Baby on Board? Proxy Voting Roils the House, Spurring One Congresswoman To Abandon the Freedom Caucus

A feud over proxy voting is roiling House Republicans — and even prompting one member of the GOP’s Freedom Caucus to abandon the conservative group.At the height of the Covid pandemic, one could turn on a live feed of the House of Representatives and see only a few members on the floor reading from notecards. On those cards were the voting intentions of their colleagues who were not present, which the attending lawmakers would then read to the clerk. Voting by proxy became the norm until the GOP took control of the chamber in 2023, and now a stark division over the practice will consume Republicans in the coming days. Welcome to Washington, where drama within the House Freedom Caucus is set to make headlines this week as conservative lawmakers are twisting Speaker Johnson’s arm to block a new absentee voting proposal. That resolution from Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna — who was, until this week, a Freedom Caucus member — would allow lawmakers to vote by proxy if they are new parents, having had a child within the previous 12 weeks. Ms. Luna — who gave birth to a child during her first term in the summer of 2023 — partnered with a Democratic congresswoman, Brittany Pettersen, to write a resolution that would allow those lawmakers with children younger than 12 weeks old to designate another House member to vote for them on the floor. Ms. Pettersen recently gave birth to a son. To cast her vote without the proxy voting option, she had to travel to Washington from Colorado, even though her child was only a few weeks old. Ms. Luna has found common cause with Democrats and a few Republicans in her fight to allow proxy voting for new parents. In the House, lawmakers can force a vote on a piece of legislation if they can garner 218 signatures — a majority of the House’s 435 members — on what is known as a “discharge petition.” The petition for a rule change resolution has already garnered the requisite 218 signatures, meaning she was expecting the resolution to come up for consideration this week — until her fellow Freedom Caucus members pulled the rug out from under her. Just this past week, as the House was voting on a procedural measure to rescind some Biden-era energy regulations, several Freedom Caucus lawmakers were seen by The New York Sun gathering at the back of the chamber. At the center of the huddle was Congressman Tom Emmer — the number three Republican in the House. For more than 20 minutes, Mr. Emmer and two of his staff members were in an animated argument with the Freedom Caucus lawmakers, including Congressman Chip Roy, who has been leading the charge against proxy voting for years. Alongside him were Congressmen Andy Ogles, Andrew Clyde, and Paul Gosar, among others. A signatory to Ms. Luna’s discharge petition, Congressman Tim Burchett, told the Sun that the lengthy argument had to do with the proxy voting issue. “It has something to do with Luna’s bill. Somehow they’re attaching that,” Mr. Burchett said. It was later disclosed that Mr. Roy and his fellow conservatives were pressuring House leadership to add a rule change this week that would bar Ms. Luna’s resolution from coming to the floor under current discharge petition procedures. Ms. Luna was, understandably, not happy that her fellow Freedom Caucus members went behind her back. On Monday, she announced she would be leaving the Freedom Caucus because of the betrayal. “A small group among us threatened the Speaker, vowing to halt floor proceedings indefinitely — regardless of the legislation at stake, including President Trump’s agenda — unless he altered the rules to block my discharge petition,” Ms. Luna wrote in a letter announcing her departure. She added: “I cannot remain part of a caucus where a select few operate outside its guidelines, misuse its name, broker backroom deals that undermine its core values and where the lines of compromise and transaction are blurred, disparage me to the press, and encourage misrepresentation of me to the American people.”Mr. Roy — a member of the powerful House Rules Committee, which sets limits for which legislation comes to the floor — has long questioned the constitutionality of absentee voting, regardless of the circumstance. Last year, a federal judge in Texas ruled that the Covid-era proxy voting scheme was a violation of the Constitution’s Quorum Clause, which states that only a “majority” of the legislative body “shall constitute a Quorum to do business.” Having lawmakers vote by proxy for the purposes of a quorum call, the judge ruled, does not comport with the Constitution. The debate this week between Ms. Luna, her small band of Republican friends, and Democrats who first instituted the proxy voting rules is likely to see Mr. Roy again on the floor — or at the least in the quaint Rules Committee room — demanding an adherence to the Quorum Clause.

Baby on Board? Proxy Voting Roils the House, Spurring One Congresswoman To Abandon the Freedom Caucus

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