Forced House Votes Take Off as Rank-and-File Flex Their Power

Nobody took discharge petitions too seriously when I started covering the Hill a few years ago.

At the start of the last Congress, the procedural quirk — which allows rank-and-file lawmakers to go over House leaders’ heads and trigger floor votes by gathering 218 member signatures — hadn’t been successfully executed in the House since 2015. Before then, it had been 13 years.

Congressional power was highly concentrated in each chamber’s Capitol hideaways, where House and Senate leaders huddled privately to craft the legislative agenda.

But yesterday’s vote to release files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein cemented the discharge petition’s status as a fluke no more.

The Epstein vote came after renegade GOP Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.) convinced three other Republicans to join his effort with all House Democrats. Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), too, can soon force a vote on restoring union protections to federal workers after five centrist Republicans joined his discharge petition this week. Three other discharge petitions have reached 218 signatures in the 118th and 119th congresses.

Lawmakers might need to start (or threaten) a discharge petition to extend Affordable Care Act tax credits that expire at the end of the year, Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), who co-leads the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, said yesterday at a Bloomberg Government event.

Congressional leaders still cut deals while smoking cigars in poorly-ventilated, closed-door rooms. But discharge petitions have increasingly offered swing-district Republicans chances to stray from President Donald Trump and House GOP leadership, who are almost always aligned.

It’s not a leadership-endorsed strategy: House Speaker Mike Johnson is sharply critical of discharge petitions, which he calls a “tool of the minority.” Republican leaders see such efforts as undermining their freshly secured GOP power trifecta.

But the discharge petition gives independent-minded Republicans an opportunity to influence the legislative agenda while showing they’re not just a rubber stamp for the Trump agenda. The trend will likely only help blue-state Republicans whose political futures depend on moderate voters. The discharge petitions are a headache for Johnson now, but those rebels’ competitive seats could win (or lose) him the 2026 midterm elections.

Part of this newfound governance by discharge petition stems from the narrow House majority. Republicans control the chamber 219-214, so just four GOP dissidents can join Democrats to put a petition over the edge.

New York Reps. Nick LaLota (R) and Mike Lawler (R) could write all the strongly worded letters and post on X all they want. But none of that would force Trump’s hand. By signing Golden’s discharge petition, they’re guaranteeing a floor vote (barring clever maneuvering by leadership) on undoing the president’s rollback of federal workers’ collective bargaining rights.

Lawler told me it’s worth signing a discharge petition when “the issue warrants it.” He helped put efforts to undo Social Security restrictions on government pension-holders over 218 signatures last year, and the broadly popular policy is now law.

“It’s a procedural mechanism afforded to every member of the body, and I have a slightly different view on it than maybe some of my colleagues,” Lawler added, acknowledging opposition to discharge petitions from leadership and some corners of the conference.

House Democrats have a less charitable view of the surge in successful discharge petitions. It’s “because of failed Republican House leadership,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), their caucus’ vice chairman, said — describing the maneuver as “an end run around the speaker and around Republican leadership.”

But the trend could very well continue if Democrats retake the chamber in 2026. Narrow margins are basically a feature of congressional politics now, with just a handful of House seats up for grabs in any given cycle. House Democratic moderates, just like their Republican colleagues, also stand to benefit when their swing voters see them as mavericks.

They’re already flexing their centrist bona fides from the House minority. More than 20 Democrats just broke with their party leaders to rebuke a well-liked colleague, Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-Ill.), for a machine-style political maneuver that essentially allowed him to hand-pick his successor. That was after substantial whipping from Democratic leadership.

Regardless of who’s in power, don’t bet on discharge petitions disappearing for another 13 years.