Mike Johnson loses his war against new moms—and he’s pissed
House Speaker Mike Johnson suffered an embarrassing blow on Tuesday after nine of his Republican colleagues defied him, rejecting his push to ban proxy voting for parents.
The stunning GOP rebellion threw the House’s legislative agenda for the rest of the week into chaos, forcing Johnson to abruptly send lawmakers home in frustration.
The vote in question centered on whether new parents in Congress should be allowed to designate someone to vote for them for the first 12 weeks after their child’s birth. The bipartisan proposal—led by MAGA Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida and Democratic Reps. Brittany Pettersen of Colorado and Sarah Jacobs of California—was a rare show of unity on an issue affecting working parents. Both Luna and Pettersen are new mothers, and with no formal parental leave policy for members of Congress, they argued the change was long overdue.
“Today is a pretty historical day for the entire conference,” Luna said. “It’s showing that the body has decided that parents deserve a voice in Washington, and also to the importance of female members having a vote in Washington, D.C.”
Holding her nine-week-old son Sam on the House floor, Pettersen echoed the sentiment. “It is unfathomable that in 2025 we have not modernized Congress to address these very unique challenges that members face—these life events, where our voices should still be heard, our constituents should still be represented,” she said.
You’d think so-called “pro-life” Republicans would back the measure. Instead, Johnson and House GOP leadership fought hard to kill it, arguing that proxy voting is unconstitutional—despite Johnson himself using it, a blatant hypocrisy that Luna called out.
Democrats wasted no time in slamming Johnson’s stance. “Republicans love to talk about family values, but when given the chance to actually support families, they turn their backs,” said Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern. “If you want to protect your rights as members of Congress, you should vote no here.”
Getting the measure to a vote was a battle in itself. When Johnson had refused to bring it to the floor, Luna and her allies used a rare procedural move—a discharge petition—to force a vote with or without his approval. With 218 signatures, rank-and-file members can bypass House leadership, and in this case, they did exactly that.
Johnson, in true petty form, tried to box his caucus in by tying the rule change to a marquee GOP bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. But his efforts backfired spectacularly. Nine House Republicans, including Luna, broke ranks and sided with all Democrats to keep the proposal alive.
“That rule being brought down means that we can’t have any further action on the floor this week,” Johnson admitted after his defeat. He later said, “A handful of Republicans joined with all the Democrats to take out a rule. That’s rarely done. It’s very unfortunate in this case.”
But Johnson’s hardball tactics seem to have backfired, as even his fellow Republicans questioned why he was going to such great lengths to override the will of the body and take such an extreme stance against working mothers.
What happens next remains uncertain. According to The New York Times, House rules require Republican leaders to bring the proxy vote resolution to the floor within two legislative days. However, with members leaving Washington, D.C., it’s unclear when—or even if—Johnson will follow through.
According to NOTUS, Johnson won’t go down without a fight. He seems bizarrely fixated on punishing new parents, likely because Republicans have long been anti-remote work and anti-women. He’s reportedly plotting procedural maneuvers to kill the rule change, hoping one will eventually stick.
The fallout, however, is already rattling the Republican caucus. Johnson looks weak, President Donald Trump didn’t rescue him, and the Freedom Caucus is imploding—especially after Luna quit in protest, furious that its members refused to support her.
“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,” Luna wrote in a blistering resignation letter.
Johnson’s hasty decision to cancel House votes for the rest of the week is undeniably humiliating. And it’s made all the more striking by what’s happening in the Senate, where Democratic Sen. Cory Booker made his feelings on the current administration clear by setting a record for the longest floor speech in history—25 hours and 5 minutes.