The ghost of Jeffrey Epstein. Another government shutdown. The U.S. military shooting down a boat. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is in turmoil just ahead of flu season. And where in the world will the National Guard go next?

This is the world Congress returned to this week. If your head is spinning, you’re not the only one. This week on The Intercept Briefing, we break it all down with host Akela Lacy and politics reporters Jessica Washington and Matt Sledge.

“The biggest thing hanging over everybody is this looming shutdown,” says Sledge, as Congress needs to negotiate a budget extension before a potential October 1 shutdown. And, as Sledge notes, there are a handful of expected fights this session that could hamstring Congress. “There are a million other things happening on Capitol Hill. There’s a big defense bill working its way through the House and Senate. And then there’s this whole Epstein situation,” he says, “which threatens to derail everything else.”

On Wednesday morning, Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., held a press conference with Epstein’s victims, where they announced a bill to force a vote to release the full Department of Justice investigation into the late Jeffrey Epstein.

“Democrats are saying, well, this is something we should do regardless, it is very clearly also a political issue in the sense that Trump has a real weakness with his base,” says Washington. “Democrats perhaps were slow to understand how much of a political liability this was for Trump. But they’re waking up, and this does very clearly seem to be an issue that is, if not partisan — obviously we’re seeing Republicans join in as well — deeply political in nature.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I am Akela Lacy.

Many of us returned this week to reality, but the end of summer feels a little different these days. Things are eerily more unhinged. Coming off a holiday weekend of speculation that the president died, Donald Trump held a press conference where he claimed without evidence that Colorado is engaged in mass voter fraud

Donald Trump: The problem I have with Colorado — one of the big problems — they do mail-in voting. They went to all mail-in voting, so they have automatically crooked elections and we can’t have that.

AL: Then he announced that the U.S. shot down a boat, allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean, acknowledging the administration’s efforts to deploy the U.S. military in its fight against narco-traffickers.

DT: We just, over the last few minutes, literally shot out a boat — a drug-carrying boat. A lot of drugs on that boat.

AL: And then he threatened to deploy military troops to not just Washington, D.C., but Chicago and Baltimore.

DT: If the governor of Illinois would call up, call me up, I would love to do it. Now, we’re going to do it anyway. We have the right to do it, because I have an obligation to protect this country and that includes Baltimore.

AL: The mask is no longer slipping; it’s off. The threats aren’t threats. They’re policies. And my question is, does anyone really have the power to stop it?

As Congress returns to session, they’re faced with avoiding fiscal free fall, preparing for fights on Trump’s nominees and a congressional stock trading ban. There’s also been talk of a looming “crime bill” with few details. Meanwhile, despite House Majority Leader Mike Johnson’s best efforts to avoid in-fighting among Republican congressional members over releasing Department of Justice sex trafficking investigation files on Jeffrey Epstein, a bipartisan effort to force a vote is gaining steam.

Ro Khanna: Less than 1 percent of these files have been released.

Thomas Massie: If you’ve looked at the pages they’ve released so far, they’re heavily redacted. Some pages are entirely redacted, and 97 percent of this is already in the public domain.

RK: We are demanding today on the discharge petition that all of the files be released.

AL: So, today we’re going to break it all down with my colleagues Intercept politics reporters, Jessica Washington and Matt Sledge. Welcome back to The Intercept Briefing, Jessie and Matt.

Matt Sledge: Thanks so much for having me.

Jessica Washington: Thank you for having us.

AL: As always, this is a fast-moving news environment. So just a note, we’re speaking on Wednesday, September 3.

Congress is back from their August recess, and we’re coming off of a weekend of conspiracy theories that Trump died and jumping right back into the “crime emergency,” a showdown at the CDC and another looming government shutdown. On top of that, it feels like we’re hearing about a new congressional retirement every other day.

There have been more retirements announced at this point in 2025 than at the same point in any year since 2018. Matt, let’s start with you. What is the mood in D.C.?

MS: Well, I think you have the D.C. where ordinary people live and they’re coming off of several weeks of facing off against National Guard officers and FBI agents just on ordinary residential streets. And then you have the mood on Capitol Hill where lawmakers are coming back after this long August recess and looking at what is going to be just a frenetic period of legislative activity.

I think the biggest thing hanging over everybody is this looming shutdown: this intra-party debate among Democrats over what to do, and this pressure from the White House that seems aimed almost at forcing a shutdown.

And then there are a million other things happening on Capitol Hill. There’s a big defense bill working its way through the House and Senate. And then there’s this whole Epstein situation happening as well, which threatens to derail everything else.

Akela Lacy: On the Epstein files, let’s just jump into this.

This might be the number one topic the Trump administration wishes would go away, but has yet to: releasing DOJ investigation files on Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide in his cell in 2019 while under investigation for sex exploitation and trafficking underage girls.

On Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee released more than 33,000 pages the Justice Department had turned over in August, but it was only a portion of the investigation file. Much of it was already public. And then on Wednesday morning, Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna held a press conference with Epstein’s victims.

Anouska De Georgiou: If Ghislaine Maxwell were pardoned, it would undermine all the sacrifices I made to testify and make mockery of mine and all survivors suffering.

Marina Lacerda: My name is Marina Lacerda. I was “Minor-Victim 1” in federal indictment of Jeffrey Epstein in New York in 2019. I was one of dozens of girls that I personally know who were forced into Jeffrey’s mansion on 9 East 71st Street in New York City when we were just kids.

Anouska De Georgiou: That is why the

© The Intercept