Santos kicked out of Congress

The House of Representatives kicked out its only Jew-ish member today, sending George Santos into the pages of history as one of only a handful of House members to be booted from the body. 

Former congressman Santos had an eventful second wedding anniversary yesterday, as he held a feisty, fiery press conference to proclaim his innocence — but declined to ask any of his colleagues to defend him against the latest charges. 

This third attempt at expulsion proved to be the charm for Santos’s foes, who rode the wave of an almost-comedic House Ethics report that alleged Santos spent donor dollars on everything from OnlyFans subscriptions (which he somewhat denied) to Botox (which he basically confirmed). 

Santos didn’t do himself any favors, lashing out at his fellow Republicans like James Comer for failing to provide impeachment-worthy evidence against everyone from President Joe Biden to Ohio congressman Max Miller. Miller in turn alleged that Santos hijacked both his and his mother’s credit cards to fund his campaign.

In the end, even uniform opposition from House Republican leadership to the resolution to expel Santos wasn’t enough to save the self-identifying volleyball champ and Goldman Sachs banker. 

Interestingly, there’s now no shortage of chatter about a renewed push to levy consequences against Democratic senator Bob Menendez, who’s infamously accused of leveraging his office to benefit foreign countries. 

-Matthew Foldi 

On our radar

RIP, SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR Former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor passed away Friday at the age of ninety-three. She became the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court when she was appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. 

A HERO IN THE SENATE Senator Rand Paul used the Heimlich maneuver on Senator Joni Ernst when she began choking during a Senate lunch Thursday. 

STILL MAGA COUNTRY An appeals court upheld former Empire actor Jussie Smollett’s disorderly conduct conviction for lying to police about an alleged hate crime in which he claimed white Trump supporters yelled racial slurs at him and put a noose around his neck. 

Beef over BLM leader’s Trump endorsement

Governor Ron DeSantis and his campaign team are bashing President Donald Trump for accepting an endorsement from Black Lives Matter activist Mark Fisher. Trump stated that he felt “very honored” to receive Fisher’s endorsement and asserted that he had done more for black Americans than any other president, with the exception of maybe Abraham Lincoln. 

Fisher, who labels himself one of the co-founders of the Rhode Island BLM chapter, said that the Democratic Party perpetuates “racist policies,” while Trump “is the opposite.” The current leader of BLM Rhode Island claims that Fisher did not co-found the organization and is not affiliated with them in any way.

Still, DeSantis’s team heavily attacked Trump for accepting the endorsement, arguing that it was inappropriate given BLM’s role in the 2020 riots. 

“BLM praising Donald Trump — and Trump celebrating it — makes perfect sense,” DeSantis posted on X on Wednesday. “When BLM was burning down cities and assaulting police officers in cities across this country, Trump did nothing but sit in the White House tweeting ‘LAW & ORDER!’ We did it differently in Florida. I didn’t just tweet.”

–Juan P. Villasmil

Elon Musk bucks fellow billionaires

Tesla founder and X owner Elon Musk stunned the crowd — and interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin — at the New York Times’s Dealbook Summit on Wednesday when he told corporations who pulled their ads from the social media platform, “Go fuck yourselves.”

Multiple corporations, including Disney, opted to no longer place advertisements on X after reports that their ads were being shown next to offensive content. Musk said he wouldn’t accept those companies attempting to “blackmail” him, asserting, “If someone is going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is.”

Musk is also currently suing Media Matters, the organization behind some of the corporate ad boycotts. Musk says Media Matters committed fraud by deliberately gaming X’s server into delivering them ads alongside pro-Nazi and antisemitic posts and then claiming this was indicative of the average user experience. 

–Cockburn