What does it take to expel an American congressman?

GEORGE SANTOS burned bright and briefly. Shortly after his election to Congress in November 2022, the lies he told to win the seat began to be revealed. The Republican had claimed, falsely, that his grandparents had fled the Holocaust and that his mother was at the Twin Towers when the 9/11 terrorist attacks took place. His CV was fiction. Even after he was indicted on federal corruption charges (to which he pleaded not guilty), he refused to resign his seat—and his colleagues did not, at first, force him out. On December 1st, however, two weeks after the House of Representatives Ethics Committee published a scathing report on the congressman, Mr Santos joined the chamber’s most exclusive club: the ranks of members it has expelled.