House Republican leaders are showing no signs of compromising in their bitter fight with their own rank and file over whether to allow members of Congress who need maternity leave to vote from home, with Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) appearing to tell CNN's Manu Raju that it's now more about keeping the caucus in line than it is about the merits of the rule change itself.
A bipartisan discharge petition is circulating to change House rules to allow proxy voting for new moms, with one of the key people spearheading the fight being Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), a militant pro-Trump lawmaker who herself gave birth two years ago. Leadership tried to thwart the measure with a vote to add retroactive restrictions to discharge petitions, only for a handful of Republicans to join Luna in crossing the aisle to block that measure.
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Scalise and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who have unsuccessfully tried to get proxy vote rules blocked as unconstitutional in the past despite having used proxy votes themselves, responded by shutting down the rest of the House's work week, preventing any progress on the discharge petition and vowing to hold another vote to block the petition next week. When Raju spoke to Scalise, he was unrelenting in his insistence that the rebellion must be crushed.
"Members, ultimately, are going to have to make some decisions about are they going to delay the Trump agenda or not," said Scalise.
"Why don't you just drop it? I mean, just give the — concede on this," asked Raju.
"The whole idea of proxy voting is the concern," said Scalise. "It's not only the constitutional issues, you know, it's it's the fact that it's not going to end there."
He did not elaborate on why else the GOP leadership opposes proxy voting, only making clear the leadership was digging in to put down the dissent.
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