Swalwell, Gonzales, Mills, and Cherfilus-McCormick Out as Representatives? Term Structure Mispricing on a Single-Member Question
· By Tyler James Webber
Kalshi's three-contract House departure series has reduced to a single referendum on Cory Mills after three of four legs already resolved YES. The market prices Mills' exit at 19/29/68% across June, July, and November deadlines; we model fair value at 5/12/42%. BUY NO across the curve, with the November contract sized Full at +21 points of edge.
Kalshi's three-contract House departure series asks whether all four named representatives — Tony Gonzales, Eric Swalwell, Cory Mills, and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick — will have left the chamber before each of three deadlines. Three of those four departures are already complete and confirmed. The series, therefore, reduces to a single underlying question: when does Cory Mills depart?
The market is pricing his exit probability at roughly 19, 29, and 68% against the three deadlines, but this analysis estimates the true probabilities at approximately 5, 12, and 42%. All three contracts trade NO at a discount to fair value, with the longest-dated contract offering the widest and most durable edge.
| Window | Position | Fair value | Market | Edge | Conviction | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | Before Nov 3, 2026 | BUY NO at 37¢ | 58¢ NO | 68% YES | +21.0 pp | 6/10 (Full) | | Before Jul 1, 2026 | BUY NO at 71¢ | 88¢ NO | 29% YES | +17.0 pp | 6/10 (Reduced) | | Before Jun 1, 2026 | BUY NO at 83¢ | 95¢ NO | 19% YES | +11.7 pp | 5/10 (Small) |
Kalshi term structure for the four-name House departure series, Apr 13 – May 10, 2026. The November contract has held steady around 62-68% while the June and July contracts drifted lower as the calendar tightened.
Thesis. The market overweights Mills' departure probability at every horizon and propagates the same overpricing across the term structure. The House is in spring recess until Tuesday, May 12, 2026, leaving roughly 12 to 14 legislative days in the May session block before the June 1 deadline against a procedural pathway that would require either a privileged motion or a full Ethics referral. Speaker Mike Johnson has explicitly opposed expulsion before the Ethics Committee completes its work. Representative Nancy Mace's pressure campaign has diffused toward Rep. Chuck Edwards and broader Office of Congressional Workplace Rights disclosures, and as of Wednesday, May 6, 2026, her office could not provide a timeline on House Resolution 1193. Mills himself has refused to resign for over two weeks running and faces an August primary with a Trump endorsement in hand. Mills' Ethics process has been formally underway since the Committee announced its investigation on March 27, 2025. An Investigative Subcommittee was seated in November 2025, and the analogous Cherfilus-McCormick process took multiple years from initial Office of Congressional Ethics involvement to resolution. Six expulsions in 237 years of House history complete this structural picture.
Key dates. May 12, 2026 (House returns from recess); May 25, 2026 (start of Memorial Day recess); June 1, 2026 (first resolution); July 1, 2026 (second resolution); November 3, 2026 (final resolution).
Market Question. The Kalshi contract resolves YES if Representatives Gonzales (R-TX-23), Swalwell (D-CA-14), Mills (R-FL-7), and Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL-20) all have actual departure dates from the U.S. House before each of the three deadlines. Three nested binary contracts trade against the same four-name basket, differing only in their resolution windows.
Event Overview. Three of the four departures have already occurred and are confirmed. Swalwell resigned with immediate effect at 2:00 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, April 14, 2026, with a special election scheduled for August 18, 2026. Gonzales filed for retirement on the same day, effective at 11:59 p.m. Eastern. Cherfilus-McCormick resigned on Tuesday, April 21, 2026, minutes before a House Ethics Committee floor sanctions vote on which a special bipartisan subcommittee had found her guilty on 25 of 27 charges. Mills, by contrast, remains in office.
The Office of Congressional Ethics referred his case to the Ethics Committee in August 2024, with the Committee announcing a formal investigation on March 27, 2025. On November 19, 2025 the Ethics Committee voted to establish an Investigative Subcommittee covering financial disclosure, campaign finance, gifts, sexual misconduct and dating violence, and misuse of official resources, and on November 20, 2025, the House referred Mace's parallel censure resolution (H.Res. 893) back to Ethics by a 310 to 103 vote, with 12 members voting Present (Roll Call 302). The subcommittee was named with Garbarino as chair, Subramanyam as ranking member, and Yakym and Pressley as the remaining members; it received a second Office of Congressional Conduct referral on December 22, 2025.
On Monday evening, April 20, 2026, Representative Mace introduced House Resolution 1193 to expel Mills as a non-privileged measure. The resolution has not been scheduled for a floor vote. On April 21, 2026, Mills told reporters he would not resign and that the Ethics process should run its course; Speaker Johnson confirmed the same day that he is not in favor of the expulsion measure and considers Mills entitled to the same due process afforded other members.
Significance. With three of four legs at probability 1, the joint probability collapses to whatever probability the trader assigns to Mills' departure. The contract is a single referendum on whether leadership, Ethics, or Mills himself produces a departure inside each window.
Current Odds. The June 1, 2026 contract last traded at 19% YES (NO ask 83¢). The July 1, 2026 contract traded at 29% YES (NO ask 71¢). The November 3 contract traded at 68% YES (NO ask 37¢). Combined series volume is modest at roughly $42,000, which limits practical sizing across the term structure but does not invalidate the analytical signal.
Price Movement. Pricing has been stable since approximately April 22, 2026, the day after the Cherfilus-McCormick resignation and Mills's first on-the-record refusal to resign. The June and July contracts have drifted lower over the past two weeks as the House calendar tightened and Mace's office failed to advance House Resolution 1193 beyond introduction. The November contract has held steady around 68%, suggesting the market views the longer horizon as adequately containing whatever Ethics Committee findings, primary outcomes, or pre-midterm cleanup pressure may emerge.
Crowd Narrative. The pricing implies that Mills' departure is more likely than not by November 3, with roughly a 1-in-3 chance by July 1 and 1-in-5 by June 1. Three things appear to drive this: the April 20-21 sequence (Mace's expulsion filing and Cherfilus-McCormick's resignation the next morning), the accumulating allegations against Mills, and recency bias from three departures already in the basket. The Hill, Newsweek, and CNN coverage that week framed Mills as the next domino, and the market has priced that framing forward.
Expert Predictions. No major forecaster has published a public probability on Mills' departure. Speaker Johnson stated on April 21 that intra-party expulsion is not something he encourages, that the chamber has a process, that the Ethics Committee ensures due process for all members, and that he is not in favor of the Mace measure. Mace's office declined to provide a timeline as of Wednesday, May 6, 2026, per The Hill. Newsweek reported on April 22 that Ethics Committee findings on Mills were likely to remain confidential for several more weeks. No primary source has projected a near-term resignation.
Position. BUY NO on the November 3, 2026 contract at 37¢ (Full). BUY NO on the July 1, 2026 contract at 71¢ (Reduced). BUY NO on the June 1, 2026 contract at 83¢ (Small). The November contract is the primary position. Edge is largest, stress survival is best, and the resolution window is long enough to absorb most adverse single-event updates while still expiring before the Ethics Committee's likely natural completion timeline.
Fair Value Methodology
The four-leg market reduces to a one-leg bet. Probabilities for the three confirmed departures are 1. The joint probability of YES on any contract is equal to the probability that Cory Mills has an actual departure date before the deadline.
Mills' departure probability is built bottom-up from three pathways. Voluntary resignation is the dominant scenario, calibrated against the Cherfilus-McCormick and Santos precedents, both of which featured chamber action only after Ethics Committee findings had been completed. Cherfilus-McCormick resigned in April 2026 only after a special bipartisan subcommittee returned guilty findings on 25 of 27 charges, the culmination of a multi-year process. Santos was indicted in May 2023, survived an initial expulsion vote on November 1, 2023, by a 179-213 margin, and was expelled a month later only after the Ethics Committee released a damning report. Mills has been under formal Ethics Committee investigation since March 27, 2025 (roughly 13 months), and his Investigative Subcommittee has been seated for roughly 5.5 months, placing him at an early-middle stage in either historical analog with measurable but incomplete procedural maturation.
Expulsion via floor vote is structurally improbable. Six expulsions across 237 years of House history yields a raw base rate of roughly one event per 40 years, and three of those six were Confederate-era removals in 1861. The two-thirds supermajority requirement, approximately 290 votes, is a hard procedural barrier rarely cleared, especially against a co-partisan in a narrow majority. Speaker Johnson controls floor scheduling and has stated the chamber should defer to Ethics. Mace's prior censure resolution against Mills was referred back to Ethics in November 2025, demonstrating the leadership's preferred procedural off-ramp. Other pathways, including death or medical incapacitation, are calibrated against Social Security Administration actuarial tables for a man in Mills' age cohort and contribute trivial residual probability.
| Pathway | Before Jun 1 | +Jul 1 (incremental) | +Nov 3 (incremental) | |---|---|---|---| | Voluntary resignation | 4.0% | 6.0% | 27.0% | | Expulsion floor vote (2/3) | 1.0% | 0.5% | 2.5% | | Other (death, medical, withdrawal) | 0.3% | 0.2% | 0.5% | | Aggregate Mills departure | 5.3% | 12.0% | 42.0% |
Because the other three legs of the basket are essentially at 1, these figures are also the YES fair values. NO fair values are therefore 94.7¢, 88¢, and 58¢, against market NO asks of 83, 71, and 37¢ respectively. Buying NO at the displayed ask captures edges of 11.7, 17, and 21pp.
The House calendar gives leadership room to slow-walk. The chamber is in spring recess until Tuesday, May 12, 2026. The May session block runs roughly through May 29, with a Memorial Day break, yielding approximately 12 to 14 legislative days before the June 1 deadline. That is more time than would be needed for a privileged resolution, but H.Res.1193 was filed as a non-privileged measure and has not been referred or scheduled. Without leadership action between now and June 1, the calendar produces a default of inaction, which favors NO. Speaker Johnson is on record opposing expulsion before Ethics completes. His statement on April 21 invoked due process and pointed to Ethics as the chamber's preferred forum. The Republican leadership controls floor scheduling, and Mace's earlier censure resolution (H.Res. 893) was already deflected once when the House voted to refer it to Ethics by 310 to 103, with 12 voting Present, on November 20, 2025. That recorded supermajority vote established a documented chamber preference for the Ethics route over direct sanction; reversing it on a Mills-specific expulsion vote inside this term structure would be a procedural break with the chamber's own recent posture. Mace's pressure campaign is diffusing. Within two weeks of the April 21 sequence, Mace publicly shifted partial focus to allegations against Representative Chuck Edwards and to broader Office of Congressional Workplace Rights disclosures revealing over $300,000 in past taxpayer-funded misconduct settlements. Her office told The Hill on May 6 it had no new timeline on H.Res.1193. Mills has not blinked. His public posture has held for over two weeks with no reversal, no leak of resignation rumors, and no withdrawal from his August 18 primary, which has now drawn at least one named challenger (former Orlando news anchor Ryan Elijah, who entered the race on April 28). His Trump endorsement remains in place. Mills briefly threatened a counter-expulsion resolution against Mace before backing down at Speaker Johnson's urging. The Ethics process is procedurally active but not yet at the resolution stage. The Ethics Committee has been formally investigating Mills since March 27, 2025, the Investigative Subcommittee was seated on November 19, 2025, and a second Office of Congressional Conduct referral was folded into the inquiry on December 22, 2025. Newsweek reported on April 22, 2026 that committee findings would remain confidential for additional weeks. The Cherfilus-McCormick and Santos predecessors both involved completed Ethics findings before chamber resolution; Mills is past the launch phase but not yet at completion. The December 22 second referral is a notable countersignal worth monitoring, since it indicates the case is expanding inside the panel rather than narrowing. The historical base rate is forbidding. Six expulsions in 237 years of House history, the most recent being George Santos in December 2023, roughly seven months after his federal indictment and only following a damning Ethics Committee report, render expulsion a rare and slow outcome. Santos, in fact, survived an initial expulsion vote before ultimately being expelled. Voluntary resignation among members under active Ethics investigation clusters in the final weeks before public sanctions, a phase Mills has not yet reached.
The key variable is Mills' departure probability. The table below tests how each NO position survives if that probability is revised upward by 10, 20, or 30pp. Each contract collapses where the adverse update equals its starting edge: June at +11.7, July at +17.0, November at +21.0.
| Stress on Mills probability | Edge on Jun 1 NO | Edge on Jul 1 NO | Edge on Nov 3 NO | |---|---|---|---| | Base case (5%, 12%, 42%) | +11.7 pp | +17.0 pp | +21.0 pp | | +10 pp adverse update | +1.7 pp | +7.0 pp | +11.0 pp | | +20 pp adverse update | −8.3 pp | −3.0 pp | +1.0 pp | | +30 pp adverse update | −18.3 pp | −13.0 pp | −9.0 pp |
The November contract holds positive edge through a 10-point update and barely clears break-even at 20. The July contract holds through a 10-point update. The June contract collapses on the first stress level. The June position fails the first stress level for a structural reason: the market YES of 19% is approximately 3.6× the analytical estimate of 5.3%, the typical pattern for short-dated NO positions on low-base-rate events. The position is correctly priced with some edge, but carries no buffer for new information. The November position absorbs roughly 21 points of adverse revision before edge disappears, and that buffer is the single most important reason it is the primary trade in the series.
Cross-Market Consistency and Conviction
The market overprices both incremental term-structure windows, but not by a uniform multiple. The fair-value increment from June 1 to July 1 is 6.7pp against a market increment of 10pp (overpricing ratio 1.49). From July 1 to November 3, it is 30pp against 39pp (ratio 1.30). Both ratios exceed one, and the contracts are logically consistent across deadlines (longer windows are priced higher than shorter ones).
Conviction is 6/10 on the November and July contracts, 5/10 on the June contract. Data quality is moderate (1.5/3): three of four legs are confirmed by public record, but the Mills-specific picture rests on public statements, House calendar mechanics, and journalistic characterization rather than internal Ethics signals or whip counts. Model confidence is moderate-to-strong (2.5/4): Speaker control of floor scheduling, the supermajority math, and the Cherfilus-McCormick and Santos precedents all point in the same direction. Completeness is moderate (2/3): the analysis cannot fully model surprise triggers such as a leaked Ethics finding, a Trump endorsement withdrawal, or any movement on the unsigned February 2025 arrest warrant.
Surprise resignation is the primary risk: the three predecessor cases all involved last-moment capitulation just before formal chamber action, and a leaked Ethics finding, an undisclosed legal exposure (the unsigned February 2025 District of Columbia arrest warrant remains a wild card), withdrawal of the Trump endorsement, or quiet leadership pressure could trigger a Mills resignation within days. Such a rumor would collapse the June 1 edge entirely, compress the July edge sharply, and absorb into the November edge with a materially diminished cushion.
A forced floor vote is the secondary risk: when the House returns on May 12, 2026, Mace could attempt to bring H.Res.1193 as a privileged resolution under House Rule IX, and even a failed expulsion vote would re-rate market expectations upward by demonstrating congressional appetite. The June contract is most exposed; the November contract is least exposed, since a failed early vote would actually make a successful later vote less likely.
Tertiary risks include changing political dynamics around the August primary and any Trump distancing.
May 12, 2026: any Mace move to bring H.Res.1193 as a privileged resolution pushes all three contracts higher (June most affected); absence of any procedural motion in the first three legislative days pushes June and July lower. Late May through June: any Ethics Committee finding repositions the term structure. Sanctions recommendations push prices toward YES (bad for NO holders, especially the November leg). A dismissal pushes prices toward NO (good for the position, especially the November leg). August 18, 2026: the Mills primary. A loss eliminates his strongest political argument for staying and raises the probability of a post-primary resignation on the remaining November contract. Trump endorsement status throughout: withdrawal at any point is the single most consequential signal short of an actual resignation announcement and would push all three contracts higher. Any procedural action that converts the unsigned February 2025 arrest warrant into an active matter substantially elevates departure probability and is not currently priced.
The contract has reduced to a single referendum on Cory Mills, and the structural picture (current spring recess, Speaker Johnson's explicit opposition, Mace's diffusing focus, Mills' hardened public stance, and the multi-year precedent for Ethics process completion) supports a Mills departure probability well below what the term structure implies.
The November 3 contract at 37¢ is the optimal trade in the series: 21 points of edge, the strongest stress survival, and a six-month window that contains the Ethics Committee's likely completion, the August primary, and the pre-midterm cleanup window. Sized Full. The July contract at 71¢ is a strong secondary with first-stress survival, sized Reduced. The June contract at 83¢ has the strongest underlying conviction but the weakest stress buffer, sized Small.