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House Speaker Johnson fails to squash a proxy voting effort from new moms in Congress

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., takes questions on tariffs while meeting with reporters at a news conference, at the Capitol, in Washington, Tuesday, April 1, 2025. (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson exercised his power of the gavel Tuesday in an unusually aggressive effort to squash a proposal for new parents in Congress to able to vote by proxy, rather than in person, as they care for newborns.

His plan failed, 206-222.

In an unprecedented move, the House Republican leadership had engineered a way to quietly kill the bipartisan plan from two new mothers — Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida and Democratic Rep. Brittany Pettersen of Colorado. Their plan has support from a majority of House colleagues. Some 218 lawmakers backed their effort, signing on to a so-called discharge petition to force their proposal on the House floor for consideration.

But Johnson, like GOP leaders before him, rails against proxy voting, as President Donald Trump pushes people back to work in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic work-from-home trend.

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