(CNN) A fight breaks out between the Republicans of the Chamber to allow new parents in the Congress to vote remotely A politically explosive problem This is gaining ground in the room at a critical time for President Mike Johnson.
A group of Hardliners of the House Freedom Caucus House Gop organized a short -term rebellion on Tuesday on the ground of the Chamber, organizing a vote unrelated when they demanded concessions from the party management on a proxy vote measure for new parents who will soon come to the ground for a vote, according to three familiar people with the discussions.
Among the requests, according to two people familiar with the issue, there were that the party leaders increase the threshold of future exit petitions at two thirds of the room, which makes them more difficult in Greenlight, ask that the leaders of the GOP have yet excluded.
The division on proxy vote takes place not only in the conference of the GOP of the Chamber, but in the House Freedom Caucus itself. The republican sponsor in chief of the proxy voting proposal is the representative Anna Paulina Luna, who is one of the only women in the Freedom caucus.
The members of the Freedom House caucus refused to support the procedural vote on the ground because they wanted the party leaders to block the thrust to allow the proxy vote for the new parents, according to three families with the discussions. After the vote seems initially risky to fail, enough members of the GOP finally supported the measure unrelated for the vote to succeed, although it was not clear which agreement had been concluded, if necessary.
It is not clear either if the proposal of the Caucus Freedom to modify the rules of the GOP on the discharge petitions would have the votes. It would also be very unusual to modify the rules in the middle of the year.
But the moment prefigures a ugly floor fight to come, because the house is should resolve De Luna and the Democratic representative of Colorado Brittany Pettersen next week. The deputy obliges the vote by using a relatively rare method known as the exit petition, which allows basic legislators to force their own measures upstairs if they can ask 217 other members to support it. The maneuver rarely succeeds, so that the fact that it has crossed the critical threshold is notable and a sign of bipartite support for the thrust, but is considered against the leaders of the GOP Parys.
We have concerns about everything that would bring a voting by proxy to the House, the representative Andy Harris, president of Freedom Caucus, told journalists.
This decision underlines the immense power that any legislator has on the questions that arrive on the ground in one of the smallest majorities of the House of History. Just a handful of GOP hardliners were able to derail the party leaders to adopt a routine rule on the ground and force them to a discussion on their own requests. And Johnson is faced with these tiny margins at a time with high stakes for the GOP of the Chamber and for President Donald Trump, as the party intends to build up through the agenda of white houses in the coming months.
The question of proxy vote while procedural is a high intensity battle among the many institutionalists of the Chamber, including in the Caucus de Freedom. While many Republicans, including Johnson himself, have voted several times by proxy during the pandemic, many of them have argued in the soil speeches and in legal proceedings that it is an unconstitutional practice.
Look, I'm a father. Im Pro-Family, journalists told Johnson on Tuesday morning. The vote by proxy, in my opinion, is unconstitutional, he said, arguing that this could lead to a slippery slope in which the members all vote at a distance, by AI or something.
During a closed -door meeting with his conference on Tuesday morning, Johnson clearly indicated that he was firmly opposed to the resolution. At least one member of the GOP interpreted his remarks as signifying that he would strongly whip his members to oppose the resolution.
It is not clear if Johnson will win the fight.
Luna convinced 11 other Republicans to support the exit petition, in a rare challenge of leadership of parties. And at least two additional GOP legislators should support the measure on the ground, representatives Jeff Van Drew and Tim Buchett, according to people familiar with their reflection. These votes and the complete democratic caucus would be enough to change the rules of the chamber in a dramatic priority of the Johnsons authority.
And Luna herself goes after Johnson, calling him for his own votes that he stole from a distance, before he maintains that it was unconstitutional.
Johnson speaker Is a nice man and his heart is in the right place, but he is mistaken about proxy vote for the new parents, she wrote on X. Here are some documents showing him voting by procuration at the 117th congress, until December 2022! He supports his unconstitutional but did it several times, she said, displaying images of at least three cases in which he voted by proxy in 2022.
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