House GOP has ‘shut down Congress’ to avoid voting on Epstein files

This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on July 22, 2025. It is shared here with permission.

Republicans on the House Rules Committee have ground business in the chamber to a halt to avoid having to vote on Democratic amendments calling for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

For weeks now, Republicans in Congress, facing pressure from the White House, have dodged efforts to force the release of the files, which may implicate U.S. President Donald Trump in crimes committed by the convicted sex criminal.

According to Axios, the House had been scheduled to vote on GOP legislation involving immigration and environmental legislation this week. But in order for these votes to reach the floor, they’d first need to pass through the Speaker-controlled Rules Committee, which has also been presented with multiple Epstein amendments.

Republicans on House Rules “don’t want to vote no because they’re then accused of helping hide the truth about Epstein,” Punchbowl News reported Tuesday morning. So instead, they’ve chosen to simply stop work for the week to avoid having to vote at all.

This has essentially ground all business in the House to a halt, potentially until after Congress gets back from its August recess.

On Monday, the ranking Democrat on the Rules Committee, Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), told Politico reporter Mia Camille, “We’re done in [the] Rules Committee until September.”

“The Rules Committee decides what gets voted on in the House. It’s where Republicans have already voted six times against forcing the release of the Epstein files,” said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-N.M.). “They’d rather shut down Congress than vote to release the files. What are they hiding?”

The Epstein cloud has only grown thicker over the White House over the past week after The Wall Street Journal reported that in 2003, Trump gave Epstein a salacious letter for his 50th birthday containing talk of a “secret” between the two men and a drawing of a nude woman. Trump has sued The Journal, calling the letter “a fake thing.”

The New York Times later reported that a decade earlier, Trump hosted a party full of young women where Epstein was the only other guest.

Amid the drip of scandal, the White House has remained dismissive of calls, including from the president’s own supporters, for the Department of Justice to release all its files related to Epstein.

Not long ago, officials in his administration made promises to release the files themselves, assuring damning revelations. But now, Trump describes the files as a “hoax” by the “radical left.” Of the Trump-faithful who have called for their release, he said, “I don’t want their support anymore!”

Late last week, Trump called for the DOJ to release grand jury transcripts pertaining to the investigation. But many other critical pieces of information, including ones that could implicate the president, would remain hidden.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has closely coordinated the House GOP’s response to the Epstein fiasco with the White House, saying repeatedly that there is “no daylight” between his position and that of the administration.

Johnson last week introduced a non-binding resolution to provide the public with “certain” Epstein-related documents, but it had no legal weight, allowing the White House to have total control over the information they disclosed. But even that resolution, Johnson said, would not be brought forth for a vote until after the August recess.

This has provoked the ire of a fellow Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who—along with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.)—drafted a discharge petition last week in an attempt to force a vote on the Epstein files onto the House floor.

“I think this is the referendum on [Johnson’s] leadership,” Massie said. “Who’s he gonna pick? Is he going to stand with the pedophiles and underage sex traffickers? Or is he gonna pick the American people and justice for the victims?”

Last week, a CNN/SSRS poll found that just 3% of Americans were satisfied with the amount of information the government had released about the Epstein files, while more than half said they were dissatisfied.

“This is the ultimate decision the speaker needs to make. And it’s irrespective of what the president wants,” Massie said.