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A pair of House Republicans could soon mount an effort to force a chamber-wide vote on sanctioning Russia for its war in Ukraine after months of back-and-forth between the House, Senate and White House yielded little movement on the issue.
“This coming week, Brian Fitzpatrick’s sanctions bill…ripens, so we can actually submit it as a discharge petition on Monday or Tuesday, and I’ll sign that,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told Fox News Digital.
“But it’s got to start from scratch,” he added. “We’ve got to get 218 signatures on it, and so that has a lot more work to do there, but it’s a really good bill that Brian has worked on both sides of the aisle to get it right. And I think it’s one that could have support in the Senate.”
A discharge petition is a mechanism for forcing a vote on legislation over the objections of House majority leadership. Historically, they’re a rarely used measure, given the petition needs signatures from a majority of House lawmakers — and most members of the party in power are traditionally wary of crossing their leaders in that way.
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But for Bacon, it’s a matter of right versus wrong that he believes will be remembered for years to come.
“Someday in the history books, it’s going to read which leaders stood up, which ones were [Winston Churchills] and which ones were [Neville Chamberlains]. Chamberlain gave away land in Czechoslovakia to appease Hitler. And Hitler said all he wanted was the Sudetenland, and then a year later, he invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia. Then a year later he invaded Poland,” Bacon said.
“We’ve got to know a bad guy when we see one, and [Russian President Vladimir Putin] is a bad guy. He’s made clear, it’s not just about Ukraine. He wants to regain the rest of what the Soviet Union had. And so history is being written, and I want to be on the right side. I hope every Republican does.”
Fitzpatrick introduced a bill in December aimed at sanctioning the Russian Federation if it refuses to negotiate a peace agreement with Ukraine or violates any existing peace agreement that may have been instituted.
The latest congressional record, dated Tuesday, appears to show Fitzpatrick introduced a resolution geared toward fast-tracking that bill onto the floor. His office did not respond to requests for an interview.
A source familiar with the lawmakers’ planning told Fox News Digital, however, that he and Bacon would give House GOP leaders “one last chance” to hold a vote on Russia sanctions. The source said Fitzpatrick was also directly communicating with the White House regarding a House vote on the measure.
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has said on multiple occasions that he supports sanctioning Russia for its war on Ukraine but that any sanctions bill must originate in the Senate. However, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said earlier this year that the process must start in the House.
The Trump administration has already imposed some sanctions on Russian entities, primarily targeting its vast oil and gas sector, but Ukraine advocates have said it’s not enough to significantly hamstring Moscow’s war machine.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who is leading the sanctions effort in the Senate, told Semafor that Congress was still waiting on the green light from President Donald Trump himself.
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Bacon also acknowledged that a discharge petition is inherently an uphill battle, telling Fox News Digital, “There’s two things working against us.”
“One, you know, it’s not normal for members of the majority to do a discharge petition because we have the majority, but I also know the political realities that Mike Johnson is under,” Bacon said, noting the slim House GOP majority and Trump’s influence. “Second, I know a lot of folks don’t want to get in front of President Trump, but I think he’s failing in this area.”
“I mean, [former President Joe Biden] was weak on Ukraine-Russia. I mean he sent a lot of aid. It was always late, tardy…and they had rules of engagement. He was trying to make Ukraine fight with one arm tied behind its back, but I find Trump has done even less. When you look at the amount of aid that we’ve provided, it’s like 1% of what we were doing under Biden. Now, granted, I know he’s selling weapons to NATO countries, and they’re giving it to Ukraine, but we should be doing so much more.”
But he sounded optimistic that their discharge petition — and another similar measure on sending more aid to Ukraine that both he and Fitzpatrick have joined Democrats on — will get enough GOP support to prevail. The Democrat bill, led by Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., needs just one more GOP signature to force a vote.
“We’ve got one [Republican] on the fence, thinking about it, and we have one that wants to wait until the primary is done. So we’re talking a month or two months. But I wish we had it tomorrow. Ukrainians are dying every day. And so, to me, the necessity of getting this done soon is very clear to me,” Bacon said.
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