House kills proxy voting measure for new-parent lawmakers
The House’s feud over proxy voting for new parents that paralyzed the chamber is on the back burner after Republicans voted to effectively kill GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s measure and formalize “vote-pairing.”
Republicans passed a rule -- a procedure to advance legislation -- Tuesday afternoon by a vote of 213-211 that included language to formalize vote-pairing and make Luna’s original measure moot.
Speaker Mike Johnson and Luna cut a deal over the weekend to formalize vote pairing, which is a procedure that allows a member who is absent during a vote to coordinate with a present member on the other side of the matter to offset the absence. It’s certainly not an equivalent to remote voting but allows for an absence to be offset.
Luna's bipartisan discharge petition would have allowed proxy voting for new parent lawmakers -- both mothers and fathers -- up to 12 weeks after giving birth.

But House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar said Democrats “won’t participate” in vote-pairing.
“This is a fake and phony effort … we won’t be engaging in this pairing effort,” he said at a news conference Tuesday at the Capitol.
-ABC News’ Lauren Peller






