Santos getting icy reception from House GOP

Published

3 years ago

January 20, 2023

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Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) is getting an icy reception from colleagues in the House GOP even as he receives committee assignments and continues to serve his constituents on Long Island.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) calls him a “bad guy;” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) describes him as an “imposter.” A handful of other House Republicans have called on him to resign, making it clear they are less than ecstatic to have him as a colleague.

Through the hostility, Santos is insisting he can still be an effective member of Congress, adding his name to co-sponsor legislation and posting that he visited a Hindu temple in his district. But in an institution built on relationships, the sizable scandals could close many avenues to legislative success.

“It’s their prerogative,” Santos told Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) on former Trump administration adviser Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast last week when asked about calls for him to resign.

“I came here to serve the people, not politicians and party leaders, and I’m gonna do just that, and I’ve been doing just that throughout this entire first two weeks — whether it was voting for the Speaker or whether it’s been the last week where we’ve been working on legislation in my office.”

Measures that Santos has co-sponsored include a bill to impose term limits for members of Congress and a resolution to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. He said his office is also working on constituent matters like securing White House tour tickets and hoping to find a way that federal authorities can address carjackings in his district.

The Santos controversy has drawn a divide within the House GOP conference, with some Republicans coming out against the freshman and others backing his continued service.

At least seven House Republicans have called on Santos to resign, five of whom are first-term lawmakers representing New York. One name notably missing from that list is Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who has stopped short of calling on the congressman to step down despite his growing list of fabrications. House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, the highest-ranking Republican in the New York delegation, has also declined to call on Santos to resign.

Last week, McCarthy said Santos deserved the opportunity to serve because he was elected by constituents of New York’s 3rd Congressional District.

“It’s the voters who made that decision. He has to answer to the voters and the voters to make another decision in two years,” McCarthy said, adding that “he will continue to serve.”

Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, and McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, have echoed that sentiment even as they have lambasted Santos.

“Certainly, I don’t approve of how he made his way to Congress. And I haven’t even introduced myself to him, because it’s pretty despicable, the lies that he told,” Comer said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “But, at the end of the day, it’s not up to me or any other member of Congress to determine whether he could be kicked out for lying. Now, if he broke campaign finance laws, then he will be removed from Congress.”

The long list of Santos controversies ranges from him admitting to fabricating portions of his resume, to allegedly stealing thousands of dollars from a fundraiser for a cancerous dog (which Santos appeared to deny), to lingering questions about his campaign finances relating to his company. Local and federal investigators are reportedly looking into Santos’s finances, and he also faces multiple ethics complaints.

“I don’t know how he got through the process, being such an imposter. I don’t know why his opponent didn’t bring this out in the election. Or, quite frankly, why he wasn’t screened as a candidate better than he was,” McCaul said on CNN this week.

The first-year

congressman took a step towards legislating on Tuesday when he was recommended to sit on the House Small Business Committee and the House Science Space and Technology Committee, following speculation that he may not receive assignments at all. McCarthy initially said Santos should not serve on any top House committees, then later confirmed that he would receive assignments.

The two lower-level panels have jurisdiction over areas including the Small Business Administration and the National Weather Service. Republicans were reportedly concerned that not seating Santos on committees could set a precedent of punishing members who are facing scrutiny despite not being charged with crimes.

Lawmakers in the past have continued to sit on committees and serve in Congress even as they faced ethics issues and criminal investigation, though some have been stripped of committee assignments after indictments, controversial comments, or as punishment for going against party leadership.

Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas), the incoming chairman of the Small Business Committee, took a similar stance as McCarthy after Santos was recommended to serve on his panel, pointing to the New Yorker’s November election.

“I don’t condone what he said, what he’s done. I don’t think anybody does. But that’s not my role. He was elected. He represents a million people,” Williams said of Santos to CNN.

Santos initially expressed interest in the Financial Services and House Foreign Affairs Committees, pointing to his “14-year background in capital markets” and his “multicultural background as a human being.” But the House GOP Steering Committee, which is made up of roughly 30 House leaders and elected regional representatives, recommended that he sit on the pair of lower-level panels — giving him some seats at the table, albeit not the ones he wanted.

Santos will also likely spend time engaging with the House Ethics Committee, after two New York Democrats formally asked the panel to open a probe into the congressman’s failure to file timely, accurate and complete financial disclosure reports.

The Ethics Committee has not commented on the request for an investigation. The panel is known for taking a long time to work through investigations and does not typically slap significant punishments on lawmakers who come under scrutiny.

Though the complaint was filed by Democrats, Republicans have expressed support for the ethics probe running its course. White House blasts Trump for calling to jail journalists who broke draft abortion decision All MARC trains canceled Friday morning after system outage

“George Santos represents over 700,000 people in New York, and whether people like that or not, those people deserve to have members of Congress collaborating with the person who serves them, whether that’s on financial issues or on public safety issues. And so George Santos will have to go through the congressional ethics process,” Gaetz told CNN’s “Smerconish” on Saturday. “I don’t want to prejudge that process, but I think he deserves the chance to at least make his case.”

“I don’t think that George Santos should be subject to shunning because the Americans he serves deserve representation and they have real challenges, and we ought to work together to solve their challenges and meet their needs,” he added.

Last week, McCarthy told reporters that “if there is a concern, and he has to go through the Ethics, let him move through that.”

Business

Surprise rise in inflation as summer travel pushes up air fares

Published

1 hour ago

August 20, 2025

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Surprise rise in inflation as summer travel pushes up air fares

Prices in the UK rose even faster than expected last month, reaching the highest level in 18 months, according to official figures.

Inflation hit 3.8% in July, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed.

Not since January 2024 have prices risen as fast.

It’s up from 3.6% in June and is anticipated to reach 4% by the end of the year.

Economists polled by Reuters had only been expecting a 3.6% rise.

More unwelcome news is contained elsewhere in the ONS’s data.

Train tickets

Another metric of inflation used by government to set rail fare rises, the retail price index, came in at 4.8%.

It means train tickets could go up 5.8% next year, depending on how the government calculate the increase.

This year, the rise was one percentage point above the retail price index measure of inflation.

These regulated fares account for about half of rail journeys.

Why?

Inflation rose so much due to higher transport costs, mostly from air fares due to the school holidays, as well as from fuel and food.

Petrol and diesel were more expensive in July this year compared to last, which made journeys pricier.

Coffee, orange juice, meat and chocolate were among the items with the highest price rises, the ONS said. It contributed to food inflation of 4.9%.

What does it mean for interest rates?

Another measure of inflation that’s closely watched by rate setters at the Bank of England rose above expectations.

Core inflation – which measures price rises without volatile food and energy costs – rose to 3.8%. It had been forecast to remain at 3.7%.

It’s not good news for interest rates and for anyone looking to refix their mortgage, as the Bank’s target for inflation is 2%.

Whether or not there’ll be another cut this year is hotly debated, but at present, traders expect no more this year, according to data from the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG).

Economists at Capital Economics anticipate a cut in November, while the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) expect one more by the end of the year.

Analysts at Pantheon Macroeconomics forecast no change in the base interest rate.

Political response

Responding to the news, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said:

“We have taken the decisions needed to stabilise the public finances, and we’re a long way from the double-digit inflation we saw under the previous government, but there’s more to do to ease the cost of living.”

Shadow chancellor and Conservative Mel Stride said, “Labour’s choices to tax jobs and ramp up borrowing are pushing up costs and stoking inflation. And the Chancellor is gearing up to do it all over again in the autumn.”

Business

AI ‘immune system’ Phoebe lands backing from Google arm

Published

4 hours ago

August 20, 2025

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AI 'immune system' Phoebe lands backing from Google arm

An AI start-up which claims to act as an ‘immune system’ for software has landed $17m (£12.6m) in initial funding from backers including the ventures arm of Alphabet-owned Google.

Sky News has learnt that Phoebe, which uses AI agents to continuously monitor and respond to live system data in order to identify and fix software glitches, will announce this week one of the largest seed funding rounds for a UK-based company this year.

The funding is led by GV – formerly Google Ventures – and Cherry Ventures, and will be announced to coincide with the public launch of Phoebe’s platform.

It is expected to be announced publicly on Thursday.

Phoebe was founded by Matt Henderson and James Summerfield, the former chief executive and chief information officer of Stripe Europe, last year.

The duo sold their first start-up, Rangespan, to Google a decade earlier.

Their latest venture is motivated by data suggesting that the world’s roughly 40 million software developers spend up to 30% of their time reacting to bugs and errors.

Financial losses to companies from software outages are said to have reached $400bn globally last year, according to the company.

Phoebe’s swarms of AI agents sift through siloed data to identify errors in real time, which it says reduces the time it takes to resolve them by up to 90%.

“High-severity incidents can make or break big customer relationships, and numerous smaller problems drain engineering productivity,” Mr Henderson said.

“Software monitoring tools exist, but they aren’t very intelligent and require people to spend a lot of time working out what is wrong and what to do about it.”

The backing from blue-chip investors such as GV and Cherry Ventures underlines the level of interest in AI-powered software remediation businesses.

Roni Hiranand, an executive at GV, said: “AI has transformed how code is written, but software reliability has not kept pace.

“Phoebe is building a missing layer of contextual intelligence that can help both human and AI engineers avoid software failures.

“We love the boldness of the team’s vision for a software immune system that pre-emptively fixes problems.”

Phoebe has signed up customers including Trainline, the rail booking app.

Jay Davies, head of engineering for reliability and operations at Trainline, said Phoebe had “already had a real impact on how we investigate and remediate incidents”.

“Work that used to take us hours to piece together can now take minutes and that matters when you’re running critical services at our scale.”

Entertainment

Paul Weller suing former accountants after they stopped working with him over Gaza statements

Published

4 hours ago

August 20, 2025

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Paul Weller suing former accountants after they stopped working with him over Gaza statements

Paul Weller is suing his former accountants after they stopped working with him after he alleged Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, according to a legal letter.

The former frontman of The Jam, 67, has filed a discrimination claim against Harris and Trotter after the firm ended their professional relationship.

Lawyers for Weller say the singer-songwriter was told in March that the accountants and tax advisers would no longer work with him or his companies.

According to the letter, which was seen by the PA news agency, a WhatsApp message from a partner at the firm said: “It’s well known what your political views are in relation to Israel, the Palestinians and Gaza, but we as a firm are offended at the assertions that Israel is committing any type of genocide.

“Everyone is entitled to their own views, but you are alleging such anti-Israel views that we as a firm with Jewish roots and many Jewish partners are not prepared to work with someone who holds these views.”

Israel has vehemently denied claims of genocide.

But lawyers for Weller claim by ending their services, the firm unlawfully discriminated against the singer’s protected philosophical beliefs, including that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and Palestine should be recognised as a nation state.

Weller said: “I’ve always spoken out against injustice, whether it’s apartheid, ethnic cleansing, or genocide. What’s happening to the Palestinian people in Gaza is a humanitarian catastrophe.

“I believe they have the right to self-determination, dignity, and protection under international law, and I believe Israel is committing genocide against them. That must be called out.

“Silencing those who speak this truth is not just censorship – it’s complicity.

“I’m taking legal action not just for myself, but to help ensure that others are not similarly punished for expressing their beliefs about the rights of the Palestinian people.”

The legal letter says Weller will donate any damages he receives to humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza.

Cormac McDonough, a lawyer at Hodge Jones and Allen, which is representing Weller, said his case “reflects a wider pattern of attempts to silence artists and public figures who speak out in support of Palestinian rights”.

Mr McDonough added: “Within the music industry especially, we are seeing increasing efforts to marginalise those who express solidarity with the people of Gaza.”

Sky News has contacted Harris and Trotter for comment.