3 women stood up to Trump, but María Elvira cowered
The modern Republican Party loves to talk about toughness. Its loudest voices insist that strength, fearlessness, and “manly” resolve are the highest civic virtues. Yet when the moment arrived to prove it—when Congress had a chance to force sunlight onto the sordid network around Jeffrey Epstein—most of the men thundering about bravery suddenly discovered their limits. And many of the GOP’s women did too.
But not all of them.
In a twist that ought to embarrass the self-proclaimed warriors of the MAGA movement, the push to pry open the Epstein files was kept alive largely through the persistence of three Republican congresswomen known more for theatrics than for bucking their own party: Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Nancy Mace. Whatever one thinks of their politics—and reasonable people have plenty to criticize—these lawmakers did what many of their colleagues were too timid to consider: they crossed Donald Trump.
That may not sound revolutionary, but inside today’s GOP, defying Trump still carries real political risk. Once he signals displeasure, many elected Republicans behave as if they’ve been handed a court summons. And on this issue, he was explicit. Supporting disclosure of the Epstein files, he warned, would register as a personal attack against him. It was a classic strong-arm move from a man who has long mistaken bullying for leadership.
Yet Boebert, Greene, and Mace didn’t fold. They backed the discharge petition that forced House leadership to bring the transparency bill to a vote, ensuring that Epstein’s victims—some of them women from South Florida—would no longer be ignored to soothe the president’s ego. That act, simple as it was, required more resolve than most of their colleagues displayed.
And that brings us to the other side of the ledger: the long list of Republicans, especially Republican women, who stayed conspicuously silent until it was safe to speak. One example stands out here in Miami.
Rep. María Elvira Salazar, who represents a district filled with women who have built lives, businesses, and families in the shadow of Miami’s own painful brush with the Epstein story, chose not to join the push for transparency when it mattered. She had an opportunity to stand with the victims. She had an opportunity to demonstrate that public service demands moral clarity even when it invites political backlash. Instead, she opted for self-preservation, unwilling to risk Donald Trump’s wrath as she faces a difficult reelection in 2026.
It is a depressing pattern. Salazar has spent the last few years posing for oversized ceremonial checks—props she brandishes proudly in Miami as proof of what she’s “brought home,” even though the funding attached to those checks originated from bills she voted against. That kind of sleight of hand may make for good campaign photos, but it is not leadership. And when the chance arrived to show actual conviction for the women harmed in one of the most predatory scandals in modern American history, she shrank from the moment.
She was not alone. From the backbenches to party leadership, many Republican lawmakers watched their braver colleagues take the heat for weeks. Only after Trump signaled that he would no longer punish them for supporting the bill did the majority of the conference come racing onto the moral high ground—as if the sprint at the end could erase their earlier indifference.
If voters are exhausted by this pattern, who could blame them? The GOP has been battered in recent elections in no small part because Americans are weary of a party that treats cruelty as strength and loyalty to one man as more important than loyalty to the country.
The path forward is not complicated. Accountability should not be a partisan idea, especially when dealing with a figure like Epstein, whose operations left real victims—real women—scarred for life. But accountability requires courage, and courage requires being willing to act before the political winds shift, not after.
That is why the stance taken by Boebert, Greene, and Mace—whatever their other flaws—matters. They demonstrated that standing up to Trump is possible. They showed that a few lawmakers with steel spines can force congressional action even in an era of fear-driven politics. And they showed that the Republican Party’s supposed “tough guys” might want to take notes from their female colleagues.
If GOP members truly want to reclaim the mantle of strength, they could start by remembering that courage is not something you shout about. It is something you do. And on the Epstein vote, the women who acted early made that point far more persuasively than the men who hid behind them.
The next time Republican lawmakers feel tempted to lecture the country about toughness, they might consider asking themselves a simple question: When victims needed them to act, did they? For too many—including those representing Miami—the answer remains no.
