Nine House Republicans Torpedo Mike Johnson’s Plans
Nine Republicans voted against their House speaker on proxy voting for new parents—causing him to abandon all plans for the rest of the week.

Nine House Republicans defected from their party on the parental proxy vote Tuesday in a direct rejection of Speaker Mike Johnson’s plans.
The vote was for a bill regarding whether to allow new parents in the House to have a proxy vote for them in the first 12 weeks after the birth of their child. The legislation, which would have helped new mothers and fathers, was put forth by MAGA Republican Anna Paulina Luna and Democrats Brittany Pettersen and Sara Jacobs. Luna and Pettersen each gave birth recently, and there is no parental leave for members of Congress.
When Johnson and other House Republican leaders went out of their way to block the bill, nine House Republicans—Luna, Kevin Kiley, Tim Burchett, Jeff Van Drew, Greg Steube, Mike Lawler, Ryan Mackenzie, Nick LaLota, and Max Miller—all turned on Johnson, torpedoing his plans and passing the parental proxy bill.
The nine betrayals bothered Johnson so much that he canceled votes in the House for the rest of the week.
Johnson, who doesn’t have the greatest working relationship with Luna, insisted that the parental proxy bill would lead to more representatives voting remotely.
“I believe it’s unconstitutional. 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,” Johnson said at a press conference last week. “I don’t think that’s what Congress is supposed to be. This is a deliberative body. You cannot deliberate with your colleagues if you’re out somewhere else.”
Republicans are weirdly obsessed with killing this bill, whether it be for anti–work from home reasons, anti-woman reasons, or both.
Pettersen, who is the thirteenth active House member to give birth, spoke in support of Luna’s bill on the House floor while holding her 9-week-old son, Sam, in her arms. Sam was born prematurely.
“No mom or dad should be in the position that I was in and so many parents have found themselves in. It is anti-woman, it’s anti-family, and we need to come together,” she said. “We have a long ways to go to make this place accessible for young families like mine.… For all of the parents here, we know that when we have newborns, it’s when they’re the most vulnerable in their life. It’s when they need 24-7 care.”