Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. Scandals persist.
When House Republican leaders rushed to leave Washington for a long August break, they seemed desperate to quell the anger among their supporters about the Trump administration’s backtracking on a promise to release files related to its investigation of the accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
But halfway through a five-week congressional recess, the clamor shows little sign of quieting. While Republicans had hoped that legal rulings might insulate them from having to confront the issue, the courts have yet to intervene. Back in their districts, lawmakers have continued to face questions about the Epstein investigation from their constituents. And the Justice Department, which ignored a Friday deadline from Senate Democrats and is set to miss another on Tuesday to comply with a bipartisan subpoena to provide the materials to Congress, has yet to release anything.
On Monday, Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said that the Justice Department would begin sharing its Epstein records with his panel by Friday. He also suggested that the release of the documents would take some time, all but ensuring that questions about the Epstein affair will drag on for weeks.
At the same time, Democrats, in some cases with the help of Republicans, have laid a series of procedural traps that will make it all but impossible for the G.O.P. to avoid confronting the issue again when Congress reconvenes in September.
