Impatient with a slow-moving committee process, advocates for a ban on lawmaker stock trading moved this week to force the issue.
A discharge petition was put forth on Tuesday evening by Republican Reps. Anna Paulina Luna and Tim Burchett. It quickly had more than a dozen signatures.
That leaves a long way to go before it reaches the magic number of 218 needed to circumvent Speaker Mike Johnson and force a vote on the measure, yet it was a notable initial show of force, especially as this week’s effort is being led by Republicans in apparent open defiance of their speaker.
Combined with high support in Democratic ranks for the proposal, the push could give new energy to an issue that has been stalled for years.
Among the initial wave of 16 signees, ten were Republicans. And at least three of those Republicans — Reps. Elise Stefanik, Gregory Steube, and Michael Lawler — had not previously co-sponsored the underlying bill.
That bill, the Restore Trust in Congress Act, would ban members of Congress and their spouses, dependent children, and trustees from owning, buying, or selling individual stocks, securities, commodities, or futures. It currently has 104 co-sponsors, with 82 Democrats and 22 Republicans signed on.
“We’re tired of the partisan games,” Luna said in a social media video just after she made the filing, later adding in another post that the discharge petition process was required “because of the BS on the back end.”
The initial signatories included an array of longtime supporters of a ban, many of whom hail from opposite ends of the political spectrum, including Democrats like Jared Moskowitz of Florida to Republicans like Elijah Crane of Arizona.
The latest move sets up a likely clash with Johnson, who had previously expressed his support of the idea of a ban but told Punchbowl News on Wednesday that members should at least be able to own stocks.
“There’s probably a way to do that that still allows for lawful conduct by members,” he said, adding that he wished Luna hadn’t gone the discharge petition route.
This issue is also just one front of trouble for Johnson, who has seen some of his Republican colleagues openly questioning his leadership.
Stefanik is a chair of Speaker Johnson’s House Republican leadership team and has dramatically broken with him on a range of issues this week. She even suggested to the Wall Street Journal that Johnson was a “political novice” and that he likely wouldn’t retain his gavel if new speaker elections were held today.