The lesson for Democrats is that they need to drive confrontations, particularly once they drive a wedge into the GOP base.
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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 through Getty Pictures)
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 night time, 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 recordsdata.”
The standstill took place 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,” mentioned Massie, who’s dealing with a MAGA main 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 searching 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 ground 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 truly utilizing their subpoena energy in a substantive method 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—that means that the recess successfully begins now, for the reason that committee units the pending voting schedule for the Home. Early Monday, Home Speaker Mike Johnson made the state of legislative collapse officialand despatched the Home packing off to recess forward of schedule.
Present Concern
Within the aftermath of the most recent Epstein debacle, Home Republicans are waving their fingers wildly in what’s develop into the usual MAGA reply to additional Epstein inquiries. “Look, Democrats are yelling and screaming,” mentioned majority chief Steve Scalise, blithely overlooking how his convention has remodeled 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 making an attempt to get paperwork launched, and I actually assume you’re gonna see, hopefully, rather a lot unsealed from that after which we’ve acquired 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 informed the Related Press that any launched testimony would cowl solely essentially the most cursory authorized floor. “The Southern District of New York’s observe is to place as little data as potential into the grand jury,” she mentioned. “They mainly spoon feed the indictment to the grand jury. That’s what we’re going to see. I simply assume it’s not going to be that fascinating.”
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 a superb 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 felony penalties for undocumented immigration. With the principles committee successfully locked down, the Home can solely vote on extraordinarily low-profile and noncontroversial laws, corresponding to a pending invoice to develop zip codes—one thing that additionally fails to register as sturdy engagement with the individuals’s enterprise as members fan out to their dwelling districts for city corridor conferences and fundraising appeals.
Democrats have largely lucked right into a sound strategic place on the Epstein entrance due to rising fissures inside the conservative motion—but this second gives a teachable second for an opposition celebration nonetheless desperately searching 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 fingers. The most recent 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 funds, focusing on funding for NPR, PBS, and the already eviscerated US Company for Worldwide Growth. Because the measure neared the end-of-week deadline for rescissions imposed by the Impoundment Management Act, Democrats as a substitute elected, but once more, to make it seem that they had been retaining their powder dry for one more deferred future confrontation with the Trump White Home. Per a report in AxiosHome 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 identical case that Senate minority chief Chuck Schumer made when he refused to make use of the leverage of a pending funds deadline to extract significant concessions from the Republican convention. Schumer’s reasoning again then was that Democrats needed to deal with the most important 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 rely when it actually mattered.
But the Epstein fracas makes it clear that the way in which to successfully wield energy in Congress is to drive confrontations, notably once 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 exhibiting on main funds 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 unpopularand on the bribe-legalizing provisions and deregulatory boons prolonged to crypto scammers underneath 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 subsequent funds deadline.
Chris Lehmann
Chris Lehmann is the DC Bureau chief for The Nation and a contributing editor at The Baffler. He was previously editor of The Baffler and The New Republic, and is the writer, most not too long ago, of The Cash Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream (Melville Home, 2016).
