In Major Rebuke to Trump, House Passes Epstein Files Resolution
Trump’s grip on his party is beginning to loosen because of a group of renegade Republicans.
The House of Representatives voted Tuesday afternoon to advance a resolution requiring the the Justice Department to release any and all documents belonging to its investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious human trafficker, sexual abuser, and pedophile who committed suicide in 2019. It passed near unanimously by a vote of 427-1. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) was the sole “no” vote.
The success of the resolution marks the harshest political rebuke so far of President Donald Trump’s second term. And an improbable one, too. The administration invested hefty political capital into stopping this from happening. And yet they and party leadership were outmaneuvered by two of the House’s more unorthodox members—Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.)—who used a discharge petition to advance legislation to the floor for a vote.
Despite the president’s repeated claims that the Epstein case was a Democratic party–manufactured “hoax” and his hardball tactics against those in his party who supported the effort, the Massie-Khanna resolution continued to gain momentum until it became too powerful for even Trump to stop. He made an abrupt 180 on Sunday to proclaim he supported the resolution. House majority leadership, forever subservient to Trump, quickly followed.
The resolution will now advance to the Senate. Its fate in that chamber remains unknown, but Democrats are optimistic it may pass. After being buffeted for months by an unrelenting public-relations crisis that has alienated some of his core hyperconspiratorial supporters, Trump said he would sign the legislation if it makes it to his desk intact.1
The resilience that both Massie and his Republican allies like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) showed over the past few months played a big role in sustaining the cause.
“I was called a traitor by a man that I fought for five—no, actually for six—years for. And I gave him my loyalty for free,” said Greene. “And he called me a traitor for standing with these women and refusing to take my name off the discharge petition.”
The revelations that the resolution will provide to the Epstein scandal could very well upend national politics in the weeks and months ahead. But already, the process of passing the resolution through the House has proved damaging to Trump. The president’s coalition, as Greene noted, has been fractured, as MAGA allies split and Trump-supportive members scurried for political cover.
Walk six feet in any direction on Capitol Hill and you’ll probably run into a lawmaker who supported Epstein transparency prior to Trump’s re-election, then went on to oppose the Massie-Khanna resolution, before ultimately coming around to supporting it. Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) is a great example: This down-home rep who almost always defers to the president had, just days ago, declared that he was “not going to let this hoax, manufactured by Democrats, slow us down.”
“I’ll be voting NO on the Epstein Hoax,” Nehls tweeted, vouchsafing his position by attaching a screengrab of a relevant Trump post on Truth Social. By Monday evening, though, Nehls had completely reversed himself to get in line with Trump’s new ex cathedra position on the bill. The president, after all, is never wrong, as Nehls has said before.
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), who kept quiet for months about the Epstein matter as he sought Trump’s support for his Florida gubernatorial campaign, did not sign the discharge petition. But on Monday, he told reporters: “I’ve been planning to vote for it for a while.”
And the morning of the vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson, who went to historic lengths to delay seating Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) to prevent her from adding the critical final signature required for the petition to advance, said he would vote for it too.
What happens next?
The House’s approval of the Epstein resolution is not just a rebuke of the president and a major political win for the out-of-power Democrats. It has a chance to become real policy.
While the Senate’s approach to the resolution is harder to anticipate, Democrats in the upper chamber are planning to attempt to pass it through unanimous consent, which would give Republicans an opportunity to quash it without a recorded vote for individual members. But the lower chamber’s new enthusiasm for the resolution, and Trump’s unexpected turnabout, may have raised the stakes too high for Republicans to stop it from passing. Still, I wouldn’t be shocked if they deployed clever ways to try.
“To me, this Epstein matter, as well as the shutdown—they’re trying to get out of the pain they caused the country because of the shutdown,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the chamber’s number-two Republican, said in an interview on Sunday. “And that’s why the Democrats want to use this, and they want to make President Trump a lame-duck president.”
Mike Johnson told reporters Tuesday morning that he called Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to game out ways the bill could be altered upon reaching the Senate.
“So I am very confident that when this moves forward in the process—if and when it is processed in the Senate, which is no certainty that it will be—that they will take the time, methodically, to do what we have not been allowed to do in the House,” Johnson said. “To amend this discharge petition and to make sure that these protections are there.”
The Senate will gavel in this evening; whether they immediately take up the resolution is unknown. Regardless, Trump isn’t pleased.
Chuy? More like slimy
Amid the good news for Democrats over the past couple of weeks, you might have missed a clear case of election subversion. Not an attack-the-U.S.-Capitol-and-stop-the-transfer-of-power kind, to be clear—this was instead a quieter scheme to eliminate choice for the voters of Illinois’s 4th Congressional District.
Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.) had intended to seek re-election in 2026—that was what he conveyed to the public, at least. Meanwhile, his chief of staff, Patty Garcia,2 tiptoed around the city collecting the necessary 2,500 signatures for ballot access for a candidacy of her own.3 Then, in the final hours before the candidate filing deadline, García announced his sudden retirement, paving the way for his longtime staffer to become the sole candidate in what should have been an open primary.
On Monday, García’s office circulated talking points to colleagues to justify his actions, claiming that his retirement decision was prompted by advice from his cardiologist “in the days before the filing deadline.” The talking points also repeated the various technicalities that García “followed all requirements and deadlines under Illinois law.”
There’s no disputing that García’s caper was legal, technically, but he should have expected the blowback he’s gotten for it, too. The episode brought back to mind the old-school Chicago political machine that worked to prevent voters from considering any prospective candidates not explicitly approved by the boss.
The scheme initially met with little consternation from Garcia’s fellow Democrats—until late last week, when Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) introduced a resolution to condemn the political bait-and-switch. (That’s why García’s office circulated those talking points.) Gluesenkamp Perez’s resolution sparked a contentious floor fight, which infuriated the party leadership, in no small part because this provided Republicans with easy “Democrats in disarray” fodder at a moment when GOP pols and pundits were desperate for any possible distraction. Nevertheless, Gluesenkamp Perez said that even though the resolution was difficult to bring forward, it was also necessary.
“I believe election subversion is wrong, no matter who’s doing it, and I think that right now, we’re seeing a profound, very loud call from Americans for transparency and accountability,” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “It’s not fun to call out a member of your own party, but I think it’s important that we’re consistent and answering, and we’re loyal to the soil. We’re loyal to our constituents and say, like, ‘Election subversion is always wrong.’”
After offering the privileged resolution on Monday night, Gluesenkamp Perez accepted handshakes from various Republicans, including Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Jodey Arrington (R-Texas).4 García sat directly behind her, shaking his head. Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.) threw up her hands and shook her head “no.”
Democrats ultimately failed to table the resolution by a vote of 211–206. Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) was the only Democrat to vote alongside Gluesenkamp Perez. After the vote, Gluesenkamp Perez rose to speak about the resolution’s importance, emphasizing that it is an issue of morality, not a legal dispute.
“True love persists in a confidence, not in your supremacy in making a choice for your voters, but in your service and humility that they have the right to choose,” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “When we start making choices for people without their consent, we have walked away from the fundamentals of democracy.”
During Gluesenkamp Perez’s remarks, most Republicans left the floor while Democrats trash-talked her in the seats.
“Sit down,” said Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.). “That’s what you need to do.”
At one point, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) walked over to the well of the House floor to complain about Gluesenkamp Perez’s attire, suggesting that her colleague should not be permitted to speak while in violation of the House dress code.
“She’s out of order because she’s dressed improperly,” Beatty said. “She’s got jeans on!”5
Prior to Monday night’s table vote, I asked House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries if, despite his opposition to the resolution, he believed that García’s actions were wrong. He answered with a quick pivot into a long monologue about how “the American people are focused on the high cost of living in the United States of America” before finishing with a bland condemnation of the resolution.
“I do not support this so-called resolution of disapproval, and I strongly support Congressman Chuy García,” Jeffries said. “He’s been a progressive champion in disenfranchised communities for decades, including during his time in Congress, and he’s made life better for the American people.”
The resolution passed the House on Tuesday by a vote of 236-183, with four abstentions. And now, House Democrats are discussing retaliation against Gluesenkamp Perez.
TikTok don’t stop
The Trump administration’s deal to force a sale of TikTok from Chinese-owned ByteDance to an American ownership group was delayed so many times this year that many people began to wonder if it would ever happen. That the administration has repeatedly delayed the ban’s enforcement by executive order—that is to say, in a way that was technically illegal—was apparently of no concern to most lawmakers.
But since Trump announced a deal, little has been done to facilitate it. Even worse, many lawmakers have zero clue about the details of the deal.
The Verge’s Lauren Feiner writes:
Less than two years ago, TikTok was a crisis situation on Capitol Hill. The chair of the House Select Committee on China called it “digital fentanyl” that brainwashes young Americans into supporting Hamas. A former national security adviser said letting TikTok remain in the US under its Chinese owner “would be akin to allowing Soviet control of several major American newspapers and TV channels during the Cold War.” Lawmakers left classified national security briefings about TikTok sharing grave concerns. All of it culminated in the surprise frenzy of a bipartisan bill forcing Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell the app or face a ban, which swiftly became law.
But nearly a year after the app should have been kicked out of the US, TikTok remains widely available, thanks to intervention from the administration of President Donald Trump. A promised acquisition by US investors, brokered through Trump, has been stalled for months. And the lawmakers who passed the ban are largely staying quiet.
The Verge reached out to nearly a dozen current and former lawmakers who voted for the bill and sat in key positions that ushered it into law, including the then-Chair of the House Select Committee on China Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL). One provided comment for this story, and several did not respond to repeated requests. It’s unclear how most feel about the impact of their push to force a sale or ban of TikTok, or what they think of the deal Trump promises will finally bring TikTok — and the American tech providers it relies on — into compliance with the law.
Read the whole piece, and keep swiping while you can.
This is somewhat moot. Trump could release the files today if he wanted. He is simply choosing not to, which is why the resolution snowballed.
No familial relation to the congressman. Just nearly a decade of loyal service.
In a particularly brazen touch, the first signature on candidate Patty Garcia’s candidate petition is that of Rep. García.
Both Norman and Arrington voted against certifying the 2020 election results.
The dress code is rarely enforced on members, especially since the departure of House Speaker John Boehner. During Monday night’s vote, I spotted multiple members from both parties wearing jeans. Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), however, was unaccountably soaring above them all in a tuxedo.
At the risk of being in the minority here, that whole Garcia / Garcia political handoff will not end well. If Democrats want to establish a reputation of "better than", they need to be willing to do things like reprimand one of their own - especially when one of their own does something slimy.
Although technically "legal", add this backroom maneuver to the list of Congressional practices that need to be reformed and eliminated. They're supposed to working for us - the citizens of their districts - not themselves.
Joe was ready to hit submit as soon as the vote happened! Love it 😂