Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., seems to be on throughout a listening to on the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday. Luna has been main a push within the Home to permit proxy voting for brand new mother and father.
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Two mothers introduced enterprise on the ground of the Home of Representatives to a grinding halt on Tuesday over their push to permit distant voting for brand new mother and father.
“We mentioned do not f*** with mothers,” Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Colo., mentioned on the steps of the U.S. Capitol alongside Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla.
“We labored as a staff,” Luna mentioned. “And I believe that as we speak is a reasonably historic day for the whole convention and exhibiting that the physique has determined that oldsters deserve a voice in Washington and in addition to the significance of feminine members having a vote in Washington, D.C.”
Luna and Pettersen have been working to cross laws that may enable new mother and father to vote by proxy for 12 weeks across the start of a brand new baby. Luna tried a number of completely different techniques to get the bipartisan invoice to the ground. Home Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., initially refused to place the invoice on the ground. So Luna teamed up with Democrats to bypass the speaker and pressure a vote.
When it turned clear that they had the 218 votes wanted to try this, Johnson nonetheless tried to cease them. He took the weird step of designing a particular rule to forestall a vote, however 9 Republicans voted alongside Democrats to dam it.
Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Colo., holds her one-month previous child as she departs throughout a sequence of votes on the Capitol on March 11. Petterson has been working with Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., to cross laws to permit proxy voting for as much as 12 weeks for members who’ve lately given start or whose partner has.
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Afterwards, Johnson instructed reporters that votes for the remainder of the week had been canceled.
“The agenda has been taken off the desk,” Johnson mentioned on his method out of the Capitol.
Within the hours main as much as the vote, Johnson argued that proxy voting “would do nice violence to the establishment — to reopen Pandora’s field.”
He maintained that proxy voting is “unconstitutional and there isn’t any limiting precept.”
“In the event you enable it for some conditions, you are in the end going to have to permit it for all,” he mentioned. “And I believe that destroys the deliberative nature of the physique.”
