February 24, 2026 09:08 AM UTC

Boebert Leads Charge For Fellow Republican's Resignation

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• by: Colorado Pols

As Rachel Schilke reports for the Phil Anschutz-owned Washington Examiner, Colorado’s cantankerous carpetbagging caldron of calamity Rep. Lauren Boebert appears to have once again set aside partisanship to strike a blow for victimized women everywhere, demanding the resignation of Texas GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales after horrendous revelations of an affair with a staffer that ended in tragedy:

Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) received his first call to resign on Monday from a fellow House Republican after evidence emerged that he sent explicit late-night text messages to a staffer who died by setting herself on fire.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) told the Washington Examiner that Gonzales should be ashamed of his conduct and needed to “resign immediately.”

“I’ve never been a fan of Open Borders Tony. Liars and cheaters aren’t my favorite either,” Beobert said in a text message. “The late night text messages released today seemingly show a perverted boss drunkenly coercing a vulnerable staffer into explicit conversations, pressing her for ‘sexy pics,’ asking about her favorite sexual positions, and even inquiring if she liked ‘anal’ all while she repeatedly pushed back, telling him it was ‘going too far, boss’ and questioning if he was sober. This kind of abuse of power has no place anywhere, let alone in Congress, and Tony Gonzales should be ashamed and RESIGN IMMEDIATELY.”

But as Bayliss Wagner (the most Texas name we’ve heard this week) reports for the San Antonio Express-News, House Speaker Mike Johnson can’t afford to lose yet another Republican vote with a slim four-seat majority:

But the condemnation from the party’s rightmost wing has yet to reach Republican leadership. The chamber’s most powerful Republicans have seemed reluctant to call on Gonzales to step aside as they fight to hold together a thin and fragmented majority, where a loss of a single vote could decide the fate of major legislative packages. Neither President Donald Trump nor House Speaker Mike Johnson have rescinded their endorsements of Gonzales, who has dismissed the latest attacks as “personal smears.”

Pressed about the growing calls for Gonzales to resign yesterday, Speaker Johnson once again refused to join them:

“There are serious accusations, and it must be taken seriously, and I’ve told him he’s got to address that with his constituents and, and he’s in the process of doing that,” the speaker told CNN.

“It is my understanding there’s an investigation in the state of Texas on these matters and has been going for some time, and the Office of Congressional Conduct has also, it’s been reported, they’ve been looking at it and all of that was news to me. But I … think as in every case like this, you have to allow the investigations to play out and all the facts to come out.”

The short answer Johnson can’t give: Gonzales isn’t going anywhere, because no matter what misconduct he committed, even resulting in the horrific death by suicide of a member of his staff, the margin of Republican control of the U.S. House is simply too narrow to spare him. Johnson’s dodge is one of the frankest acknowledgements of the total moral abdication of today’s Republican Party we’ve seen since…well, the Epstein files.

Once again, no matter what other criticisms you have of Rep. Boebert, and they continue to aggregate, her refusal to let high-profile scandals involving the mistreatment of women by powerful men go down the memory hole is commendable. In this case, Boebert is doing so despite the significant hurdle Gonzales’ resignation would pose to passing further legislation in this Congress.

So here we are again giving unexpected credit where due.