‘The rule was going down’: Inside the House GOP’s Epstein meltdown

Anger inside the conference over Epstein went beyond even what was on display publicly. (This is bizarre apparently a lot of constituents are demanding the release of Epstein documents)

By Meredith Lee Hill and Hailey Fuchs 07/24/2025 04:45 AM EDT1/3

Inside his cavernous office on Monday afternoon, Speaker Mike Johnson was facing a growing crisis. The House GOP conference, which included some of the Louisiana Republican’s key allies, was in full rebellion over the spiraling Jeffrey Epstein situation.

Rules Committee Chair Virginia Foxx of Virginia and panel member Erin Houchin of Indiana informed Houseleaders that Republicans on the panel would not advance any rule for the week — the prerequisite for the chamber to fully function — without a better solution to the Epstein problem, according to two people with direct knowledge of the conversation.

The lawmakers knew that bucking their own leadership was an extreme response.But panel Republicans were incensed that a week earlier, they were all but forced to vote against a Democratic effort calling for the release of Epstein-related informationn. Many, including Houchin,were under intense pressure from constituents to support the unsealing, and they wanted leaders to provide more political cover.

Hours later, Johnson and senior Republicans decided to shut down the Rules Committee altogether, which meant forgoing votes on two key immigration billsbefore lawmakers left for the month-long August recess. After some back and forth, leaders also scrapped votes scheduled for Thursday and sent members home a day early. The speaker later defended his strategy, saying House Republicans were refusing to play Democrats’ “political games” over the deceased financier and convicted sex offender.

One Rules Committee Republican, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, suggested Johnson had bought himself some time — for now.“I think the administration will put more stuff out in August. … If they don’t, then I promise you, there’s going to be some more looking at this in the first week of September,” he warned.

This account of the House breakdown is based on interviews this week withmore than a dozen lawmakers and aides who described a level of anger within the conference that went beyond even what was on display publicly. Behind closed doors, standoffs played out between GOP leaders and rank-and-file members who found themselves divided over being forced to take more Epstein-related votes.

The revolt of House Republicans who favored releasing Epstein case documents surprised White House officials and multiple members of GOP leadership.Trump officials in particular, who are used to House Republicans rolling over to the president’s every whim,were especially stunned at the increasingly public and blunt pushback.

But some senior GOP aides privately acknowledged they could see Epstein-fueled pressure brewing into a bigger and bigger problem. They could tell how sensitive the issue was for the White House after Johnson appeared to break with President Donald Trump over the matter by calling for full transparency from the DOJ on a conservative podcast, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

The White House fumed over the perceived off-script moment, with Johnson going on to say days later there was “no daylight” between House Republicans and Trump.

The speaker kept in close touch with the president as the crisis unfolded, according to the people, and has since worked diligently to keep Epstein-related votes at bay. But Johnson’s efforts to preach party unity and presidential deference on the matter ran up against an outcry from within his conference.

Dozens of House Republicans had spent years clamoring for this information to be made public, and feared they would be called hypocrites if they backed down now, following Attorney General Pam Bondi’s announcement there would be no more documents released.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/24/house-gop-rebellion-epstein-00473348

>>23374356Bizzaro

2/3

House Republican leaders received a series of warnings from members in closed-door meetings and in conversations on the House floor, including from committee chairs, that the problem wasn’t going away. Some of these lawmakers begged leadership for action, according to the people with knowledge of the private exchanges.

House Oversight Chair James Comer said he told leadership last week that if certain Epstein-related votes came up in his committee, his GOP majority would vote for it — and they did. First, on Tuesday, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) forced a vote on a motion to subpoena Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell; then, on Wednesday, three Republicans joined onto a Democratic motion to subpoena the entire Epstein dossier from the Justice Department.

“My committee has been wanting to do this for several weeks now,” Comer said earlier in the week. “I told leadership last week if there’s ever an opportunity … to do anything realistically with the Epstein stuff, a majority of the committee’s gonna vote for it.”

Leaders had already canceled an appropriations subcommittee markup slated for Thursday due to expected absences,but also Democrats had been planning to try to force votes on dozens of Epstein-related amendments there, too, according to a person granted anonymity to share party strategy. On Wednesday, Johnson strongly defended his handling of the crisis, telling reporters “no one in Congress is blocking Epstein documents.”

But days earlier, there were Republican members of the Rules Committee telling Johnson there was a major problem.

Concern rose just before a committee meeting scheduled for Monday afternoon,when word got out that Democrats would again force an Epstein-related vote as the panel sought to pave the way for floor consideration of underlying bills, including immigration legislation central to the GOP agenda.

Most Rules Republicans quickly balked, and the committee recessed indefinitely to figure out next steps.

Shortly after 6 p.m., Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise and other GOP leaders huddled with the GOP Rules members in Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s office. Inside the room, Johnson and his team laid out several options, according to three people with direct knowledge of the meeting.

One option, of which Johnson appeared to be most supportive, was to forgo moving legislation through the Rules Committee for the rest of the week — effectively a legislative surrender, but it would give the White House time over August recess to work on releasing Epstein-related information.

Another route was to vote on a rule that included some of the Epstein language from the GOP-authored, non-binding resolution from the previous week, which would call for the release of a limited scope of Epstein documents. But GOP leaders believed that would likely fail on the chamber floor.

Then there was the alternative that some House Republicansbristled at the most: to forge ahead in the Rules Committee and to vote “no” on Democratic-led Epstein amendments. But that also wouldn’t have satisfied Republicans who wanted leaders to come up with a palatable alternative to support like the nonbinding resolution.

“The rule was going down anyway,”said another person with knowledge of the matter. “So the choice was clear.”So Republicans picked door No. 1, a choice that has opened Johnson up to mockery on the Democratic side of the aisle and incredulity inside his conference. “People want the information. They don’t want things covered up,” GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, one of Trump’s biggest cheerleaders in the House, told reporters this week.

Majority Leader Steve Scalise in an interview Wednesday played off the crisis, saying that the fallout wasn’t a “rebellion” but rather Democrats trying to “turn the Rules Committee into a circus” and Republicans “weren’t going to let that happen.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/24/house-gop-rebellion-epstein-00473348

>>23374367

3/3

But Senior House Republicans have also been irritated that the White House hadn’t offered much in terms of backup, according to two other Republicans with knowledge of the conversations. When there is a problem in the House GOP conference, leaders often call in Trump to mediate.

Trump did speak to Rules Committee Republicans — who were at the center of the protest over Epstein this week — in the Oval Office Tuesday night, according to three people with direct knowledge of the meeting. Foxx, the Rules chair, said the meeting was to thank panel Republicans for their work to pass Trump’s megabill ahead of a White House celebration around the legislative achievement.

But Rules Committee Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina — who this week accused House GOP leaders this week of “stalling” on Epstein matters — said he believes Trump now “is gonna release everything.”

“We were with him last night,” Norman added.

Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) have been pushing for a vote on a binding Epstein file-release measure that could have the support to pass the house in September, when the bipartisan duo will be able to use procedural maneuvers to force the issue. GOP leaders privately argue their best chance to defeat it is for the administration to make progress in August — an outcome Norman and others are rooting for, too.

In the meantime, the firestorm doesn’t appear to be dying down, especially following a Wall Street Journal report that the Justice Department informed Trump in May that his name was in documents related to the Epstein case.

“That is our best, and only, option now,” one senior House Republican said. “Otherwise, we’ll be right back here in September.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/24/house-gop-rebellion-epstein-00473348

So the constituents are more concerned on Epstein docs, then anything else in the country, I don't believe that, but it's just weird.

>>23374382

Thune: Johnson will have to ‘deal’ with Epstein mess

Thune says in interview he’s talked with Trump about Epstein ‘in passing.’

Jordain Carney

07/23/2025, 4:26pm ET

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday that Speaker Mike Johnson has to figure out a way forward on theJeffrey Epstein controversy that’s derailed House business until the fall.

“In some fashion, in some way, he’s going to have to handle it and deal with it,” Thune said during an interview from his Senate office.“And it sounds like, yeah, that’ll be a September [issue].”

Johnson chose to wrap up House votes early this week and send members home for the summer because of growing dysfunction fueled by the bipartisan push for more disclosure around Epstein, the deceased financier and former sex offender with ties to Trump and other prominent figures.

“He’s kind of handling it how I believe he thinks he needs to,” Thune said of Johnson. “He has a constituency out there that feels, in his caucus at least, that feels very strongly about it, and can make it difficult to get anything else done.”

Thune said the Epstein conflict isn’t yet bubbling up in his chamber.

“I’m not hearing the hue and cry, I guess I would say, to do a deep dive into this — to hold hearings or anything like that,” he said. “At least not at the moment.”

Thune said he and Trump have discussed Epstein “in passing.” Thune said Trump has conveyed that “there are other priorities that should take precedence.”

“He hasn’t made any specific point with me in conversations other than to reference what’s going on, what the House is saying,” Thune said. “I think he has an opinion, which he’s stated, that he’s shared with me, but he hasn’t given us any direction or suggestion or anything like that.”

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/07/23/congress/thune-interview-on-epstein-johnson-00471670

Appeals court finds Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship unconstitutional

The ruling brings the issue one step closer to returning to the Supreme Court.

By Associated Press07/23/2025 10:13 PM EDT

(Kamala’s radical Mother and Communist father knew they could get away with it, so her mother came in from Canada to CA and had Kamala born there, she is a birthright citizen, which is illegal.The lefties are probably doing this for those reasons, how many more democrats are birthright citizens?)

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s order seeking to end birthright citizenship is unconstitutional, affirming a lower-court decision that blocked its enforcement nationwide.

The ruling from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes after Trump’s plan was also blocked by a federal judge in New Hampshire. It brings the issue one step closer to coming back quickly before the Supreme Court.

The 9th Circuit decision keeps a block on the Trump administration enforcing the order that would deny citizenship to children born to people who are in the United States illegally or temporarily.

“The district court correctly concluded that the Executive Order’s proposed interpretation, denying citizenship to many persons born in the United States, is unconstitutional. We fully agree,” the majority wrote. (they are shit for judges then)

The 2-1 ruling keeps in place a decision from U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour in Seattle, who blocked Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship and decried what he described as the administration’s attempt to ignore the Constitution for political gain.

The White House and Justice Department did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

The Supreme Court has since restricted the power of lower court judges to issue orders that affect the whole country, known as nationwide injunctions.

But the 9th Circuit majority found that the case fell under one of the exceptions left open by the justices. The case was filed by a group of states who argued that they need a nationwide order to prevent the problems that would be caused by birthright citizenship only being the law in half of the country. (The SC intentionally blocks Trump by their unneeded further definition, even when they give him a win.)

“We conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in issuing a universal injunction in order to give the States complete relief,” Judge Michael Hawkins and Ronald Gould, both appointed by President Bill Clinton, wrote.

Judge Patrick Bumatay, who was appointed by Trump, dissented.He found that the states don’t have the legal right, or standing, to sue. “We should approach any request for universal relief with good faith skepticism, mindful that the invocation of ‘complete relief’ isn’t a backdoor to universal injunctions,” he wrote.

Bumatay did not weigh in on whether ending birthright citizenship would be constitutional.

The Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment says that all people born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to U.S. jurisdiction, are citizens. (but they leave out the parent must be a citizen first)

Justice Department attorneys argue that the phrase “subject to United States jurisdiction” in the amendment means that citizenship isn’t automatically conferred to children based on their birth location alone.

The states — Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon — argue that ignores the plain language of the Citizenship Clause as well as a landmark birthright citizenship case in 1898 where the Supreme Court found a child born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was a citizen by virtue of his birth on American soil.

Trump’s order asserts that a child born in the U.S. is not a citizen if the mother does not have legal immigration status or is in the country legally but temporarily, and the father is not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. At least nine lawsuits challenging the order have been filed around the U.S.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/23/appeals-court-finds-trumps-effort-to-end-birthright-citizenship-unconstitutional-00473423

JOHN SOLOMON: “The Engineer In Chief Is President Obama, He Can’t Run From The Evidence Anymore.”

13:38

https://rumble.com/embed/v6ufo6g/?pub=4

>>23374533

McCabe should be the first one taken to jail, at Gitmo