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In a striking departure from the usual alignment with President Trump, Congress overwhelmingly passed a bill on Tuesday compelling the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious child sex offender. This development signals a rare moment where Trump’s grip on congressional Republicans appears to have faltered, prompting speculation about his continuing influence over the GOP as his second term winds down.
President Trump has historically maintained a stronghold over Republicans, pushing them to adapt to his agenda, even when it contradicted longstanding conservative principles like free trade, family values, and a robust defense of international democracies. Despite these deviations, most Republicans have historically rallied behind him, including during his attempts to contest the 2020 election results.
However, the decisive action taken by both legislative chambers to mandate the Justice Department’s release of Epstein’s files reveals the boundaries of Trump’s sway among Republicans on Capitol Hill. This episode underscores a rare defiance against the president from within his own party.
For an extended period, Trump had consistently dismissed the Epstein issue as a “hoax,” clashing with his party over the proposed bill. He criticized loyal supporters who opposed his stance and, as recently as last week, engaged in a final effort to sway House Republicans. Trump summoned them to the White House, pressuring them to withdraw support from the discharge petition that brought the Epstein bill forward.
Despite his efforts, Trump’s strategies proved ineffective. Tuesday’s overwhelming vote, with a tally of 427-1, demonstrated that Republicans viewed the Epstein files as an issue too politically perilous to ignore. This collective decision suggests that, at least on this matter, they prioritized transparency over party allegiance.
Just hours later, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) asked unanimous consent to approve the bill. Not a single senator objected — ripping off the Band-Aid on the Epstein bill saga.
Even some Republicans suggested on Tuesday that the episode was a clear sign of deepening tensions between Trump and the “America First” stalwarts who propelled him to a second term.
“He doesn’t have control over the base. And when he told his base, ‘You’re no longer my supporters if you still want these Epstein files,’ that’s where he got disconnected from his base,” said Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a lead sponsor of the Epstein bill who led the discharge petition effort to force a vote on it.
The near-unanimous House vote and unanimous Senate approval came after Trump relented and endorsed the legislation on Sunday night.
The White House argued that “the Trump Administration has done more for the victims than Democrats ever have.”
“President Trump has been consistently calling for transparency related to the Epstein files — by releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request, and President Trump recently calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends,” said White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson, pointing to Epstein’s associations with former President Clinton and Democratic Del. Stacey Plaskett (Virgin Islands).
Massie said Trump’s late-stage endorsement of the bill was a face-saving measure, and that it would have passed by a substantial margin without his support, guessing that around 100 Republicans would have voted for it. That would have amounted to an embarrassing rebellion — and one that could have overcome a presidential veto.
Several House Republicans who did not sign the discharge petition told The Hill last week — before Trump’s about-face — that they were preparing to vote for the bill on the floor.
“He was smart to get in front of the parade that was already leaving the station,” Massie said.
But Massie mused that it was also a political, electoral calculation for the president — and that he would have forced loyal Republicans to take a vote that could cost them in the midterm elections.
“I feel like somebody probably walked into his office and said, ‘Look, you can keep doing the mean tweets against Massie and [Rep. Marjorie Taylor] Greene [R-Ga.]. You’re just burning political capital, and you’re going to force these guys to walk a plank, and some of them will walk it for you, and then you’re going to lose the majority,’” Massie said.
To be sure, most Republicans are still hailing Trump and his leadership chops, saying he unites the GOP on a vast majority of the major issues facing the country — Tuesday’s vote aside.
“Trump is the most dominant force in politics in the Republican Party. Nothing that’s happened in the last couple of weeks has changed that,” Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) said. “There are Republicans who feel quite strongly on taxes, and border policy, our standing in the world. And we’re pretty much aligned with the president on things like that.”
Still, Republicans got a wake-up call earlier this month when they were pummeled in the off-year elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and elsewhere — showing that it will be difficult to re-create the electoral coalition that elected Trump in 2024 without the president on the ballot. And a vote against Epstein disclosure, they privately fretted, would only undermine their prospects in next year’s midterm elections.
Rep. Don Bacon (Neb.), a moderate who is one of the few Republicans to regularly criticize Trump, said that there has been “a lot of yes men and yes women mentality” in Congress under Trump.
“I don’t think the direction has been perfect, so I think there should be some course corrections,” Bacon said. Republicans starting to push back, he said, is a “positive sign.”
There are other recent signs of Republicans pushing back on Trump, either rejecting his directions or even pushing him to reverse course.
Senate Republicans this month rejected Trump’s repeated calls to eliminate the 60-vote threshold to end the filibuster and proceed on major legislation as a way to end the government shutdown. Republicans in Indiana’s state Senate are resisting Trump’s push to pursue redistricting in the state with the aim of giving Republicans a midterm edge. And Trump downplayed the idea of the government encouraging 50-year mortgages after he got broad pushback from the right.
“I’ve been pushing back on tariffs. The president subsequently said, ‘Hey, we shouldn’t do tariffs on coffee and bananas.’ Well, yeah, duh,” Bacon said.
Democrats are also pointing to the blue wave earlier in the month as a key factor that drove Republicans to support the Epstein bill even in the face of Trump’s frustrated opposition.
Rep. Ted Lieu (Calif.), the vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said those results were a wake-up call for Republicans who “got their asses kicked” at the polls and don’t want a repeat next year.
“Democrats didn’t just win in blue states like Virginia and California and New Jersey. Democrats won in every state in which there was an election — Georgia, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Maine,” Lieu said. “The Republicans have noticed, and now you see more Republicans standing up to Donald Trump, who is now a weight and anchor on the Republican Party.”