Washington — Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida withdrew her membership from the conservative House Freedom Caucus on Monday amid a divide over whether the lower chamber should allow new parents in Congress to vote remotely around the birth of their child.
“With a heavy heart, I am resigning from the Freedom Caucus,” she wrote to her colleagues in a letter obtained by CBS News.
Luna’s discharge petition — a maneuver that allows members to circumvent House leadership — won enough support earlier this month to force a vote on a measure that would allow new parents to designate a colleague to vote for them for 12 weeks after they or their spouse gives birth. The bill would also allow that period to begin earlier if the lawmaker has a serious medical condition or isn’t able to travel safely.
But House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, opposes proxy voting, calling it unconstitutional. He confirmed last week discussions were taking place about how to block the measure.
In her letter, Luna accused House Freedom Caucus members of threatening Johnson with halting floor proceedings indefinitely unless he changed the rules governing House votes to block her effort.
“This tactic was not just a betrayal of trust; it was a descent into the very behavior we have long condemned — a practice that we, as a group, have repeatedly criticized leadership for allowing,” she wrote, adding that her respect for those colleagues had been “shattered.”
Luna said last week that Republicans who backed her effort were being pressured to drop their support. The members were told that their bills would not be brought up for floor votes and that the party would not help with fundraising, according to Luna.
On Monday, it appeared as though Republicans would seek to quash it through the House Rules Committee by attaching language into a rule for unrelated legislation on requiring proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote.
Rep. Jim McGovern of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee, asked Monday why the election security bill was coming before the panel when it already had a rule.
“I have a theory that you guys are trying to derail the discharge petition,” McGovern said before reading part of Luna’s letter. “So is that the reason why we’re here, is so that we could try to get a rule that might make it more difficult for Republicans to vote no on, in order to kill a discharge petition where a majority of members of this House — Democrats and Republicans — signed on to?”
Democrats instituted proxy voting during the pandemic, but the practice was ended by Republicans when they took control of the House in 2023.
