House Republicans are battling over whether and how to squash a looming vote on allowing new parents to vote by proxy, after Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) circumvented leadership with a rarely-successful legislative tool to force action on what would be a historic rule change.
Republican leaders are discouraging support for the legislation, and trying to get the Republicans who signaled support for the move to change their minds. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is arguing publicly that proxy voting is unconstitutional.
Some hardline Republicans — aligned with leadership in opposition to the proposal from their fellow House Freedom Caucus member — are pressing leaders to pursue more aggressive tactics, brainstorming procedural hurdles they can throw in front of Luna’s proxy voting effort.
Luna led the successful discharge petition, getting signatures from 218 members — including eleven other Republicans — to force floor action on the resolution allowing 12 weeks of proxy voting for new parents.
Despite the efforts to squash it, she is confident she will succeed, suggesting that she could derail future priorities from GOP leadership if they thwart her effort.
“If people want to do that, then, you know, you have a two-seat majority, so good luck passing anything,” Luna said, adding: “If they want to play hardball, let's play f------ hardball.”
The earliest that Luna or one of her allies could trigger floor action on the matter is next week. Luna, not wanting to tip off House leadership who might spoil her plans, declined to say when it would come up.
Leaders are rushing to figure out how to thwart the matter before then.
Proxy voting, a process in which a member votes on behalf of one who is absent, was widely used by both parties when it was implemented under Democratic leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic, but drew widespread Republican criticism and legal challenges.
Johnson spoke against the parental proxy voting push in a closed-door House GOP conference meeting on Tuesday, and the arguments resonated with at least one member who signed the discharge petition, a source told The Hill. Discharge petitions are a tool of the minority, Johnson argued. And he noted that he helped present a brief to the Supreme Court a few years ago arguing that the practice is unconstitutional, though the high court declined to take up the matter.
And despite being “pro-family” and wanting to “make it as easy as possible for young parents to be able to participate in the process,” Johnson said there is “no limiting principle” and it could lead to demands for proxy voting to take care of a sick spouse or child.
“This is a deliberative body. You cannot deliberate with your colleague if you are out somewhere else,” Johnson said in a press conference. “I think it opens a Pandora’s box where ultimately, no one is here and we're all voting remotely by AI or something.”
Luna, who had her first child in 2023, introduced a resolution to allow members who have given birth to vote by proxy in the last Congress. Earlier this year, the bipartisan measure was expanded to include members whose spouses give birth, a change that drew support from the Congressional Dads Caucus and the bulk of House Democrats.
The underlying resolution is being led by Rep. Brittney Pettersen (D-Colo.), who gave birth to a son in January and brought her infant with her to major votes when he was just weeks old.
Multiple Republicans who signed the discharge petition, though, were unaware of the change to allow new fathers to vote by proxy, thinking it only applied to new birthing mothers. One member told The Hill he would not have signed the discharge petition if knew it would apply to new fathers.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), another one of the Republicans who joined Luna’s discharge petition, also was not aware it would apply to new fathers, explaining that he supported the resolution because the House structure was created at a time when it was only men.
“Now that there's ladies, and it's a biological fact that they're going to have a baby, I think that is the one exception that should be made” on proxy voting, Burchett said.
But despite leadership “sending people” to Burchett to talk to him about the proxy voting issue, he is sticking with his support for Luna’s discharge petition.
“When they all tell me that it’s unconstitutional, then all of them have voted by proxy, I’ve got a little problem with that,” Burchett said.
Luna made the same argument publicly on X, posting documents that showed Johnson himself previously voted by proxy – while saying that Johnson is a “kind man and his heart is in the right spot.”
“Every argument against it falls flat on its face … over half of the Republican Conference voted by proxy,” Luna told reporters. She also mentioned that the legislation stipulated that any members voting by proxy will not be counted for the purposes of designating a quorum — an issue that Republicans brought up when proxy voting was widely used for an omnibus spending bill in 2022.
She also said that leaders were trying to have “external forces contact me to try to pressure me to not do it” – declining to elaborate on what those external forces would be.
“You guys can assume,” Luna said.
The high risk of the proxy voting measure getting to the floor and being adopted is alarming hardline conservatives who have normally been Luna’s allies, with many members of the House Freedom Caucus mounting their own mini-rebellion on Tuesday by withholding support for an unrelated procedural vote in order to talk to leadership about their concerns about the strategy for squashing it.
Recent history with discharge petitions is also informing those members’ concerns, according to a senior Republican aide.
The last successful discharge petition over the objections of leadership was for the Social Security Fairness Act at the end of last year, which increased payouts of benefits primarily for those who received public sector pensions. Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) and then-Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) attempted a rogue procedural move on Election Day to try to block a vote on the bill, but it ultimately passed and was signed into law.
One option that was reportedly discussed among the anti-proxy voting hardliners on Tuesday was to raise the threshold for a successful discharge petition to two-thirds of the House, rather than a standard majority of 218 members – and make it retroactive to apply to Luna’s effort. That would require her to get support from dozens more Republicans before forcing a vote.
But the Speaker said he is opposed to that idea, telling reporters later on Tuesday: “I'm not in favor of raising a discharge threshold to two thirds, because I think it's unprecedented, and I'm tired of making history around here.”
There are a number of other procedural avenues that leaders could attempt in order to try to thwart the proxy voting proposal, some of which would involve the House Rules Committee.
But ultimately, any effort to prevent floor action on the discharge petition will be a test of how strong the Republican support for the parental proxy voting resolution is — and a test of whether Luna and her allies can get the Republican support to jump over any hurdles from leadership.
”218 people can do whatever they want in the House if they are hellbent on doing it,” Matt Glassman, senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University, said in an email. The question, though, is “how much they are willing to fight for it.”
Cracks in the support for the parental proxy voting effort are already emerging.
Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), another member who signed Luna’s discharge petition, told The Hill that while he supported her ability to bring it forward, the underlying proxy voting resolution is a different matter.
“I may not support it on the floor,” Ogles said, predicting that several others who had supported Luna feel the same.
Rep. Michael Ruilli (R-Ohio), another member who signed the discharge petition, said that members who signed were probably not thinking “that deep in the weeds” on if they would have to vote down leadership attempts to stop the discharge petition.
Luna, though, said there are other members who support her resolution — including some who have not made their positions known to leadership. And she expects virtually all House Democrats to support it, meaning she needs only a handful of GOP members to stick with her, depending on absences.
“I really think that from a Republican stance and platform, this is the most pro life thing, pro-family thing that you can do,” Luna said.
“Dems are good with it. Republicans are good with it. I'm not going to just simply fall in line.”
Mychael Schnell contributed.
