It'll take one call, when the rubber hits the road, to "turn" one of the Repuq's currently on our side. GQP control the vote outcome, really, Grijalva voting or not. And Trump also controls Bondi, AND SCOTUS.

IMHO believing hiding Epstein files is even in the top 3 of calculations in Trump/GQP hivemind is falling for misdirection away from even MORE evil intentions. Trump wants to see how long Johnson can get away with not seating her, seeing what happens, in the court, and the court of public opinion. Just as a for-instance.

Speaker Johnson; no more excuses!

House before next year's elections, or maybe before the 2028 elections if the Republicans can gerrymander and disenfranchise their way to keeping control next year?

It seems wildly unlikely. But so did Nixon tanking the Paris Peace Talks to win the election, Reagan telling the Iranians to keep the US hostages until he was inaugurated, Bush the First pardoning the Iran contra felons on Christmas, the supremacist court halting a presidential election to ensure that the Republican candidate won, the Senate majority leader refusing to give "advice and consent" to a supreme court nominee because the president was from a different party, a president fomenting a coup then being re-elected and then pardoning the rioters.

At this point about the only thing that I'm willing to rule out in US politics is space aliens landing on whatever is left of the Whitehouse lawn and installing a Sasquatch as our leader. Which is a shame, because it would be a distinct improvement.

Theoretically, he may be able to avoid reconvening the House through the end of 2026. But all Congressional Reps terms end at the end of that year. Even those people who get reelected to their seat have to be sworn back in for their new term. See the 4:00 mark of this video:

I’m only half joking. Civics as we know it isn’t the same. I think you’re right and it would be absolutely crazy for this to extend past the new year, but I’m being careful to not make definitive statements about the future after witnessing the erosion of the rule of law in the last few years.

There is zero chance of the Epstein files being forced to be released just because the government is reopened. It's true, if the House went back in session, they would likely fairly quickly pass the bill to release the Epstein files. But it would still have to be passed by the Senate (possible but unlikely) and then signed by Trump (not a chance in Hell) before it would become law and actually require the files to be released.

There is almost a zero chance for the reasons you put forward, but no reason to say someone’s ideas are ridiculous. Your points are salient, so why the totally dismissive language. There may be ways to circumvent Trump’s veto, at least for some of the files. They could subpoena them, although this DOJ would most likely ignore. There’s a non zero chance that Trump is either impeached or otherwise incapacitated. There’s is also a non zero chance that the files are “cleaned” or redacted to the point that the Republicans have no reason to fear their release. We don’t always have to talk about the probable.

over a year?