Both the House and Sen­ate act­ed de­ci­sive­ly Tues­day to pass a bill to force the Jus­tice De­part­ment to pub­licly re­lease its files on the con­vict­ed sex of­fend­er Jef­frey Ep­stein, a re­mark­able dis­play of ap­proval for an ef­fort that had strug­gled for months to over­come op­po­si­tion from Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and Re­pub­li­can lead­er­ship.

When a small, bi­par­ti­san group of House law­mak­ers in­tro­duced a pe­ti­tion in Ju­ly to ma­noeu­vre around Speak­er Mike John­son’s con­trol of the House floor, it ap­peared a long­shot ef­fort — es­pe­cial­ly as Trump urged his sup­port­ers to dis­miss the mat­ter as a “hoax.”

But both Trump and John­son failed to pre­vent the vote. The pres­i­dent in re­cent days bowed to po­lit­i­cal re­al­i­ty, say­ing he would sign the bill. And just hours af­ter the House vote, sen­a­tors agreed to ap­prove it unan­i­mous­ly, skip­ping a for­mal roll call.