WASHINGTON – House of Representatives voted Wednesday night to take the Democrat-backed resolution to expel Rep. George Santos, RN.Y., to the Ethics Committee.

The direction was approved by 221 votes to 204, requiring only a simple majority to pass. No Republicans voted against the proposal, and seven Democrats voted in attendance, including all five Democratic ethics committee members.

By sending it to the House Ethics Committee, which has been investigating Santos since early March, Republicans have for now avoided voting on the resolution itself, which was introduced on Tuesday by Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif.

Because the resolution was favored, Republican leaders had to schedule a vote for Thursday. House Majority Rep. Tom Emmer, of Minnesota, sent out a notice Wednesday telling lawmakers they would vote on a motion to take the resolution to the ethics committee around 5:00 pm.

Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy, D-California. — who last week said he would not support Santos’ bid for re-election — said Tuesday night that he prefers a transition approach rather than a general vote to kick Santos out of Congress.

Garcia called McCarthy’s approach a “cop-out” at a press conference Wednesday morning. “It’s already on the ethics committee,” Garcia said. “We want an actual vote on exclusion.”

Rep. Dan Goldman, D.N.Y., a former U.S. Attorney, suggested that the Ethics Committee would take no action on the resolution and instead submit to the Justice Department, which indicted Santos on 13 counts last week. indication.

“The prosecutors are going to ask the ethics committee to pause and let their prosecution start over,” he said. “This is what I’ve been doing for 10 years, that’s the nature of these things. And traditionally the Ethics Committee will report to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution, and Kevin McCarthy knows that.”

Goldman said the tactic was a way for Republicans to avoid responsibility for the removal measure.

Santos’ office in Congress did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Last week, Santos pleaded not guilty in a Long Island court to a federal indictment uncovered by the Justice Department. Santos what is charged seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives, according to the Justice Department. He is due back in court on June 30.

Santos, who previously admitted to lying about his past, called the allegations against him “witch-huntand said he would not retire.

In March, the House Ethics Committee launched an investigation that it said should determine “whether Santos engaged in illegal activities in relation to his 2022 Congressional campaign; failed to properly disclose the required information about applications filed with the House of Representatives; violated federal conflict of interest laws in connection with their role in a fiduciary services firm; and/or engaged in sexual harassment of a job seeker in their congressional office.”

Rebecca Shabad

Rebecca Shabad is a political reporter for NBC News based in Washington DC.

Kyle Stewart

Kyle Stewart is an associate producer covering Congress for NBC News.

Zoe Richards contributed.

Trust in the Supreme Court fell to its lowest level in at least 50 years in 2022 after dobbs solution which led to government bans and others restrictions on abortion, study of major trends shows.

The gap between Democrats and Republicans over support for abortion rights was also the widest in 2022. General social survey. The long-standing and respected survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago has been measuring trust in the court since 1973, the same year that Rowe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide.

In a 2022 poll, only 18% of Americans said they had a lot of trust in the court, up from 26% in 2021, and 36% said they had little to no trust, up from 21%. Another 46% said they “only partially” trust the latest poll.

The drastic changes have affected women, Democrats and those who believe a woman should be able to have an abortion if she wants one “for whatever reason,” the poll shows.

Only 12% of women said they have great confidence in the court in 2022, up from 22% a year earlier and 32% in 2018. Confidence among Democrats has fallen to 8% in 2022 from 25% a year earlier. And among those who believe that an abortion should be available to a woman who wants it for any reason, confidence in the court has fallen from 25% to 12%.

However, even among Republicans, confidence in the court has eroded somewhat over the past few years. dominated by Republican-appointed conservative judges. 26% said they had great confidence in the court, up from 31% in 2021 and 37% in 2018.

The survey is conducted through personal and online interviews over several months. Most of the interviews were conducted after the court’s Conservative majority ruled in late June on Dobbs, which overturned Roe, and all were conducted after draft decision leaked seven weeks earlier.

Support for widely available abortion did not change significantly between 2021 and 2022, but the survey shows that support for widely available abortion has increased since 2016, when only 46% said abortion should be available if a woman wants it for any reason, and 54% said it shouldn’t. A new poll says it should be available a little more than it shouldn’t be, 53% versus 47%.

The difference is due to the skyrocketing support for abortion rights among Democrats, while Republican support is at its lowest level in 50 years. The 77% to 28% split between Democrats and Republicans in their support for abortion rights is the biggest split between parties on the issue.

A vast majority of Americans said they believed a woman should be able to have an abortion if her own health was in danger, if the baby had a major change or defect, or if the pregnancy was the result of rape.

Many states now ban abortion without exception in cases of rape or incest. Mississippi’s state ban has an exception for rape, but not for incest.

General Social Research has been conducted since 1972 by the NORC of the University of Chicago. Sample sizes for the annual survey range from about 1,500 to about 4,000 adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points to plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. The last survey was conducted from May 5, 2022 to December 2022. September 20, 2022 and includes interviews with 3,544 American adults. Results for the full sample have an error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to block Illinois’ ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines as a challenge to the new law moves through the courts.

In a one-sentence ruling, the judges denied a request by an Illinois gun store owner and a gun rights group to block a state law they say violates the Second Amendment right to own a firearm. The court did not provide an explanation for this decision.

A judge in a separate lawsuit ordered the law to be stopped, but a federal appeals court overturned that decision earlier this month.

State legislators passed the law after a mass shooting during a July 4th parade in suburban Chicago last year.

Gun shop owner Robert Bevis and the National Gun Rights Association, in a statement urging judges to intervene, argued that “there cannot be the slightest doubt” that the Illinois restrictions violate the Second Amendment. They pointed to ruling 2022 in which judges struck down New York’s law on who can carry concealed weapons.