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Dec. 4, 2025, 2:37 PM ESTBy Scott Wong, Melanie Zanona and Kyle StewartWASHINGTON — Less than a year before the critical 2026 midterm elections, Speaker Mike Johnson is losing control of the House floor.The Louisiana Republican suffered a bruising defeat before Thanksgiving when Donald Trump foe, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and a trio of GOP women defied Johnson and his top lieutenants and teamed with Democrats to force a near-unanimous vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein files to the public.Seeing Massie’s huge success in getting the Epstein bill signed into law, other Republicans are now turning to that same playbook to go over the speaker’s head.This week, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., filed a discharge petition in a bid to bypass Johnson and force a vote on a bipartisan bill that would ban members of Congress from owning or trading individual stocks. Nine other Republicans have joined Luna and signed the petition, along with six Democrats.That’s a far cry from the 218 signatures needed to go around the speaker and force a floor vote. But the signatures are notable; it was once unheard of for members of the majority to use discharge petitions against their own leadership.Moderate Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., a leader of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, is threatening to file his own discharge petition to impose “crushing” U.S. sanctions on Russia as Trump’s proposed peace deal to end the Ukraine war appears to be faltering. And he’s considering another one to extend expiring Obamacare subsidies unless leaders act before the Dec. 31 deadline.“We’re not afraid to use that option,” Fitzpatrick said. “It’s not a tool of the minority — it’s a tool of the rank and file.”House passes bill to release Epstein files04:45On Wednesday, Johnson’s team abruptly yanked the SCORE Act — which would create federal standards for compensating student athletes — off the House floor amid opposition from a bloc of conservative Republicans led by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas. It was their most important bill of the week.On top of that, Johnson has been contending with rank-and-file members forcing votes to censure other colleagues, with Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., even targeting a fellow Republican, Rep. Cory Mills of Florida.Mace is part of a group of high-profile female lawmakers who’ve been slinging arrows at Johnson, lambasting his leadership and making life miserable for the speaker, who unexpectedly rose from obscurity to the top job two years ago after Kevin McCarthy was toppled by his own internal revolt.Many of Johnson’s headaches stem from the fact that he is presiding over one of the smallest majorities in history. Since he swore in Tennessee Republican Matt Van Epps on Thursday morning, Republicans have a 220-213 edge over the Democrats, meaning Johnson can afford only three GOP defections on any bill he brings to the floor.’A lot of anxiety and stress’Privately, senior Republicans point to a “confluence” of circumstances and events that has resulted in the flurry of discharge petitions and other rogue antics on the floor. Trump’s approval ratings continue to fall. Democratic candidates overperformed in recent elections in New Jersey, Virginia and Tennessee, a grim sign for House Republicans in next year’s midterm elections. Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” has not resulted in lower costs and curbing inflation. And Johnson’s decision to keep the House in recess for 54 days because of the shutdown meant less committee work and fewer bills being passed.“The confluence is weakened political power by Trump, the result from the elections in New Jersey, New York and Virginia, and people getting anxious about the election. There’s a lot of anxiety and stress about the election, and people looking at their own districts, saying, ‘I thought things were going to be different,’” one senior House Republican lawmaker said.“And I just think being off for 50 days, there was no continuity. Nobody was here. There was nobody like, ‘Hey, you’re doing great. Keep it up,’” the lawmaker continued. “Everyone being back in their district, there was a loneliness. A lot of members may have felt like we’re on our own.”Johnson, a bespectacled and buttoned-up constitutional attorney, rarely appears flustered or angry. While other candidates for speaker in 2023 faced vocal opposition, Johnson catapulted to speaker from the No. 7 leadership slot, in part, because he had no enemies.During the past two years in the role, that certainly has changed. But Johnson downplayed the drama on the floor and in his 220-member conference, saying that despite the variety of opinions and narrow margins, his party has been able to move “a very aggressive agenda on a very short time frame.” “Sometimes there’s friction, sometimes there’s vigorous debate. That’s all part of the process. People are going to have emotions. They’re going to get upset about things. That’s part of the process. It doesn’t deter me in any way. It doesn’t bother me,” Johnson told reporters Thursday. “But when there is a conflict or concern, I always ask all members, come to me. Don’t go to social media, call me. Come by the office.”While he has his share of detractors, Johnson, a Trump loyalist who’s been accused by Democrats of handing over too much congressional authority to the president, has an equal number of defenders.“I support Mike Johnson and what he’s been doing. I think he’s in line with the president. I think he has the ear of the president,” Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, said. “If it’s not Mike Johnson, well, then who? … Who could get enough votes to even replace him? And quite honestly, it’s probably nobody.”A flurry of discharge petitionsDischarge petitions rarely succeed. Only 4% of discharge petitions introduced from 1935 to 2022 were successful in bringing a bill to the floor, according to a review by the Brookings Institution. Johnson has repeatedly railed against the practice, saying they cede power — and control of the floor — to the opposition party. “We continue to see the norms of the House diminish over time. I think that’s unfortunate,” said GOP Rep. Dusty Johnson, who is running for South Dakota governor and is not related to the speaker. “A discharge petition, I don’t think, helps the institution. … It clearly empowers the minority in what is otherwise a majoritarian institution.”But facing fewer opportunities to secure bipartisan accomplishments, vulnerable Republicans are turning to the legislative tool to advance policy priorities they can tout back home.On Tuesday, Luna, a Democratic target whose private investments have come under scrutiny, filed her petition on a bipartisan stock trading ban for members of Congress and their immediate family members. Reps. Fitzpatrick, Mace, Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., Eli Crane, R-Ariz., Greg Steube, R-Fla., Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, have all signed on.It’s unclear, however, if backers of the bill will be able to secure the requisite 218 signatures, given that a large number of lawmakers hold and trade individual stocks, some in industries related to the committees on which they serve.“Congress is infinitely broken under either party, and the committee system bogs things down,” said Burchett, the author of the underlying stock ban legislation. “This is the only way to get the bill to the floor.”Johnson and his team were dealing with other setbacks as well this week. Leaders had to pull the SCORE Act shortly before the floor vote Wednesday after Roy, who is running for attorney general in Texas, and a handful of other Republicans remained opposed to the bill. Earlier in the week, Roy and a band of conservative allies almost blocked a procedural rule vote that would have immediately killed the sports bill. Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., and Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., were needed to twist arms and flip votes on the floor; the rule passed 210-209. Roy and Reps. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., and Scott Perry, R-Pa., all voted no.Roy said on X on Wednesday that the bill was “not ready for prime time” and questioned why Congress was even getting involved in trying to regulate college sports. “There were a whole lot of no votes. It wasn’t just me,” Roy told NBC News after the bill was pulled. “Obviously, there were three of us on the rule, but there was, like, I’m not gonna give the number … There were a lot of people who were not prepared to be on this bill today.”Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., who served as Rules Committee chairman and now is the top Democrat on the panel, said he understands Republicans who are turning to discharge petitions amid a gridlocked floor. “They get no help from their own leadership. This place doesn’t function anymore. I mean, we reported out a rule for the six bills this week — all of them are closed, no amendments made in order. Even Republican amendments were rejected,” McGovern said in an interview outside the Capitol.“For some Republicans, their priorities are not being addressed by their leadership, and so they’re kind of going around their leadership,” he added. “I don’t always agree with everything they’re doing, but I certainly share their frustration.”Scott WongScott Wong is a senior congressional reporter for NBC News. Melanie ZanonaMelanie Zanona is a Capitol Hill correspondent for NBC News.Kyle StewartKyle Stewart is a producer and off-air reporter covering Congress for NBC News, managing coverage of the House.

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Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleOct. 14, 2025, 5:12 PM EDTBy Angela YangBefore Sebastian Castillo cracks open a book on the bus, he has an intrusive thought: Should he tap the stranger next to him on the shoulder and clarify that yes, he’s starting this book on Page 1, but he has, in fact, read many other books before?Castillo, a novelist and English literature instructor, said he realizes that is extreme. He’d never do that. But the urge reflects a recent anxiety that has burgeoned around the act of reading in public in the digital age, when everything is scrutinized as possibly “performative.”“If you’re on the bus or at the park or at a cafe, nobody really cares about you or what you’re doing,” said Castillo, 37. “And so I think it’s, more than anything, just kind of a silly way to think about how people tend to observe themselves more than how other people observe them.”It’s a feeling that many people have started to put into words.On social media, real and staged videos of people reading at coffee shops, on escalators or at basketball games have become fodder for jokes about “performative reading,” or the idea that people want to look like they’re reading without actually doing so. Some have playfully shared their own lists of books they deem suitable to “read performatively” on public transit. The singer Sombr even poked fun at the concept in the middle of a concert this year.Many of the callouts are simply memes, running jokes for people to get in on. But avid readers say the concept of reading for social points is a very real phenomenon that has unwittingly influenced how people approach books.The discourse around so-called performative reading is the latest iteration of a broader cultural fixation on authenticity in the era of casual social media surveillance — when anything done in public could be farmed for content and people could find themselves going viral at any time.And it’s not just books. “Performative male” contests have also popped up across the United States this year in which people offer their own tongue-in-cheek versions of men who dress and act in ways that come off as socially aware — complete with tote bags, matcha lattes and dog-eared copies of feminist literature under their arms.That idea has particularly resonated in the online book community.On platforms like TikTok, Instagram, X and Goodreads, bookish users often tout images of impressive titles and aesthetically pleasing reading setups or monthly reading lists with dozens of books already checked off.Raol Muong, a creator who shares video essays about internet culture, made a TikTok video analyzing why books have seemingly become the new accessory in public spaces, as well as in literary circles online. “Especially on TikTok and in Instagram Reels, we can see that the algorithm basically rewards what looks good, like the eye-catching cover and the staged coffee shots in a downtown cafe,” said Muong, 17. “They’re focusing on what looks good and not whether the book is being read or not. And I think, because of this, platforms turn books into basically aesthetic props to curate in their Instagram dumps.”Muong said literary classics by the likes of Jane Austen and Joan Didion appear more performative, as it’s tempting to scrutinize whether people are carrying around popularly renowned books to give off an air of intellectualism or good taste.Even some longtime readers say they’ve sometimes been influenced by the pressure to perform.Éva Jéga-Szabó, a book lover since she was a young child, typically reads about 50 books a year. But she said the online culture of judgment around how quickly people read, or even the format in which they read — in some circles, audiobooks don’t count — pushed her to change her habits.“I found myself going for shorter books or novellas rather than what I actually wanted to read. I was pushing for the numbers rather than just engaging with literature the way I wanted. And only recently, when I stopped being attached to the numbers, did I start enjoying it again,” said Jéga-Szabó, 25. “I see this from a lot of people who say that they feel a lot of pressure and shame and they’re going through these reading slogs and they don’t want to read anymore.”Selwa Khan, a recent university graduate who enjoys sharing her reads on social media, said she feels it’s common for many online, including her, to “aestheticize our hobbies” for content. But Khan, 21, said a little bit of performance doesn’t necessarily take away from the authentic joy of reading.“I think social media makes everybody perform, whether they acknowledge it or not,” she said. “We’re all performing, and a lot of us are saying that we’re not performing, but the fact that you’re on a platform at all implies the existence of performance, right?”Khan said she also takes issue with the assumption that any visible reading must be an act, noting that that mindset only reveals the people who can’t imagine themselves genuinely taking pleasure in a book.“I’ve seen for years posts on BookTok, Bookstagram and all these platforms of titles that are ‘performative,’ which always happen to be titles that I really enjoy,” Khan said. “So there’s always this thought in my head of: What makes these performative? Or are people just projecting their own insecurities with reading?”Much of the mockery around performative reading seems to take aim at men. Over time, reading has taken on a reputation of being more of a woman-dominated activity. Many in-person book clubs have also noticed a dearth of male members. To some online, that has led to the perception that heterosexual men are so unlikely to pick up a book that if one is reading, he must be trying to impress a woman.Jafei Pollitt, a frequent reader who has jokingly pushed back against that meme online, said she hopes young men don’t take the trend too seriously or let it discourage them from reading in public.“Even if it is to impress a girl, if they do have a feminist piece of literature in their hand and they are actually reading it, I don’t quite see the harm in that,” said Pollitt, 27. “Because they’re getting some knowledge in their brain, and by the end of it, they might genuinely be like, ‘Oh, this is how to respect women.’”Similarly, Pollitt said, she doesn’t judge anyone who does appear to be reading performatively, because even pretending to read still encourages somebody to actually take in the words.“It’s a little bit of ‘fake until you make it.’ Yes, you can start off wanting to read for the aesthetics, but eventually you might involve yourself in the book, and you actually might like reading,” she said. “So as long as the book is in your hand and you’re reading the book, I don’t know if it totally matters how you got there.”Angela YangAngela Yang is a culture and trends reporter for NBC News.

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