Democrats pushing the discharge petition predicted that Republicans would rush to support the measure once it hit the floor.
Republicans are bracing for a significant chunk of the conference to vote for Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D-Calif.) and Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-Ky.) Epstein file disclosure bill once it lands on the House floor.
Senior Republicans privately believe dozens of Republicans will vote for it, possibly 100 or more, according to five people granted anonymity to speak candidly. Democrats pushing the petition publicly predicted that Republicans would rush to support the measure once it hit the floor.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said earlier Wednesday that he’d vote in favor of a bill demanding the Justice Department release files related to Jeffrey Epstein, but expressed confidence in the House Oversight Committee’s work in releasing information related to the case.
“I think it’s a little bit of a false hope that’s going to provide these great results,” Bacon told MSNBC about the discharge petition. “It’s still got to work its way through the Senate and the president. But we’re already getting a lot of results.”
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) also said he’d vote for the measure when it comes to the House floor.
“Sure I’d support it, absolutely,” he said in a brief interview. “Unless there’s some reason not to. I don’t see any reason not to.”
Rep. Rob Bresnahan, a vulnerable Republican in a Pennsylvania swing district, said in an interview he also would vote for Epstein bill on the floor.
Trump signs bill ending longest government shutdown in US history
After the House cleared the bill earlier in the evening, the president signed it into law in an Oval Office ceremony.
President Donald Trump signed legislation late Wednesday to end the government shutdown that spanned 43 days, punting the next funding deadline into late January.
“Today we’re sending a clear message that we will never give in to extortion,” Trump said, alluding to Democrats’ demand that GOP leaders agree to negotiate policy to head off the expiration at year’s end of health care subsidies for millions of Americans.
The president also made his pitch again for nixing the Senate filibuster, despite the resistance of most Republican senators. “If we had the filibuster terminated, this would never happen again,” Trump said of the historic funding lapse. “And don’t forget, we have another date coming up in the not-too-distant future.”
Under the bill Trump signed Wednesday night, funding for most federal agencies will run out at midnight on Jan. 30. The House passed the funding measure earlier in the evening, after eight Senate Democrats broke with their party to advance the package Monday night.
House Republicans plan legislative response to provision letting senators to sue over phone records
There will be votes on the House floor and in the Judiciary Committee next week related to the controversial language in the government funding package.
Speaker Mike Johnson said he told Senate Majority Leader John Thune he strongly disagreed with the Senate GOP’s inclusion of a provision in the government funding package allowing senators to sue if their electronic records are obtained without their knowledge.
“I don’t think that was the smart thing to do,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday night.
Of Thune, Johnson added, “I think he regretted the way it was done, and we had an honest conversation about that.”
The House voted late Wednesday on legislation to end the longest government shutdown in history that included a continuing resolution to fund federal operations through Jan. 30 and a “minibus” of three full-year appropriation bills for Department of Agriculture and the FDA, the Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction projects and the legislative branch.
Thune personally negotiated the inclusion of language in the legislative branch funding measure that would allow senators to receive a $500,000 payment if federal law enforcement obtains their electronic data and doesn’t notify them.
It was a direct response to recent revelations that eight Republican Senators had their phone records subpoenaed during former special counsel Jack Smith’s probe into President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
But even though Republicans on both sides of the Capitol are irate over Smith’s actions and want to haul Smith before lawmakers to testify, House Republicans were caught off guard by the provision and are now seeking to have it reversed.
Johnson announced Wednesday afternoon the House would vote on legislation next week to overturn it; it’s expected to pass with wide bipartisan support.
Separately, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan will hold a vote in his panel on a bill that would create stricter rules for the courts to approve non-disclosure orders often sought by federal law enforcement officials when conducting investigations. It passed the House in the previous Congress.
Jordan told reporters Wednesday there was no justification for Smith to seek a non-disclosure order when obtaining the senators’ phone data around the date of the Jan. 6, 2021 attacks on the Capitol.
Still, he did not appear to have an issue with clawing back the related provision in the government funding bill.
“Frankly, I would just say that we should pass laws for Americans, not for any special category,” he said.
