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Outgoing Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky just confirmed to Raw America that he has collected the requisite 218 signatures from House members to force a vote on a second Epstein files bill. Out in Alaska, incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan got some bad news after a fresh batch of votes came through from the state’s reddest area. Incoming Democratic committee chairs are feeling the pressure from their constituents, the courts and the clock about moving fast on investigating Donald Trump’s corruption. And Republican Senator John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana just called his colleagues downplaying the midterms “stupid” while on Fox News.
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Exclusive: Massie Confirms He’s Now Able to Force Vote on New Epstein Files Bill
This morning, Congressman Thomas Massie confirmed to Raw America that his discharge petition for his new bill, the Epstein Files Transparency Act II, had reached the required signature threshold of 218 to force a vote on the House floor by the end of November. That means House Speaker Mike Johnson can’t hold it up, no matter how much Donald Trump may want him to.
“We’ve reached 218 signatures yesterday, which by our calendar means that we could have a vote on this before November 30. That’s the limit that Mike Johnson has to comply with under House rules,” Massie explained. “And I think it’ll be a successful outcome. I think that we’ll have unanimous or nearly unanimous passage of that bill in the House, and also in the Senate.”
(Video by Luke De Cresce / Raw America)
Massie says he’s working alongisde Democrats Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico and Ro Khanna of California to get the bill to the floor by the end of the month. According to Khanna — who co-sponsored last year’s Epstein files bill — the new version would allow for state attorneys general to prosecute the people who abused and trafficked young girls alongside Epstein. Massie has also said it would enable Epstein’s survivors to obtain their own personal records and take the Department of Justice to court for hiding critical evidence.
The first Epstein Files Transparency Act forced the Trump DOJ to release millions of pages of files, which implicated a number of prominent figures. But survivors insisted that the Justice Department release millions more pages still being withheld, and that the DOJ prosecute Epstein’s co-conspirators. They also sounded the alarm after files released under former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s watch exposed the names and other identifying information of previously unknown survivors, while names of potential co-conspirators were redacted.
Yesterday, incoming House Oversight Committee chair Robert Garcia of California accused the Justice Department and Attorney General Todd Blanche of illegally withholding more than 2.5 million pages. Garcia has promised to hold public hearings in which powerful men who spent time with Epstein are questioned, with Donald Trump chief among them.
Massie is working against the clock, given that he’ll be leaving Congress in January after losing his primary earlier this year to a Trump-backed challenger. He’s aiming to finish as much of his agenda as possible before the lame-duck session concludes.
Tell Congress: appoint a special counsel to investigate the Epstein files!
GOP Senator in Tight Reelection Race Gets Bad News from Alaska’s Reddest Area
Up in Alaska, the Senate race has yet to be decided, but the latest numbers aren’t doing much to ease incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan’s campaign.
Of roughly 5,600 newly reported votes, Sullivan picked up 2,836 to Peltola’s 2,561. That trimmed his overall deficit to 3,975, but it fell well short of what he needed from the Matanuska-Susitna Borough (also known as Mat-Su), which made up most of this latest batch of votes.
Mat-Su is about as red as it gets in Alaska. In 2024, every single candidate on the general election ballot for its state legislative seats identified as a Republican, which is made possiblr by the state’s top-four primary system.
Zachary Donnini, who is the head of voter science at Votehub, called the ballot drop a very poor update for Sullivan. saying the Mat-Su votes “simply weren’t red enough” for Sullivan to make a dent. He added that Sullivan’s path to victory is close to nonexistent now.
With 86 percent of the vote in, Peltola is leading by a margin of 48.9 percent to 47.3 percent. Her margin is also now smaller than the roughly 4,100 votes cast for a separate candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., of the fishing village of Petersburg. Peltola’s campaign manager, Cheryl Bruce, said there are still tens of thousands of uncounted ballots from both Alaska’s largest city, Anchorage, and other parts of rural Alaska friendly to Peltola. If she wins, she’ll be the 57th Democratic member of the Senate in the 120th Congress.
Democrats Feeling Pressure to Ramp Up Investigations of Trump’s Corruption
Democrats won’t regain control of committee gavels until January 3, but they’re already feeling the pressure to move fast on holding Trump accountable.
Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who’s expected to chair the powerful House Judiciary Committee in the 120th Congress, said the Trump administration is swimming in such a “cesspool of corruption” that his committee will have to mover swiftly to issue subpoenas.
Despite not yet being sworn in, time is already a factor. Setting up committees usually takes close to month, and by fall of 2028, most members will be out in their own districts campaigning for reelection. That turns a two-year Congress into something closer to 18 months. And given that the administration is already signaling plans to stonewall all investigations, Democrats will have to take the fight to the courts, which move at a snail’s place.
Recent history proves that point. The House’s Fast and Furious subpoena fight with the Obama administration’s DOJ dragged on for eight years before finally reaching a settlement in 2019. The battle to obtain testimony from Trump’s first White House counsel, Don McGahn, dragged on for more than two years. And the fight over Trump’s financial records held by his accountant, Mazars, went all the way to the Supreme Court, which sat on its docket for another two years before a negotiated resolution.
Former House general counsel Stan Brand told Politico there’s currently no quick mechanism to enforce a congressional subpoena. Former Senate Judiciary counsel Sara Zdeb was even more direct, saying the pace of litigation simply doesn’t keep up with the rapid pace of the political calendar.
However, Democrats aren’t entirely out of options. White House counsel Will Scharf has already threatened to conduct a criminal counter-investigation against Democrats, who are almost certain to show Scharf’s letter to a judge to demonstrate the pointlessness of negotiation with the White House. House Investigators could also turn their focus on private corporations and individuals outside the administration, who have fewer tools at their disposal to stall a congressional probe. Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut has already sent several demands to Trump-linked cryptocurrency companies and corporate donors to Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom, with a hard deadline of January 4 to respond.
Zdeb also observed that Congress’ strongest tools don’t even involve the judiciary. She said withholding votes on Senate confirmations and controlling the purse strings via the appropriations process can end up forcing answers faster than any lawsuit.
GOP Senator Calls Colleagues ‘Stupid’ for Downplaying Republicans’ Midterm Losses
Our final story this morning: Republican Senator John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana is taking his own party to task over the midterms.
In a Wednesday appearance on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s show, the senator said last week’s results were no ordinary midterm loss, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is stupid. That was a remarkable thing to say on a show whose host had argued just two days earlier that the losses were in line with typical midterm setbacks.
Kennedy told Republicans to stop thinking they’re so smart, and he argued voters didn’t just stay home. They actively chose Democrats. His ideas for winning them back include banning stock trading by members of Congress, changing taxes on home sale profits, cracking down on paid pardon brokers and boosting military spending by at least $200 billion as the war with Iran drains ammunition stockpiles.
The catch, according to Kennedy, is that Senate GOP leadership won’t let him move any of it. He was one of five Republican senators who tried and failed to delay this week’s leadership vote, and Majority Leader John Thune was reelected unopposed anyway.
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I’m John Byrne, in for Thom Hartmann. Thanks for reading, thanks for supporting independent media, and please make sure to tap the ❤️ and hit restack so these stories can reach the most people. Those two clicks help more than you know.
Release to show trump guilty/not guilty its guilty right now
Thank you Congressman Massie and Chair Garcia for your work.
Senator Kennedy, while the current elected Republicans are stupid and have done nothing but sit on their thumbs for the last 10 years. I am assuming that's why you call them stupid. Not doing their jobs is surely stupid. The will of the people " We The People" have spoken, loud and clear. We will continue to rid our Country of stupid, well paid, do nothing, elected officials. Making our Country America again. The time has come to clean house and take out the trash. Pun intended.