Congress
Luna: Johnson blocked proxy voting for new moms
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) said Wednesday that Speaker Mike Johnson has blocked her proposal to allow new mothers to vote by proxy for several months from being included in the rules package for the next Congress.
“Today, after speaking with @SpeakerJohnson about this for months, I was told, He will not support allowing female members to vote if they give birth,” she wrote in a thread on X. “Among other things, this is something that I fundamentally disagree with him on.”
Johnson’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but he has backup from other corners of the Republican conference.
“I don’t give a crap who you are or whether you just had a baby in the last six weeks,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said on “CR Podcast with Daniel Horowitz.” “It is unconstitutional to proxy vote.”
Luna has been leading the charge throughout the year, beginning her bipartisan push in January to allow new moms to vote remotely in order to spend more time with their newborns.
Proxy voting was used in the then-Democratic controlled House during the pandemic, but faced legal challenges and staunch opposition from Republicans who decried it as unconstitutional.
A meeting is now underway seeking potential paths for ending the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.
Tom Homan, President Donald Trump’s border czar, is meeting with top Senate appropriators and other key senators. It’s the second meeting of the same group in as many days.
Speaker Mike Johnson is planning to put a stalled Homeland Security funding bill on the House floor a third time next week, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss private plans, as the GOP moves to further pressure Democrats to end the five-week closure.
Two versions of the bill have already passed the House, each time with just a few House Democrats breaking from party lines to back it. But the bill is still held up in the Senate, where Democrats have refused to approve DHS funding without adding new restrictions on immigration enforcement.
The House will also vote on a resolution next week in support of DHS workers, including TSA officers who have gone without pay as the spring break travel crush stresses U.S. airports.
House GOP leaders are punting a reauthorization vote for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that they had hoped to hold next week until mid-April, with a GOP hard-liner revolt over warrantless surveillance threatening to tank the legislation, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter granted anonymity to discuss the conference dynamics.
GOP leaders are still dealing with a dozen or so Republican members who want reforms to the spy powers extension, as Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to pass a clean, 18-month extension without any changes. President Donald Trump has also asked for the clean extension.
Johnson and GOP leaders will instead work through the remaining issues over the upcoming two-week recess and try to put the extension on the floor the week of April 14, the people said.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and a group of ultraconservatives have warned GOP leaders that the reauthorization would fail if Johnson tried to push it through next week.
Another House Republican told Blue Light News there was “no way” a rule to advance a clean FISA extension would pass next week.
Johnson can lose only two votes on a rule to advance the measure, and already a handful of GOP hard-liners have told Blue Light News they would oppose it.
The FISA reauthorization deadline is April 20, and the delay leaves barely any time for the Senate to act.
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