Storms start to move out of Minnesota, continue for western Wisconsin

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

Florida Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna is accusing leaders from her own party of threatening and bribing other lawmakers to block her effort to allow proxy voting for new parents in the House of Representatives.

"I'm not going to be bought. I will tell you that I've now been reached out to multiple times, offering me positions on different committees, and I don't want it because this is bigger than me," Luna told reporters on Thursday. "It's about actually changing the institution for the better."

Luna, 35, became the 12th lawmaker to give birth while serving in the House in 2023 and appealed to GOP leaders to adjust the rules so that new

parents can cast votes remotely around the birth of a child. Both former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and current Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., rebuffed her.

"I'm a father. I'm pro-family. The Republican Party is pro-family. We want to make it as easy as possible for young parents to be able to participate in the process," Johnson said earlier this week when asked by NPR about the push to change the rules. "But proxy voting, in my view, is unconstitutional."

Johnson's office declined to comment on allegations by Luna about bribes or perceived threats to other lawmakers. 

Luna is teaming up with Colorado Democratic Congresswoman Brittany Pettersen, the 13th lawmaker to deliver a baby while in office. They used a procedural tool called a discharge petition to gather support from a majority of House members — 218 — to force a vote on their measure, which would allow new parents to vote by proxy for 12 weeks around the birth of a new child. They reached that threshold earlier this month and under House rules they can call it up for a vote on the floor as early as next week.

Allegations of threats and trades for votes

Luna says GOP leaders and their allies are using a mix of threats and horse trading to try to get lawmakers to derail that vote. She says she was even offered a committee slot on a panel that she was initially rejected from earlier this year. Luna didn't specify that the speaker was personally making any offers or threats, but said "multiple people" have reached out to her. 

Luna also reported that Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett, one of 11 Republicans to sign the discharge petition, was offered a vote on two of his bills in return for opposing the proxy voting bill.

"Yeah, somebody said, 'Well, if we got those bills on the floor, would you vote against Luna?'" Burchett recounted to reporters Thursday. "I was like, voting against pregnant women — are you all crazy?"

Luna said so-called "front liners" — GOP lawmakers who represent swing districts — have been threatened with the loss of fundraising help in their districts for supporting this legislation.

She stressed this is not a partisan issue and believes even those who haven't publicly backed the bill or signed the discharge petition would ultimately vote for it.

"I have Republican members coming up to me telling me that I am in the right. They will vote to this when it comes to the floor and this should have been done a while ago," Luna said. "I had a sitting U.S. senator tell me that this is the change the institution needs."

Pettersen said it "blows my mind" the tactics GOP leaders are using to try to defeat her and Luna's effort. 

"It makes me angry because if they were in this position, they would have a different perspective," she told NPR from her home on Wednesday.

She called Luna "a fierce advocate" and pointed to the "broad bipartisan support" the issue has received, with nearly a dozen GOP lawmakers signing onto the effort. 

Luna, whose son turns 2 in August, said she's trying to modernize Congress and forcing the issue using the discharge petition was the way to get leaders to demonstrate that young families have a place in making policy. 

"They are not doing the right thing right now. They're not being honest brokers," she said. "We're going to fix it. I'm not backing down."

Pettersen, 43, waged a similar fight when she was in the state legislature in Colorado. When she ran for the House in 2022, she already had one young son and knew the job in Congress wasn't family friendly. 

"You live part time in another place and you're flying back and forth. Obviously, this is a big job and you're constantly working," she said. 

When she became pregnant again, she said she was "thinking through how we're going to manage this and quite frankly, still dealing with this every day of what does this actually look like when I'm back in Washington? My team trying to figure out how to schedule meetings, what that entails when I'm available." 

So she introduced a bill that would make what she calls a targeted rules change to have Congress "adapt to the times." 

"It is obvious that this place was not made for young women, for young families and for regular people. It's historically been much more wealthy older men," she said. 

Last month, Pettersen flew to Washington for a crucial vote on a House budget resolution with her newborn, who was four weeks old. With GOP leaders facing a tight vote with a single digit majority, she said it was important to come. She held her baby on the House floor as she spoke out against the proposal. She called the trip to Washington alone with a four week old "scary." 

"You worry about your kid even going to the grocery store with you when they're that young, let alone, you know, being in an airplane, in an airport, being on the House floor," she said. "But knowing that so many lives were on the line for that vote — I needed to be there for my constituents."

The bill is limited to new moms and their spouses and would allow them to vote by proxy for up to 12 weeks — that could include time during and after the pregnancy, and for spouses who need to help partners or infants dealing with medical issues.

Johnson maintains that approving proxy voting is a "slippery slope" to other exemptions. 

During the COVID pandemic, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., 

 and lawmakers from both parties cast votes regularly by requesting in writing that a member who was present vote in their place. 

But Johnson signed onto a legal brief contesting the practice as illegal. When Republicans took control of the chamber in 2023, then-Speaker McCarthy banned proxy voting. 

Johnson made the case against bringing it back during a closed-door meeting with House Republicans earlier this week. 

"I believe it violates more than two centuries of tradition in the institution, and I think that it opens a Pandora's box where ultimately maybe no one is here and we're all voting remotely by AI or something. I don't know — I don't think that's what Congress is supposed to be," he told reporters afterwards.

New York GOP Rep. Mike Lawler, whose wife had a baby around the November election, joined the effort to force the vote. Pettersen also credits Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., with promoting a change to help those who plan to have families in the future.

Luna noted GOP leaders may be concerned with their slim majority and any factor that could allow Democrats to cast votes, but several Republicans would benefit from a change in the rules.

"You have a Republican male who has his wife due in May, you have another Republican that just announced yesterday that she's pregnant," she said. "What if I get pregnant? Is it going to be a problem that we're not here? I mean, my goodness, the oldest Congress in U.S. history, this will be better for the institution in the long term."

Luna and Pettersen declined to provide a timeline for when they will force the leadership's hands with a vote, but Luna quipped on Thursday, "I don't play to lose."

Deirdre Walsh

Author

Claudia Grisales

Barbara Sprunt

Lawmakers from both parties teamed up to force a House vote on a measure allowing new parents to vote by proxy for 12 weeks, but House Speaker Mike Johnson opposes it on Constitutional grounds.

GOP leaders accused of making threats to block bill to let new moms vote remotely

Go Deeper.

Like this?