Congress

‘He got tired of me winning’: How Thomas Massie outmaneuvered Trump on Epstein

Published

10 months ago

November 17, 2025

President Donald Trump’s call for House Republicans to support releasing Jeffrey Epstein-related documents was a stunning capitulation after a months-long campaign to block the vote.

It was also a specific defeat for Trump at the hands of a despised GOP opponent: Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

“He got tired of me winning,” Massie said of Trump’s U-turn in an interview Monday morning.

Insisting “I DON’T CARE!” in a late-night Truth Social post, Trump was bowing to the inevitable — a broad House Republican mutiny on a vote that was only scheduled because Massie forced it. It was the result of Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) launching a discharge petition aimed at sidestepping senior GOP leaders who desperately wanted to avoid bringing the issue to the House floor.

The campaign to avoid the vote got remarkably ugly in the days before Trump finally conceded, with the president personally attacking Massie for recently remarrying after the sudden death last summer of his wife of more than 30 years. Just hours before Trump’s reversal, one of his top political advisers called him “garbage” in an X post.

That adviser, Chris LaCivita, is carrying out a Trump-ordered effort to unseat Massie from the rural northern Kentucky seat he has held since 2012. Trump recently endorsed a challenger, former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, in the GOP primary.

Massie has not flinched from the threats. Politically, he has seen the best fundraising of his congressional career, entering October with more than $2 million in his campaign coffers. As for the personal attacks, Massie said Monday he and his wife were laughing them off.

“She said, ‘I told you we should have invited him to the wedding!’” Massie said.

Massie’s efforts around Epstein have been no laughing matter for the White House, with top aides and legislative affairs staff furiously scrambling late last week to head off the completion of the discharge petition.

That included pulling Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) into the White House Situation Room in the final hours to try to persuade her to remove her name from the petition she had signed alongside GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Nancy Mace of South Carolina, a survivor of sexual assault. All three have cast their support for the petition as an effort to protect women.

The effort failed. The three female House Republicans held firm, and the petition notched its final and 218th signature Wednesday moments after Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) was sworn in following her September special election win.Despite a final barrage of attacks from the president over the weekend — which included Trump calling his once-close ally Greene a “traitor” and threatening a GOP primary against her — backers of the Massie-Khanna discharge effort knew they had the president beat.

There were emerging signs that it was Massie, not Trump, who had his fingers closer to the pulse of the MAGA base.

Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas), a top Trump ally in the House, posted online he would be “voting NO on the Epstein Hoax” as he sought to rally Republicans to “stand by” the president’s side. Nehls received an immediate barrage of online pushback, suggesting a position against full transparency on Epstein would not be sustainable.

Massie, in conjunction with the three GOP women who signed the discharge petition, have sought to put Epstein’s victims front and center amid the battle. They invited several to Capitol Hill in September to keep the fight in the public eye as members returned from the summer recess. They are tentatively scheduled to appear together again Tuesday ahead of the final House vote.

“This shouldn’t have been a battle, and unfortunately, it has been one,” Greene said as she left a meeting with Epstein victims in September.

Yet for months, senior White House officials labored to convince rank-and-file Republicans to keep their names off Massie’s discharge effort. That, according to five people granted anonymity to discuss private conversations, included warnings that any effort to support an Epstein vote would be viewed as a direct and personal move against the president.

Trump has denied wrongdoing in relation to the Epstein allegations, and no evidence has suggested that Trump took part in Epstein’s trafficking operation. The president also has maintained that he and Epstein had a falling out years ago.

In an effort to undercut Massie’s effort, GOP leaders and the Justice Department worked to release 30,000 pages of DOJ documents in early September, right after Massie could begin gathering signatures on his petition. But lawmakers quickly realized most of the materials had been previously released.

Around that time, the White House’s key legislative affairs liaison to the House, Jeff Freeland, was on Blue Light News, seeking to head off Massie right after lawmakers returned from recess.

“Jeff introduced himself to me outside of the Capitol, and he said I was moving too fast for him,” Massie said in the interview. “I told him I made a mistake by getting 12 sponsors [on the Epstein bill], because I had given him his whip list to block the most likely signers” of the discharge petition.

Over the past week, it became clear to House GOP leaders that they would no longer be able to keep the Epstein measure off the House floor. Shortly after Grijalva signed, Speaker Mike Johnson announced he would expedite the vote, holding it this week rather than next month as required under the discharge petition. Still, with Trump opposing the effort, he maintained Massie’s legislation was reckless and “moot” now that the House Oversight Committee was heading up its own probe.

Last week, Johnson tried calling one of the three GOP women who had signed on to Massie’s discharge petition. The member looked down at her phone and let the call go to voicemail, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter who declined to identify the specific lawmaker.

Trump’s Sunday night edict was directed only at House Republicans, according to Trump officials. The president could order the release of the entire Epstein document trove at any time, vote or no vote. So far, he’s declined to do so.

Senate GOP leaders have not committed to holding a vote on the Epstein bill if the House passes it as expected this week. While Republicans still widely assume the measure will die in the other chamber, it will be hard to argue to GOP senators that they should take the political heat while their House counterparts get to take a consequence-free vote.

Massie has been working with Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who authored a Senate version of the bill, to bring the matter to a head across the Rotunda. Senate Democrats are already exploring options to force a vote in the coming weeks.

Massie said last week that the Epstein drama reflects how Republicans are starting to take stock of a post-Trump political world.

“They need to look past 2028 and wonder if they want this on their record for the rest of their political career,” he said.

“Right now, it’s OK to cover up for pedophiles, because the president will take up for you if you’re in the red districts — that’s the deal,” Massie told reporters last week. “But that deal only works as long as he’s popular or president. … If they’re thinking about the right thing to do, that’s pretty obvious: You vote for it.”

Congress

House Democrats watch closely as Hakeem Jeffries vows to rein in rogue members

Published

6 hours ago

September 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Democrats have spent the better part of two years looking on in glee as House Republicans have struggled to wrangle their narrow majority and enact a consensus agenda.

Now, eyeing a potentially small majority of their own, they are eager not to see the shoe quickly land on the other foot — which is why Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is under fierce internal pressure to crack down on a surprise rebellion this week.

The decision by Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) and Jared Golden (D-Maine) to support a Republican procedural measure that would have otherwise failed — essentially bailing out Speaker Mike Johnson’s floor agenda — prompted Jeffries and fellow Democratic leaders to decry a “breach of trust” and promise a “serious response.”

Rank-and-file members are watching closely to see if Jeffries follows through on those threats and moves to rein in rogue members who could undermine the party agenda and his own leadership.

“If there’s no understanding that we need to stay together on procedural measures, then we’re going to be like Republicans,” said Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Rules Committee Democrat and a Jeffries ally. “I mean, they can’t get anything done because everybody’s going off in different directions.”

Many Democrats are hoping Jeffries will set an assertive tone and send a message that some protest tactics will not be tolerated in a future majority. The situation is of particular interest to members given the slate of insurgent hard-left members poised to join the caucus next term — some of whom have openly discussed adopting strategies embraced by the hard right.

“It’s an open secret — we don’t want to end up with our own Freedom Caucus,” one House Democrat granted anonymity to speak candidly said in an interview, referring to the fractious ultraconservative group. “You see how a core group of people can stop the workings here … when it’s continual and it’s just about grandstanding. … We don’t want that.”

“I’m not saying that those folks coming in are going to operate in that way,” the member added. “We don’t know. But we’ve got to tighten up the systems.”

Already, House Democrats have competing views about how and when to punish the rogue members. Multiple members, for example, have privately suggested kicking Gluesenkamp Perez off of the Appropriations Committee — a highly coveted assignment.

Gluesenkamp Perez represents a district President Donald Trump won in 2024.

But others acknowledge that leaders have little leverage against the duo. Golden is leaving the House at the end of this term, and Gluesenkamp Perez is one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the country.

Keeping her seat in a district President Donald Trump won by 3 percentage points in 2024 could determine the outcome of the midterm elections, and she has made her clashes with party leaders a core part of her political identity.

Some members — including progressives who used procedural votes for leverage during Nancy Pelosi’s speakership — also cautioned leadership from overpolicing members.

Asked about how Jeffries should “punish” the members, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), a former chair of the Progressive Caucus, said, “We’re not kids, and he’s not our dad.”

“I’m elected by 750,000 people. I get to make my decisions about what I want,” Jayapal said before adding, “At the same time, I think there has to be a strong commitment to the team.”

“I think that there can be certain reasonable expectations — for example, to flag how one may intend to vote on something,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said. “I also think that the idea that there will be consequences depending on how that is laid out could create a slippery slope.”

Both of the rebels are shrugging off the intense reaction from Democratic leaders and some of their colleagues. Golden said he voted with Republicans to advance a bill he cosponsored benefiting lobstermen in Maine; Gluesenkamp Perez said she voted to support Golden and “people who make their livelihoods and heritage on the water.”

“I do not have a polished political strategy,” she told reporters Wednesday. “I know my community, and that’s who sent me here, and that’s who I am thinking about.”

Many of their Democratic colleagues aren’t ready to just let it go, however. Several argued in interviews that if every member broke ranks on procedural votes to advance legislation they support, the party would lose significant leverage.

Golden, left, is retiring after his term ends.

“I am generally of the view that if you believe that you are a free agent in this town, maybe you don’t get to use the team locker room anymore,” Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) said, adding that he could not think of a potential punishment “within the scope of what leadership can do that could be opposed by the caucus.”

Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) said “some tough love“ might be necessary to send a message to the broader caucus: “We’re all in this together.”

Amid the agita, it’s not clear how quickly Jeffries will act. An internal committee dealing with caucus rules met Wednesday and discussed the matter but did not advance any specific proposals for sanctions or rules changes.

Jeffries himself has not committed to a timeline for imposing consequences against the two defectors. He told reporters Wednesday he wants to pursue action “sooner rather than later” as he faces internal questions about whether he can exert the same level of control over Democrats as his predecessor did.

Pelosi dealt with rebellions of her own, including moderates who repeatedly voted with Republicans to amend Democratic bills on the floor. But she pointedly commented on the disloyalty on display this week, with Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez essentially voting to advance the GOP floor agenda.

“We didn’t even consider that anybody would do that,” she said Tuesday. “We never had that problem, so I’m disappointed that they did that.”

Another lawmaker who was happy to comment Wednesday was Johnson, who has routinely contended with GOP mutinies during his time in office — including one that Gluesenkamp Perez and Golden bailed him out of Tuesday.

Jeffries “has a serious problem in his caucus,” he told reporters, citing the “warring factions in his party.”

“I don’t see a way out of that thicket,” he said. “But I’m not going to tell him how to govern his conference, and he doesn’t, or shouldn’t, be telling me how to.”

Congress

Tillis renews calls for Hegseth’s ouster

Published

11 hours ago

September 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Thom Tillis renewed his call for President Donald Trump to fire Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday, following the resignation earlier this week of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll.

“I have never witnessed more inept management of the brave men and women who serve our country,” the outgoing two-term North Carolina Republican wrote on X. “He is intimidated by competence and retreats to ginning up culture wars instead of soberly attending to the vital work of our national defense and the health and well-being of our fighting force.”

Driscoll, whose long-rumored resignation became official this week, had clashed with Hegseth over the Defense secretary’s reluctance to modernize the Army and his firings of dozens of senior officers. Hegseth has focused more on cultural issues — including grooming and fitness standards — within the department.

“If we had a @SecWar who maintained the same priorities and forward-thinking, he would be fighting to retain talented leaders like Dan and the many flag officers he has forced into retirement,” Tillis charged. “Instead, he is creating a leadership void at the top of our military ranks.”

The White House and Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment on Tillis’ post.

Tillis, who is not running for reelection in November, has openly clashed with Hegseth since Trump tapped the former Fox News host to lead the Pentagon in 2024.

In May, Tillis told POLITICO he believed Hegseth had misinformed Trump on the dynamics of a war in Iran. Firing Hegseth, he said, was on “a Christmas wish list.” In a book set to be released next month, Tillis branded Hegseth — along with a handful of other White House officials — as “MAGATS” and accused them of “not looking around corners and taking care of this president.”

It hasn’t earned him friends in the administration.

“The media said how brave he was to take me on, but he wasn’t brave, he was just the opposite – HE WAS A QUITTER!” Trump wrote on Truth Social in May. “Now he can have all the fun he wants for a few months, with some of his RINO friends, screwing the Republican Party. In the end it will only get bigger, and better, and stronger, than ever before!”

Congress

No immediate plans to punish rogue House Democrats for bailing out GOP

Published

11 hours ago

September 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Despite a stern message from party leaders, a panel of House Democrats did not settle on any particular consequences for the pair of lawmakers who crossed party lines Tuesday to advance an otherwise troubled slate of Republican-led bills.

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and fellow leaders said the matter would be reviewed by the Democratic Committee on Caucus Rules, which convened Wednesday morning for a prescheduled listening session.

Attendees discussed possible changes to the rules that govern House Democrats’ conduct for next term. Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.), the panel’s chair, suggested to reporters that discussion included what should happen if members vote with Republicans on procedural measures like the one Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) supported Tuesday.

“There’s been a variety of suggestions to change our rules, not just regarding the last couple days, but several suggestions that have been percolating for some time,” Levin said, while adding that any changes would happen only “in the next couple of months.”

The lack of urgency stands in contrast to the stern statement Jeffries and fellow leaders made Tuesday about the rogue members’ “breach of trust” — not to mention the rage some rank-and-file House Democrats are expressing. Some have floated removing the pair from their committees — particularly Gluesenkamp Perez’ seat on the exclusive Appropriations panel.

“Somebody else who is willing to think about other people needs to be on that seat, that exclusive committee,” said one House Democrat granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Jeffries, who was not present at the meeting, also seemed to have a speedier timeline for responding to Gluesenkamp Perez and Golden. He told reporters after the meeting wrapped that he was waiting on feedback from Levin and that the caucus would have conversations “amongst the family about the best way to move forward.”

Asked about his timeline for action against the pair, Jeffries said, “Sooner rather than later.”