In Paul’s place is his son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who is set to become Kentucky’s senior senator when Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) retires, and fellow Bluegrass State lawmaker Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY). Both men follow in the elder Paul’s footsteps, not always to the benefit of Republican congressional leaders trying to whip votes for must-pass legislation.

Now that the Republicans’ House majority is vanishingly small, Massie’s no votes have attracted the ire of those leaders and President Donald Trump, who has called for a primary challenge against Massie next year.

Massie has teamed up with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) in support of a discharge petition that would force a House vote on legislation compelling the Trump administration to release files pertaining to the disgraced financier and sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein. The Kentuckian is one of only a handful of Republicans to back this largely Democratic initiative, but GOP leaders don’t have many votes to spare. 

Massie reportedly pushed back against House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) request that Republicans back the GOP-controlled House Oversight Committee’s Epstein investigation instead of the Massie-Khanna discharge petition. 

Massie’s Epstein rebellion comes after the Kentuckian broke with the speaker and the White House on both a stopgap government funding bill, on which he was the only Republican to vote no, and the “big, beautiful” megabill extending the Trump tax cuts, which Congress passed through the reconciliation process to avoid a Democratic filibuster in the Senate.

The list of Republicans who have crossed Trump and faced political repercussions is fairly long. Most recently, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) decided not to run for reelection in his battleground state after Trump blasted him on social media as “a talker and complainer, NOT A DOER!” 

Trump has done less of this in his second term, preferring to twist arms and lobby lawmakers privately this time. But he remains unafraid to disavow jittery Republicans, whom he sometimes calls “Panicans,” who dare to defy him.

During Trump’s first term, he threatened to throw Massie out of the party for pushing for a recorded vote on COVID-19 emergency legislation favored by the White House. But ultimately, Trump stayed out of Massie’s 2020 primary, while future Never Trumper Liz Cheney gave money to Massie’s unsuccessful challenger and backed him in 2022. Massie endorsed Trump for president in last year’s general election, though the congressman supported Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in the primaries.

But the Epstein matter is more personal to Trump. The two men became friends, or at least acquaintances, in the late 1980s and had a falling out in 2004. While so far there is no evidence linking Trump to Epstein’s criminal activities, the association is now embarrassing, and it remains a sore subject. Trump has likened it to the “Russia hoax.”

“I think the best way to clear President Trump’s name is to release all the files,” Massie told MSNBC host Chris Hayes. “I actually don’t think he’s done anything criminal; I think he may be covering for some rich and powerful people that are friends of his. And in fact, some of those billionaires are running ads against me in Kentucky right now.”

Massie is different from Trump’s past targets inside the GOP. For one, he is trying to run as more America First than the president himself, rather than as a critic of the MAGA movement. Like Ron and Rand Paul before him, he is a libertarian-populist conservative hybrid. And Massie’s district appears to appreciate his independent streak.

“As popular as Trump is in Republican politics, as popular as Trump is in Kentucky, as popular as Trump is in the 4th District, on the substance, on the policy, Thomas wins those arguments over Trump,” former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson told Politico in June. “Until you see someone step up, Thomas is still pretty formidable.”

Grayson lost the 2010 Republican Senate primary to Rand Paul despite being the McConnell-endorsed favorite for the nomination.

For his part, Trump has unleashed his top political operatives on Massie. A Trump-aligned pollster says this is impacting Massie’s numbers.

SIX TAKEAWAYS FROM EPSTEIN SURVIVORS SPEAKING OUT ON CAPITOL HILL

Before Trump’s rise, the Republican Party was going through a libertarian moment. But for all of Trump’s overtures to libertarians, such as speaking at the Libertarian Party’s 2024 national convention and clashing with the Federal Reserve, his more full-throated populism has supplanted that of the libertarian variety.

But it hasn’t gone away entirely, as Massie hopes to prove.