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The House GOP reality in Trump’s Washington

Yes, it’s July 23. But if you’re a House member or staffer, August starts this afternoon around 4 p.m.

The People’s House is beginning a robust six-week recess that will stretch until Sept. 2. Some members will hold town halls. Others will head overseas as part of congressional delegations. Many will vacation. Speaker Mike Johnson has his annual high-dollar donor retreat in Wyoming.

With fly out day upon us, the House is wrapping up an incredibly busy seven months of the GOP governing trifecta. They’ve gotten 27 bills signed into law, with the OBBB, GENIUS Act and a $9 billion rescission package, being the most notable.

But we wanted to focus on what we’ve learned from Johnson’s chamber — and what it might mean from now until the midterm elections. By the way, Johnson hasn’t only declared that Republicans will keep their majority in 2026, but also swears the GOP will expand its hold on the chamber. For the record, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has predicted a Democratic victory.

1) House Republicans did a big thing. Can they do more? Let’s give Johnson and the House Republicans credit where it’s due: They did get their massive reconciliation bill through the House and Senate by July 4. We all doubted that Johnson could do it — and by “we,” that’s reporters, members of Johnson’s own leadership team and the Trump White House.

Coming off that win, Johnson floated another two reconciliation bills to cut additional spending — one in the fall and one in the spring of 2026, which, as you may already know, is an election year.

Can Johnson do it? We’re not going to explicitly say no. But we will note that Republican congressional leaders were able to jam through hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts because they had the sweetener of tax cuts to offer their rank-and-file members. What sweetener do they have this time around?

President Donald Trump floated Tuesday cutting capital gains taxes on home sales. Will that be enough to get House Republicans to further cut entitlement spending, especially heading into a midterm election where the president’s party usually loses seats?

And remember the other critical open legislative items still left to do. The highway bill comes up early next year. Premium tax credits for Obamacare expire at the end of 2025, which is a huge issue.

2) The GOP-controlled House is an arm of the White House. We don’t want to harp on this for too long because it’s so evident if you’re a Congress watcher. Under Johnson and Trump, the House simply isn’t an independent branch of government anymore. Whether it’s on Russia sanctions, the Jeffrey Epstein files or voting for a $5 trillion debt-limit increase, House Republicans do whatever Trump tells them to do.

Some of that is inevitable when the House is controlled by the president’s party. But it wasn’t long ago that a House Democratic majority turned their back on Barack Obama’s trade agenda or then-Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) derailed Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda.

3) Trump’s Epstein problem. Epstein has been dead for six years. But the disgraced financier has become more politically significant in death than he ever was while alive. And he’s playing an unusually large role in the day-to-day operations of Congress. The furor over the Epstein scandal shut down the House again this week.

The Rules Committee ground to a halt after panel Republicans refused to vote against Democratic amendments calling for the White House to release all the Epstein documents. The House Oversight Committee has approved a motion to subpoena Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former associate who is in prison following her sex-trafficking conviction. DOJ wants to talk to Maxwell too, which may complicate things.

As for the House’s Epstein debacle, there’s enough blame to go around — between the White House and GOP leadership. Johnson allowed Rules to pass a non-binding resolution last week, which seemed insufficient at the time and has proven so since. Johnson and House GOP leaders should’ve known this wasn’t going to be enough to calm the Epstein angst.

Trump is giving Hill Republicans absolutely no cover here. The White House’s posture seems to be that the House Republicans should suck it up and back Trump over Epstein.

By giving the White House the month until September to release documents, Johnson has all but guaranteed that the story continues. Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-Ky.) discharge petition ripens in September.

And the larger question for the White House is whether House Republicans will break with the president here – and if they do, where else will they split with Trump?

4) Broken record alert: Government funding will be a mess. We’ve been writing about this for months now: Congress is charging headlong into a government-funding showdown. In fact, the last time Congress did anything resembling the normal appropriations process was two-and-a-half years ago.

The House is leaving town having passed just two funding bills. The Senate’s bills are markedly different — they’re bipartisan. But they’re still only on the first one.

Hardline House conservatives like Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) are pushing for a yearlong CR, which would memorialize Biden’s funding levels for yet another year. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has already said she won’t vote for a CR.

Again, we ask: Is there any CR that Trump will sign that Democrats will vote for?

5) The House GOP leadership. The soap opera that is the House Republican leadership is decidedly less publicly dramatic this Congress. Eric Cantor and John Boehner, Steve Scalise and Kevin McCarthy this is not.

Speaking of Scalise, several key staffers have left his office. And some in the GOP leadership privately gripe at Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s vote-counting operation. There’s also the perennial question of whether Trump will ever get tired of Johnson like he has every other GOP leader he’s worked with. Only time will tell.

Punchbowl News Presents

We’re launching a weekly show on YouTube on September 4! Fly Out Day will include authentic conversations with the people shaping today’s biggest political stories, straight from our townhouse. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for early access.

Editorial photos provided by Getty Images. Political ads courtesy of AdImpact.

Punchbowl News Presents

We’re launching a weekly show on YouTube on September 4! Fly Out Day will include authentic conversations with the people shaping today’s biggest political stories, straight from our townhouse. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for early access.