When it comes to fighting President Donald Trump, Democrats across the nation have complained for months about the sluggish reflexes of party leaders in Washington.
Who would have guessed that a MAGA-fueled conspiracy theory would change all that?
Congressional Democrats appear to have finally found their mojo in sticking it to the White House by seizing on the Jeffrey Epstein saga to humiliate the president and split the GOP. Unlike in the past, senior Democrats have shown a surprisingly nimble ability in recent days to pivot to the GOP’s vulnerability du jour, threatening to force votes exposing a divided Republican Party.
The strategy has effectively hijacked the House, derailed Hill Republicans’ agenda and forced Speaker Mike Johnson to send lawmakers packing for an early August recess. That’s not to mention embarrassing Trump in the process and exposing the surprising limits of his sway on a party he’s held in his clutches for the better part of a decade.
“We’ve been trying to say Trump is full of shit for years and it hasn’t really stuck, right? But something about this topic is making a healthy portion of MAGA world — particularly folks who are not ideologically aligned with Trump but kind of flirted with him last year when they pulled the lever for him — be like, ‘Yea, he’s definitely full of shit,’” a senior Democratic campaign aide boasted to me. (This aide and others in the story were granted anonymity to speak candidly about dynamics on the Hill.)
Even better for the Dems: Their effort tapping into MAGA world fury has legs. Between a bipartisan discharge petition expected to ripen this fall and Trump bowing to public pressure in promising to release grand jury information in the coming weeks, the issue will almost certainly remain at the forefront for weeks to come. That means Democrats will have plenty of opportunity to continue to stir the pot.
At issue is Trump’s handling of the Epstein files amid a public clamor for the documents’ release. The president’s top MAGA allies have argued for years that the government is covering up for powerful men who had connections with the convicted sex offender. But now that some of those allies are running the Justice Department, they’ve gone back on promises for transparency.
In the middle is Trump, who once had a well-documented friendship with Epstein and who has been referenced in court documents surrounding the now deceased financier — though who is not accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. Trump has tried to smother the controversy, even scolding his supporters for obsessing.
“Everyone’s always talking about Trump being ‘Teflon’ — obviously that’s because all Hill Republicans are pretty much a suit of armor for him, right? But in this instance, they’re not,” said a senior Democratic aide discussing the strategy. “And so it exposes him, I think, to more attacks that otherwise would be brushed off — and makes it easier for us to drag his numbers down while creating chaos among the Republicans.”
The most interesting part about the strategy is how organically it came together. After watching the MAGA-sphere melt down over the administration’s announcement in early July that there was no “client list,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) grabbed the issue, telling his colleagues that the matter was kryptonite for the GOP, according to people close to him.
In the House Rules Committee, ranking Democrat Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and his team had similarly been watching the feeding frenzy with right-wing podcasters and influencers, sensing an opportunity to needle Republicans so clearly out of step with their own base.
Khanna found an unexpected ally in libertarian gadfly Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), teaming up to launch a discharge petition that could let House members circumvent Johnson’s attempt to keep the issue from a vote on the floor.
Through it all, Democratic leaders were cheering on their members. Beyond giving Khanna tacit support to work with Massie, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries set the tone for members early last week. He insisted in press conferences and in private meetings that this issue was a lose-lose situation for Republicans: either Trump and his allies had been lying for years about what was in those files or they were right and were now hiding evidence to protect their cronies.
For longtime Hill watchers like myself, Jeffries’ embrace of the scandal was a surprise. AsAxios wrote last week, Jeffries has been known for an “often taciturn approach to salacious stories of the day, preferring to remain disciplined and on-message in his public communications.” But like his members, Jeffries sensed the Epstein scandal was different, insisting it could feed into a narrative of corruption that would resonate beyond just the Democratic base.
Last week, Jeffries convened his committee leaders and other key Democrats with a message: “Keep the pressure on,” he told them, according to people privy to his closed-door instructions.
Democrats then tried to force Republicans to kill language that would instruct the DOJ to release the files, a roll call that trapped Republicans between the base’s fury and loyalty to Trump. By this week, when McGovern announced that he’d be running the play again, GOP members feeling the heat back home had had enough: They didn’t want to vote with Trump anymore, making Johnson shut the House down early so they wouldn’t have to take the vote.
Senior Democratic aides say forcing these votes — or threatening to force them — successfully widened the controversy from a Trump-focused scandal to one that engulfs the entire Hill GOP, exposing rifts in the party and knocking them off their message.
Democrats’ messaging arm, meanwhile, sent around several rounds of talking-point guidance, including a bullet point accusing Republicans of “protecting child sex abusers.” Leadership also encouraged rank-and-file members to use their “paid communications budgets” to fund mailing, texting or digital solicitations to reach voters on the issue.
“No one in the government should be trying to keep the facts on these child predators hidden,” says one template I got my hands on.
The strategy has Democrats sounding more like Megyn Kelly and Steve Bannon than Speaker Johnson. Yet it’s working. Not only did Jeffries and his members successfully delay passage of a partisan immigration bill this week amid the GOP dysfunction, they’re above-the-fold news for the first time in months — and seeing a groundswell of support online.
Millions of Americans are tuning into these otherwise wonky House debates on the matter, and social media influencers with large followings are propping them up. Theo Von and Flagrant — two pro-Trump podcasters with MAGA followings — have tweeted in support of the Massie-Khanna resolution.
What’s more, Democrats across the nation are starting to copy the playbook, following Jeffries after months spent criticizing Washington leaders for not showing enough backbone.
Behind the scenes, there’s a question even among senior Democrats about whether this issue will impact the midterms. Americans, after all, are more likely to be motivated by their own pocketbooks rather than online obsessions and scandal. And Trump is doing his damndest to argue that this is exactly that: a very-online, inside-the-beltway obsession that nobody actually cares about.
But House Democrats’ ploy here could maybe — just maybe — have electoral impact for a few reasons, Democrats say. For one, Republicans were hoping to spend August recess selling their “big beautiful bill” to constituents — a new law that, let’s face it, needs some salesmanship, according to the polls. Now instead Republicans will be on the defensive, ducking questions about how they’ll vote when the Massie-Khanna discharge petition is ready to hit the floor in September.
There’s also a belief among senior Democrats that this controversy feeds into a narrative that is in fact critical to 2026 messaging: that the president is more interested in protecting the rich and powerful than average Joes and children. That, they surmise, dovetails nicely with their accusations that Republicans are robbing from the poor on Medicaid and food stamps to pay for tax breaks for the rich.
Notably, this moment comes less than a week after Quinnipiac Universitypolling found that Hill Democrats’ approval rating has dipped to an all-time low. Fewer than two in 10 Americans approve of their performance, which is the lowest on record since the group started asking the question more than 25 years ago.
But right now, it’s House Republicans who are squirming. Beyond having to cancel votes, they are engulfed in finger-pointing about who’s to blame for the embarrassment.
Johnson spent most of Tuesday, for example, chastising Massie and some of his own members who he says are hurting their own teammates. Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) has been complaining that Democrats are being disingenuous, arguing that former President Joe Biden could have released the Epstein files but didn’t.
“They spent four years covering up for Epstein, and you know, at least President Trump’s in the courts right now trying to get documents released,” he said.
Yet, at least for the moment, that pushback is getting drowned out in the frenzy. What’s more, this is politics, Mr. Leader. Consistency has never been this town’s strong suit.