The lesson for Democrats is that they need to power confrontations, particularly after they drive a wedge into the GOP base.
Speaker of the Home Mike Johnson (R-LA) leaves the Home Republican Convention caucus assembly within the US Capitol on July 22, 2025.
(Invoice Clark / CQ-Roll Name, Inc by way of Getty Photos)
After programming its legislative calendar and staging committee hearings to feed conspiracy theories and persecution fantasies, the 119th Congress seems to be grinding to a halt over the threatened launch of paperwork regarding the Jeffrey Epstein case. Late Monday evening, the Home guidelines committee collapsed into chaos as GOP leaders blocked a bipartisan decision directing the Division of Justice and the FBI to make public the long-debated however stubbornly stationary “Epstein information.”
The standstill happened as a result of the decision—cosponsored by Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Democrat Ro Khanna of California—explictly requires the Trump White Home to safe the paperwork’ launch, whereas a competing GOP measure expresses only a feeble want. “Their Epstein invoice decision is nonbinding, so it’s sort of pretend,” stated Massie, who’s dealing with a MAGA major problem over his refusal to vote for Trump’s huge spending invoice. “The decision I’ve with Khanna can be binding on the president.”
Massie and Khanna had been looking for to have their decision go to a vote on a discharge petition—a measure that, ought to it win backing on the principles panel, would proceed on to a flooring vote with 218 signatures from Home members supporting it. The prospect of a protracted, and presumably shedding, battle over a discharge petition despatched the Home’s Republican management into paralysis.
In different phrases, the specter of really utilizing their subpoena energy in a substantive means has Home GOP leaders shutting down the works altogether. The Home had been scheduled to enter summer time recess this Thursday, however the meltdown over the Epstein controversy has shut down all enterprise earlier than the principles committee—which means that the recess successfully begins now, because the committee units the pending voting schedule for the Home. Early Monday, Home Speaker Mike Johnson made the state of legislative collapse official, and despatched the Home packing off to recess forward of schedule.
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Within the aftermath of the most recent Epstein debacle, Home Republicans are waving their arms wildly in what’s grow to be the usual MAGA reply to additional Epstein inquiries. “Look, Democrats are yelling and screaming,” stated majority chief Steve Scalise, blithely overlooking how his convention has reworked yelling and screaming into the chamber’s MO. Scalise then went into “Hey, look over there!” mode, referencing final week’s symbolic authorized motion from Trump’s Justice Division to launch redacted federal grand jury testimony regarding the Epstein prosecution within the Southern District of New York. “President Trump’s within the courts proper now attempting to get paperwork launched, and I actually suppose you’re gonna see, hopefully, loads unsealed from that after which we’ve received another choices.”
However grand jury testimony, by definition, doesn’t characterize deep investigative work or a conclusive authorized verdict; there’s a motive, in any case, that prosecutors have lengthy bragged that they will get grand juries to indict a ham sandwich. Former New York federal prosecutor Sarah Krissoff told the Associated Press that any launched testimony would cowl solely probably the most cursory authorized floor. “The Southern District of New York’s follow is to place as little info as doable into the grand jury,” she stated. “They mainly spoon feed the indictment to the grand jury. That’s what we’re going to see. I simply suppose it’s not going to be that attention-grabbing.”
That Home leaders are counting on this Trump gimmick to deflect consideration away from future Epstein disclosures solely fuels the rising suspicion and hypothesis surrounding the GOP’s slow-walking of Epstein materials—notably after the MAGA mediasphere has loudly and righteously known as for full Epstein transparency for years. And it’s removed from an excellent search for the GOP’s Epstein avoidance playbook to place the Home right into a self-induced legislative coma at a second when members are urgent to get signature payments in movement forward of Thursday’s scheduled recess, together with one more measure to extend prison penalties for undocumented immigration. With the principles committee successfully locked down, the Home can solely vote on extraordinarily low-profile and noncontroversial laws, reminiscent of a pending invoice to broaden zip codes—one thing that additionally fails to register as strong engagement with the folks’s enterprise as members fan out to their house districts for city corridor conferences and fundraising appeals.
Democrats have largely lucked right into a sound strategic place on the Epstein entrance because of rising fissures within the conservative movement—but this second offers a teachable second for an opposition celebration nonetheless desperately looking for to reclaim political relevance. Because the Trump White Home continues its lawless assault on primary freedoms and establishments, Democrats have principally made a theatrical present of sitting on their arms. The newest installment on this slough of despond got here final week, when Home Democrats rolled over for the White Home’s punitive set of rescissions within the federal price range, concentrating on funding for NPR, PBS, and the already eviscerated US Company for Worldwide Improvement. Because the measure neared the end-of-week deadline for rescissions imposed by the Impoundment Management Act, Democrats as an alternative elected, but once more, to make it seem that they had been preserving their powder dry for one more deferred future confrontation with the Trump White Home. Per a report in Axios, Home Democratic leaders suggested members that forcing the chamber to breach the deadline “wouldn’t have the sort of kill-shot impact some believed.”
However you don’t have to return far within the sorry litany of Trump wins in Congress to see Democrats rally to the identical doubtful and defeatist reasoning: It was primarily the same case that Senate minority chief Chuck Schumer made when he refused to make use of the leverage of a pending price range deadline to extract significant concessions from the Republican convention. Schumer’s reasoning again then was that Democrats needed to give attention to the main spending cuts Trump’s White Home was going to cram into its main spending invoice—and that technique has since been uncovered as an abject failure. Democrats made the identical extenuating arguments to keep away from coping with successive impeachment resolutions drafted by Consultant Shri Thanedar of Michigan and Al Inexperienced of Texas; the true battle was elsewhere, they insisted, they usually wanted to husband their sources within the minority to make their votes depend when it actually mattered.
But the Epstein fracas makes it clear that the best way to successfully wield energy in Congress is to power confrontations, notably after they drive a wedge into the bottom of the governing celebration. The identical logic that’s inadvertently helped Democrats foment discord inside the brittle MAGA coalition might have been employed on many different fronts. Along with the Democrats’ woeful displaying on main price range measures, in addition they folded on demagogic laws just like the Laken Riley Act, which launched a regime of brutal immigration crackdowns which are proving to be massively unpopular, and on the bribe-legalizing provisions and deregulatory boons prolonged to crypto scammers below the farcically named GENIUS Act. One can solely pray that the procedural muscle they’ve flexed over the Epstein resolutions gained’t as soon as extra atrophy when Congress returns within the fall to confront its next budget deadline.
