Congress
Under Mike Johnson, a rarely used House tool has gone mainstream
Over the course of decades, House lawmakers had succeeded only a few times in triggering votes on bills the chamber’s leaders refused to call up.
Then Mike Johnson became speaker.
On the Louisiana Republican’s watch, the “discharge petition” has caught fire. Rank-and-file lawmakers have managed five times since he won his gavel two years ago to circumvent Johnson’s wishes by getting the 218 signatures needed to force votes on legislation he had blocked — more than in the prior 30 years combined.
Most recently, a bipartisan group used the maneuver to advance a long-stalled bill requiring President Donald Trump’s administration to release information about the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
It’s members of Johnson’s own party who have most effectively wielded the tool in recent years. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) masterminded the Epstein push, while Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) engineered an effort to seek voting accommodations for House members with newborn babies. Before that, then-Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) used the gambit to enact a bill to expand Social Security payments for millions of public sector workers.
“They try to say that discharge petitions are a tool of the minority, but that’s actually only the perspective of people that want to consolidate power within leadership,” Luna said in an interview, adding that she would protect the maneuver “with every bone in my body.”
The upshot for Johnson is that the arcane legislative mechanism once known only to Capitol Hill obsessives is now a routine part of life in the Republican House majority. Beyond Epstein, Johnson is now facing several new drumbeats for action, with lawmakers looking to force votes on banning member stock trading, sanctioning Russia and extending health care subsidies that are set to expire at year’s end.
The GOP’s slim majority is an obvious contributor to the burgeoning popularity of the maneuver. The discharge process is set into motion when 218 members sign on to a petition, meaning only a handful of Republicans need to cross leadership if Democrats are united in support.
But the recent spate of successful discharges also reflects careful groundwork Democrats laid to quickly seize on the procedure, along with a sentiment among many Republicans that Johnson is stifling the will of the House to appease Trump and small GOP factions — including hard-liners who successfully ousted Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy.
“I would encourage you to ask Mike Johnson why he repeatedly refused to bring my bill to the floor,” Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) said in an interview.
‘Toxic political environment’
Steube is still bitter about how Johnson hindered passage last year of his legislation to provide tax relief to disaster survivors, even after the measure was unanimously approved in committee. Once Steube got the signatures he needed to compel floor action, the measure passed the House in a 382-7 vote before clearing the Senate and earning then-President Joe Biden’s signature.
That first victory — seven months into Johnson’s tenure as speaker — showed how the maneuver can be successful “in a toxic political environment,” said Steube, a MAGA-hat-wearing, fourth-term member who has consistently won his southwest Florida district by a landslide. “It’s got to be something that is very bipartisan and is important enough that the body says, Yeah, this warrants overriding the speaker.”
The discharge petition dates back to 1910, when it was created in response to the “overreaching, overbearing, overcontrolling” style of then-Speaker Joseph Cannon — aka “Czar Cannon” — according to Sarah Binder, a George Washington University professor who focuses on legislative politics.
Now, she said, it serves as a “pressure valve” for a chamber designed to reflect the majority’s will.
In some cases, discharge petitions can help solve thorny political problems for the speaker. Philip Wallach, who studies the roots of congressional dysfunction at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said Johnson is “using this idea of getting forced” as a way to keep his job.
“He’s actually kind of deft at the coalition management problem and at staying on side with Trump,” Wallach said. “If he acted some other way, I really do think there’s a good chance that he would find himself on the wrong side of Trump and get thrown out.”
That was certainly the case with the Epstein vote, though Johnson protested mightily against the bill Massie and his ally Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) sought to discharge, arguing until the moment Trump signed it that it did not do enough to protect Epstein’s victims from invasions of privacy.
But as the 427-1 vote demonstrated, there was a deep groundswell for transparency that Johnson had been holding off at Trump’s behest.
‘The fuse in the fuse box’
Massie said members of both parties are now “brainstorming” other bills they might be able to catapult to the floor.
“It’s the fuse in the fuse box when everything gets jammed up and the wires get crossed and nothing can get done,” he told reporters last week.
In discouraging Republicans from signing on to discharge petitions, House GOP leaders argue that the tactic undermines the party in power and circumvents Congress’ “regular order” system of debate, where legislation is meant to advance through committees with special expertise.
“Typically it’s when somebody either doesn’t want to go through the committee process or doesn’t get what they want out of the committee process,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said in an interview.
But it’s not just committee calendars and floor scheduling that has chafed many House Republicans. GOP leaders have taken more overt steps this year to thwart the chamber’s ability to work the majority’s will — including by preemptively blocking efforts to force votes on canceling some of Trump’s tariffs.
Even before Johnson’s tenure, House leaders of both parties have chipped away at the “open rule” practice of allowing lawmakers to debate any amendments they wanted on the floor. Now they nearly always pick and choose the amendments allowed — if they allow them at all.
On the Epstein bill, the House’s top Republicans characterized the decision to sign Massie’s petition as a loyalty test.
“They made it pretty clear that if you get on the discharge petition, you’ve declared war on the president, in so many words,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said in an interview, adding that he sympathized with Johnson’s need to keep Trump and “prima donnas” in the House GOP happy.
“He tries his best,” Bacon said.
But Bacon, who is retiring after his term ends, has signed on to several discharge petitions, including one to sanction Russia and aid Ukraine, which is just a few signatures shy of 218. Bacon reasons that gesture is a way to show Trump that there’s rising support for helping Ukraine while affording Johnson some political cover.
“I feel like I’m helping him out by doing the discharge on Ukraine, in a way,” Bacon said of Johnson. “Because I’m trying to force the hand. He’s going to say, ‘I didn’t have any choice on this.’”
‘Zombie’ legislation
Democrats, to be sure, have done their share to contribute to the dizzying pace of discharges. Just last week, another petition succeeded, setting up a vote on a measure sponsored by Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) that would nullify an executive order Trump issued in March scrapping the collective bargaining rights of more than 1 million federal employees.
The party’s leaders, in fact, have quietly plotted for months to take full advantage of the tool. Under House rules, it typically takes well over a month to force a vote once a petition gets the requisite 218 signatures. So Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee, coordinated the filing of “zombie” measures containing placeholder language allowing members to jump-start the procedural countdown before they finalize the substance of the legislation they want to propel to the floor.
McGovern acknowledged in an interview that none of that spade work pays off unless at least a few members of the majority are disgruntled enough to buck their leaders.
“It takes a lot of courage for Republicans to sign on to a discharge petition when they’re in charge,” he said. “But I think it’s a reflection of their frustration with their own leadership.”
Off Blue Light News, congressional observers who know the history of the seldom-used gambit are stunned, if not necessarily surprised, by its recent success.
“Despite the fact that it doesn’t succeed very often, it’s out there for an ambitious, organized minority — and, in this case, also disgruntled or concerned majority members, who feel their leadership’s not on the right side of the issue,” Binder said. “So beware the discharge.”
Cassandra Dumay contributed to this report.
Sens. Susan Collins and Patty Murray have long prided themselves on working together to advance government funding bills. That collegiality is now showing signs of decay.
The Maine Republican and Washington Democrat have been openly feuding about the path forward on spending measures this summer. It comes after their successful collaboration on bipartisan legislation during Murray’s two-year reign as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which continued when Collins took the gavel last year.
Democrats attribute the clash to Collins’ pursuit of President Donald Trump’s demands for a record military budget that eclipses domestic spending, as she fights to retain her Senate seat in November. Republicans say Murray is playing midterm politics by trying to prevent Collins from landing a deal before Election Day, when Democrats hope to regain House and Senate majorities — and the upper hand in year-end funding talks.
“It’s not personal, but it is very frustrating,” Collins said last week, while insisting she and Murray are still on good terms.
All Murray would say about the state of their relationship was, “We’re talking.”
While that impasse doesn’t necessarily heighten the odds of a government shutdown this fall, it could delay any meaningful Senate appropriations action until after the elections. The outcome of congressional races — including Collins’ toss-up contest against Democrat Graham Platner — could change the power balance in government funding negotiations.
“It certainly looks to me like the Democrats don’t want to give Susan Collins a victory,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said in an interview. “I really think it’s intensely political. She is a very reasonable legislator. If you can’t make a deal with Susan Collins, you don’t want to make a deal.”
Part of Collins’ campaign-trail pitch to Mainers is that she gets results in Washington, and her inability to advance the dozen annual appropriations bills through her committee undercuts that narrative.
Collins isn’t refuting the idea that Democrats might want to deprive her of legislative success as she competes against Platner in one of the closest and most-watched races in the country.
“That’s certainly a viable theory, which is pretty pathetic,” she said in an interview.
This month Collins publicly accused Murray of sending government funding offers that have “made it clear that Democrats are abandoning the appropriations process.” Murray, meanwhile, suggested Collins was at fault for the stalemate by divulging she hadn’t responded to Murray’s latest offer in more than two weeks.
It’s a major tone shift for the two lawmakers, who have earned a reputation for trying to stay out of the partisan fray since they became their party’s top leaders on the Appropriations Committee in 2023. They’ve consistently resisted broadcasting behind-the-scenes friction during tough negotiations and succeeded in reaching cross-party compromises to advance funding bills each year — even after the record government shutdown last fall.
But they’re now at loggerheads over funding totals for the military and domestic programs, along with votes on hot-button Trump policies. Senate Republicans are seeking a military funding boost more than four times larger than any increase in domestic spending, as Trump calls for a record $1.5 trillion defense budget.
“We do not have an agreement,” Murray said, because Republicans “are set on increasing defense in an increasingly huge way that we’ve never had to deal with before.”
GOP senators also want to avoid any amendment votes that could sink approval of appropriations bills, including some related to the Justice Department’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund” administration officials have promised not to pursue.
The result is that Collins has yet to hold a committee markup on a single government funding bill with just three months left before federal dollars expire. And some Republican appropriators acknowledge it’s possible the panel won’t vote on any of the spending measures this year given the deadlock.
“Obviously Susan is up this year. And Democrats, at every level and every opportunity, are playing politics with it,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in an interview. “The appropriations process used to be fairly bipartisan. … Murray and the Democrats have turned it into a partisan game.”
Some Democrats openly sympathize with Collins’ predicament in trying to represent politically moderate Maine while holding one of the most influential positions on Capitol Hill during Trump’s second term and unified Republican control of Congress.
“The chair of the committee is being squeezed in every direction,” Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a senior Democratic appropriator, said in an interview.
Many Senate Republicans don’t “give a damn” about funding domestic efforts like public education and biomedical research, Baldwin continued. “I believe that the chairwoman does care about those issues. But you know, she’s in an unenviable position.”
Since Trump was reelected, Collins has worked to negotiate funding bills that spend far more on domestic programs than the president sought. The result has been essentially flat funding for nondefense programs and a 17 percent increase in military spending, which includes the billions of dollars Republicans enacted along party lines last year.
“Chair Collins is very devoted to, or interested in, following through to help the president get more money for the Department of War and munitions, et cetera,” said West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a top Republican appropriator. “And I think Senator Murray is on the opposite page.”
“Rather than legislate and work these things out,” Capito added, “I think it’s been decided on the other side to just be obstinate and not participate and not negotiate.”
Trump is calling this year for boosting Pentagon spending by more than 40 percent while slashing domestic programs by 10 percent. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, a senior Democratic appropriator who has served in Congress for more than 40 years, calls it “a massive change” in the way government funding has been divvied up for decades — by negotiating matching dollar-for-dollar increases in both military and nondefense funding.
“We’re so far apart. We haven’t faced anything like that in recent memory,” Durbin said in an interview. “And to accept the premise of it — what’s left for nondefense is terrible.”
Collins could proceed with markups this summer without an agreement with Democrats, as the House Republican majority has done for years. But Republican senators would need to be willing to vote on controversial amendments Democrats might offer — including proposals that defy Trump.
Senate Republican appropriators faced that issue last summer, when the panel unexpectedly adopted an amendment barring the Trump administration from repurposing cash intended for relocating the FBI headquarters. That outcome prompted several GOP senators to withdraw support for the funding bill.
“The challenge is that, if you have every Democrat voting against reporting the bill out — and then they also are offering poison pills — it’s hard to move those bills,” Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), chair of the Appropriations subcommittee that funds the FBI, said in an interview.
During the two years Murray chaired the full committee, Moran recalled, “We had members who wanted to offer what would probably be considered poison pills by Democrats. And Senator Collins talked Republicans out of doing so, to move the process.”
The two sides could easily reach an agreement on amendments and policy stipulations, some Democrats contend, if only Collins and Murray could bridge the divide between the president’s military funding demands and their own domestic priorities.
“Senator Collins is carrying out the administration’s wishes,” Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, another senior Democratic appropriator, said in an interview. “And Senator Murray is noting that a reckless increase in defense spending is not in the best interest of Americans.”
“So they’re both advocating for their viewpoint,” Merkley added. “That’s what we do in a democracy.”
Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.
The House Rules Committee advanced a procedural measure aimed at breaking an intra-Republican deadlock Monday night. But GOP leaders are still facing a major battle Tuesday to regain control of the House floor.
The panel approved on party lines a measure to set up Republicans’ $1.1 trillion defense policy bill, a government funding bill and other GOP bills for floor debate. It would then combine the Pentagon bill, once passed, with the contentious elections overhaul known as the SAVE America Act and send it to the Senate as one piece of legislation.
That maneuver, telegraphed by Speaker Mike Johnson earlier Monday, is aimed at appeasing House GOP hard-liners who have blockaded the floor, demanding the Senate pass the elections bill that has languished there for months.
However, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, the Republican leading the blockade, said in an interview Monday before the Rules Committee acted that Johnson’s plan is not sufficient — raising the possibility she and allies could vote down the measure on the floor. Other House GOP hard-liners say there are other outstanding issues to battle over Tuesday.
Rep. James McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Rules Democrat, called the merger move “a big waste of time.” The panel voted down a motion by McGovern to remove the provision to combine the two bills in a party-line vote.
The Senate is set to debate its own version of the defense bill next month, and it is likely that the elections overhaul will be removed in negotiations between the two chambers — as McGovern acknowledged Monday and House GOP leaders privately concede.
“The Senate will just strip the SAVE Act out,” he said at the meeting. “There is a zero percent chance SAVE ends up in the [Pentagon bill] because of this rule today.”
The defense bill faces a tight vote if Republicans can pass the procedural measure. Most Democrats are expected to oppose the measure over its massive price tag, which they contend is wasteful.
The panel is set up debate on 312 amendments to the bill. The slate includes GOP measures to codify a Trump executive order to block transgender people from serving in the military, prohibit coverage of gender-affirming care, block aid to arm Ukraine and strip Democratic-backed protections for collective bargaining for Pentagon civilian workers.
The committee also voted down Democratic proposals to slash $150 billion from the bill’s topline and limit the war against Iran.
Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday he plans to deploy an unusual procedural maneuver in a bid to unfreeze the House floor this week, seeking to send the annual Pentagon policy bill and the GOP elections bill known as the SAVE America Act to the Senate in a single package.
That is likely a recipe for a continued standoff between the two chambers over the SAVE America Act, which has stalled in the Senate for months due to internal GOP divides. Under Johnson’s plan, the annual defense policy bill, which typically passes every year with large bipartisan majorities, could become a collateral victim of the impasse.
Asked in brief interview if he had talked to Senate Majority Leader John Thune about his plans, Johnson replied, “I have to do my job in the House, and they’ve got to do their job in the Senate, so we’ll see what happens.”
Johnson is seeking to placate House conservative hard-liners, led by Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who have threatened to oppose the procedural measures that give Republicans control of the floor unless they agree to tougher tactics meant to force the Senate into passing the elections bill.
House GOP leaders discussed the plan to merge the two bills over the weekend as Luna pushed to amend the defense bill directly.
She did not say in an interview Monday whether Johnson’s gambit would suffice: “We want it baked together, not able to be stripped out,” she said.
But the Senate is free to work its own will, and members of that chamber are likely to reject any defense bill that has the partisan elections bill attached. That would set the stage for GOP leaders to strip it out when the House and Senate hash out the differences between their competing Pentagon bills later this year.
Johnson, meanwhile, is pushing a separate plan to pass a slimmed-down version of the SAVE America Act through the party-line budget reconciliation process — an option hard-liners have all but rejected.
“I don’t think that that can be done,” Luna told reporters Monday.
He’s also facing another complication: The version of the SAVE America Act he is proposing to attach to the Pentagon bill doesn’t include the latest demands for the bill from President Donald Trump — including a near-total ban on mail voting that is opposed by many Republicans.
Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
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