The U.S. government has finally reopened after the longest shutdown in American history, 43 days. Federal workers are getting paid again, SNAP food aid is restarting, and air traffic control is back online. On the surface, that sounds like relief.
But the deal itself leaves deep cracks untouched. Democrats failed to secure the healthcare subsidies they were fighting for, and the compromise adds another 1.8 trillion dollars a year to an already 38 trillion dollar national debt. So yes, Washington’s lights are back on, but the fire inside the system still burns.
Then came the twist. Just hours after the deal passed, House Republicans released 20,000 new pages from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate. That happened only after Democrats had dropped private emails between Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and author Michael Wolff. Those messages raised new questions about Donald Trump’s connection to Epstein. The White House dismissed it all as a fake narrative.
The biggest shift came when the Epstein Files Transparency Act hit 218 signatures, the number required to force a full House vote. The final signature came from Adelita Grijalva, sworn in that same day as two Epstein survivors watched from the gallery. Every Democrat backed it, joined by four Republicans: Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Nancy Mace.
Speaker Mike Johnson had been stalling the process for weeks, but now he has to allow a vote. The bill directs the Attorney General to release every unclassified document tied to Epstein and Maxwell, with victims’ identities protected but everyone else’s names exposed.
Within hours, Trump called the bill an “Epstein trap” on Truth Social and warned that only “bad and stupid Republicans” would support it. His team even reached out to Boebert and Mace, urging them to withdraw their support. They refused. The files are coming.
And that is the point. If there is nothing to hide, why fight so hard against transparency?
This is no longer about Epstein alone. It is about power, money, and who gets protected when justice gets too close to the rich.
Here is the 20,000-page files,
