Expel George Santos From Congress Movement Gets Boost From ‘Students Against Santos’

“Drag Santos Out of Congress” is the brainchild of Students Against Santos, a group of young people organizing to hold embattled Republican Rep. George Santos accountable for misleading his constituents with a web of lies about his background. The drag-inspired protest in the disgraced congressman’s New York district is scheduled for Saturday, March 4.

Along with progressive youth messaging organization Path to Progress, youth gender equality group Generation Ratify, and a number of drag artists, Students Against Santos is planning to demonstrate in Queens. The protest riffs on reporting that Santos, a 34-year-old Latino and openly gay congressman, was a drag performer in Brazil, something the congressman has denied — though he did not contest the legitimacy of a photo of him wearing drag attire.

Santos was elected to Congress in November, after defeating Democratic candidate Robert Zimmerman by more than seven points. He is the first nonincumbent, openly gay Republican to win a House seat. But he has supported anti-LGBTQ laws, including Florida legislation meant to limit classroom discussion on gender and sexual orientation, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” act by critics.

“He’s openly gay and has aligned himself with the Lauren Boeberts and the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of his party, and they are actively working to dismantle the rights of LGBTQ people, particularly our trans community,” says Marti G. Cummings, a drag artist helping Students Against Santos organize their protest.  

Cummings, a former New York City Council candidate who advises the organization Drag Out the Vote, references the slate of nearly 400 anti-LGBTQ+ bills that have been introduced in state legislatures across the country already this year. “When you have somebody who claims to be a part of the LGBTQ community but is actively working against them, of course we’re going to speak out,” they say, “because drag is rooted in political action.”

The intrigue about Santos’s alleged past as a drag performer captured the attention of many Americans who are eager for more information about him. The media, Santos’s colleagues, and his own constituents have struggled to decipher fact from fiction since a bombshell New York Times story last year brought focus to his lies about numerous parts of his biography. 

According to the Times, Santos fabricated claims that he was Jewish (he has subsequently claimed he meant to say he was “Jew-ish”); that he graduated from Baruch College; that he had previously worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs; that he owned more than a dozen real-estate properties; and more. 

Since then, the congressman has admitted to inventing some of these details, telling British TV personality and journalist Piers Morgan in an interview that he “just went with it.” Santos also told Morgan, “I ran in 2020 for the same exact seat for Congress, and I got away with it then.”

The House Ethics Committee unanimously voted to investigate Santos, according to a statement from the Committee this week. Meanwhile, the scandal-ridden congressman has asked to be removed from his committee assignments until he is “cleared” of wrongdoing, per a January statement from his congressional office.