Congress
House proxy-voting mess threatens to jam up the GOP agenda
Speaker Mike Johnson has grand ambitions to finalize a budget plan next week and launch Republicans on a final sprint toward passing their “big, beautiful” domestic policy bill. One problem: He doesn’t appear to have control of the House floor.
An internal GOP fight over whether new parents serving in the House should be able to cast votes by proxy has metastasized into a battle of wills between competing factions of Republicans. The showdown culminated in a stunning vote Tuesday where nine Republicans joined with Democrats to reject Johnson’s move to block the proxy-voting proposal.
Johnson responded by sending lawmakers home for the week, skipping planned votes on election integrity, judicial overreach and other key GOP priorities. Now he is scrambling to find an off-ramp as he pledges to finish work next week on a fiscal blueprint for their sprawling party-line agenda.
Publicly, he doubled down Wednesday on his opposition to Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s proxy-voting effort. The Florida Republican recruited several GOP colleagues to sign a discharge petition, successfully circumventing Johnson to force a floor vote.
Behind the scenes, however, he has been in frequent contact with Luna negotiating other potential legislative options in an attempt to unjam the House floor, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss the private conversations.
Johnson said Wednesday he was “actively working on every possible accommodation to make Congressional service simpler for young mothers.” By evening, he suggested a breakthrough was close.
“I think there may be a path through this,” Johnson told reporters. “We’re trying to work through and resolve it in a way that satisfies everybody. So I think we can do that.”
At stake is not only Johnson’s control of the House floor, but also the GOP’s tight timeline for advancing their closely watched megabill. Senate Republicans on Wednesday released a revised budget blueprint — a key intermediate step — and planned to work into the weekend to approve it. Johnson reiterated in a separate interview he wants the House to give it final approval next week.
But first he needs to find a way to accommodate both Luna and her group of GOP allies, who have so far been intent on pushing through their proxy-voting proposal, and a similarly strong-willed group of Republican hard-liners, who have threatened to hold up House business themselves if Luna’s proposal isn’t sent to the dustbin.
So far Luna has not indicated she is willing to budge on her demand for a vote on her bill. She holds a trump card: With the discharge petition now complete and ripe for consideration, she could potentially call the measure up as soon as the House comes back into session. And if Johnson makes another attempt to stifle the vote, Luna and several of her GOP allies insist they will again join with Democrats and reject it.
They include a geographically and ideologically diverse group of GOP members who mostly aren’t known as rebels, including Reps. Kevin Kiley of California, Mike Lawler of New York, Max Miller of Ohio and Greg Steube of Florida.
Johnson’s tough stand against allowing new parents to vote by proxy might seem puzzling to House outsiders — and it’s puzzling to many inside the House, too. But it is at least partly rooted in the venomous partisanship that developed between the two parties during the Covid pandemic.
Democrats under Speaker Nancy Pelosi instituted widespread proxy voting less than three months into the national emergency over the objections of the Republican minority, which sued unsuccessfully to stop it. It stayed in place for nearly three years, until the GOP regained the majority and undid it in 2023.
Johnson alluded to those hard feelings in a statement he posted to social media Wednesday: “Nancy Pelosi experimented with proxy voting during the 117th Congress, and it was quickly abused,” he wrote, adding that he had “responsibility to defend and uphold the Constitution and the integrity of this institution” and “cannot allow it again.”
Pelosi responded to Johnson, noting that the Supreme Court declined to hear a lawsuit brought by GOP leaders challenging the practice and that Johnson himself voted by proxy 39 times. “It’s just another shameful case of Republicans’ ‘rules for thee, not for me,’” she wrote on X.
Johnson also has political reasons to oppose proxy voting: If he doesn’t try to kill Luna’s petition, according to his fellow GOP leaders, House Freedom Caucus hard-liners who fiercely oppose proxy voting will themselves defeat any attempt to get House business moving as usual.
The Catch-22 Johnson now finds himself in is especially notable given that he has racked up a series of narrow and significant wins this year after struggling to wrangle the House during his first year as speaker. That success has largely been due to Trump, who has helped strong-arm votes on key budget and spending measures.
Trump has not expressed any opinion on the proxy-voting fight, and he has long enjoyed close ties with Luna. But some House leaders are openly warning Luna and the eight Republicans who voted alongside her Tuesday to stand down.
“I wouldn’t want to be one of the nine people that stand in front of the Trump agenda,” said Rep. Lisa McClain of Michigan, the No. 4 House Republican, who didn’t rule out potential presidential intervention in a brief interview Wednesday.
“I’d rather be able to clean up our own house and deal with it internally and not have the president weigh in,” she added. “But the president is pretty focused on his agenda, and if he needs to weigh in, I think he will.”
Speaking on NewsNation Wednesday night, Luna said she had spoken to Trump. “The president assured that this would get resolved,” she said.
President Donald Trump and top White House officials are privately lobbying Republican senators to delay a ban on intoxicating hemp that’s set to kick in this fall.
At the Trump administration’s urging, the government funding patch the Senate is working to pass this week would push off the forthcoming ban of some cannabis products derived from hemp. But several Republican senators are demanding a vote to strip the delay out and let that prohibition kick in come November.
They’re hearing from the White House about it.
Trump called Sen. Ted Budd on Tuesday night, after the North Carolina Republican filed an amendment to ensure the ban kicks in as mandated on Nov. 12, according to a Senate aide granted anonymity to describe the private discussion. On the call, the president discussed creating a federal regulatory framework for hemp but did not ask Budd to withdraw his amendment, the individual added.
“I’ve been asked by lots of people to stand down on this amendment,” Budd told reporters Wednesday.
Budd noted that the Trump administration has had almost nine months to come up with a plan for implementing the ban.
“So why all of a sudden pop up for some seemingly innocent delay?” he asked, accusing the White House of instead preparing to “jam this on some must-pass” funding package at year’s end to further delay the prohibition.
A White House official granted anonymity to discuss the private debate said the Trump administration is seeking “a modest four-week delay” through the Dec. 11 expiration of the funding patch “to allow for productive conversations to continue.” Some synthetic cannabis products would be permanently banned in the meantime, the official added.
The administration lobbying has successfully swayed some Senate Republicans, such as Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who said in an interview that “the White House has committed to me that they’re committed to regulate the industry.”
Republican Sen. Rand Paul of hemp-rich Kentucky said the issue came up “in a big way” during Senate Republicans’ private lunch meeting Wednesday. Paul said he spoke in support of delaying the ban and said those arguing for a delay “aren’t very rational.”
“They’re wanting to hold up the funding for the government over one month,” he said. “It’s kind of insane.”
Grace Yarrow contributed to this report.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is in the Capitol meeting with holdout GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Bill Cassidy of Louisiania as he tries to lock down their support for his confirmation as permanent leader of the Justice Department.
Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) declined to respond directly Wednesday to Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to denounce his former son-in-law Rep. Max Miller over abuse accusations leveled by Moreno’s daughter: “These aren’t accusations in my world,” he said.
“In my world, this is the reality,” Moreno told reporters at the Capitol. “This is not something that is theoretical to me. This is my lived reality of my daughter and my family every single solitary day.”
In an interview with Dasha Burns for Blue Light News’s The Conversation, Johnson declined to take sides in the dispute between Miller (R-Ohio) and Emily Moreno. He called for a House Ethics probe to “play out.”
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
Politics1 year agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
Politics1 year agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Politics1 year agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship11 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words