For well over a century, the U.S. House has been a legislative chamber tightly controlled by its leaders. Unlike members of the Senate, House representatives have no automatic right to offer amendments to bills. The leadership-controlled Rules Committee has to certify access to the House floor for votes, plus all amendments. The Speaker’s leadership team controls all committee assignments, which aren’t as completely bound by seniority as they are in the Senate. And there’s no device like the Senate filibuster available in the House to empower minorities to block (and, in many cases, help shape) majority-backed legislation. Enhanced over the decades by especially powerful Speakers, ranging from the late 19th century’s Thomas B. “Czar” Reed to the early 21st century’s Nancy Pelosi, the so-called People’s House hasn’t been run in a particularly democratic manner, except to the extent that “the people” regularly change its composition — and often its partisan control — in two-year intervals.

Beginning in 1910, however, a rare path around the Speaker and the Rules Committee emerged: the so-called discharge petition, which, if signed by a simple majority of members, forces legislation to the floor for an immediate vote. It’s been used to bypass House leadership four times in the roughly two years since Mike Johnson became Speaker. That’s quite the historical anomaly, and it says a lot about the weakness of the current Speaker.

Until recently, discharge petitions were sparsely employed. As an

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