House Republicans have repeatedly bucked GOP leadership this year as they use rare procedural tools to push their agenda and force a vote on contentious bills.
Often called a “tool of the minority,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and other House GOP lawmakers have gone down several avenues to try to block discharge petitions since this Congress began in January.
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Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) introduced a discharge petition on Tuesday to force a vote on their legislation to release the criminal files on deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Johnson, House leadership, and the White House fought back. First, Johnson added a new bill to the floor this week that would direct the House Oversight Committee to “continue its ongoing investigation” into Epstein, in leadership’s latest effort to appease the members of their caucus on the issue. Then, the Oversight Committee later released 33,000 files on Epstein, just hours after the discharge petition opened. Next, the White House sent a warning to Republicans who tried to join Massie’s effort.
“Helping Thomas Massie and Liberal Democrats with their attention-seeking, while the DOJ is fully supporting a more comprehensive file release effort from the Oversight Committee, would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration,” a White House official told the Washington Examiner.
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The drama unfolded as a number of Epstein’s victims arrived on Capitol Hill to speak privately with bipartisan members of Congress on Tuesday, ahead of their planned press conference on Wednesday with Massie and Khanna. In 2019, Epstein died in jail, in what the DOJ deemed a suicide, as he was awaiting trial for allegedly sex trafficking minors.
“Johnson’s trying to just keep the files from being released, and he’s not going to let this bill get to the floor,” Massie told the Washington Examiner. “So I did a discharge petition, one because it needed to be done, but two because it’s doable.”
Massie isn’t the only Republican who has been a thorn in Johnson’s side.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) is set to introduce her second discharge petition of this Congress to force a vote on the longtime congressional stock trade ban issue. Her first discharge petition this Congress fought for proxy voting to allow new parents to vote remotely on floor legislation.
Beginning Tuesday, members can add their signatures to the Massie discharge petition. Most, if not all, Democrats are expected to sign on to his Epstein files petition, meaning only six Republicans would need to cross party lines to add their names.
Democrats have remained united on the issue of the Epstein files as it has gained traction in recent months. The party has called for a full release of the files from the Trump Justice Department, but did not rally around the same release just last year when former President Joe Biden was in office.
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Luna and Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) said they do not plan to sign Massie’s discharge petition on Tuesday, following House Oversight’s release of the files they received from the Department of Justice.
“Currently, now there’s no reason to,” Burchett said about signing onto the petition. “The files are out. Unless something changes, unless there’s some other files that miraculously appear.”
Still, Luna will move forward with her stock trading petition, marking the third time a Republican has used a discharge petition to force a vote on an issue Johnson refuses to bring up, backing leadership into a corner.
“The idea that a discharge petition is ‘only a tool of the minority’ is just an excuse to keep power consolidated in the hands of people who don’t actually want your member of Congress to legislate or fight for you,” Luna wrote in a post on X.
On Tuesday, Luna told Washington Examiner: “Obviously, I think it’s a great tool.”
The so-called “discharge petition” must reach 218 signatures for it to force the speaker to call a vote on it. After the petition reaches that threshold, the member can call a vote after seven legislative days.
Burchett, who has pledged to support Luna’s effort with the stock trade ban and signed on to her previous petition for proxy voting, told the Washington Examiner that using the discharge petition tool is “absolutely” necessary.
“I think it’s there for a purpose,” Burchett said. “If it wasn’t, they would have gotten rid of it.”
In the past, discharge petitions have often been used as a tool of the minority when bringing up a bill with bipartisan support when the party in leadership refuses to schedule a vote on the issue. However, in a Congress with such a narrow majority, they are also starting to become more of a norm for the majority.
Discharge petitions often set the conference up for a tough battle because they seek to force the contentious underlying bills to the floor.
Although a congressional stock trading ban is a popular issue among the public, some Republicans have expressed frustration with Luna’s effort to force the speaker to put the bill on the floor, one senior GOP House staffer told the Washington Examiner last month.
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Luna brought up the first discharge petition — which caused Johnson a major headache — earlier this year for a bill that would have allowed members to designate another member as a proxy beginning on the date of birth and terminating 12 weeks after. Johnson took many steps to ensure this bill did not hit the floor, including language in a procedural vote to kill the petition. This rule vote ultimately failed, serving as a win for Luna during her first buck with leadership.
Johnson and Luna ultimately struck a deal that ended her effort to force a vote on the bill. The agreement was to end the push for proxy voting, and, in exchange, formalize “vote pairing,” which allows a member who is absent during a vote on the House floor to coordinate with a present member on the opposite side of a matter to announce that the present member is forming a “pair” with the absent representative. It allows the absent representative to record how they would have voted had they been present.
Johnson’s office did not reply to the Washington Examiner for comment.
Rachel Schilke and Mabinty Quarshie contributed to this article.
