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After it received a 218th signature on Wednesday night, a bipartisan effort to force the House to vote on a measure that would compel the Justice Department to release the Epstein files advanced to the next stage.<\/p>\n
With President Trump and House Republican leaders opposed, proponents had turned to an arcane procedural tactic, known as a discharge petition, which allows them to circumvent House leadership and bring bills onto the floor if a majority of members \u2014 218 of them \u2014 sign on.<\/p>\n
When it became clear that they had succeeded, Speaker Mike Johnson, who had gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid a vote on such a measure, relented on Wednesday night and said he would bring the measure to a vote next week.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Here\u2019s how the process will work.<\/p>\n
The House of Representatives operates by majority rule, but in practice, the speaker and the leaders of the majority party control how and whether bills move to the floor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Normally, when legislation is introduced, it gets referred to a House committee that is controlled by the majority. That committee is not required to act, and bills opposed by the leadership effectively die at this stage. A discharge petition is supposed to provide an end run around this problem. Its name comes from the act of discharging a bill from committee.<\/p>\n
In this case, Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, and Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, were looking to force a vote on a bill that would require the Justice Department to release within 30 days material on its investigation into the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.<\/p>\n
The lawmakers turned to a discharge petition after it became clear that Mr. Johnson would not bring the bill, which the White House has fought to kill, to the floor.<\/p>\n
Mr. Massie and Mr. Khanna began collecting signatures in September. But their petition was only able to reach the 218-member threshold on Wednesday, when Representative Adelita Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona, signed it just minutes after she was sworn into office<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n