Hello and welcome to the Punch Bull News Readback podcast.

I'm your host, Congressional Reporter Max Cohen.

And this week we're joined by fellow congressional reporter Mika Solner to talk about all things Jeffrey Epstein and the U.S. House of Representatives.

Mika, how you doing?

Thanks for being on the show.

Doing well.

Thanks for having me.

Of course.

It was a wild week in the House just as much for what didn't happen as for what did happen, right?

Johnson sent members home early.

He didn't want to go through this whole rules process with Democratic amendments.

For the listeners at home, can you sum up what happened here?

And how does Epstein play into this?

Yes. So basically, Democrats attached a bunch of amendments related to trying to force a vote on the release of the Epstein files.

Obviously, this creates issues for Republican leadership, given that, you know, there's many in his own party who are angry about this and who do want these release.

So this is a bipartisan issue, but it is a very strange nexus right now, given that, you know,

Democrats are not trying to make this their own issue, and they say that this is some kind

of transparency accountability issue, then that Trump has promised this.

And the Republicans are more like the conservative wing of the party who will really relate to

the base.

That is fired up about this issue. And Democrats actually. are more like the conservative wing of the party who will really relate to the base that is

fired up about this issue. And Democrats, after Mike Johnson made the decision to send members

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