WASHINGTON — A band of Republican lawmakers on Tuesday sunk an effort by Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to kill a plan to allow remote voting for lawmakers who become new parents, a bitter dispute that brought the House floor to a halt.
A procedural rule vote to advance the House GOP’s package of bills for the week failed 206-222, with nine Republicans bucking GOP leadership and voting with all 213 Democrats. The failed vote means, for now, those pieces of legislation cannot move forward for a final vote.
Shortly after the vote, congressional leaders said that they were sending lawmakers home for the week and would bring them back Monday.
“Let me just make clear, that rule being brought down means that we can’t have further action on the floor this week,” Johnson told reporters as he left the chamber.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., who gave birth to her first child in 2023, had planned to force a floor vote this week on a resolution that would allow new mothers and fathers in the House to be able to vote remotely, through a proxy, for up to 12 weeks.
But the effort has been fiercely opposed by Johnson and his leadership team, as well as members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, of which Luna had been a member until recently. Opponents called the proposal “unconstitutional” and warned it would lead to a slippery slope where others would request to vote by proxy.
To stop Luna, Johnson’s team inserted language in a rules package to kill the proxy-voting push by essentially blocking any discharge petition, a tool that allows any member to circumvent leadership of the majority party and bring legislation directly to the floor for a vote after collecting 218 signatures.
Luna had collected the 218 signatures, including from 11 Republicans, needed to force a vote on the proxy resolution. Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Colo., who gave birth in January and brought her baby to the floor Tuesday, authored the bill.
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