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In the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, adopting tactics of the minority will never yield substantive wins for the majority. Caving to that temptation will backfire and undercut our own ability to govern and legislate. The agenda of President Donald Trump, along with the mandate that was given to this majority, will be circumvented entirely – a result that should never occur.

Discharge petitions, one such tactic of the minority, have never been, nor ever will be, viable avenues to secure any manner of conservative wins when we are in the majority. In fact, discharge petitions are in direct violation of one of Republicans’ own governing principles in the People’s House: the Hastert Rule. 

The Hastert Rule, when Republicans are in the majority, instructs the Speaker of the House to only bring a bill to the floor only “if the majority of the majority” are in direct support of it. Discharge petitions are nothing more than a last-ditch demarche that sidesteps this governing principle, and the authority vested in the House’s committees, by forcing a bill’s way to the floor for an up or down vote.

We saw this happen on Valentine’s Day in 2002 when the so-called “Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act” barged its way, via a discharge petition, to the House floor under then-Speaker Dennis Hastert, a Republican. In October 2015, the Export Import Bank Reauthorization was brought to the floor  the exact same way – and another Republican, John Boehner, was speaker at the time. 

Both bills passed and left Republicans with a black eye and a broken nose. These are two examples in recent history that discharge petitions yielded outcomes that were antithetical to Republican principles and Republican governance. Legislative history spells this out with blinding clarity, and we ought to pay attention.

Fast forward to now, as the House is about to be force-fed another discharge petition that will stab our conservative governance in the back, if it is not defeated. 

This discharge petition, led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), would mandate that the House of Representatives permit proxy voting for pregnant, female members, or their spouses. 

While I am sure that those who support this change have good intentions, they’re doing two things: throwing their weight behind an unconstitutional procedure and unilaterally endorsing the same proxy voting scheme that Nancy Pelosi forced upon the House less than five years ago. And where does it end? The temptation to continue to expand the use of proxy voting for any purpose will be too great to ignore.

Voting in favor of this discharge petition is a surefire way of dissolving our own Republican governance in real time and steeping ourselves in a vat of hypocrisy. 

Proxy voting in committees was banned in 1995 by Republicans – and when we were given the majority back in 2023, the first action we took was to remove this unconstitutional scheme from the House floor. When we adopt tactics of the minority, while we ourselves are in control, all we do is shoot ourselves in the foot. Furthermore, it diminishes our ability to deliver for Americans and evaporates our unity and collective resolve in real time. 

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “Congress” is defined as the “act of coming together and meeting”. Proxy voting runs afoul of that definition, and it damn sure flies in the face of the sacred document that we take an oath to protect and defend.