Speaker Mike Johnson has had the House side of the U.S. Capitol mostly to himself for the better part of the last two months. That all changes on Wednesday when Democrats and Republicans alike flood back to Washington to open up the government and return to the business of governing. 

It will be a far cry from normal legislating, however. 

More than seven weeks ago, Mr. Johnson sent House members home for what he had hoped was going to be a week-long recess for the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. When it became clear that Senate Democrats were not going to allow a clean funding bill to pass, the speaker kept his colleagues at home in the hopes that senators would feel pressure to act. 

Now that they have, the House is almost certain to pass the Senate amended version of the funding agreement, which President Trump will then likely sign on Wednesday afternoon. Once that bill is signed, a host of issues, including fights over the Epstein files, a stock trading ban, and funding the rest of the government will dominate his days between now and Thanksgiving. 

On Wednesday, Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva will be sworn into office after her election to the House in September. Once she is sworn in, she will officially be the final signature on a petition to bring up a bill which would force the disclosure of the so-called Epstein files. 

The Republican sponsor of the bill which would for the Justice Department to release all records related to Jeffrey Epstein, Congressman Thomas Massie, celebrated Ms. Grijalva’s inauguration on Tuesday night. 

“The 218th and final signature for the Epstein … petition will happen tomorrow,” Mr. Massie wrote on X matter-of-factly. The Democratic sponsor, Congressman Ro Khanna, told MeidasTouch on Tuesday afternoon that he and Mr. Massie were planning a “major” press conference with Epstein’s survivors at the Capitol next week. 

Once Ms. Grijalva signs the petition to bring up the underlying bill, the legislation from Messrs. Massie and Khanna is expected to receive a vote within the next seven legislative days. That will take place before the Thanksgiving holiday. 

Beyond the Epstein files vote, Mr. Johnson will have to manage his colleagues’ attempts to ban individual stock trading by members of Congress. There was consternation over such efforts before the shutdown began, both in the House and in the Senate. 

In July, Senator Josh Hawley partnered with Democrats to advance a bill to force lawmakers and officials in the executive branch to divest from certain securities and prevent anyone from trading individual stocks. The president caught wind of it from other Republican senators and went on to call Mr. Hawley a “second-tier” lawmaker because someone had told Mr. Trump that he would have been forced to sell Mar-a-Lago, which would not be the case under Mr. Hawley’s bill. 

A similar piece of legislation from Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican, will receive a hearing in the House this coming week. During that hearing, lawmakers will consider her legislation which — like Mr. Hawley’s bill — would force lawmakers to divest and ban them from trading individual stocks in the future. 

“Speaker Johnson has notified me that as soon as we return and the government is reopened, the bill to ban insider trading is going to be marked up in committee. This is a big win for America,” Ms. Luna said in a post on X over the weekend. 

Beyond those two contentious issues, Mr. Johnson has to consider the rest of government funding, which will run out at the end of January. That may seem like a long way off, though considering how slowly the funding process moved along between January and September of this year, it will be a slog for lawmakers. 

In the first nine months of 2025, the legislative branch was only able to come to agreement on three of the 12 annual appropriations bills. Now, they will have to fund the other nine bills over the course of only two-and-a-half months.