Overview
- Newly sworn-in Rep. Adelita Grijalva provided the 218th signature on the bipartisan discharge petition, freezing it in place and prompting Speaker Mike Johnson to schedule a vote next week rather than wait for the standard procedural timeline.
- All House Democrats and four Republicans — Thomas Massie, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace — signed the petition, and additional Republicans say they may support the measure on the floor.
- The White House lobbied Republican signers to back off, including a Situation Room meeting with Boebert attended by Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, but none removed their names before the threshold locked the list.
- House Oversight Democrats released emails from Epstein materials that reference President Trump, while Oversight Republicans posted tens of thousands of pages from Epstein’s estate; Trump called the push a “hoax.”
- Johnson argues ongoing Oversight work makes the petition unnecessary and has raised privacy concerns, and even if the House passes the bill it still faces resistance in the Senate and could be vetoed by the president.