George Santos, the first-term GOP Congressman from New York who it seems only increasingly unlikely will be returning to Congress no matter his insistence on ostensibly running for re-election, will soon see who his allies in the Republican Party really are.
Democrats have introduced a measure called a privileged resolution, which as reports have explained, mandates a vote within just a couple days of introduction. It seems the measure would need to survive multiple rounds of voting in the chamber for it to actually pass, and enacting the expulsion initiative would require the agreement of two-thirds of the chamber — which is something it’s unclear the resolution’s supporters would be able to get. Still, the whole scenario will force a documentation of whether individual Republican members of Congress are willing to support the continued presence in Congress of someone currently accused by federal prosecutors of lying to that very chamber and whose evident inclination towards outright deception in just about any public context has been well documented.
Democrats launched their latest effort against Santos on Tuesday, meaning a vote might come by Thursday. A comparatively small number of House Republicans, including figures from Santos’s state of New York, have condemned Santos, and there have been calls for his resignation — so will some of these figures be willing to support pushing Santos out of Congress entirely?
Republican leaders in the House like Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise have been almost entirely hesitant to pursue substantial action against Santos, who is already off his committee assignments in the House but still has the opportunity to otherwise participate in the legislative process. Polling from before the criminal charges against him were unveiled already found over three-fourths of his constituents supported the idea of his resignation, which would come after he was even found to have seemingly lied about having family connections to the Holocaust.
