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By Anna Rahmanan
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Lauren Boebert has lost her congressional seat, and with it goes the last surviving member of a small Republican rebellion that once forced Donald Trump into retreat over Jeffrey Epstein.
The Colorado firebrand lost to Democrat Eileen Laubacher. The political epitaph is already taking shape.
Four Republicans stood against their president over the Epstein files. By January, all four will be gone from Congress—even after winning their original fight.
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In November 2025, Boebert joined Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace in defying the White House to demand the release of Justice Department records concerning Epstein. Their weapon was a discharge petition, a rarely successful congressional maneuver that allows lawmakers to bypass their own leadership.
The rebellion worked: the House approved the legislation 427-1. Trump, having resisted the effort, reversed course and signed it into law.
For a brief moment, four members of his own party had demonstrated that even Trump's authority over congressional Republicans had limits. Some might now see in that fleeting defiance a prophecy of the midterms to come: the first crack in the crown, before the kingdom delivered its verdict.
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Then came the departures, one by one, until the rebellion began to resemble a political disappearing act.
Greene resigned after her spectacular falling out with Trump. Mace chose to pursue South Carolina's governorship rather than another House term. Massie, the Kentucky libertarian who helped engineer the rebellion, lost his Republican primary to Trump-backed Ed Gallrein.
Boebert was the last holdout, although her relationship with Trump was never straightforward. She remained a committed supporter of his broader political movement even as she refused to surrender her position on Epstein.
Now, her defeat in a district Trump carried by more than 18 points completes the quartet's disappearance.
The tempting morality play writes itself: four Republicans defied the president and four congressional careers came to an end. Reality is less obliging, though, because Greene fell out with Trump, Massie lost to his preferred challenger, Mace sought higher office and Boebert faced an electoral reckoning of her own.
But for connoisseurs of political theater, there is one final scene worth keeping an eye on before the curtain falls.
Massie and Democratic Representative Ro Khanna are pursuing another Epstein transparency measure, seeking stronger enforcement of the original law and further disclosure of withheld records. Massie hopes to force another House vote before the congressional term expires.
Massie also has another parting shot in his repertoire: eight articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, introduced Monday, accusing him of unlawful military action in Iran and other abuses of power. The move could force a House vote within days, although Hegseth has dismissed the effort and Republican leaders could move to block it.
It promises a curious political swan song: one final attempt to pry open the Epstein files and, courtesy of Massie, an impeachment bid against Trump's defense secretary. Two last acts of defiance as the congressional careers of the original rebels draw to a close. The rebels may have lost their seats, their friendships or their political futures, but they still possess the instrument that made them troublesome in the first place: a vote.
Will enough colleagues join them? Will Democrats pursue their own investigations when the new Congress convenes, while the White House maintains that Trump has nothing to hide?
Whatever the case may be, the clock is running down on the original four.
Their rebellion began with a demand to open the files, and it's set to end with four empty chairs. How Shakespearean.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Gray R. Thomas
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