House Republican leaders thought Tuesday was the day they could kill a discharge petition forcing a floor vote on a proposed House rule to allow new parents to vote remotely.
But the effort to squash Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s discharge petition failed, with nine Republicans joining all Democrats to vote down a rule on the House floor and keep the discharge petition alive. And now, House leaders are contending with a new reality: Luna’s resolution might succeed.
Republicans attached instructions killing the discharge petition to a rule setting up floor debate for a number of unrelated bills, including legislation that would require individuals to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote and a measure that would deal with overdraft fees.
But on Tuesday, that rule failed, 206-222, with nine Republicans joining 213 Democrats to vote down the measure.
“It’s very unfortunate,” Speaker Mike Johnson said after the failed rule vote. “Let me just make this clear, that rule being brought down means that we can’t have any further action on the floor this week.”
Johnson said Republicans would “regroup and come back” and “do this again.”
Moments after the vote failed, Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s office said there would be no further votes expected for the week.
It was the first rule of the year to go down on the floor, and Republicans suggested it was an entirely predictable outcome. “Could’ve seen that coming from about six miles away,” Rep. Mike Simpson said.
Luna, for her part, suggested GOP leaders made a grave mistake in trying to turn off her discharge petition through a rule.
“This entire process has been the most disappointing, especially from among my party,” Luna said on the House floor ahead of the vote. “If we don’t do the right thing now, it will never be done.”
The discharge petition, which would allow new parents to vote by proxy for up to 12 weeks after the birth of a child, received 218 signatures last week, triggering a floor vote on the resolution.
But the Rules Committee inserted language Tuesday morning to table Luna’s proxy voting proposal, setting off a legislative scramble on both sides of the aisle — with both parties in the Rules Committee suggesting this debate posed an existential threat.
Republicans on the Rules panel said proxy voting would change the fabric of the body, that the narrow allowance for new parents would open the door to more proxy voting.
Democrats, meanwhile, saw using the Rules Committee to prevent a vote on a discharge petition with 218 signatures as its own dangerous precedent.
“It’s a high bar to meet, because you have to convince enough people to sign that discharge petition, which they did,” Democratic Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, a member of the Rules Committee, told NOTUS on Monday.
“They went to all the work, and then for them to pull the work out from under them through some trick in the Rules Committee is just nefarious, you know? It’s nasty,” she said.
The discharge petition has created a considerable amount of conflict within the House GOP conference, as Speaker Mike Johnson joined with Freedom Caucus members in trying to table Luna’s proposal.
“The speaker is required to look beyond the issue of the day to the long-term consequences, and that’s what we’re doing here,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday morning. “It was a very difficult decision, but one I had to make.”
He added that the speaker’s job “is to protect the institution.”
“That’s what we’re having to do here,” Johnson added.
Even Republicans who don’t support proxy voting for new parents still voted against the rule, disagreeing with leadership’s approach to sidestepping the discharge petition.
Rep. Greg Steube, who successfully led a discharge petition for hurricane relief last year that was signed into law, voted against the rule.
“It’s not a minority thing; it’s not a majority thing,” Steube told NOTUS. “Every member of this body should be opposed to doing away with that, because this body is the check on leadership.”
Luna’s (now-former) colleagues on the House Freedom Caucus have also strongly opposed her efforts, leading to her announcing over the weekend that she’d resign from the ultra-conservative group.
Luna wrote two letters on Monday afternoon, one formally announcing her resignation from the Freedom Caucus, and another addressed to the entire Republican conference.
“This is a disgraceful betrayal, a return to the manipulative tactics we have condemned, and the 119th Congress aimed to leave behind,” she wrote in the letter to the conference.
The top Democrat on the Rules Committee, Rep. Jim McGovern, submitted both letters for the record during the panel’s hearing on Tuesday, as he and other Democrats called out Republicans on the committee for trying to subvert House rules on discharge petitions.
Republicans adding language to a rule to kill the discharge petition — a rare procedural move — caused some confusion at the hearing, even for Republicans. As the committee debated the text of the rule, Republicans themselves didn’t seem sure what they could or couldn’t do to prevent a discharge petition from moving to the floor.
Over an hour into the meeting, Rep. Ralph Norman told NOTUS that Republicans on the committee couldn’t “turn off” the discharge petition.
“We’re not considering it because discharge petitions go to the floor,” Norman said.
Rules Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx called the divide over proxy voting “an existential issue for this body.”
“I know there’s a new laptop class in America that seems to operate increasingly in a virtual space, but that’s simply not a fact of life for most American workers, and I believe Congress should live by that standard,” Foxx said.
Rep. Tim Burchett, one of the Republicans who joined Democrats in supporting proxy voting, said the choice should be simple for Republicans.
“We’re the party of family and all that,” he told NOTUS. “I think we ought to honor that.”
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Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Daniella Diaz is a reporter at NOTUS.
Reese Gorman, who is a reporter at NOTUS, contributed to this report.