The News
House Democrats are betting that a future Speaker Hakeem Jeffries wouldn’t struggle with the type of aisle-crossing rebellion that’s often vexed current Speaker Mike Johnson.
That’s in part because of a House rule that’s prolonged Johnson’s problems: Any 218 House members can force a bill to the floor, bypassing leaders in the majority party. The current Congress has set a modern record for the use of this GOP leadership-defying maneuver — resulting in the passage of a Ukraine aid bill and a worker contracts bill during this month alone.
But Democrats don’t see much reason to fear what’s known as the discharge petition if they prevail in the midterms, and several House sources told Semafor they wouldn’t look to change it. Members of their party would have few incentives to break with Jeffries, who’d take office as the first Black speaker and lead a caucus eager to align against the Trump administration.
House Democrats also hope Jeffries’ more deliberate leadership style would help them avoid the discontent that has pushed so many Republicans to buck their leadership. And they believe the unique political dynamics driving frustrated Republicans to team up with them this Congress might evaporate if the majority flips.
“I’m trying to think of the issues you could get all Republicans and a handful of Democrats on” if the House turns blue next year, one senior Democratic aide said, “and I just don’t see it.”
While Republicans are openly considering changing the rules to make discharge petitions harder, Democrats are not likely to do the same if they retake the House. The House’s periodic descent into politically motivated censure votes, however, could propel them to make a change next year.
Current House rules allow any one lawmaker to force a vote on disciplining a colleague, setting the stage for censure clashes that have frequently become retaliatory grudge matches. For example, Republicans’ efforts last fall to formally reprimand Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., over her involvement in a chaotic scuffle at an immigration detention center turned into a back-and-forth with Democrats who were trying to censure Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., for alleged ethical transgressions.
Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., has spearheaded bipartisan legislation to hike the threshold required to censure a lawmaker to 60% of the House, up from the current simple majority. He told Semafor he’s planning to press the party to implement his change at the beginning of the new Congress, perhaps as part of the required new House rules package.
“I thought we were close now, but not with Mike Johnson,” Beyer said of his current campaign to change the censure rules. “You have to do it early.” The proposal has been floated to Jeffries, who’s previously expressed openness to it.
Beyer wants his party to consider other significant rules changes, including possible term limits for Democratic committee leaders and ranked-choice voting for caucus leadership positions. Both of those ideas have failed to gain traction with Democrats in the past.
In this article:
Know More
Of course, despite a House battleground map downsized by redistricting, Democrats remain hopeful they can win a large enough majority in November to effectively moot discharge petitions.
“I haven’t heard any discussion about it,” said New York Rep. Joe Morelle, the party’s top member on the committee on managing the House and a Jeffries ally.
Democrats’ current success pushing legislation past Johnson didn’t happen overnight. They laid the groundwork for successful discharge petitions very early on this Congress by filing placeholder bills, allowing them to move quickly if they could convince a handful of Republicans to break ranks.
Republicans who signed discharge petitions this Congress describe their moves as a way to air exasperation with their leadership for not putting bills on the floor.
“For the most part, there’s a big demand signal for some of these things, and if the speaker doesn’t come up with a Republican version, you’re left with a discharge,” said retiring Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who’d bucked his party on the Ukraine aid bill.
Rep. Kevin Kiley, I-Calif., who caucuses with Republicans and was the crucial final signature on the Ukraine petition, described the discharge petition’s demise under Democratic rule as a premature prediction: “You’re unlikely to see anything but a fairly closely divided Congress for the foreseeable future, and in that case, I think that it’s probably more viable as a tool for driving action in the House.”
But Kiley’s own use of the tool epitomizes the potential for partisanship to limit it. After his seat got targeted for remapping by California Democrats, Kiley filed a discharge petition on a bill banning midcycle gerrymandering — a position shared by many Democrats until recently.
Now that both parties have embraced redistricting for partisan advantage, he’s the only signatory.
Room for Disagreement
Jeffries’ leadership style has yet to face the harsh scrutiny a majority brings; he’s operated in relative luxury, hearing out the various factions of the Democratic caucus.
And so it’s still possible that moderate, purple-district Democrats will want to find ways to demonstrate independence from the rest of their party, especially if the party wins the House by picking up seats in redder territory where its brand is more underwater.
Still, Jeffries hasn’t become the kind of bogeyman on the campaign trail that his mentor, California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, was to Republicans. Nor has he generated the level of clear opposition from sitting lawmakers that forced Johnson and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy to make concessions to conservative hardliners in order to win the gavel.
Nicholas’s view
The last time Democrats were in the House majority, they went through bruising political fights over putting Israel aid and public safety bills on the floor — divisions that Republicans went on to exploit when they came back into power in 2023.
But if Democrats think they can avoid those divisions just because Trump is in charge and because the politics of the left have changed, they might be mistaken next year. If the House margin is as small as many lawmakers increasingly think it could be, Republicans will have even more incentive to stick together, unite against Democrats, and find procedural roadblocks to thwart the majority.