George Santos is out.

The House voted to expel the indicted New York Republican 311-114, exceeding the two-thirds threshold required for booting a member. Nearly all Democrats supported the measure, with two voting against it and two voting present, while 104 Republicans backed it. It’s the first time the House has expelled a member without a conviction since the Civil War.

The New York Republican told reporters as the vote concluded: “It’s over. … They just set a dangerous new precedent for themselves.” He declined further comment.

“As unofficially already no longer a member of Congress, I no longer have to answer a single question. That is the one thing that I’m going to take forever,” Santos said.

The resolution was sponsored by House Ethics Committee Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.), after after his panel released an explosive report two weeks ago that found “significant evidence” of Santos’ criminal wrongdoing.

The motion managed to pass with a comfortable margin despite last-minute opposition from all four top GOP House leaders, which shook Republican support for the measure. After the vote, Speaker Mike Johnson did not acknowledge Santos in comments to reporters, instead “admonishing” the Senate for not passing aid for Israel.

“I am gonna make one statement. It’s been over a month since the House passed a bipartisan support package for Israel. It has been sitting on the Senate’s desk over there for over a month. It’s time for them to take action on that matter,” Johnson said.

Only five members have been booted from the House in history. The first three were due to their support for the Confederacy, and the other two were removed after federal convictions.

But in the days before the vote, Santos’ standing with colleagues plummeted, with the New York Republican even acknowledging he would probably have to leave the House. Still, he had refused to resign, with some GOP members speculating Santos wanted to portray himself as a martyr.

“He should have resigned. It shouldn’t have come to this. But it is. And now we’re going to actually allow the third district to elect a representative. Someone that they can trust. Someone that they know,” said Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.), one of Santos’ leading critics.

Expulsion is the most severe sanction the House has for its members. Santos’ removal from the House further narrows Republicans’ already miniscule majority.

Santos is facing 23 federal charges but has not been convicted. His trial is slated to begin in September. He has pleaded not guilty.

Jordain Carney, Daniella Diaz and Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.

As the House formally expelled him from its ranks for a litany of controversial behavior, George Santos left the floor early.

The New York Republican told reporters as he departed the Capitol on Friday that he had no reaction beyond warning that his colleagues “just set a new dangerous precedent for themselves.”

Santos added that he did not plan to take advantage of Capitol access privileges afforded to former lawmakers, but he did suggest — despite holding repeated press events in the run-up to his expulsion — that he would enjoy leaving the spotlight.

“As unofficially already no longer a member of Congress, I no longer have to answer a single question,” said Santos, who is facing trial next year on multiple felony counts, including lying to Congress and wire fraud. “That is the one thing that I’m going to take forever.”

Santos left the Hill in a Jaguar SUV.

Speaker Mike Johnson will vote on Friday to oppose the expulsion of George Santos, signaling that the House GOP’s leaders will swing against the bipartisan push to boot the indicted New York Republican.

While Johnson and his leadership team are not formally whipping against the latest expulsion push, describing it as a vote of conscience, other House Republicans on the fence are certain to take cues from the GOP leader. It’s not clear that there are enough votes to meet the two-thirds threshold needed to eject Santos.

Embattled Rep. George Santos got into a heated floor discussion with Rep. Max Miller as the chamber debated whether to expel the New York Republican on Thursday.

After Miller called Santos a “crook,” the New Yorker referenced past allegations of alleged abuse in a relationship by Miller, calling the Ohio lawmaker a “woman beater.” Miller has forcefully denied those allegations, suing the woman for defamation but voluntarily dropping the lawsuit earlier this year.

Santos also moved to have Miller’s remark taken down, saying it violated House decorum rules. The request, however, was not ruled in order.

A vote on whether to expel Santos is expected Friday.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene withdrew a second attempt to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas on Thursday, saying she had received guarantees a House committee would “move forward” on impeaching the Homeland Security secretary.

“I have been guaranteed that we’ll move forward with impeaching Mayorkas. The good thing is, is that my articles of impeachment are in the Homeland [Security] Committee, where we can move forward,” Greene said.

The Georgia Republican first triggered a vote on impeaching Mayorkas roughly two weeks ago, leapfrogging over GOP leadership. At the time, eight Republicans voted with Democrats to send the articles to committee, and Greene acknowledged ahead of Thursday’s vote that she hadn’t spoken to the holdouts to see if they had changed their position.

At least one made it clear they hadn’t — Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), who called Greene’s impeachment attempt “manifestly unserious” and the idea that two-thirds of the Senate would remove him a “delusional fantasy.”

“What is the practical effect of impeaching Mayorkas, other than assuring that Republicans will have no defense when a future Democrat majority turns this new definition against them?” he added, accusing Greene of trying to expand what qualifies as an impeachable offense.

Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.), who is conducting a sweeping investigation into Mayorkas and the border, hasn’t said publicly if he will ultimately make a referral to the Judiciary Committee, which would handle an impeachment. But Greene indicated she had received assurances, without specifying from who, that the committee would advance impeachment. She said she’d spoken to Speaker Mike Johnson and Green.

Greene indicated earlier this week that she had also heard little from the top ranks of her conference, contrasting the silence from Speaker Mike Johnson to how she believes ex-GOP leader Kevin McCarthy would have handled it if the Californian were still speaker. Johnson, unlike McCarthy, has backed impeaching Mayorkas. But McCarthy had a closer relationship and was in more frequent contact with Greene.

“It’s something that should be a priority for him as speaker of the House,” Greene said, adding that she believes McCarthy would have reached out to her about the effort.

Greene added that she would “just keep reintroducing” the impeachment articles, predicting that “the American people will not tolerate Republicans continuing to vote it down.”

Mayorkas was once viewed as the House GOP majority’s most likely impeachment target, with frustration over the Biden administration’s handling of the border a unifying through line for a conference that frequently finds itself at odds.

But impeachment advocates have struggled to lock down the votes needed to recommend booting him from office, amid skepticism from a swath of their GOP colleagues that his actions meet the bar for impeachment, rather than just a policy disagreement.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, in a statement, said that Congress should “stop wasting time and do its job by reforming our broken immigration system, reauthorizing vital tools for DHS, and passing the Administration’s supplemental request.”

Meanwhile, House Republicans are nearing the end of a broad impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, and are under pressure from their right flank to show progress on that front. They are expected to hold a conference meeting on Friday to discuss the Biden investigation.

Joe Manchin is pitching a new idea for the Senate’s bipartisan border talks: expanding worker visas.

The West Virginia Democrat also wants negotiators to just move on if they get hung up on parole — a top priority for the GOP.

Manchin is talking to senators in both parties about a proposal to add new visas to help fill open jobs across the country with migrants who are barred from legally working upon their arrival in the United States. While Manchin is not a member of the gang of six senators trying to strike a deal that would pair border policy changes with aid for Ukraine and Israel, he is trying to help triangulate a solution.

“We have thousands and thousands of people that come and these people are basically prohibited by law from working immediately, unless they’re doing it illegally,” Manchin said in an interview on Thursday. “Work visas have to be [issued] immediately so they can start earning and taking care of themselves.”

And as negotiations get hung up over whether to restrict presidential authority to parole some migrants, Manchin suggested that the Senate should consider taking a deal on asylum reform, border security funding and foreign aid for U.S. allies — without firmly settling the discussions on parole. He made clear that the package needs to combine border, Ukraine and Israel components to win his support.

“Parole could be the biggest concern, the biggest stumbling block. We’ll have to work around that,” Manchin. “Because if they agree on the rest of the stuff, parole could be something we can continue to work on. It shouldn’t be a deal breaker.”

Manchin spent two years as the deciding vote for Democrats’ agenda, but his entry into the immigration talks amounts to a reprise of his more familiar role as an active Senate deal broker. It’s also a test of his influence after he announced he won’t run for reelection next year: Republicans no longer need to deprive him of legislative wins in order to help defeat him, which would ostensibly make it easier for him to help find a compromise.

Though worker visa reform has skewed bipartisan, Republicans are trying to keep the ongoing negotiations strictly focused on border security and may seek to reject anything outside that scope. Manchin agreed that “the stadium is full” when it comes to the border, but argued it’s logical for migrants to pay taxes and fill jobs once they enter the United States.

“Trying to find out where that sweet spot would be and what we can do,” Manchin said. “The need is there for Ukraine and Israel, and the desire is there to do something on the border. Make sure you don’t leave one short.”

A group of House lawmakers is demanding easier access to information related to UFOs — and insisting the strongest possible disclosure requirements make it into the annual defense policy bill currently being finalized.

“Whether it’s little green men, American technology or worse — technology from the [Chinese Communist Party] — we need to know,” said Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) at a press conference.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and other lawmakers said they were encountering resistance from the Senate Armed Services and House Intelligence committees to provisions related to UAPs — or “unidentified aerial phenomena,” the official term the U.S. government uses instead of UFOs — being included in the National Defense Authorization Act.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) got an amendment requiring the declassification of records related to UFOs included as part of the House-passed NDAA, while Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer added a longer version as part of his chamber’s version. Burchett said that Senate attempt “overcomplicated” the issue, even as members indicated they wouldn’t oppose the Schumer language.

“Schumer’s efforts here are probably the floor as to where we would like to see disclosure begin,” said Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.). “Not to say that they’re not good efforts. I think basically any step forward is a step in the right direction here.”

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said the resistance to disclosure from government officials is what leads him to stay interested in the issue.

“The pushback we got is what interests me,” he said. “Every time we pull the thread — and we stumbled on something — it seems that we would get stonewalled.”

Asked whether they’d seen evidence of extraterrestrial life, Gaetz said he’d viewed an image that includes “nothing that that I’m aware of having existing in our arsenal of assets” — or in those of other countries.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee tried to shout down Chair Dick Durbin after he limited debate on judicial nominees up for their third round of consideration by the panel, drowning out the clerk calling the roll.

The panel, beset with partisan rancor in recent months, was thrown into chaos before getting to the most contentious agenda items set for votes on Thursday, subpoenas for conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo and Texas billionaire Harlan Crow regarding their relationships with Supreme Court justices.

Durbin limited debate, saying that lawmakers had two previous chances to speak against the nominees, which Republicans claimed was false and set a dangerous precedent.

“Mr. Chairman, you just destroyed one of the most important committees in the United States Senate,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told Durbin. “Congratulations on destroying the United States Senate Judiciary Committee.”

When Republicans sought recognition from Durbin to speak on the nominees, he said the committee was in a roll call vote, as the clerk continued to call the roll as lawmakers shouted over her and each other.

“You want us to shut up?” asked Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) in response to Durbin.

“I guess Durbin isn’t going to allow women to speak, I thought that was sacrosanct in your party,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) after Blackburn was rebuffed.

“You’ll have a lot of consequences if you go down this road,” warned Cotton.

Republicans wanted further opportunity to speak against judicial nominees they said are unqualified and unfit for the federal bench.

Durbin eventually relented for a third judicial nominee, who had not seen previous action in the committee.

The Illinois Democrat eventually explained the precedent he was acting under, citing Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley’s leadership of the committee, during which debate was limited on the nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and on an immigration bill.

“Republicans established a new precedent that I followed on one occasion last Congress and will follow again today. I’ve said time and time again there cannot be one set of rules for Republicans and a different set for Democrats,” Durbin said.

“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.).