Tenure
Massie was sworn in for the balance of Davis's term on November 13, 2012. He thus gained two months' seniority on the rest of the 2012 House freshman class. As a measure of how much the Cincinnati suburbs have dominated the district, he became the first congressman from the district's eastern portion in 45 years.
Upon arriving in Congress he was assigned to serve on three committees: Transportation and Infrastructure, Oversight and Government Reform, and Science, Space and Technology. He later became chair of the Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation, replacing outgoing chair Ben Quayle.
Massie broke from the majority of his party by opposing the reelection of Speaker of the House John Boehner, instead casting his vote for a fellow libertarian, Republican Justin Amash of Michigan. In May 2013, he voted against the Stolen Valor Act of 2013, which passed 390–3. In December 2013, he was the only congressman to vote against the Undetectable Firearms Act.
In March 2014, Massie voted against a bill to name Israel an American strategic partner. Massie voted no because the bill would have subsidized green energy companies in Israel. He said he would not support subsidies for American green energy companies, let alone foreign ones. The bill passed by a margin of 412–10, with 6 voting present.
In May 2014, Massie objected to a voice vote to award golf star Jack Nicklaus a gold medal recognizing his "service to the nation", and demanded a roll call vote. The vote passed easily, 371–10. Through mid-June 2014, Massie had voted "no" at least 324 times in the 113th Congress – opposing one of every three measures that came to the House floor. Politico dubbed him "Mr. No".
In 2015, Massie was the sole member of the House to vote "present" on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear agreement, citing Constitutional concerns that the treaties are not ratified by the House of Representatives and that he had no authority to vote for or against the nuclear deal. In November 2016, he voted against an extension of U.S. sanctions against Iran, the only member of the House to do so.
In February 2017, Massie introduced a one-page bill that would abolish the United States Department of Education, and cosponsored a bill that would abolish the Environmental Protection Agency.
In April 2017, he expressed skepticism over the role of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in the 2017 Khan Shaykhun chemical attack. In May 2017, he was the sole House member to vote against sanctions on North Korea.
In July 2017, Massie joined representatives Amash and John Duncan Jr., and senators Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders in opposing a bill to impose new economic sanctions against Russia, Iran, and North Korea. President Donald Trump opposed the bill, arguing that relations with Russia were already "at an all-time and dangerous low". He did, however, sign the bill.
On December 29, 2017, Massie voted for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Before voting, he said he would support the bill to cut taxes, but that he would oppose "new government spending", despite the $1.5 trillion estimated to be added to the national debt according to the Congressional Budget Office in the wake of the bill being passed.
In October 2018, Massie spoke at the John Birch Society's 60th anniversary celebration. He talked about government corruption and spoke out against the advisability of an Article V Convention to amend the Constitution.
On March 26, 2019, Massie was one of 14 Republicans to vote with all House Democrats to override Trump's veto of a measure unwinding Trump's declaration of a national emergency at the southern border.
In 2019, Massie signed a letter to Trump led by Representative Ro Khanna and Senator Rand Paul asserting that it was "long past time to rein in the use of force that goes beyond congressional authorization" and that they hoped this would "serve as a model for ending hostilities in the future – in particular, as you and your administration seek a political solution to our involvement in Afghanistan". Massie was also one of nine lawmakers to sign a letter to Trump requesting a meeting with him and urging him to sign "Senate Joint Resolution 7, which invokes the War Powers Act of 1973 to end unauthorized US military participation in the Saudi-led coalition's armed conflict against Yemen's Houthi forces, initiated in 2015 by the Obama administration". They asserted that the "Saudi-led coalition's imposition of an air-land-and-sea blockade as part of its war against Yemen's Houthis has continued to prevent the unimpeded distribution of these vital commodities, contributing to the suffering and death of vast numbers of civilians throughout the country" and that Trump's approval of the resolution through his signing would give a "powerful signal to the Saudi-led coalition to bring the four-year-old war to a close".
On April 10, 2019, during former United States secretary of state John Kerry's testimony to the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Massie called Kerry's political science degree from Yale University a "pseudoscience degree" and called Kerry's position on climate change "pseudoscience". Kerry responded, "Are you serious? I mean, this is really a serious happening here?"
In July 2019, Massie was the only Republican among 17 members of Congress to vote against a House resolution opposing efforts to boycott Israel and the Global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.
In November 2019, he was the sole "no" vote in Congress on the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019, which he called an "escalation" with the People's Republic of China. He told Fox Business that he agreed with "90 per cent" of the bill but disagreed with sanctions. He was also the sole vote against the Uighur Intervention and Global Humanitarian Unified Response (UIGHUR) Act in December 2019. In explaining his vote, Massie said that it would be hypocritical to take drastic action against China while still doing business with it, writing on Twitter that "please consider whether you committed enough to the issue that you would personally go a week without buying something made in China." In December 2021, he was the sole vote against the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
In July 2021, Massie voted against the bipartisan ALLIES Act, which would increase by 8,000 the number of special immigrant visas for Afghan allies of the U.S. military during its invasion of Afghanistan, while also reducing some application requirements that caused long application backlogs; the bill passed the House, 407–16.
In September 2021, he was the only Republican to vote against $1 billion of funding for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system. In May 2022, Massie was the only member of the House of Representatives to vote against a non-binding resolution denouncing antisemitism and opposition to Israel. Massie tweeted that he voted against the bill because it promoted censorship.
On April 16, 2024, he co-sponsored a motion to vacate filed by Marjorie Taylor Greene in an attempt to oust House speaker Mike Johnson.
In July 2024, Massie co-moderated a presidential debate for third-party candidates held by the Free & Equal Elections Foundation.
In 2025, Massie voted against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025. He argued both bills were not sufficiently fiscally conservative. As a result, Trump announced he would support and fund a primary challenger against Massie.
In July 2026, Massie introduced an amendment to the annual State Department appropriations bill that would have eliminated all US assistance to Israel. With 103 Democrats voting in agreement with Massie to cut off all funding for Israel, but no other Republicans agreeing, the amendment failed.
On March 27, 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Massie forced the return to Washington of members of the House who were "sheltering in place" in their districts by threatening a quorum call that would have required an in-person vote on the $2.2 trillion aid package that had passed the Senate by a 96–0 vote. Before Massie arrived on the House floor, just two representatives were present to pass the bill by voice vote. On the House floor, Massie said he was trying to "make sure our republic doesn't die by unanimous consent in an empty chamber." Massie received criticism for endangering members of Congress by requiring them to gather amid a pandemic.
After Massie's unsuccessful push, Trump said Massie should be removed from the Republican Party, calling him a "third rate [g]randstander"; John Kerry quipped that Massie "tested positive for being an asshole"; Representative Sean Patrick Maloney tweeted, "@RepThomasMassie is indeed a dumbass"; Representative Dean Phillips called his actions a "principled but terribly misguided stunt". In a phone interview with Betsy Woodruff Swan of Politico, Massie responded in jest to Trump's calls for his removal, stating "I take great offense to that. I'm at least second-rate." Some Republicans defended Massie: Paul Gosar called him a "good man and a solid conservative" and Chip Roy said Massie was "defending the Constitution today by requiring a quorum".
In an interview with Politico, Massie said:"The fact that they brought all of these congressmen here in order to get a quorum shows you that I was right. The Constitution requires a quorum to pass a bill, and they were planning to subvert the Constitution."He also questioned why people such as grocery store employees or truck drivers should be expected to work during the pandemic, but not members of Congress, who "make $174,000 a year" and have "the best health care in the world".
In April 2020, Massie was one of five House members to vote against the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act, which added $320 billion of funding for the Paycheck Protection Program. Trump signed the bill into law the next day. In July 2020, Massie argued against face mask mandates and compulsory vaccinations. He faced allegations of antisemitism after comparing vaccine mandates to the Holocaust, and later deleted the tweet doing so. In February 2025, Massie called for the US Food and Drug Administration to revoke its approvals of COVID-19 vaccines.
On June 27, 2021, Massie said he and representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ralph Norman were suing Speaker Nancy Pelosi after they were fined for refusing to wear masks on the House floor.
In July 2025, Massie introduced a discharge petition alongside Democratic representative Ro Khanna to force a vote on a law to compel the release of the Epstein files. This again resulted in criticism from Trump, who called Massie an "Embarrassment to Kentucky". However, the petition passed on November 12, 2025, and the bill it supported, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, was signed into law a week later. The files were all required to be released by December 19, 2025, but the Department of Justice only released part of the files that day; in so doing they were accused of violating the law. More files were released in waves after then, with a fifth and final release on January 30, 2026. Following this, the department claimed that it had fulfilled its legal obligations and released all available files, amounting to over 3.5 million pages. This announcement received pushback from Massie and others, with some reports indicating that the full Epstein files consist of over 6 million pages.
In February 2026, Massie reviewed unredacted Department of Justice files related to Epstein alongside Representative Ro Khanna. Following the review, Massie stated that six individuals whose names had been redacted in publicly released materials were identified in the documents. He criticized the Justice Department's redactions and called for greater transparency. The names released by Khanna included Les Wexner and Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem. According to The Guardian, "the Department of Justice said that four of the men Khanna named have no apparent connection to Epstein whatsoever, but rather appeared in a photo lineup assembled by the southern district of New York (SDNY)."
In July 2026, Massie introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act II (Res. 9694) into the House of Representatives.
On August 31, 2026, Massie addressed the House chambers and read aloud a list of fourteen alleged Jeffrey Epstein co-conspirators in an effort to shame to the Department of Justice. None of the individuals named have been charged with an Epstein-related crime, and several of the individuals have denied any wrongdoing.
