1 day Ago By Post Editorial Board
Nobody had this one on their “blow up the GOP House majority” bingo card, but that’s what the fight over proxy voting for new parents could do if Speaker Mike Johnson doesn’t find a way to defuse it. It’s already stalled votes planned this week on reining in rogue judges, repealing Biden-era regulations and the voting-security SAVE Act — and the battle’s not over. It also prompted Rep.
Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) to quit the House Freedom Caucus after a handful of its members sided with the speaker in a bid to sabotage her measure to OK a member voting by proxy for 12 weeks after a new birth. Johnson and the hard-liners believe proxy voting is unconstitutional, and reasonably expect more excuses for it would be proposed if even one is allowed.
Luna and her supporters, including Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), see this one exception as clearly aligned with Republican pro-family beliefs, and she persuaded enough other House members (albeit mostly Democrats) to collect 218 signatures on a disclosure petition to force a vote. That’s playing well within House rules, but a few Freedom Caucusers reportedly lost their minds and threatened to hold up all business on the floor until Luna’s motion got killed.
Then the Rules Committee (a k a the “Speaker’s Committee”), in passing the rules for voting on the SAVE Act, snuck in language to ban not just Luna’s discharge petition but any future petition that tried to allow proxy voting. That is, changing a House rule halfway through the session — not a good way to keep the narrow GOP coalition united. Luna (who had no choice but to miss votes after giving birth in 2023) slammed the “backroom deal” that undermines “core values” of the Freedom Caucus, which at this point probably needs to do some fast internal reflection if it isn’t to keep shrinking.
Johnson, meanwhile, has to mend fences, since enough Republicans broke with him on this to kill the rule and so derail the House agenda for this week — at least. We guess it’s telling that it’s a clash of firm principles that has bollixed the House GOP, but Johnson and the pro-parenthood rebels need to find some agreeable resolution. The Republicans are already at the point where they had to derail Elise Stefanik’s rise to UN ambassador to keep their majority secure.
Blowing up the whole Trump agenda on this hill would be crazy. Find a compromise that will get you through the 2026 elections, or you’ll wind up the House GOP minority ..
