The Jewish Daily Forward, the same news outlet that broke the story that Rep. George Santos (R-NY) lied about his heritage, has now seemingly confirmed another suspected Santos fib — that his mother was in the vicinity of World Trade Center on 9/11 and survived the attack.

Ever since Kevin McCarthy was narrowly elected speaker in the wee hours of the morning after a historic 15 rounds of voting, there’ve been reports that the new speaker had to more or less sell his soul and offer up his first born to the MAGA hardliners in exchange for the gavel.

This lawsuit comes just a few days after Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel also announced she was opening an investigation into the sham Trump electors. Nessel initially referred the matter to the DOJ but decided to open her own investigation after the House Jan. 6 committee released its report.

While announcing their committee’s call for freshman Rep. George Santos (R-NY) to resign from Congress today, Nassau County GOP Chairman Joseph Cairo, Jr. let a little bit of news slip.

“I remember specifically, I’m into sports a little bit, that he was a star on the Baruch volleyball team and that they won the league championship,” Cairo said, while walking reporters through a handful of other publicly known things that Santos had lied about on his resume.

“What can I tell ya,” he said. Peep his fellow party officials giggling in the background.

We can all rest easy knowing accountability is in the unassailable hands of the newly minted Republican House leadership.

Scalise’s remarks come the same day that Democratic lawmakers actually did something tangible about the fact that there’s a freshman member of Congress who was just sworn in after admitting he lied about basically everything he’s ever said and done.

In the few hours we weren’t furiously updating our liveblog covering the lawless speakership election each day last week, I spent most of my downtime answering texts and explaining to friends what exactly was happening on the House floor.

That is where things stand.

(In all seriousness we will be bringing back my daily Editors’ Blog post next week after our brains recover from the dumpster that is on fire on the House floor right now.)

In the meantime, Emine Yücel and I are covering all of today’s madness here.

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The competition was fierce. Voter comments got messy. Some of our winners only eked out a victory by a few percentage points. But after a free and fair election, and more than 12,000 votes cast, we’re ready to announce 2022’s greatest losers.

What better way to round out the year than by toasting the scoundrels who did the worst the best? It’s TPM tradition, after all. Ever since Duke Cunningham — in all of his shameless glory, complete with bribe menu, lava lamp, and yacht party — brought us into a new era of public corruption, reveling in the moments when public figures reveal their true, often corrupt and comically grimy colors is what we do best.

Without further ado, join us in our celebration of this years winners — one of the most cartoonishly dishonorable cast of characters we’ve raised a toast to yet.

As the Oscars holds its in memoriam each year, so too will the Golden Dukes this year, complete with a bit of dark spin. We would never dance on anyone’s actual graves (probably), but their political graves are fair game.

2022 gifted us a lot of losers who we can now celebrate as winners — in their unscrupulous, unhinged, and ultimately unelectable glory. Introducing the Golden Dukes Forgotten Heroes, an in memoriam to all of our favorite scoundrels who never quite made it to elected office. The 2022 midterms, in all its Big Lie-fueled insanity, gifted us hundreds of options for whacky candidates we will miss the most. Some may run for office again. But in our hearts they’ll always be losers.

The last several years have offered especially fertile ground for conspiracy theories big and small. Some have become so engrained in our collective consciousness that it’s hard to remember they were once just whispers in the swampiest corners of the internet.

Others are just downright dumb, so memorable in their convoluted chaos that they’re worthy of several celebratory cheers.