paywall

paywall

Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images

This afternoon, Mike Johnson finally administered the oath of office to new Arizona Democratic congresswoman Adelita Grijalva. The Speaker held off this moment for well over a month under the guise of not wanting to do serious business while the government was shut down (the House wasn’t technically in recess, and Johnson had sworn in Republicans at similar moments earlier this year).

Grijalva won the seat vacated by her father’s death in a September 23 special election. Her delayed swearing-in was generally understood to have been attributable to her pledge to become the 218th signatory on a discharge petition to force a House vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a piece of legislation co-sponsored by Republican Thomas Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna that the White House would love to consign to the bottom of the sea. It would force the release of whatever the Justice Department has on the late sexual predator and his associates.

Grijalva has now signed the petition, and last-minute efforts by Trump himself to get one or more of the four Republicans on the petition to withdraw their names failed. So this triggers a process that Johnson can only do so much to delay. Politico explains:

The completion of the discharge petition, a rarely used mechanism to sidestep the majority party leadership, will trigger a countdown for the bill to hit the House floor. It will still take seven legislative days for the petition to ripen, after which Johnson will have two legislative days to schedule a vote. Senior Republican and Democratic aides estimate a floor vote will come the first week of December, after the Thanksgiving recess.

If accurate, the timing is interesting: That will be at about the same time the Senate is setting up some sort of vote on extending Obamacare premium subsidies, as promised by John Thune as part of the deal to reopen the federal government. High drama in both congressional chambers at roughly the same time will be a moment of political peril for Republicans. They will likely display some of their most unpopular prejudices: indifference to the plight of Americans facing much higher health-care costs and a protective attitude toward Donald Trump and his possible implication with really bad stuff in the Epstein files.

Johnson may be able to play some games in how the House votes on the Epstein-files bill via his control of the Rules Committee, which will deal with possible amendments and all sorts of timing issues. But the whole point of a discharge petition is to tie leadership’s hands, which is why it’s used so rarely. The freer access to the floor the Senate affords means that if the bill clears the House it will likely surface in the Senate as well, but its fate there is unclear. Administration allies could filibuster it and block it with 41 votes, though that would be a bit ironic given Trump’s own recent attacks on the filibuster itself. Still, even if both chambers pass the legislation, Trump would have to sign it, which isn’t happening.

As votes are teed up in House or Senate, there will be competitive leaks of Epstein-files material by each party (such as the Epstein emails mentioning Trump that House Oversight Committee Democrats released today) either showing there’s smoke and fire or that it’s all a nothingburger. The White House and its congressional allies cannot be too heavy-handed in dismissing demands for more disclosure given the longtime importance of Epstein in various MAGA conspiracy theories. And even if Republicans can minimize disclosure, it’s not going to be helpful to their midterm election prospects to have these issues being broadly and actively discussed in 2026. So they will likely handle the Massie-Khanna bill with fire tongs and try to dispose of it as quickly as they can.

What Happens After Congress Votes on the Epstein-Files Bill

What Happens After Congress Votes on the Epstein-Files Bill