Johnson, Luna struck a deal to end their feud over remote voting for new parents. Democrats are still pushing the point

House Speaker Mike Johnson successfully stopped an effort by fellow Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna to allow new parents in Congress to vote remotely. But her House Democratic partners made clear Tuesday that they still want that vote — even if it’s now symbolic.

House Speaker Mike Johnson successfully stopped an effort by fellow Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna to allow new parents in Congress to vote remotely. But her House Democratic partners made clear Tuesday that they still want that vote — even if it’s now symbolic. Democratic Reps. Brittany Pettersen of Colorado and Sara Jacobs of California — who teamed up with Luna on a discharge petition on the matter — formally noticed it on the floor Tuesday afternoon. It’s a rare step that would typically require the full House to soon take up the measure, forcing all members to go on record in a vote. But in this case, it will not succeed. That’s because Johnson and Luna recently agreed to kill the effort — tucking language into an unrelated measure that would prevent the bill from coming up under that discharge petition tool. Luna announced over the weekend that she and Johnson had struck a deal on proxy voting. Democrats, though, were not part of that agreement. Johnson and Luna agreed to bring back a centuries-old tradition known as “vote pairing,” in which a lawmaker is essentially paired with another who withholds their vote, to cancel each other out.