One of them is a Democrat representing Silicon Valley, a guy who has hobnobbed with tech moguls like David Sacks and seems to harbor dreams of running for president. The other is a Republican who lives off the grid in Kentucky, has taken up causes like ending gun-free zones at schools and has criticized Covid vaccines.
These two congressmen — Thomas Massie, the Republican, and Ro Khanna, the Democrat — have nevertheless formed an unlikely alliance with one increasingly formidable goal: ramping up pressure on the Trump administration to release all of the materials it possesses about the investigation into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
This morning, Khanna and Massie, joined by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the MAGA flamethrower from Georgia, appeared in front of the Capitol with women who spoke of having been abused by Epstein. Yesterday, Massie and Khanna began collecting signatures on a discharge petition — a rarely used procedure that can allow rank-and-file lawmakers to put legislation on the floor, without the support of the leadership, if 218 House members sign on — that would force a vote on whether to demand that the administration release all of the Epstein files.
Their effort is facing stiffening headwinds. My colleague Michael Gold reports today that their momentum appears to be stalling in the face of a multipronged effort by Republican leaders — including a warning from the White House that support for their measure would be viewed as a “very hostile act to the administration.”
Yet just the fact that the White House and Republican leaders have needed to work so hard to stop a quixotic effort by two political opposites speaks to the hold the Epstein matter still has over the president’s base — and the unexpected potency of the topsy-turvy political alliances that are forming in Trump’s Washington.
Khanna said, “Do you really want a situation where we’re at 216, or 217, signatures, and every single Republican member of Congress who’s not on that petition is going to be asked back home, ‘Why don’t you sign the petition to get the release of the files?’”
The release of the Epstein files once drew broad support from Republicans, including President Trump, who seemed to endorse the idea during his 2024 campaign. Since he took office, though, Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested the administration would release major revelations from the files, before backpedaling.
“I think the administration did a 180 on this because they discovered not that Trump would be implicated, but some of their biggest donors and friends would be implicated and/or embarrassed,” Massie told me.
I spoke with both men by phone last night, when Massie, a renegade Republican who has repeatedly drawn the president’s ire by voting against his priorities, was in Khanna’s office. At the time, the pair knew they had the support of three Republican representatives — Greene, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Lauren Boebert of Colorado — but they also said the White House was working to peel away the support of other Republicans (11 originally signed on as co-sponsors of Massie’s bill).
“I told the White House liaison — who’s working against me — I said, ‘I may have made a tactical error here by actually getting co-sponsors on my bill, because now you know which 12 to target,’ and he kind of smiled,” Massie said. He insisted that he hadn’t lobbied hard to get the Republican signatures on the discharge petition that he had collected so far — and hadn’t even been aware that Mace was going to sign on until she did.
The two decided to team up on the measure earlier this summer. They had already cosponsored a resolution to block American involvement in the June conflict between Iran and Israel when Massie noticed that Khanna had forced an Epstein-related vote on the rules committee that drew the support of one Republican, Ralph Norman of South Carolina.
“He said, ‘You know, I’ve got a better idea,’” Khanna said. “‘Why don’t we team up, and we’ll do this as a resolution and a discharge petition?’”
At this morning’s news conference, which was largely organized by Khanna, women who said they had been victims of Epstein spoke of the closure they would get from a broader release of documents and said they would compile a list of Epstein’s associates themselves.
“Accountability is what makes a society civilized,” said Anouska De Georgiou, who said she had been abused by Epstein. She added: “President Trump, you have so much influence and power in this situation. Please use that influence and power to help us.”
The odd politics of the moment were on display, too, as Massie urged fellow Republicans to “find their spines,” while Khanna praised Greene for being there and urged people to stop calling her names.
Republican leaders are hoping mightily that they have done enough to stop Massie and Khanna’s momentum. Yesterday, the House Oversight Committee released 33,000 pages of Epstein files — although much of that material was not new — and Republican leaders met with some Epstein victims who had traveled to Washington for this morning’s news conference. Earlier today, Republicans supported a largely symbolic measure that instructed a House committee to continue an inquiry into the matter that Democrats had forced it to start earlier this summer.
“This is a Democrat hoax that never ends,” Trump said today.
Massie and Khanna believe that any political cover provided by Republicans’ moves this week will be fleeting. The issue’s hold on the base, they say, is just too strong.
“Too many people are following this too closely, and when the American people tune into something, it’s very hard to pull the wool over their eyes,” Khanna said.
One Number
56 percent
That’s the share of Americans who oppose Donald Trump’s takeover of Washington, D.C. My colleague Ruth Igielnik, The Times’s polling editor, has more.
President Trump appears poised to extend his takeover of law enforcement in Washington, D.C., and suggested today that he intends to send troops to Chicago and New Orleans, too.
In doing so, he may be escalating a move that has proved fairly unpopular with the public. Across the country, 56 percent of voters oppose Trump’s decision to deploy troops in Washington, while 41 percent are in favor, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll.
Trump has repeatedly described his crackdown on crime as a political winner ahead of the midterms. But most independent voters oppose the move, the poll found.
The poll showed that 86 percent of Republicans supported the deployment, while 12 percent of voters opposed it. Yet while Republicans largely support the idea of using the National Guard to assist local police departments, their opposition jumps at the prospect of Trump’s taking over those departments.
Overall, though, crime is the only issue on which a majority of Americans approve of the president’s job performance, according to polling from The Associated Press and NORC, a research organization. Overall, 53 percent of Americans approve of how he has handled crime, 10 percentage points higher than his approval on the economy.
ON THE MAP
The Senate midterms come into focus
It has long been apparent that the battle for the Senate map in next year’s midterms offers few opportunities for Democrats to retake the majority. But some new details about marquee contests are beginning to emerge. Here’s what we’ve learned so far this week:
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Former Senator John E. Sununu, a member of a prominent Republican political dynasty, is considering a Senate run in New Hampshire. Republicans are looking to flip the seat after Jeanne Shaheen, the Democratic incumbent, announced her retirement this year.
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Dan Kleban, a political newcomer and a co-founder of the Maine Beer Company, entered the Democratic primary for Senate in Maine. National party leaders are anxiously waiting to hear whether Gov. Janet Mills, a two-term Democrat, will join the race to unseat Senator Susan Collins.
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Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, formally announced this week that she, like a growing list of senators in her party who have been targeted by President Trump or his supporters, is opting not to seek re-election next year. That offers a glimmer of hope to Democrats, although they face major headwinds in the Republican-dominated state.
ONE LAST THING
A big beautiful rebranding
Don’t call it the One Big Beautiful Bill.
That, my colleague Annie Karni writes, was the advice from three top officials from President Trump’s 2024 campaign who journeyed to Capitol Hill today with advice to members of Congress on midterm strategy.
The attempt to relabel Trump’s signature domestic policy achievement was an implicit acknowledgment that it is deeply unpopular. They want members instead to call it a “working families tax plan.” Control of the House could hinge in part on whether or not they can do so successfully.
Ruth Igielnik and Jacob Reber contributed reporting.
Jess Bidgood is a managing correspondent for The Times and writes the On Politics newsletter, a guide to how President Trump is changing Washington, the country and its politics.
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