The 43-day government shutdown — the longest in history — will likely end on Wednesday evening.
The House passed legislation to fund the government through January, sending the bill to President Donald Trump, who will sign it later on Wednesday evening.
The vote was 222 to 209. Six Democrats voted for it; two Republicans voted against.
Democrats are reeling after eight Senators broke with the rave caucus and joined with Republicans earlier this week to pass the funding legislation, even though demands were not met to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies. Instead, the Senate GOP pledged to bring a vote to the floor in December, although no commitment was made in the House.
On the floor on Wednesday, House Democrats sought to turn attention to another issue: Jeffrey Epstein. Earlier in the day, Democrats on the Oversight Committee released emails in which Epstein, in 2019, wrote that Trump “knew about the girls.” Epstein was a convicted sex offender and died by suicide in 2019 as a trial was pending on child sex trafficking charges.
The release of the emails was a prelude to Democrats drive to force a House vote on the full release of Epstein files held by the Justice Department. Earlier in the day, House Speaker Mike Johnson swore in Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ), who has provided the crucial 218th signature on a discharge petition to bring the release of the files to the floor.
Trump has raged on Truth Social over Democrats’ focus on Epstein. “The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects,” Trump wrote. But he did not address the emails directly. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, “These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.”
In another email that was released, Epstein wrote to Ghislaine Maxwell on April 2, 2011: “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. [Victim] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. Police chief. etc. im 75 % there.”
Before the funding vote, Democrats hammered Republicans for not coming to the table to extend the healthcare credits.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) cited a provision inserted into the funding legislation that will enable senators to sue and collect damages if their phone records were obtained by Special Counsel Jack Smith as part of his investigation into the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
Ocasio-Cortez said, “It is unconscionable that what we are debating right immediately is legislation that will give eight members of the United States Senate over $1 million a piece and we are robbing people of their food assistance and of their healthcare to pay for it. How is this even on the floor?”
But even House Republicans have objected to the provision, and Speaker Mike Johnson said that they would vote next week to repeal it.
Just before the vote, Johnson slammed the Democrats for “using the American people as leverage for political gain.”
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