WASHINGTON – Republicans in the House of Representatives abruptly canceled their last day of work before a roughly eight-week recess, punting a politically sensitive vote on impeaching Pentagon chief Pete

Hegseth until after the midterm elections in November.

Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Sept. 16 that the decision to leave Washington earlier than planned was unrelated to the push to remove Hegseth. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican and outspoken political foe of President Trump, introduced the articles a day earlier, to the surprise of GOP leaders.

Johnson said it was "time for our members to go home to their districts and make the case to the American people" ahead of the fall elections. He derided Massie's longshot impeachment resolution, which due to special procedural rules has a privileged voting timeline, as a "publicity stunt."

"It will immediately be tabled, of course," he said. "We will do it when we come back."

Democrats and Massie criticized the scheduling decision, saying it was part of an effort to avoid several approaching headaches for Republicans at a politically sensitive moment.

"They are afraid that the House of Representatives will vote to impeach Pete Hegseth," Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-New Mexico, said. "So instead, they're just going to send us home."

In a social media post, Massie said the scheduling change happened "just as (he) predicted."

Massie also has been collecting signatures, to the chagrin of top Republicans, to force another vote related to the Epstein files. Among the provisions of the new legislation, the Epstein Files Transparency Act II would give victims of the late convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein standing in court to sue the Justice Department for allegedly not fully complying with Congress' first law to publicly release an accounting of all its Epstein-related documents and investigations.