Cory Mills experience, it’s easy to think this is just how Congress works now. But that illusion dies fast when you look at his House colleague, Rep. Maxwell Frost. Frost manages to do the same job without scandal, chaos or contempt. No ethics saga. No reality-show energy. If I was one district over, I’d get representation. Here, I get a performance.
JJ Holmes is a 21-year-old college student and disability advocate from Longwood, and a 2025 Central Floridian of the Year.
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2026/02/08/commentary-cory-mills-town-hall-was-merely-performative/
