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Good afternoon, Press Pass readers. The new House calendar is out for next year, and unsurprisingly, it’s a light schedule. That means more chaos when they’re in town and more panic when they’re on the campaign trail for the coming midterm elections. Rest assured, The Bulwark will be with you every step of the way. Sign up now for an annual Bulwark+ subscription today and you’ll enjoy full access to all our products through Election Day next year. What a deal!
Today’s edition takes you into the Capitol for the passage of the Epstein files resolution, which overcame long odds to advance out of the House in a sweeping vote. The bill still has a way to go before it reaches the president’s desk, but today’s vote marks a stunning political defeat for an administration that has been fighting to withhold whatever it can on Epstein for most of the year.
In addition, a Democratic member of the House pulled a fast one on his constituents by retiring in a way that allowed his chief of staff to run to succeed him without having to face a primary fight. But when that member was called out by a fellow lawmaker, Democrats took aim at her—not the outgoing representative responsible for the bait and switch. It all culminated in a dramatic fight on the House floor. Lastly, no one in Congress seems to have a clue what’s happening with Trump’s supposed TikTok deal. All that and more, below.
In Major Rebuke to Trump, House Passes Epstein Files Resolution
Trump’s grip on his party is beginning to loosen because a group of renegade Republicans.
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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.