Latest news with #HouseDemocrats
Associated Press
12 hours ago
- Politics
- Associated Press
House Democrats launch bid to subpoena Justice Department for Epstein files
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats launched a bid Wednesday to subpoena President Donald Trump's Justice Department for files in the sex trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, goading GOP lawmakers to defy Trump and Republican leadership to support the action. Democrats on a subcommittee of the powerful House Committee on Oversight made a motion for the subpoena Wednesday afternoon, just hours before the House was scheduled to end its July work session and depart Washington for a monthlong break. The subcommittee's Republican chairman, Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana, postponed a vote on the matter until the end of the meeting. While several Republicans on the panel are members of a right-wing faction and have called for the release of the files, it was not clear whether they would vote for the subpoena. During a brief break in the meeting, Higgins told reporters he expected the motion for the subpoena to pass with some changes. 'If the Republican Party, if our colleagues on this committee don't join us in this vote, then what they're essentially doing is joining President Donald Trump in complicity,' Rep. Summer Lee, the Pennsylvania Democrat who made the motion for the subpoena, told reporters outside the hearing room. The move by Democrats showed how they were doing practically everything in their power to force Republicans to act on the Epstein files. House Speaker Mike Johnson — caught between demands from Trump and clamoring from his own members for the House to act — has resisted calls for action and prepared to send the House home a day early. Johnson told reporters earlier Wednesday there was no need to vote on legislation calling for the release of the Epstein files this week because the Trump administration is 'already doing everything within their power to release them.' Yet Democrats have delighted this week in pressing Republicans to support the release of the files. Their efforts halted the GOP's legislative agenda for the week and turned attention to an issue that Trump has unsuccessfully implored his supporters to forget about. 'They're fleeing our work, our job and sending us back home because they don't want to vote to release these files. This is something that they ran on. This is something that they talked about: the importance of transparency, holding pedophiles accountable,' Lee said. Democratic leaders are hoping to make the issue about much more than just Epstein, who died in his New York jail cell six years ago while he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges. 'Why haven't Republicans released the Epstein files to the American people? It's reasonable to conclude that Republicans are continuing to protect the lifestyles of the rich and the shameless, even if that includes pedophiles,' said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries at a news conference. 'So it's all connected.' It comes as both parties are gearing up to take their messaging to voters on Trump's big multitrillion-dollar tax breaks and spending cuts bill. For Republicans, it's 'beautiful' legislation that will spark economic growth; for Democrats, it's an 'ugly' gift mostly to the richest Americans that undermines health care for low-income people. Yet as furor has grown on the right over the Trump administration's reversal on promises related to Epstein, several Democrats have seized on the opportunity to divide Republicans on the issue. 'This goes to a fundamental sense of, 'Is our government co-opted by rich and powerful people that isn't looking out for ordinary Americans? Or can we have a government that looks out for ordinary Americans?'' said Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who has put forward a bipartisan bill meant to force release of the files. Republican leaders accuse Democrats of caring about the issue purely for political gain. They point out that the Department of Justice held on to the Epstein investigation through the presidency of Democrat Joe Biden. Trump's Justice Department is also seeking the release of testimony from secret grand jury proceedings in the Epstein case, though that effort is unlikely to produce new revelations. The House Oversight Committee, with support from Republicans, also advanced Tuesday a subpoena for Epstein's former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, for a deposition. However, those lawmakers who want Congress to take a stronger role in the Epstein files have cautioned that Maxwell, who is serving a prison sentence for helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls, may be an unreliable witness. 'It's a good idea, but it's not enough. It's not nearly enough,' said Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who has pushed the bipartisan bill to pry the records from the Justice Department. ___
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Hakeem Jeffries Breaks House Record With Speech Bashing Trump's Tax Bill
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries spoke for eight hours and 44 minutes on the House floor on Thursday, in a marathon speech delaying the passage of = Donald Trump's Medicaid-and-food-assistance slashing, tax-gift-for-the-wealthy abomination of a reconciliation bill. The speech breaks the record for longest ever delivered on the House floor, previously held by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Jeffries spent much of his hours-long 'magic minute' speech reading statements, letters, and stories from individuals who have benefited from Medicaid and other programs, or have written in opposition to the legislation's cuts to the federal health care program for the disabled and poor. 'Donald Trump's deadline may be Independence Day. That ain't my deadline,' Jeffries said of the president's demand that the bill be sent to his desk for signature by the Fourth of July. 'We don't work for Donald Trump. We work for the American people. That's why we're right here now, on the floor of the House of Representatives, standing up for the American people.' The people are being set up to suffer, as Jeffries highlighted. 'People will die. Tens of thousands, perhaps year after year after year, as a result of the Republican assault on the healthcare of the American people,' he said. 'I'm sad. I never thought that I'd be on the House floor saying this is a crime scene. And House Democrats want no part of it.' Republicans dismissed the stalling tactic, which will only delay the House's final passage of the bill through Congress. 'The sooner we get this done, the better,' House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Thursday. 'If Hakeem Jeffries would stop talking, we could deliver relief for the American people.' 'It's an utter waste of everyone's time, but you know, that's part of the system here,' Johnson told reporters. 'We'll land this plane before July Fourth.' While Jefferies is making the GOP wait to take their victory lap, the majority of the delays related to the bill's passage have stemmed from disagreements within Johnson's own party. On Wednesday night, another record was broken in the House when Republicans forced the longest vote in the history of the lower chamber, holding a rule vote open for seven hours while they attempted to browbeat the party's deficit hawks into submission. While Johnson may consider a lengthy speech a waste of his time, the over 11 million American who may lose health care as a result of the bill's Medicaid cuts would hope that their elected representatives delay passage as long as possible. Unfortunately for those affected, delay was all Jeffries' speech did, and the Democratic Party's accomplishments in the early months of Trump's second term haven't amounted to much more than symbolic theatrics. More from Rolling Stone One Minute Is Missing From the Epstein Video. Conspiracy Theorists Are Losing Their Minds Trump Maybe, Finally Realizes Putin Has Been Playing Him 7 Overlooked Provisions in Trump and the GOP's Ugly Tax Bill Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
E&E News
17-07-2025
- Politics
- E&E News
House Dems seek EPA records on firings, regulations
House Democrats are seeking information from EPA on staff purges and new policies as the agency barrels ahead with a reorganization plan. Sixteen Democrats, led by Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois, submitted a submitted a request Tuesday under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a trove of documents from EPA. 'At your January 16 confirmation hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, you pledged to be 'transparent and accountable to Congress and the public,' the group wrote to EPA administrator Lee Zeldin. Advertisement 'Your response will help address our concerns about the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) implementation of the President's various executive orders and other actions,' they added.
Yahoo
17-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Republicans torpedo Democratic effort to force vote on releasing Epstein files
The latest attempt by House Democrats to force a vote on releasing files related to the disgraced, late financier Jeffrey Epstein failed on Tuesday. Democrats unsuccessfully urged the chamber to oppose a routine procedural vote — known as the motion on ordering the previous question — since failure would have triggered a vote on Rep. Ro Khanna's (D-Calif.) amendment requiring Attorney General Pam Bondi to preserve, compile and publish the Epstein files. The Epstein files have been a source of controversy in Washington — especially the Republican Party — in recent days, with the MAGA base demanding its disclosure while President Trump directs those in his party to drop the matter. The vote on the motion ordering the previous question is almost always a routine, party-line vote, with members of the majority party voting in favor and those in the minority party voting in opposition. It represents a last-chance effort for members in the minority to try and force consideration of certain legislation. In the end, Republicans united and supported the procedural vote, bringing the final tally to 211-210 along party lines — clearing the majority threshold that Democrats were hoping to avoid. Democrats had framed the procedural vote as a referendum on whether Republicans want the Epstein files to be released, or whether they would fall in line with Trump's request. 'Republicans spent years screaming for the Epstein Files to be released. Now Donald Trump wants to hide them. Today, every R can vote to release the files. Will they give the American people transparency or block the truth to protect Trump?' Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) wrote on X. Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.), the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee, attempted a similar gambit on Monday night, forcing a vote in committee on staging a floor vote on Khanna's amendment. That effort, however, failed 4-8, though Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) notably voted in favor. He was the only GOP vote in support. Despite the GOP conference's united opposition to triggering a vote on Khanna's amendment, the party is divided over the Epstein files. Some hardline conservatives, particularly those close to the MAGA base, are furious with the administration's handling of the files and want them to be made public, breaking with Trump's plea that the party drops the conversation. 'I would just like the files to be turned over,' Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said Tuesday morning. Others, however, are deferring to the administration. 'I'm confident that they've been looked at and that, quite frankly, a fairly controversial assessment, that there isn't a there there, that in spite of many of the things that are believed by my own base weren't true,' Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said. 'I trust the people who reported it to us and who looked at them.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
12-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Democrats Finally Have a Plan to Attack Trump. Sort Of.
The first six months of Donald Trump's second presidency have been a master class in what he truly excels at: wanton misrule. With an absence of adult minders and a determination to run roughshod over all of the democratic guardrails that have historically only been propped up by a fealty to norms and the waning spirit of fair play in Washington, Trump has moved fast and broken the government, put the economy into trauma with his constantly shifting tariff demands, perpetrated the deaths of HIV-infected children abroad, and cut the ribbon on a spanking new concentration camp in Florida. These first six months have also featured a Democratic Party that has done what it does best: kept its stockpile of powder nice and dry. While some Democratic electeds have broken from the herd (often to the disdain of Democratic leadership) to confront Trump and his Republican minions, the party's age-old theory of how political change happens—wait for the GOP to screw up—has remained in effect. Though now, with the passage of Trump's big new 'kick people off health care and funnel the money into an American Gestapo Act of 2025,' it looks like Democrats finally have their quarry right where they want them. Or … almost? As it turns out, Democrats are planning to take on the GOP—in a few weeks, anyway. 'House Democrats are plotting to turn the August recess into the opening salvo of the midterms, including through town halls and organizing programs,' reports Politico, as the party is experiencing 'renewed bravado after months in the political wilderness.' And to think that all it took for Democrats to exit this self-imposed exile was Trump getting everything he wanted. But come on, feel the bravado, folks. Maine's centrist weirdo Representative Jared Golden, who is part of a group of Democrats who've lately decided that swearing more often makes them look edgy, shows up in the same Politico piece, bragging, 'There's almost nothing about this bill that I'm going [to] have a hard time explaining to the district. This is a giant tax giveaway to wealthy people. Everyone fucking knows it.' Can confirm! The New Republic has been covering this bill rather relentlessly over the past few months, which raises an uncomfortable question: What was stopping Golden from explaining this to his district at any point during the legislative meanderings of this bill? (Perhaps Golden, the most Trump-curious member of the Democratic caucus, was weighing whether to vote with the Republicans, as he has in the past.) If there's one thing that Democrats do seem committed to, it's their August timetable for finally unleashing the spittin', cussin', new-look party to officially open the midterm election campaign. Over the past weekend, as Texans faced the now-familiar tragedy of mass casualties from devastating floods, House minority leader and energy vampire Hakeem Jeffries found it premature to go on an attack. Instead, he joined the Sunday morning talk show idiot parade to express his firm hope that Democrats might work productively with the party that's hell-bent on destroying the government and wiping climate change from our brains: 'I think we are going to have to figure out what happened, why did it happen, and how do we prevent this type of tragedy from ever happening again? And so the question of readiness is certainly something that Congress should be able to explore in a bipartisan way, particularly as we head into a summer where we can expect intensifying extreme weather events.' It's hard to fathom a Democratic leader speaking these words aloud in July of 2025. In the first place, the hows and whys of this flood should be glitteringly apparent: Trump's executive branch misrule has led to cuts in the programs and personnel that keep people safe from these disasters, his shell of a disaster-response agency was slowed by Kristi Noem's penny-pinching and is (as of this writing) 'slow-walking the response,' and the federal government's weather resources are being sold to his cronies. There is also ample evidence of Republican misrule closer to home, from a Republican governor who keeps presiding over these needless disasters to local officials who passed on funding a more robust emergency system so they could score partisan political points. Meanwhile, the GOP's commitment to the promulgation of deranged conspiracy theories has the MAGA faithful engaging in the sorts of crimes that might cause the next disaster. Therefore, the question of 'How do we stop this tragedy from happening again?' has a pretty clear and obvious answer: Drive Republicans out of office. And that, I'm sorry to say, precludes the possibility of working arm-in-arm with the members of this criminal syndicate to solve the problems of the world. The scores who perished in these Texas floods deserve the finest politicization-of-their-deaths that the Democrats can muster: Take the cheapest shot, force Trump and his lackeys to defend themselves, shred their defense to pieces by demanding more and better, and then reload for the next disaster, which under Trump, as we know, will always be soon in arriving. I agree with The New Republic's editor Michael Tomasky that Trump's murderous new piece of legislation will reveal how cruel and stupid the Republicans have become; how could it not? But the GOP has a distinct advantage over Democrats not just because they, as Tomasky correctly points out, have 'a multibillion-dollar propaganda machine that will see to it that [their] vast audience never learns the truth about the impacts of this bill'; they are also vastly better at playing the media game with outlets outside their immediate control, where they are quicker to the punch and more relentless in bringing controversy and conflict to market. It would be a good idea to follow Delaware Representative Sarah McBride's lead and start referring to the future Medicaid cuts as 'Trumpcare.' Until these widening strategic gaps start to close, I wouldn't put my faith behind the belief that Trumpism will discredit itself. It's not enough to simply vote against Trump's bad ideas—though that is mandatory. You have to engage in full-frontal war with the GOP, relentlessly force them to defend themselves, find a way to blame them for everything that goes wrong, and use your available resources and expertise to help those who will be harmed by the GOP's policies. This is the time for Democrats to get a lot less civil. To bide one's time in the hopes that a more favorable political environment might emerge is malpractice—because while you're waiting, people are getting crushed economically and snatched off the street by masked paramilitary thugs. And to pretend that you have a productive relationship with the GOP on any level, as Jeffries asserted in the wake of more deaths by Republican hands, is simply brain-dead. I'm pleased as punch to know that in a few weeks' time, the Democrats will supposedly be firing their powder. I hope to see some real pyrotechnics at last. This article first appeared in Power Mad, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Jason Linkins. Sign up here.
