House GOP leaders cancel Thursday votes

Allison Mollenkamp, CQ-Roll Call on Jul 22, 2025

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WASHINGTON — No more votes are scheduled beyond Wednesday in the House, a change from the previous schedule that reflects a Rules Committee dispute over release of the Jeffrey Epstein case files that will prevent any rules for debate from coming to the floor.

The House is expected to continue to consider legislation under suspension of the rules through Wednesday afternoon, but won’t have any more floor votes on Thursday.

That’s a shift from Monday night when Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters that the chamber would remain in session through Thursday because of suspension votes and committee meetings.

It means most members can likely start their summer recess early, though as of Tuesday morning the House Appropriations Committee was still scheduled to mark up its draft fiscal 2026 Commerce-Justice-Science spending bill on Thursday.

Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said at the top of Tuesday’s Interior-Environment bill markup that he intended to mark up all three bills on his panel’s calendar this week, though the timing was in flux.

Tuesday votes are scheduled on a bill to sell a small parcel of land in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in Wisconsin and another to codify the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Great Lakes Mass Marking Program, which was created for the mass marking of hatchery-produced fish in the Great Lakes Basin.

House rules for the 119th Congress do not allow for motions to suspend the rules except on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, though if further proceedings were postponed on a bill, the vote could have been held Thursday.

The Rules Committee recessed Monday after hearing testimony on three Congressional Review Act resolutions to overturn three Biden administration Bureau of Land Management resource management plans; a bill to up criminal penalties for undocumented immigrants and another to change the permitting process under the Clean Water Act.

The unexpected change comes after Democrats have, in the two previous Rules meetings, offered amendments to require release of the Epstein files.

Last week the committee approved a rule that would, upon adoption of the rule, adopt a nonbinding resolution asking for release of the files, but the rule has not come to the floor. President Donald Trump has also asked for the release of grand jury files in the case, but not other materials held by the Justice Department.

Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., have a separate bill that would compel Attorney General Pamela Bondi to release all documents and records released to the Epstein case.

Massie has filed a separate resolution intended to force a vote on the measure via a discharge petition if they get 218 signatures. He already has 11 GOP cosponsors, so in theory if all or most Democrats sign on, they could force a vote sometime this fall.

Massie could start collecting signatures next week, but with lawmakers largely gone at that point, there will be plenty of time after Labor Day for Republican leaders to plot strategy — or hope the August doldrums cool the fervor for release of the files.

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—David Jordan and Daniel Hillburn contributed to this report.