Congressmen Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna say they will have the requisite level of support they need to force a vote on their plan to release the Epstein files bill come October. Two strongly Democratic House seats — currently vacant due to two deaths — will soon be filled, meaning they will almost certainly have a majority of House members backing them.

Messrs. Massie and Khanna began collecting signatures last week on what is known as a discharge petition after Congress returned from its August recess. The discharge petition is a procedural maneuver that allows lawmakers to force votes on specific bills or resolutions so long as they garner a majority of signatures from the House, which is 218. Once they have the signatures, then the bill must be brought up for a vote within a matter of days. 

Currently, the discharge petition has 215 signatures — four from Republicans and 211 from Democrats. One Democrat is expected to sign on once he returns to work following the death of his mother last month. Two other predominantly Democratic districts — one in Virginia and one in Arizona — will hold special elections this month to fill those seats after the two previous representatives died in the middle of their terms. 

“We have the 218 votes,” Mr. Khanna said during a joint interview with Mr. Massie on ABC News’s “This Week” on Sunday. 

“216 [members] already support it,” Mr. Khanna said. “There are two vacancies that haven’t been reported [on] as much, but two Democrats are gonna be joining and they are both committed to signing it. That’s gonna happen by the end of September.”

On Tuesday, voters in Virginia’s 11th congressional district will go to the polls to elect their new representative. Vice President Kamala Harris won that district, which includes part of the strongly Democratic northern Virginia suburbs, by 34 points last year. Arizona’s 7th congressional district, which Ms. Harris won by 22 points, will elect a new representative on September 23. 

If all 213 Democrats plus the four Republicans currently signed on to the discharge petition keep their names on the list, then the bill could come up for a vote as early as the first week of October.

The bill would require Attorney General Pam Bondi to release all of the files in the Department of Justice’s possession related to Jeffrey Epstein within 30 days. The only documents that would not be released are those that identify victims, include pornographic images or videos, and anything that could affect ongoing prosecutions or investigations, among other things. 

If Messrs. Massie and Khanna do garner 218 signatures and pass their bill on the House floor, the measure would then go to the Senate, where Republicans could hypothetically block it. Mr. Massie predicts that once the House passes the bill, the Senate majority leader, Senator John Thune, will have no choice but to take it up if public pressure builds. 

“The pressure that’s on the House of Representatives right now is gonna go to the Senate after this passes the House. I think we’re gonna get a resounding vote on this and I think he’s gonna be under more pressure than he realizes,” Mr. Massie said of Mr. Thune. “He should do the right thing.”

“The American people are dialed into this,” Mr. Khanna added. “They want to know that … as a country, we can stand with survivors.”

The speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has pushed back forcefully against this effort by Messrs. Massie and Khanna, arguing that the justice department can be trusted to release files as it sees fit and that the House Oversight Committee is up to the task of investigating and releasing information on its own timeline. 

“We have a subpoena, which must be enforced and that does have the effect of law,” Mr. Johnson told the Sun last week after he and the Oversight chairman, Congressman James Comer, met with alleged Epstein victims. The Oversight Committee has subpoenaed records from both the justice department and the Epstein estate. 

Mr. Massie’s actions in recent weeks have driven a considerable wedge between the Kentucky Republican and his party’s leadership in Congress. Although he has long been a thorn in the side of the GOP’s top brass going all the way back to Speaker John Boehner, Mr. Johnson was prepared to support Mr. Massie earlier this summer. At a press conference in July, after being asked if he would continue supporting Mr. Massie, Mr. Johnson asserted that he was leading the “incumbent protection program.”

Now, Mr. Johnson seems to have little appetite for coming to Mr. Massie’s defense.

When asked by the Sun on Tuesday if he was supporting Mr. Massie’s 2026 re-election bid, Mr. Johnson said that it was “up to him,” referring to his colleague from Kentucky. 

President Trump has said that he will support a primary challenger to Mr. Massie next year. In a Truth Social post in July, the president declared that he was “looking for someone good to run against this guy.” Some of Mr. Trump’s most prominent donors, including Miriam Adelson and Paul Singer, have already poured a combined $2 million into a super PAC to be used to try to defeat Mr. Massie next year. 

In an interview with CNN that aired Sunday, Mr. Johnson again declined to endorse him, saying Mr. Massie was “actively working against his team almost daily now.” 

“So he is, you know, deciding his own fate,” the speaker said. In that same CNN interview, several other members of Republican leadership declined to back Mr. Massie’s re-election bid.