Mike Johnson Pulls Shady Move as Pressure Over Epstein Files Escalates

House Speaker Mike Johnson is offering Republicans a cowardly out to avoid voting on a bipartisan discharge petition to release the Epstein files in full. 

Representatives Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna have been trying to push a House bill that would force the Justice Department to release the Epstein files, an effort that was reignited by the Trump administration’s shady mess of a rollout that shed further light on the president’s close friendship with the defamed serial sexual predator. 

But rather than deliver transparency to the public, Johnson scheduled a vote this week that would allow Republicans to order the Oversight Committee to “continue its ongoing investigation.” The legislation does nothing to force the Justice Department to outright release the files in full, as Khanna and Massie are fighting for. 

This all comes as the House Oversight Committee plans to meet with 10 of Epstein’s victims on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to further investigate “the possible mismanagement of the federal government’s investigation of Mr. Jeffrey Epstein and Ms. Ghislaine Maxwell, the circumstances and subsequent investigations of Mr. Epstein’s death, the operation of sex-trafficking rings and ways for the federal government to effectively combat them, and potential violations of ethics rules related to elected officials.” Massie and Khanna also plan to hold a press conference with the victims on Wednesday.   

“Speaker Johnson just scheduled this meaningless vote to provide political cover for those members who don’t support our bipartisan legislation to force the release of the Epstein files,” Massie wrote shortly after news of Johnson’s ghost vote broke. Massie said he plans to file his discharge petition to force a vote on releasing the files on Tuesday at 2 p.m. Johnson’s vote allows Republicans to pretend they’re doing something on the matter by simply telling the Oversight Committee to keep up the good work, serving as yet another exhibit of Republicans choosing to protect rich pedophiles.  

At least half a million people across the country marched against the billionaire takeover of the government on Labor Day—but you wouldn’t know it by the amount of coverage media devoted to it.

The U.S. Department of Labor has called President Donald Trump’s second administration the “new dawn” and “golden age” of the American worker. However, Americans expressed their discontent Monday by organizing more than one thousand Workers over Billionaires demonstrations.

In Chicago, where Trump has threatened to carry out the next phase of his illegal law enforcement takeover of Democratic cities, hundreds of workers from dozens of unions marched in protest of the Trump administration. “No Troops in Chicago,” read one protester’s sign, while others had slogans about “Families Over Billionaires,” and “Education Not Deportation.”

Stacy Davis Gates, head of the Chicago Teachers Union, delivered remarks condemning Trump’s efforts to tamper with government institutions that were built by workers, for workers.

“Lincoln didn’t free us. We freed ourselves, workers. Our work created the Departments of Housing, Education. Labor, and more. We built the United States as we’ve known it, and now workers will protect it,” Gates said, according to the union’s post on X.

Across the country, unions in Boston, Massachusetts organized the city’s first Labor Day parade in decades. Governor Maura Healey and Senator Elizabeth Warren marched alongside union leaders and thousands of protesters. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and Senator Ed Markey made remarks to the demonstrators at City Hall.

“We won’t let you get away with kicking our loved ones off health care to fund tax breaks for the rich,” said Wu, according to The Boston Globe. “We won’t let you sweep the Epstein files under your Qatari jet.”

In Los Angeles, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler joined members of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor as they rallied in Long Beach. The May Day Strong movement, the group behind the nationwide protests, was backed by the AFL-CIO, which includes 63 national and international unions that represent more than 15 million working people. Worker demonstrations were planned all across Southern California, and hundreds marched in the northern part of the state in San Francisco.

Near Trump Tower in Manhattan, New York, a crowd of several hundred people gathered to protest the president, holding signs asking “Which Side Are You On?” according to The New York Times.

The demonstrations weren’t confined to larger U.S. cities.

In Durham, North Carolina, hundreds of workers marched at Duke University, and protesters strode down the streets of Asheville demanding, “Power to the people!”

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, 6,000 people took to the streets, according to the American Federation of Teachers. Des Moines, Iowa, Seattle, Washington, St. Louis, Missouri, and Detroit, Michigan were among the other cities where demonstrators gathered.

Across the country, people showed up to express their resounding rage with America’s first billionaire president, who seems bent on reshaping the American economy to benefit his family, and his wealthy friends—while sending prices soaring, sparking an economic slowdown, and making plans to gut essential programs like Medicaid and Social Security.

On Tuesday, The Boston Globe revealed that the Justice Department lawyer pushing Donald Trump’s war against Harvard University for alleged complicity in campus antisemitism once wrote a college paper from the perspective of Adolf Hitler.

When Michael Velchik was a senior at Harvard in 2011, studying Classics, he was assigned to write a brief paper in Latin “from the perspective of a controversial historical or literary figure justifying your actions and defending yourself against potential accusations.” Students could choose a “classical figure such as Nero or Cleopatra; a mythological figure such as Medea or Theseus; or anyone from the post-classical world, whether a Shakespearean villain or a twentieth-century tycoon.”

Velchik chose Hitler, according to three sources of the Globe—two of whom had read the paper and considered it disturbing. “At Harvard in 2011, no one would say that Hitler was a controversial figure,” an unnamed source said.

The instructor, dismayed, reportedly had Velchik redo the assignment.

Fast-forward 18 months—when Velchik was getting ready to matriculate at Harvard Law School—and, per the Globe, he told a peer that Hitler’s manifesto, Mein Kampf, was his favorite book he’d read that year. “[I]s it bad that my favorite class at harvard was nietzsche and my favorite book i’ve read this year is mein kampf?” he wrote in a June 2013 email.

After starting at Harvard Law, Velchik offered additional thoughts on Hitler’s book in another email to a peer. Sharing quick reviews of 76 books he’d recently read, he called Mein Kampf “fascinating,” and wrote of its author, “He certainly excelled as an orator, and his writing reflects oratory.… Understands the importance of propaganda. Thought that the timing of a speech was important: better late at night!”

Velchik omitted to mention Hitler’s responsibility for the Holocaust.

And he wasn’t as impressed with other books as he’d been with Mein Kampf. Velchik was critical of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, which he said “reminded” him why he didn’t “usually read books written by women.”

The Republican-led House Oversight Committee will meet with 10 victims of serial sexual abuser and wealthy socialite Jeffrey Epstein. The meeting will seek to shed more light on “the possible mismanagement of the federal government’s investigation of Mr. Jeffrey Epstein and Ms. Ghislaine Maxwell, the circumstances and subsequent investigations of Mr. Epstein’s death, the operation of sex-trafficking rings and ways for the federal government to effectively combat them, and potential violations of ethics rules related to elected officials,” Oversight Chair James Comer noted.

This bipartisan effort comes after months of distraction and denial from the Trump administration—from Attorney General Pam Bondi first claiming she had the Epstein files on her desk, to later saying there actually were no files and the case was effectively closed, to President Trump himself proclaiming that anyone who still cared about the said files is a big stupid idiot. That fiasco only fed more attention to the case, and now nearly 70 percent of the country believes that someone in the government (perhaps … the president) is hiding something. House Speaker Mike Johnson even called summer recess early to avoid having to vote on Epstein related issues. Now, as Congress returns, eyes are turning back to it.

If the House Oversight’s move wasn’t concerning enough for the Trump administration, Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie will be holding a public press conference at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning. “I pray Speaker Johnson will listen to the pleas of these victims for justice and quit trying to block a vote on our legislation to release the Epstein files,” Massie wrote on X.

Massie and Khanna filed a bipartisan discharge petition calling on the Justice Department to release the Epstein files in full. The move struck a nerve with Trump, who called Massie “the worst Republican congressman.”

We’ll see if Trump has anything more to say on Wednesday morning.

“These victims haven’t spoken for decades. When Epstein got that lenient plea deal, no one talked to the victims or their lawyers,” Khanna said to Fox News Digital on Monday. “There are a lot of other rich, powerful men, politicians, business leaders, who have committed abuse and who have not been held accountable. That’s what we’re going to hear on September 3, and people are going to be outraged, and I don’t see how, after that, the House can’t vote for the release of these files.”

Owen Shroyer, a host for Infowars, announced Monday that he is leaving the conspiracy-driven news platform due to a fight with its founder, Alex Jones. Jones believed Shroyer was too “anti-Trump,” according to the outgoing host.

“I have nothing but respect and appreciation for Alex and everything we’ve done at Infowars,” Shroyer said in a livestream late Monday. “I’m not sure that was mutual, but it doesn’t really matter.”

Prior to his decision to leave, Shroyer said, “Alex had been coming into my show [War Room], and talking about how I’m negative and calling me a pessimist, and all this other stuff, which is fine.” Shroyer said. “He says I’m too negative, he says I’m a pessimist, whatever, I’m too anti-Trump.”

Shroyer decided to take time off, thinking “maybe he’s right.” But their issues persisted when he returned.

“It’s not to say that I didn’t have creative control over the Infowars War Room,” Shroyer said. “But I mean, imagine. It’s like somebody staring over your back 24/7. And so every single day that I came back, it was either a guest I was told I had on at the last minute or it was him coming into the studio—he wants me to cover this, he wants me to cover that.”

On Thursday, these frustrations came to a head, as Shroyer said he prepared a three-hour show that he thought he would host where a “babysitter wouldn’t be looking over my shoulder.”

“I was wrong,” he continued. “It happened, and I just said I’m out.”

On air, Jones attributed Shroyer’s absence to a family emergency, but, Shroyer said, “There was no family emergency. I walked off the show.”

Jones on X Tuesday said he wishes Shroyer the best, but denied insinuations of censorship, which he claimed were drummed up to promote the departing host’s next venture.

“I only encouraged him to be more positive in general about the fact that humanity has come a long way in the great awakening,” Jones wrote—the “great awakening” referring to a time during which humanity is “waking up” to the supposed sinister plans of a global elite cabal. “I am surprised by the censorship claim he is hinting at but if he thinks he needs to say that to build his show that will be on him.”