Politically speaking, Republican U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida is hardly my cup of tea. She is, by her own admission, one of the most conservative members of Congress.
Indeed, in 2023, she championed an effort to censure and fine Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff for leading the first impeachment of President Trump when Schiff was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee in 2020.
That censure effort failed because lawmakers were loath to levy a $16-million fine on a fellow member. But Luna, who was not even in office at the time of the Schiff-led impeachment, was undaunted.
“I am telling you,” she said at the time, “I am persistent, and I am not kidding, censuring is going to happen.” And so it did, minus the fine, the second time around.
Luna is, for lack of a more elegant phrase, kind of a bad ass.
The lawmaker, an Air Force veteran, the first Mexican American woman elected to Congress from Florida and mother of a toddler, has now taken on her leader, House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who, like his fellow Republicans, gives lip service to supporting families but mostly devotes himself to making their lives more difficult.
Since January, Luna and her Democratic colleague Rep. Brittany Pettersen of Colorado, a mother of two, have been trying to get the House to pass a measure that would allow Congress members who have infants to vote by proxy until their babies are 12 weeks old.
No dice, says Johnson.
“I have great sympathy, empathy for all of our young women legislators who are of birthing age. It’s a real quandary,” Johnson said last month. “But I’m afraid it doesn’t fit with the language of the Constitution, and that’s the inescapable truth that we have.”
His helplessness rings hollow.
During the pandemic, when Democrats were in control, the House passed a rule allowing proxy voting for the first time in American history. Johnson was among the Republican lawmakers who sued to overturn the rule, but hey, even he and dozens of other members availed themselves of the new rule. When Republicans took back control of the House, they put an end to the practice, citing concerns that it could be abused.
Last week, Luna and Pettersen essentially brought the House of Representatives to a halt after defying Johnson, and using a procedural twist to do an end run around him.
In the face of Johnson’s refusal to bring the proxy measure to a vote, they rounded up enough bipartisan support to force the measure to the floor with the use of a “discharge petition.”
Then Johnson — so, so helpless, right? — designed a special rule to prevent the vote, but as NPR reported, nine Republicans bucked their leader and voted alongside Democrats to block it.
“I could not in good conscience vote for an unprecedented rule that would pull the rug out from under Rep. Luna’s discharge petition that got the required signatures fair and square,” said Republican Ohio Rep. Max Miller, who has a year-old baby.
Pettersen put it more succinctly: “Don’t f— with moms.”
You may recall that Pettersen made headlines in February when she rushed back to Washington with her 4-week-old son, Sam, to cast a vote against the Republican budget plan. She was photographed cradling her baby on the House floor.
“I was a complete, you know, zombie right out here trying to represent my constituents,” Pettersen told USA Today.
Luna became a first-time mother in 2023. She had complications stemming from high blood pressure, and her doctors urged her not to travel while she recuperated. As a result, she missed 137 votes.
“How is it not discriminatory to tell a duly elected member of Congress that she can’t vote because she gave birth to a child?” she said in January. “New mothers in Congress should not be forced to choose their careers over children or choose children over careers.”
It is hardly surprising that most congressional Republicans, in thrall to Trump, are so hostile to children and families.
The MAGA animus toward kids — our most precious resource blah blah blah — was on full display early on in Trump’s first term when he implemented the grotesque family separation program. We know that many of the children separated from their parents at the southern border suffered severe psychological trauma and, shamefully, some families have never been reunited.
How else do Trump’s and the GOP’s policies hurt children?
In his first term, he tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and to pay for tax cuts now, the administration with the help of congressional Republicans, is trying to cut Medicaid, which provides healthcare to millions of low-income children.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. worries about the potential dangers of artificial food coloring, but he has contributed to a wave of vaccine skepticism that will unquestionably result in actual deaths. He currently presides over a measles outbreak that has killed two unvaccinated people so far, one a Texas child, and has recommended that children at risk of measles take vitamin A, which does nothing to prevent the disease.
When the callous young members of Elon Musk’s White House advisory team, which he calls the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, killed off USAID, the foreign-aid agency that is America’s most effective soft-power tool, they cut off aid to children in developing countries, with a probable outcome that tens of thousands of children, and millions of people of all ages, will now needlessly die of tuberculosis, HIV, starvation and other preventable or treatable diseases.
Abolishing the Department of Education will hurt children in low-income communities who benefit from federal aid that is disbursed through the states and school districts, and disabled and special education kids as well.
It’s unclear at this point what happens next to Luna and Pettersen’s bill. Tuesday, Johnson was forced to cancel votes for the rest of the week, which means the House did not address MAGA bills that would prevent federal courts from issuing national injunctions and require proof of citizenship to vote.
Then, on Thursday, Trump weighed in. “I don’t know why it’s controversial,” he told reporters on Air Force One. “If you’re having a baby, I think you should be able to call in and vote. I’m in favor of that.”
Hell just froze over; he is absolutely right.
Bluesky: @rabcarian.bsky.social Threads: @rabcarian
