House Republican leaders are playing hardball as they try to stop Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) from triggering a vote on a bill to allow proxy voting for new parents, throwing a procedural hurdle at the push that will test the will of those who support Luna’s full-on legislative war against Republican leadership.
Using arcane parliamentary warfare, GOP leaders are preparing a vote for Tuesday that issues a dare to the Republican lawmakers: If you vote to support Luna and allow her proposal to come to the floor, you will halt action on other legislation that President Trump supports, including on limiting the power of federal judges and requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.
The House Rules Committee on Tuesday morning advanced a procedural rule to set up that vote.
The fight pits arguments about constitutionality and a slippery slope against a desire among “pro-life” Republicans to show support for new moms and families, all while having major ramifications for how much control leaders can maintain over the House floor going forward in their razor-thin majority.
And it is fracturing coalitions in the House GOP.
Luna — who has long pushed for proxy voting for new moms and had her first child months into her first term — resigned from the House Freedom Caucus on Monday after members of the group pushed the Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to be more aggressive in trying to kill her measure. She said in a resignation letter that “respect” among lawmakers in the group had been “shattered last week” and alleged that they threatened to halt floor action if the Speaker did not agree to their hardball tactics.
Luna earlier this month had gotten more than 200 House Democrats and about a dozen Republicans to sign a discharge petition to allow her to force floor action on the proxy voting resolution. The legislation itself is being led by Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.), who had a child in January, and would allow members who give birth or lawmakers whose spouses give birth to designate another member to vote on their behalf for 12 weeks.
Discharge petitions are rarely successful, and amount to a major defiance of leadership. Johnson, arguing against the move to members last week, called it a “tool of the minority.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) noted that Luna had to “team up with mostly Democrats, 90 percent Democrats, who are in the minority.”
“We’re in the majority on the Republican side, and want to be able to move the Republican agenda. And you know, I’d rather not move Pelosi policies over the majority,” Scalise said.
While proxy voting was widely used by both parties when it was implemented under Democratic leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic, it drew widespread Republican criticism and unsuccessful legal challenges — concerns that Luna has brushed aside, saying the resolution prevents concerns about members voting by proxy counting toward a quorum.
GOP leaders at first tried to get the Republicans who signed the petition to change their minds — and did get Reps. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) and Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) to back off their support. But with nearly all Democrats expected to support the measure, there was great risk of the resolution succeeding if it came to the floor, since that would take just a couple of Republican defections in the razor-thin majority.
Leadership then took the more aggressive tactic, aiming to stop the push before the discharge petition could “ripen” and had the opportunity to force a privileged motion to consider the matter on the House floor.
The House Rules Committee on Tuesday morning teed up a rule resolution that would essentially “turn off” that privilege that would allow Luna or her allies to force action on the discharge petition for the proxy voting measure or similar measures, but not for all discharge petitions.
The legalese says the discharge petition measure is “laid on the table,” and says anything “relating in substance to or dealing with the same subject matter is substantially the same as House Resolution 23” — the proxy voting for new parents resolution — “shall not be in order.”
The measure is attached to the wider procedural legislation that sets the terms of debate and consideration for two Republican-supported proposals: The No Rogue Rulings Act, which would limit the power of federal judges to impose nationwide injunctions like those who have blocked Trump administration actions; and the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.
Democrats railed against the move.
“Discharge is a very difficult process. It is rarely successful, and when it is successful, it’s usually because the Speaker is blocking something that is common sense, and that’s the case here. A majority of this House supports the Luna-Pettersen rule to allow new parents to vote remotely, because it is common sense and because this is 2025 not 1925,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said in the House Rules Committee hearing Tuesday.
McGovern also dinged Republicans for not speaking out against Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) allegedly having another member voting on his behalf earlier this year when he was filming a talk show in California. Donalds last week declined to comment on that matter.
Rule votes are typically on party lines, with all Democrats voting against it. If all Democrats are present and voting and two Republicans join her to vote down the procedural rule, it would allow her to use her discharge petition to force a vote on parental proxy voting — at the expense of delaying and blocking consideration of the SAVE Act and No Rogue Rulings Act.
Luna said she will be voting against the rule Tuesday, preemptively combating accusations that she would block action on election integrity by doing so.
“They are trying to paint me as someone that does not support election integrity, which, you guys can pull my voting record — I’m one of the top 10 conservative most members of Congress. So it’s just it’s ridiculous to me that they would even do that,” Luna said.
And Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), one of the 11 Republicans who signed her discharge petition, said he would support Luna and vote against the rule unless “somebody gives me some compelling reason not to.”
“I just think the exception should be for a mama who’s having a baby,” Burchett said. “All these people up here shouting and it’s unconstitutional and all this, they all voted by proxy. I never voted by proxy.”
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) signaled there would not be a formal whip effort on the part of leadership in favor of the rule: “We don’t whip discharge petitions, and we’re not whipping the proxy thing. That’s the Speaker’s call.”
The process has ignited intense public pushback from Luna to not only leadership, but her one-time allies in the Freedom Caucus.
In her letter announcing her departure from the hard-line group, Luna wrote: “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.”
Mychael Schnell contributed.
