House Republicans are now suddenly trying to send George Santos through a trap door

It was always a given that as George Santos’ numerous scandals got even uglier and he got closer to trial, House Republicans would begin seriously considering whether to expel him. For one thing, many of them will have a harder time getting reelected in 2024 if he’s still in the conversation. On top of that, once he’s in prison, his vote will be of no use to them anyway.

So it’s not surprising that, even after the initial expulsion vote against Santos failed weeks ago, the odds of his ouster are now climbing. The Republican-controlled House Ethics Committee has released a damning report recommending his expulsion, and a number of House Republicans who previously voted against expulsion are now coming out in favor of it.

The way these things work is that if and when there are indeed enough votes to expel Santos, House Republican leadership will go to him privately and give him the option of resigning instead of having to face the humiliation of expulsion. It appears that has now happened, given that “Speaker” Mike Johnson is telling reporters that he’s spoken with Santos “about his options.”

Most people in George Santos’ position would rather resign than be expelled. But Santos is a different kind of character, to put it mildly. He spent the weekend publicly threatening to expose the scandals of unnamed House Republicans and take them down with him. It’s not clear if Santos actually has this kind of dirt or if he’s merely bluffing to try to fend off expulsion. We’ll see.

But when it comes to every political office holder who has resigned amid scandal, there was previously a point where they had very loudly and defiantly insisted they would never resign and would go down swinging. So we’ll see if Santos ends up caving and resigning like so many others before him. Even if he doesn’t resign, the odds of expulsion seem to keep going up. So we need to be ready to gear up for a potential special election to replace him at any time. The leading Democratic candidate to replace him is Anna Kaplan. Get to know her.