This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

The pressure on President Trump and Republicans to release the Jeffrey Epstein files has gone nuclear.

A discharge petition to force release of the files is close to having the support it needs to pass the House, and survivors of the Epstein sex trafficking ring spoke out on Wednesday,

with one directly taking on Trump over this in an exceptionally powerful way.

Meanwhile, there are clear signs that the White House is quietly starting to panic.

Yet Trump himself is using the same

tired old talking points about this fiasco that he's been using all along. Does the White House have

a strategy other than brow-beating congressional Republicans into covering up the files? And could

that actually work or not? Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, a member of the House Rules Committee, has been in the

middle of this whole debate, so we're talking to him about all this today.

Congressman, thanks so much for coming on.

I'm happy to be with you.

So for years, Trump and MAGA demanded the release of materials related to the criminal

investigation into Epstein's sex trafficking.

Then when Trump took over and his people saw the materials, they went right into cover-up mode.

Now, you're part of this. There's a discharge petition in the House to force release of the files,

supported by Democrats and four Republicans, Marjorie Taylor Green, Nancy Mace, Lauren

Bobert, and Thomas Massey, who's sponsoring it. As of this recording, as of now, it only requires

two more Republicans to pass. Congressman, can you sum up where things stand on this?

Well, I think you just summed it up pretty accurately. We're waiting to see whether we can get

two more Republicans and then force a debate and a vote on this on the House floor.

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