Heading For The Exit and Say Goodbye to George (Nov. 24 - Dec. 1)
Hello everyone and welcome back to another week of Politics Explained. We at Politics Explained hope everyone had a very amazing and thankful Thanksgiving! This week was another week filled with shake-ups in the 2024 congressional seat and more on George Santos. If you’re new here, we write about the happenings on Capitol Hill, in short and concise blogs easy for all levels of readers to understand. So let's dive right into it!
The stage is starting to be set for the elections for the House of Representatives and Senate in 2024. Every two years, every House member has to run for reelection, while in the Senate, every 6 years a Senator has to run for reelection. During every two year election cycle, roughly 5-10% of members decide they want to change office or retire. Currently, this year 17 members of the House are running for different offices, while 18 members are retiring. The 17 members of the House that are leaving will be running for either President, Senator, Governor, State Attorney General, or Mayor. The rest of the members will be running for reelection in their districts. In the Senate there will be 5 members who will retire at the end of 2024. Of the members who are departing the House or Senate, 70% of them are Democrats.
Earlier today George Santos (R-NY) was expelled from the House by a vote of 311-114. If you have been with us for a while now, you would know that George Santos has been a hot topic for the past year. At the end of October there was a vote to expel Santos from office but the vote failed as the required 2 ⁄ 3 of the House needed for expulsion was not acquired. Prior to Thanksgiving, the Chairman of the House Ethics Committee filed a motion to expel Santos from Congress. Santos is being charged with 13 Federal charges including wire fraud, money laundering, thief of public funds, and false statements to Congress. Santos stated Thursday that he would not resign and warned members of Congress that his expulsion* would not be good. Santos stated that there has never been a member of Congress ousted without being convicted of a crime or of treason. Santos is the sixth member ever to be kicked out of Congress and the first Republican member. Santos losing his spot in Congress will be very unfortunate to Republicans, as they will almost certainly lose his seat in the House to a Democrat (a special election will be held in February), as New York is a very blue state.
*An act of taking away someone’s membership in an organization
