Mike Johnson gets bypassed more than any past speaker
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House members in both parties are embracing the discharge petition like never before to sidestep Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and pass bills he refuses to put on the floor.
Why it matters: Republican leaders have long discouraged their members from signing onto Democratic-led petitions, but those pleas are increasingly falling on deaf ears.
- Johnson briefly floated changes to House rules last year to make it harder for discharge petitions to succeed.
- He said at the time the tactic was "too common," with Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) saying he would "like to see a higher threshold for a lot of these motions."
Driving the news: A discharge petition introduced by Rep. Donald Norcross (D-N.J.) hit 218 signatures on Wednesday. It will force a vote on legislation aimed at speeding up unionization negotiations.
- The petition was signed by 211 Democrat and seven Republicans, with Reps. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) and Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) providing the final signatures.
- The turnaround was lightning fast: Norcross introduced the petition on April 20 and the trio of Republicans signed it exactly a month later.
By the numbers: This is the eighth time in the 119th Congress that a discharge petition has reached the necessary 218 signatures to force a House vote.
- Two other petitions secured 218 signatures in 2024, for a total of 10 in the last two years.
- That represents more than 20% of the successful discharge petitions since 1935, according to data compiled by Axios' Kate Santaliz.
- The 119th Congress has seen the most discharge petitions hit the necessary signature threshold of any congressional session since the tool was created in its modern form, according to Good Authority.
The bottom line: The petitions have had a mixed record so far.
- The two in 2024 — one to expand Social Security benefits to retirees who receive certain government pensions, and the other to provide tax breaks to victims of natural disaster — both got signed into law.
- But just one of the eight discharge petitions this year — the Epstein Files Transparency Act — has become law, with several others passing the House but languishing in the Senate.
- Johnson even managed to effectively shut down Rep. Anna Paulina Luna's (R-Fla.) discharge petition to allow limited proxy voting for House members with newborn children.
