Congressman-elect George Santos has rapidly emerged as the least popular person in Congress and he’s actually not even in Congress yet. The message seems to have finally begun to sink in for him, however. The local ABC News outlet in New York is reporting that Santos has already told associates that he will not seek reelection in 2024, assuming he manages to remain in office until then. ABC is only citing “sources” for this report, but it’s not much of a stretch of the imagination to believe it’s true. Here’s the brief video report they released last night.

The obvious question here is whether or not Santos really intends to retire after one term. I mean, why would anyone believe him? Of course, there’s no assurance that he would even be the party’s nominee if he tried. A spokesman for the state Republican party asked why they would even consider endorsing him for another run. There doesn’t appear to be anyone supporting Santos at this point except whoever it was that gave him all that money earlier this year.

Others are trying to capitalize on Santos’ unpopularity already. Democratic Congressman Ritchie Torres (NY-15) has introduced the SANTOS Act (Stop Another Non-Truthful Office Seeker). If passed, the bill would compel congressional candidates to testify under oath about three aspects of their resumes, providing details about their education, employment and military records. The bill would not cover less objective claims regarding things such as the candidate’s sexual orientation or religion. Having made those statements under oath, anyone who turned out to be lying could be removed from Congress on that basis.

The law raises a couple of issues, however. First of all, there’s the standard joke about how Washington would look like a ghost town if you threw out every politician who lied. But a more serious question is that of whether the law would even be constitutional. The Constitution only sets forth three requirements for a person to be eligible to run for a seat in the House. But the states and the members of Congress have added other requirements in the past, so it might survive a court challenge.

In other Santos news, another claim he made during the campaign has been unearthed. It turns out that he told a New York podcaster that he had previously battled a brain tumor and undergone radiation treatment prior to contracting COVID. Normally, when someone informs you that they had been diagnosed with cancer you would feel nothing but sympathy for them. But is it even true? Or was Santos making up yet another detail of his life story to generate sympathy or make himself look like more of a fighter? It’s kind of a shame that we even have to raise questions like this, but George Santos has brought it all on himself. At this point, I’d like to see his birth certificate just to make sure he’s actually a citizen.