President Trump may regret declaring war on Republican congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky. Incensed that Massie criticized his bombing of Iran and voted against his One Big Beautiful Bill, Trump “launched Kentucky MAGA, a super PAC devoted to defeating Massie in the May 2026 primary.” But Massie has responded by teaming up with California Democrat Ro Khanna to introduce a troublesome discharge petition.

Let me explain. The Speaker of the House has firm control over what bills are put on the schedule and come up for a vote. The only way to force a bill to a vote over the Speaker’s objections is to pass a discharge petition. This can be done in a couple of ways, but the speediest is to introduce “a special rule” to the Rules Committee.

If proponents of a discharge effort seek greater control over the terms of a measure’s consideration beyond what the standing rules provide for, they may draft a special rule governing proceedings on the targeted measure and attempt to discharge the Committee on Rules from consideration of the special rule. This approach requires supporters to draft and introduce a special rule that includes language (1) providing that the measure will be considered even if unreported; (2) setting terms for its debate and amendment, normally in Committee of the Whole; and (3) stipulating that consideration continue until final disposition.

Such “discharge” rules may not include provisions that would allow nongermane amendments or make more than one measure privileged for consideration.

Seven legislative days after its introduction, if the rule has not been reported by the Committee on Rules, supporters may file a motion to discharge the Rules Committee from its possession of the rule. If this effort yields 218 signatures on a discharge petition, and the House adopts the motion to discharge, it automatically proceeds to consider the rule in the usual way, under the one-hour rule. If the rule is adopted, the House immediately proceeds to execute its terms by considering the measure it makes in order.

Massie and Khanna began this process on Tuesday by introducing the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), “which would force the House of Representatives to vote on the complete release of the government’s files related to Jeffrey Epstein.” If the House Rules Committee doesn’t take the matter up on their own, this bill will get a vote after seven legislative days have passed, meaning potentially sometime next week. I can say this with confidence because Massie and Khanna will have no problem getting a few Republicans to sign the petition.

But this prospect has the House Republicans in a panic. In fact, they are so panicked that many are calling for Speaker Mike Johnson to cancel next week’s legislative workweek and send them home for an extended August recess. Politico reports that “House Republican leaders are under fierce internal pressure to send members home for the summer amid deepening anxiety over a possible vote on the Jeffrey Epstein controversy.” This would cause a big problem with members of the House Appropriations Committee “who are already livid over delays in government funding work ahead of the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.” But “the thinking, the members and aides said, is that members won’t have to face questions at home about whether or not they have signed on to the Massie-Khanna effort — and that the issue will have died down by the time members return to Washington in September.”

This seems pretty delusional. On the surface, going home early might work. The discharge petition won’t “ripen” for seven legislative days from this past Tuesday, meaning that no one will be signing or declining to sign it before late next week. Cancel next week, and there’s no decision to make. And September is a long way off and many other issues will rise to the top of the nation’s attention in the interim.

But that in no way means that House Republicans can expect to return to their districts and not be asked how they intend to vote on the petition in September. Every single one of them will be asked to sign the petition or explain why they won’t. And there is no answer they can provide for why they won’t that will be acceptable to their constituents.

The truth is, if they recess early, the biggest story in the country will be that they ran away. Everyone will know that they left crucial time-sensitive appropriations work undone because they wanted to protect President Trump from revealing what he’s trying to hide in the Epstein files. It’s true that the controversy will die down somewhat as the weeks pass and attention is directed elsewhere, but that won’t make the discharge petition go away. When they return in September, they will have to vote on it.

Speaker Johnson could take control of the situation somewhat by having the Rules Committee advance the bill on its own. This would eliminate the need for a petition vote and allow him to set the rules for debate, for example, and with a little creativity he might be able to poison the measure enough to provide some excuse for opposition. Perhaps he will attempt this.

He doesn’t have many other options. He can sit back passively and allow the discharge procedure to unfold, but that would be a massive defeat that divides his caucus and angers the president. He can cancel next week, which would temporarily mollify Trump and many of his worried members, but it would infuriate his appropriators and actually make matters worse in the long run.

Johnson must be miserable.

As for Trump, he’s trapped on flypaper. And Massie has a flyswatter.