Speaker Mike Johnson said he would send lawmakers home early for their summer recess in order to head off Democratic demands for votes on calling for the release of files from the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
Mr. Johnson implied that his concerns about transparency had been alleviated, for now, by Mr. Trump’s move to authorize Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek the public release of grand jury testimony from the prosecution of Mr. Epstein. That is a far cry from the breadth of information the president’s supporters have demanded, yet it appeared to be enough to persuade the speaker.
Edit
This thread used to link to https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/07/22/us/trump-news/0d8c9050-dee0-5253-89b2-30e4737090c1, a live thread linked from NYT’s “Breaking news” newsletter, which headlined it “Johnson Shutting Down House Early to Block Epstein Vote”. Now that the NYT has made a standalone article, I’ve replaced this post’s link with that article’s gift link, courtesy of the relevant subcommag.
I don’t see why it isn’t. This is the norm everywhere else. For a slightly extreme example, Prime Ministers can do the same thing. You have to have someone decide when to recess. If representatives disagree, they just vacate 'em. To counterbalance, the Speaker does not usually participate in floor debates, and is mostly responsible for other procedural and administrative stuff as well.
Is it a norm for the government to just go on a paid vacation when an uncomfortable question arises?
Not the norm, but not unexpected at all either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Brackett_Reed#Spanish-American_War_and_resignation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_House_of_Representatives_sit-in#June_23:_Sit-in_ends
That’s very different than what we have here.
What’s your alternative to having the representatives elect one member to exclude from debates and decide when to recess?
I would start with not taking such a reductionist view of the situation
What’s the holistic view, then?
The holistic view is that Republicans are all pedophiles and all of them should die.
Cool, that can happen independently of amending the Speaker-ing procedure.