House Speaker Mike Johnson is mounting an unusually aggressive effort to squash a proposal for new parents in Congress to able to vote by proxy, rather than in person, as they care for newborns. Two new moms, Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida and Democratic Rep. Brittany Pettersen of Colorado, want to force a vote on their proposal for proxy voting, which a majority of House colleagues support. Johnson says their so-called discharge petition to force their proposal onto the House floor for consideration is unconstitutional, and he tried to stop it in a procedural vote Tuesday. But it failed 206-222. Nine Republicans joined Democrats to keep the proxy plan alive.
