Over the course of many years, Congress has earned a reputation as a plodding and sclerotic institution, where even good ideas move at a glacial pace. But we’re occasionally reminded that members can move quite quickly when they want to.
After months of divisive debate and wrangling behind the scenes, the House finally voted on Tuesday afternoon to approve the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which would force disclosure of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Although many Republicans fought against the effort for much of the year, the final tally was lopsided: The bipartisan measure cleared the lower chamber on a 427-1 vote.
The legislation initially faced an uncertain fate in the Republican-led Senate, and it was far from clear when or whether the bill would reach the floor. But that’s when things got interesting. As MS NOW reported:
Hours after the House overwhelmingly passed a bill to force the release of files from the Justice Department’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the Senate moved to approve the legislation by unanimous consent — sending the measure to President Donald Trump’s desk and bringing the yearslong campaign to release some of America’s most scrutinized documents to its final stage.
The House vote wrapped up at 2:43 p.m. local time. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer successfully executed his unanimous consent request at just after 5 p.m. local time.
The developments happened so quickly that, as MS NOW’s report added, “the Senate hadn’t even formally received the bill from the House” when Schumer accomplished his maneuver. (The New York Democrat asked that once the legislation reached the upper chamber, it be automatically “deemed as passed.”)
It’s not yet clear how the process will proceed at the White House. In fact, Trump, who announced earlier this week that he intends to sign the bill, published an item to his social media platform on Tuesday afternoon, after the Senate had acted, that suggested he had no idea the bill had already cleared Capitol Hill.
As the dust settles on a tumultuous process and the political world awaits the president’s next move, spare a thought for House Speaker Mike Johnson, who managed to fail in multiple, unexpected ways.
The Louisiana Republican spent months following Trump’s lead and fighting transparency, even as the MAGA movement slowly tore itself apart over the issue. Johnson’s intransigence led to a discharge petition, which generated 218 signatures and left the House speaker embarrassed.
Ahead of Tuesday afternoon’s vote, Johnson said he’d vote for the legislation he’d opposed, but there was a catch: The GOP leader said he was “very confident” that the Senate would “amend” the measure and send it back to the House. In other words, Johnson believed the House vote would simply be the start of a larger process that would include a variety of Senate actions — followed by another House vote. That didn’t happen. Maybe Johnson was confused; maybe Senate Majority Leader John Thune changed his mind; maybe Republican senators wanted to get it all over with and didn’t much care about the House speaker’s expectations. Whatever the explanation, Johnson’s strategy flopped. As work wrapped up on Tuesday night, the House speaker conceded to reporters that he was “deeply disappointed” in the outcome. The reaction wasn’t surprising: Senators from both parties treated Johnson and his concerns like an afterthought, adding to the Louisiana Republican’s list of failures.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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