Republicans Turn On Each Other In Fight To Help New Moms In Congress

WASHINGTON – In a stunning defeat for House Republican leadership and for the far-right House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) on Tuesday successfully overcame their efforts to block her bill to allow new moms in Congress vote by proxy.

And because Luna has been using something called a discharge petition to bypass party leaders and force action on her bill, the House is now required to hold an up-or-down vote on it within two legislative days.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was so angry about the setback that he abruptly canceled all House votes for the rest of the week.

Luna, a far-right lawmaker and strong ally of President Donald Trump, has sparked a bitter intraparty spat over her bipartisan bill, which would let lawmakers vote by proxy for up to 12 weeks if they are new parents. The bill is aimed at accommodating new moms, but new dads in Congress would have the option to do it, too.

Republican leaders were planning to use a sneaky procedural maneuver to kill Luna’s bill. Earlier in the morning, the Rules Committee teed up rules for debating an unrelated bill, the SAVE ACT, and snuck language into those rules to derail her proposal.

Luna had been pushing for her bill to get a committee hearing, but was rebuffed by party leaders. So she tried a different tactic: collecting 218 signatures from Republicans and Democrats and then filing a discharge petition, forcing a bill directly onto the House floor and requiring it to get a vote.

Discharge petitions almost never work. But in this case, Luna found the support for hers and cleared its path for a floor vote. She teamed up with two other congresswomen, Reps. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) and Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.), to lead on the bill. Both Pettersen and Luna recently gave birth while serving in the House.

“I can tell you we have a long ways to go to make this place accessible for young families like mine,” Pettersen said on the House floor, while bobbling her 9-week-old baby, Sam. “I couldn’t fly towards the end of my due date because it was unsafe for Sam.”

But Luna’s bill hit strong resistance from her colleagues in the Freedom Caucus, who vowed to halt all business on the House floor indefinitely to stop her discharge petition. They argued that no lawmakers should be allowed to vote by proxy, even as some did repeatedly during the COVID pandemic.

Luna responded by abruptly quitting the caucus on Monday.

“I have consistently supported each of you, even in moments of disagreement, honoring the mutual respect that has guided our caucus,” she said in a letter to her Republican colleagues. “That respect, however, was shattered last week.”

Here’s a copy of her letter:

She called it “a betrayal of trust” that some Freedom Caucus members pushed for tying her discharge petition to the SAVE Act, a bill that the GOP ― and Trump ― really want to pass. Because of the way the Rules Committee set up the rule for the SAVE Act, a vote to move forward with that bill was also a vote to kill Luna’s discharge petition or any measure like it.

“This was a modest, family-centered proposal,” she said in her letter. “I cannot remain part of a caucus where a select few operate outside its guidelines, misuse its name, broker backroom deals that undermine its core values and where the lines of compromise and transaction are blurred, disparage me to the press, and encourage misrepresentation of me to the American people.”

In a separate letter to all colleagues, Luna said Johnson had been “blackmailed” by Freedom Caucus members to kill her bill.

For all the GOP support for the SAVE Act, eight Republicans joined Luna on Tuesday, along with all Democrats, in killing the rule to bring it up ― in order to preserve Luna’s discharge petition. The final vote was 206 to 222. Several lawmakers cheered and applauded as the rule failed.

Technically, the House already passed a rule for bringing up the the SAVE Act in the beginning of the year, so they could just bring the bill up again with that rule. But three other bills were rolled into Tuesday’s rule for the SAVE Act, so Republicans have to go back to the Rules Committee and pass a new rule for some of all of these bills all over again.

During their hours-long hearing on Monday, which restarted again early Tuesday, Democrats in the Rules Committee criticized Republicans for their “unprecedented” efforts to break rules to kill Luna’s discharge petition, something she followed the rules to build support for.

“A majority of this House supports the Luna-Pettersen bill to allow new parents to vote remotely because it is common sense ― and because this is 2025, not 1925,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the panel. “You guys are falling all over yourselves to block mothers with newborn babies from voting remotely.”

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a member of the Freedom Caucus who also serves on the Rules panel, argued that the House should never let anyone vote by proxy.

“When you change the rules to allow proxy voting, then you change the institution,” Roy said.

“It’s really hard to sit here and listen to all that,” McGovern replied. “We’re not talking about blanket proxy voting. We’re talking about proxy voting for new parents.”

For good measure, the Massachusetts Democrat called out GOP members of the committee who voted by proxy during the COVID pandemic: Reps. Michelle Fischbach (Minn.), Ralph Norman (S.C.) and Austin Scott (Ga.).

When Norman scoffed across the table, McGovern said, “Well, you did. Now you want to vote to deny new parents the ability to do that.”

“I’m not gonna sit here and let y’all lecture on hypocrisy,” Norman grumbled. “I’m not going to sit here and let you lecture on abandoning mothers.”

The South Carolina Republican started to say he only voted by proxy “less than 5% of the votes” during the pandemic, but McGovern jumped in, with receipts: “Sixty-three times.”

“I will gladly accept that,” continued Norman. “But proxy voting is wrong.”

Johnson was silent amid all of this. During a Tuesday press conference, he said nothing about the ugly intraparty dust-up, even as the SAVE Act is now heading to the House floor for debate along with its rule tied to Luna’s discharge petition.

Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), who chairs the Republican Policy Committee and speaks on behalf of party leaders, is one of the 218 Republicans who signed onto Luna’s petition. He told HuffPost he now regrets signing onto it.

“When I signed on the petition, I think I had a different idea of what it was going to be,” said McCormick. “I should have looked a little bit more into detail and see how that was used.”

He said there were “a lot of feelings” about Luna’s petition in Republicans’ Tuesday morning conference meeting. The problem with it, he said, is that it opens “Pandora’s box” in terms of what other exceptions might be made to allow lawmakers to vote by proxy.

“What about end of life? What if your spouse is sick? What if, you know, where does it end?” McCormick wondered. “So, I think it’s something I’ve reconsidered.”

Jacobs, a Democratic co-sponsor of Luna’s bill, noted that Luna formally filed her motion Tuesday morning to discharge her bill, starting the clock on the requirement that the House vote on her bill within two legislative days. Luna’s move, which she made right before the House’s vote on the rule to kill her bill, marked quite a ratcheting up of GOP warring.

“We feel good” about the fate of Luna’s petition, Jacobs said.

Regardless of whether Luna’s bill ultimately passes, Democrats said the GOP looks like big hypocrites for putting up such a fight to stop a popular and bipartisan effort to accommodate new moms in Congress.

“Republicans should stop lecturing people on being pro-family when they’re opposing this uniformly,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, told reporters. “It’s clear that Speaker Johnson is doing everything he can to undermine the will of the House.”