In his last news conference before House members left Washington for a five-week summer break, Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader, attacked Republicans for their signature tax cut legislation, accusing them of taking food and health care from poorer Americans to bolster the wealthy.
Then, he ceded the lectern to Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the No. 2 Democrat, who made a jarring pivot to a different topic.
“Instead of standing up for kids, for families, instead of standing on the side of transparency and accountability, Republicans are running away — all to avoid the release of the Epstein client list, all to cover up for pedophiles,” Ms. Clark said on Wednesday.
Shut out of power in Washington, Democrats have been searching all year for ways to throw a wrench in the works of Congress and gain the upper hand against a Republican majority that routinely bulldozes over them. They have focused relentlessly on making the economic case against President Trump’s agenda, bashing Republicans for backing policies they argue will hurt ordinary Americans.
But the deep G.O.P. fissure over the Trump administration’s refusal to release files on Jeffrey Epstein despite promises to do so has shaken that focus, giving Democrats an opening they have eagerly seized to gum up the works at the Capitol and stoke public anger about how Republicans are governing.
Over the past two weeks, Democrats have effectively paralyzed the House floor by insisting at every turn on forcing votes Republicans do not want to cast on whether to insist on the release of files related to Mr. Epstein, the financier who died by suicide while in federal custody on sex-trafficking charges.
Faced with a choice between alienating MAGA constituents, who are clamoring for the release of the files, or angering President Trump, who has urged them to move on, Republicans in control of the House have decided to do neither. The dilemma prompted Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday to send lawmakers home early for the summer, even as several rank-and-file Republicans continued to urge a vote calling on the Trump administration to release the material.
“The ghost of the disgraced Jeffrey Epstein is haunting our Republican colleagues,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said on the Senate floor on Wednesday. He suggested that Democrats would hammer at the issue during Congress’s August break, calling it the “Epstein recess.” He added: “This issue is going to grow and grow and grow the longer House Republicans dodge.”
Democrats’ new line of attack has seemed at times as unlikely as it has been successful. They have spent much of the past decade accusing Republicans of irresponsibly propagating misinformation and trafficking in conspiracy theories that distracted the American public from more pressing concerns.
Now, Democrats have come to realize that those theories, many of them fueled by Mr. Trump and his right-wing allies, might work for them too.
“I was not obsessed with the Jeffrey Epstein case,” said Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts. “I mean, I just assumed all the stuff Trump was saying, that there was no merit to it. But the way he has handled this makes you wonder.”
The newfound emphasis on Mr. Epstein has required an abrupt shift. In preparation for their August recess, Democrats had been drilling their talking points on what they expect to be their most potent political weapon in the midterm elections: the Republican mega-bill that slashed Medicaid and food aid to pay for large tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy.
Some Democrats initially resisted the sudden pivot to the Epstein affair. Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the former speaker, argued last week that the case was diverting focus from the Trump administration’s cuts to government programs.
“This is a distraction,” she said in an MSNBC interview last week. “We have major issues right here, with things we’re voting on today.”
Yet by Tuesday, with the Epstein furor in full effect, Ms. Pelosi had announced her support for a bipartisan effort to try to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files, saying in a statement that releasing the government’s files was a “vital step toward truth and accountability in the face of unspeakable abuse.”
Democratic leaders reject the idea that their recent preoccupation with the Epstein case might divert them from issues like health care that they have long said are of greater concern to American voters. Mr. McGovern, the top Democrat on the influential Rules Committee, said that his party would have to “walk and chew gum at the same time.”
And at his news conference, Mr. Jeffries tried to draw a direct line from the Epstein case to Republicans’ policy agenda, arguing that both reflected how Mr. Trump and his allies in Congress were favoring the rich and powerful over vulnerable Americans.
“It’s reasonable to conclude that Republicans are continuing to protect the lifestyles of the rich and shameless, even if that includes pedophiles,” Mr. Jeffries said.
It was a statement that might have seemed inconceivable just a few years ago, when Democrats were batting down right-wing conspiracy theories that sought to link high-profile members of their party to child sexual abuse and blasting Mr. Trump and some Republicans for amplifying them.
As they work to exploit the Republican divisions over Mr. Epstein, Democrats have found themselves embracing staunch right-wing Republicans they once dismissed as wing nuts, who are their most vocal critics and who are closely aligned with Mr. Trump’s MAGA movement.
On Wednesday, a Democratic-led effort to order a subpoena for the Epstein files drew support from close Trump allies including Representatives Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Brian Jack of Georgia, a former White House political director. In calling for the release of the Epstein material, members like Ms. Pelosi now find themselves aligned with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a hard-right lawmaker and frequent Pelosi critic.
Several Democrats have also drawn on Epstein-related talking points that have been fodder in right-wing circles for years. Ms. Clark was one of several lawmakers to reference a “client list,” a document that supposedly details the names of people for whom Mr. Epstein procured women and that has been at the heart of theories surrounding the Epstein case.
There has never been a reference to any such list in any of the civil litigation brought by Mr. Epstein’s victims, and many involved in the criminal case insist one never existed. Mr. Trump’s Justice Department recently concluded that there was no list after deploying hundreds of F.B.I. agents and prosecutors to scour materials in the case.
Republicans have accused Democrats of being hypocritical, arguing that they could have called for the release of the Epstein files at any time while former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was in office.
“Where were their voices?” Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina, who has urged Republican leaders to bring the Epstein matter up for a vote, said on Wednesday.
Many Democrats will readily admit that they were not concerned with the theories that have swirled around Mr. Epstein since his death in 2019, but they say they have been drawn to the issue after Mr. Trump and members of his administration suddenly seemed inclined to sweep it under the rug.
Representative Dan Goldman of New York said that the Trump administration’s handling of the case offered a chance for Democrats to expose how Republicans have lied to their supporters.
“It is very important for the American people to understand that so many of the conspiracy theories that the MAGA right props up, led by Donald Trump, are false,” he said. “And this one turns out to be a very good example.”
Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.
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