Ro Khanna would not be anyone’s idea of a likely ally to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The five-term Democrat, who represents California’s Silicon Valley, joined every other Democrat to strip Greene of her committee assignments just four years ago. But on Wednesday, Khanna was the only Democrat to join a press conference with Greene and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) joining a throng of survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse.
Khanna is one of the two chief sponsors of the discharge petition to release files related to Epstein’s criminal sex trafficking operations.
So far, two other Republicans have joined Massie and Khanna’s discharge petition. If it gets enough signatures, Khanna and Massie can force a vote and get around House Speaker Mike Johnson’s attempts to block the release.
The day before the press conference, The Independent spoke to Khanna in his office briefly to discuss why he decided to partner with Massie on the subject.
“How can we do big things like providing people with health care and child care and education if people don’t trust government?” he said. “If people think government is only operating for the rich and the powerful, or that the government is being controlled by special interest forces?
“So restoring trust in government is key to making the argument that government can be a force for good in people’s lives.”
Khanna is a progressive Democrat who endorsed Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. He’s came out early in support for a ceasefire in Gaza and ardently supports Medicare for All. For him, getting to the bottom of Epstein and the cover-up that allowed him to act with impunity is about restoring trust in government.
But for Khanna, it’s also about reaching Trump voters where they are and seeing the Democratic Party not as one that just protects the status quo but as one that reforms it.
“The second thing is that a lot of people voted for Trump out of nihilism, out of despair,” he said. “They wanted to burn it all down, tear it all down, and they thought that this government has been corrupted, corrupted and working only for the rich and powerful.”
Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson have taken extraordinary measures to avoid the discharge petition. Shortly after the interview, the House Oversight Committee, on which Khanna sits, released 30,000 pages of information related to Epstein.
On Wednesday, Trump once again called the Epstein files “a Democratic hoax.” But Khanna insists the Epstein investigation is not partisan and had a message to his Republican colleagues.
“I’m not making this an issue that’s anti-Trump, I’m making this an issue that’s standing with survivors, that’s protecting Americans’ kids, that’s standing up for trust in government,” Khanna said.
Indeed, Khanna pointed out how many commentators and elected officials in the MAGA wing of the Republican Party have expressed anger ever since the FBI and Department of Justice released its two-page memo saying Epstein likely killed himself in prison and that no “client list” existed.
“Can you think of another issue where you had prominent people–prominent MAGA supporters break with Trump?” he said.
The push on Epstein comes as many Democratic voters want to see their elected leaders fight back against Trump and Republicans. But Khanna said how Democrats fight matters as much as fighting in and of itself.
“All of the base, which I agree with, they say ‘fight, fight, fight,’” he said. “But it’s not fight to lose. It’s fight smartly, fight strategically, fight in a way that’s going to help us build a majority.”
Despite being a progressive Democrat who represents an area of the country that hosts several of the wealthiest companies and some of the highest earners, Khanna has tried to make inroads in places where Democrats once succeeded. Indeed, after Trump’s win, he visited Ohio and even met with JD Vance.
But Khanna said that he is disappointed in his fellow Yale Law School alumnus, with whom he has sparred on X, about racism against Indian-Americans given that Vance wife Usha and his in-laws are Indian-American.
“He could have made a contribution in a constructive way, in my view, to Ohio, to the country,” he said of Vance. “And instead, he has chosen, for his own political advancement, to align himself with Donald Trump, who’s interested in dividing us, who’s demonizing immigrants like the parents of his own wife, who is giving tax breaks to the wealthy and doing nothing for the working and middle class who he champions.”
For Khanna, Trump and Vance are selling working-class Americans a bill of goods.
“Donald Trump took the rhetoric of FDR, right? Talking about forgotten men and women and all. And then decided to deliver for the economic royalist,” he said in reference to four-term President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who led the nation out of the Great Depression and through much of World War II.
But Democrats have a few opportunities on the horizon. In 14 months, voters will get a chance to pick the Democrats to control the House of Representatives instead of Republicans. In Texas, Republicans redrew their congressional map, which triggered California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom to call for a referendum to allow for a one-time redraw of the maps to counter gerrymandering.
For Khanna, Republicans gave Democrats the best campaign tool when they passed Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which slashed Medicaid to pay for another round of tax cuts.
“That it is totally unfair, and it’s leading to hospital closures,” Khanna said. “It’s leading to people’s premiums going up in healthcare because hospitals now are charging more to the private insurance. And I believe that we should make 2026 a referendum on this big, ugly bill.”
