And Why You Really Need to Read Past Them
This morning my phone started blowing up with notifications about the Epstein Transparency Act. EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN VOTED AGAINST THE EPSTEIN TRANSPARENCY ACT! AFTER PARTY LINE VOTE, EPSTEIN TRANSPARENCY ACT IS DEAD! And on and on and on and on.
As these headlines kept popping up on my phone, I’ll admit that my first instinct was to curse creatively (and extensively) and then immediately share every single post on my own social media profiles.
I’m glad I didn’t do that. Because here’s the thing. The headlines are misleading (shocker, I know). They aren’t technically incorrect, they are just selectively truthful, like so much of legacy media is these days.
If we go only by what legacy media reports, there are four steps involved in an idea becoming an action.
1. Someone has an idea.
2. The House of Representatives votes on the idea. If they pass it, it goes to the Senate.
3. The Senate votes on the idea. If they pass it, it goes to the President.
4. The President signs the idea into law or vetoes it.
Boom! Done.
Here’s what actually happens.
1. Someone has an idea.
2. That person tells their idea to some other people. Those people work together to come up with a cohesive way to describe the idea and why it matters.
3. They write all that down and turn it in to the Clerk of the House.
4. The Clerk of the House gives the idea a number and puts it in front of the Speaker of the House.
5. The Speaker of the House takes a look and then assigns the idea to a House Committee.
6. That Committee then takes a look at the idea and then gets to work learning more and fighting about it.
7. Eventually the Committee figures out what they need to know (or what they think they need to know) and actually writes a bill.
8. The Committee then votes to either send that bill to the Speaker of the House or to “table” it. Tabling is fancy pants speak for “shove it in a drawer and deny it ever existed”.
9. The Speaker looks at the bill and decides whether or not to send it to the floor for a full vote.
10. Hijinx ensue. (Not really, but for the purposes of this post, we’re only looking at the beginning of the legislative process. The rest can wait.)
What Happened Today?
As of today, the Epstein Transparency Act was at step 8 in the process. The House Rules Committee was voting on whether or not to advance the Act or to table it.
There are twelve people on the House Rules Committee. Eight of them are Republicans. Four of them are Democrats.
All eight Republicans voted to table the Epstein Transparency Act. All four Democrats voted to advance it. Typically, this is where the Act would die and the other 211 Republicans in the House could breathe a sigh of relief because they wouldn’t be forced to vote on the Act themselves.
However…
There is another way that an idea can be brought to the floor of the House for a vote. Representatives are allowed to petition the House to force a full floor vote on an idea. If they gather enough signatures, then it won’t matter what the Committee says or what the Speaker wants. The idea will be voted on. Period*.
AFAIK, as I write this, there is still a petition being circulated in the House to force a floor vote on the Epstein Transparency Act. The Petition is co-sponsored by Representative Khanna (D-CA) and Representative Massie (R-KY) and only needs two more signatures to succeed. All 212 Democrats have signed the petition. Four Republicans have added their names.
So, no. The Epstein Transparency Act is not dead yet.
*This would be the rule if we were still in any semblance of a normal timeline. In our apocalyptic upside-down, nobody has any idea what the rules actually are anymore so anything could happen.