But the deep G.O.P. fissure over the Trump administration’s refusal to release files on Jeffrey Epstein despite promises to do so has shaken that focus, giving Democrats an opening they have eagerly seized to gum up the works at the Capitol and stoke public anger about how Republicans are governing.

Over the past two weeks, Democrats have effectively paralyzed the House floor by insisting at every turn on forcing votes Republicans do not want to cast on whether to insist on the release of files related to Mr. Epstein, the financier who died by suicide while in federal custody on sex-trafficking charges.

Faced with a choice between alienating MAGA constituents, who are clamoring for the release of the files, or angering President Trump, who has urged them to move on, Republicans in control of the House have decided to do neither. The dilemma prompted Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday to send lawmakers home early for the summer, even as several rank-and-file Republicans continued to urge a vote calling on the Trump administration to release the material.

“The ghost of the disgraced Jeffrey Epstein is haunting our Republican colleagues,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said on the Senate floor on Wednesday. He suggested that Democrats would hammer at the issue during Congress’s August break, calling it the “Epstein recess.” He added: “This issue is going to grow and grow and grow the longer House Republicans dodge.”

Democrats’ new line of attack has seemed at times as an unlikely as it has been successful. They have spent much of the past decade accusing Republicans of irresponsibly propagating misinformation and trafficking in conspiracy theories that distracted the American public from more pressing concerns.