House Speaker Mike Johnson suffered an embarrassing blow on Tuesday after nine of his Republican colleagues defied him, rejecting his push to ban proxy voting for parents.
The stunning GOP rebellion threw the House’s legislative agenda for the rest of the week into chaos, forcing Johnson to abruptly send lawmakers home
in frustration.
The vote in question centered on whether new parents in Congress should be allowed to designate someone to vote for them for the first 12 weeks after their child’s birth. The bipartisan proposal—led by MAGA Republican
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida and Democratic Reps. Brittany Pettersen of Colorado and Sarah Jacobs of California—was a rare show of unity on an issue affecting working parents. Both Luna and Pettersen are new mothers, and with no formal parental leave policy for members of Congress
, they argued the change was long overdue.
Rep. Anna Luna
“Today is a pretty historical day for the entire conference,” Luna said. “It’s showing that the body has decided that parents deserve a voice in Washington, and also to the importance of female members having a vote in Washington, D.C.”
Holding her nine-week-old son Sam on the House floor, Pettersen echoed the sentiment. “It is unfathomable that in 2025 we have not modernized Congress to address these very unique challenges that members face—these life events, where our voices should still be heard, our constituents should still be represented,” she said.
You’d think so-called “pro-life” Republicans would back the measure. Instead, Johnson and House GOP leadership fought hard to kill it
, arguing that proxy voting is unconstitutional
—despite Johnson himself using it
, a blatant hypocrisy that Luna called out.
Democrats wasted no time in slamming Johnson’s stance. “Republicans love to talk about family values, but when given the chance to actually support families, they turn their backs,” said Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern. “If you want to protect your rights as members of Congress, you should vote no here.”
Getting the measure to a vote was a battle in itself. When Johnson had refused to bring it to the floor, Luna and her allies used a rare procedural move—a discharge petition—to force a vote with or without his approval. With 218 signatures
, rank-and-file members can bypass House leadership, and in this case, they did exactly that.
Rep. Brittany Pettersen speaks on the House floor holding her newborn son.
Johnson, in true petty form, tried to box his caucus in by tying the rule change to a marquee GOP bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. But his efforts backfired spectacularly. Nine House Republicans, including Luna, broke ranks and sided with all Democrats to keep the proposal alive.
“That rule being brought down means that we can’t have any further action on the floor this week,” Johnson admitted after his defeat. He later said, “A handful of Republicans joined with all the Democrats to take out a rule. That’s rarely done. It’s very unfortunate in this case.”
But Johnson’s hardball tactics seem to have backfired, as even his fellow Republicans questioned why he was going to such great lengths to override the will of the body and take such an extreme stance against working mothers.
What happens next remains uncertain. According to The New York Times
, House rules require Republican leaders to bring the proxy vote resolution to the floor within two legislative days. However, with members leaving Washington, D.C., it’s unclear when—or even if—Johnson will follow through.
According to NOTUS
, Johnson won’t go down without a fight. He seems bizarrely fixated on punishing new parents, likely because Republicans have long been anti-remote work
and anti-women. He’s reportedly plotting procedural maneuvers to kill the rule change, hoping one will eventually stick.
The fallout, however, is already rattling the Republican caucus. Johnson looks weak, President Donald Trump didn’t rescue him, and the Freedom Caucus is imploding—especially after Luna quit in protest
, furious that its members refused to support her.
“I cannot remain part of a caucus where a select few operate outside its guidelines, misuse its name, broker backroom deals that undermine its core values and where the lines of compromise and transaction are blurred, disparage me to the press, and encourage misrepresentation of me to the American people,” Luna wrote in a blistering resignation letter
.
Johnson’s hasty decision to cancel House votes for the rest of the week is undeniably humiliating. And it’s made all the more striking by what’s happening in the Senate
, where Democratic Sen. Cory Booker made his feelings on the current administration clear by setting a record
for the longest floor speech in history—25 hours and 5 minutes.
Howard Lutnick hasn’t necessarily been making friends or influencing people since becoming secretary of commerce. In fact, White House insiders have been throwing him under the bus as the country braces for impact on President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day
” on Wednesday.
“He is a loose cannon with half-baked ideas that he just randomly spews on live television,” a source told the New York Post
Tuesday, adding that Lutnick isn’t “deliberate enough with his words.”
“He can’t just be promoting certain stocks or saying even if there’s a recession it’ll be ‘worth it,’” they said.
Aside from the morally and legally questionable moment when Lutnick urged people to buy multibillionaire Elon Musk’s Tesla stocks as they were plummeting, he has a record chock-full of eyebrow-raising moments
During an interview
on David Sack’s “All In” podcast in March, Lutnick ranted about Social Security, saying that only “fraudsters” complain about receiving their checks.
“Let’s say Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law, who’s 94, she wouldn’t call and complain,” he said. “She just wouldn’t. She thinks something got messed up and she’ll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise screaming, yelling, and complaining.”
A digital billboard in Pennsylvania reads, “Tariffs are a tax on hardworking Americans.”
Speaking of loud, Lutnick has been one of the squeakiest wheels behind the idea of Trump’s $5 million immigration “gold card
,” which critics say has its own handful of moral and ethical concerns
.
But Lutnick’s failing popularity seems to be coming at an inopportune time, since he’s expected to be the first to take the heat from Trump’s disastrous tariff implementation
on “all countries
.”
According to Politico
, Trump’s squad is fully prepared to not just point fingers but to potentially fire Lutnick should things go south.
“I think people would take special pleasure in blaming him,” one insider told the outlet Tuesday.
And as critics are expecting this to be the biggest tax increase in U.S. history
, the projection for Lutnick, Trump, and voters’ bottom line is looking dire.
The outcome of Tuesday’s elections in Wisconsin and Florida should have Republicans in a state of panic since the results showed that the backlash to President Donald Trump and co-President Elon Musk’s agenda could sink the GOP’s chances in the 2026 midterm elections.
In Wisconsin, Democratic-backed nominee Susan Crawford handily won
a seat on the state Supreme Court, defeating Republican-backed nominee Brad Schimel by 10 percentage points
in a state Trump won
just five months ago.
The results should send a shiver down the spines of GOP Reps. Bryan Steil and Derrick Van Orden
. Van Orden barely
won reelection in 2024, while Steil won by 11 points
. But if these swings toward Democrats hold next November, both men could be in serious jeopardy of losing their seats.
In fact, Van Orden seemed almost resigned to that after Crawford’s win, claiming his seat would be redistricted now that the court remained in liberal hands.
“Being a member of Congress is not my identity,” Van Orden told
Politico. “So if through all these crazy machinations I don’t get reelected because far-leftists on the court decide to redistrict and make it nearly impossible for me to get reelected—I can accept that without any malice or bitterness.”
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race hinged not only on key issues—including abortion and voting rights—but also on Musk
and his attempt to buy a seat
on the court, spending $25 million
on the race and handing out million-dollar checks to a handful of voters.
Signs supporting Judge Susan Crawford, voting and election officials adorn the front yard of a home on South Sixteenth Street on Election Day, April 1, 2025, in Milwaukee.
Democrats ran ads tying Schimel to Musk, whose popularity has plummeted as his crusade to make cuts to the government has led to chaos and destruction
. Republicans have already faced backlash
at town halls, with voters demanding that their GOP representatives stop Musk from decimating the government. But Tuesday’s result in Wisconsin shows that running an election off that message really did resonate with voters, giving Democrats concrete proof that running against Musk’s cuts to the government could be the roadmap to success next November.
Meanwhile, in Florida, Democrats may not have won
the two special elections to replace two former Republican representatives—embattled national security adviser Mike Waltz and alleged sex pest Matt Gaetz. However, Republican nominees in both districts severely underperformed
. In November, Trump carried the districts by at least 30 points, but on Tuesday, the Republican nominees saw that margin cut in half.
Much of the attention in Florida was in the 6th District
, where GOP nominee Randy Fine was trashed by fellow Republicans for running a crappy campaign. That includes Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who trashed Fine before Tuesday’s results came in, saying that if he underperformed, it was a referendum only on Fine, not on Trump.
“This is a rejection of a specific candidate amongst some voters who either choose not to vote, maybe even vote third party. I don’t know how many Republicans would cross over and vote for a lunatic Democrat,” DeSantis said
.
Conservative state Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel, the loser, makes his concession speech to a crowd on April 1, 2025, in Pewaukee, Wisconsin.
But Republicans did arguably worse in the heavily Republican 1st District. In November, Trump won the district by 37 points
, but on Tuesday, GOP nominee Jimmy Patronis beat Democratic nominee Gay Valimont by less than 15 points
. Gaetz, who previously held the seat, defeated Valimont by 32 points
in November, making Tuesday’s results a massive swing away from the GOP.
Valimont even flipped Escambia County
, a feat no Democrat has pulled off in decades. Escambia County is home to many military and federal workers
, another sign that Trump and Musk’s cuts to the federal government could be a major problem for the GOP next November. In 2024, Trump won the country by 20 points
.
Ultimately, the fact that Republicans saw that big of an underperformance in safe seats should be a terrifying prospect for the GOP. There are manydistricts
that Trump carried by less than 15 points which now could be in play in the midterms.
Tuesday’s results also make it clear why Trump pulled
New York Rep. Elise Stefanik’s nomination to serve as ambassador to the United Nations. Her district, which she won by 24 points
in November, could have slipped away from Republicans in a special election.
“The [Republican] party has to worry about the position they’ll be in with voters in Virginia and New Jersey, and then looking down the road, where they’ll be going into the midterms,” said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette University Law School Poll, told
Politico. “It’s not an auspicious start, coupled with the accumulating polling data about how unpopular Trump’s most prominent policies, tariffs, are.”
A new report has revealed that Trump national security adviser Mike Waltz conducted official U.S. government business via his personal Gmail account. The usage of the service exposes another security vulnerability as the administration tries to turn the page on the leak of war plans to a reporter.
The Washington Post reported
on Tuesday that a senior aide for Waltz used the service “for highly technical conversations with colleagues at other government agencies involving sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict.”
Waltz also had other information, like his schedule and documents related to his work, sent to his Gmail account, providing a plausible way for foreign adversaries to keep tabs on a senior U.S. security figure.
A spokesperson for the National Security Council told the Post that Waltz did not send classified information on the account, but the administration has frequently lied and misled about such disclosures.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries
“Mike Waltz is totally and completely unqualified to be in a sensitive national security position, as is the case with the Trump national security team,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told Axios
, following the newest disclosure.
Waltz is one of the central figures
in the leak scandal, where a journalist was included on a chat with senior administration officials discussing ongoing military operations. In that instance, Waltz used the Signal chat app, which he also used in other cases to discuss sensitive national security issues. Additionally, it was found that Waltz had left sensitive information exposed on his Venmo account
as well.
Even with all of the disclosures and growing concerns about security vulnerabilities, President Donald Trump has stood by Waltz and has not fired any of the officials involved in the leak, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Instead, the administration has attacked reporter Jeffrey Goldberg, who was added to the chat. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt even went after
Goldberg’s family while she was spinning on behalf of the Trump administration.
The Trump administration is trying to get past
the leak story and has prematurely claimed the case on the issue is “closed.” But congressional leaders—even some Republicans—have signed on to demands for answers from the administration and called for an independent investigation of the scandal.
Waltz’s decision to use yet another service with significant security risks makes clear the case is not closed. Questions will continue to swirl around the possibility that the Trump administration actions have put Americans in danger.
In concert with President Donald Trump, Fox News is amplifying right-wing attacks against Chief Judge James Boasberg
, who issued an order halting Trump’s mass deportations.
The Trump administration has claimed that the immigrants deported to El Salvador are dangerous gang members, but Boasberg issued a temporary retraining order
—effectively pausing the deportations—that the administration has disregarded.
On Tuesday, Fox News reporter Haley Chi-Sing cast suspicion
on Boasberg, particularly regarding his appointment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by Chief Justice John Roberts.
“The Chief Justice handpicked DC Obama Judge Jeb Boasberg to serve on the FISA court. The DC federal judges are in a cozy little club, and they protect their own,” said Mike Davis, president of the Article III Project, a right-wing legal group.
Fox News, which is owned by Australian-born billionaire Rupert Murdoch, also attacked Boasberg on air. In a Sunday episode of Mark Levin’s
“Life, Liberty & Levin,” the judge was mocked as “the most powerful man in America.”
Cartoon by Clay Bennett
Fox’s attacks echo Trump, who in a Sunday social media post characterized
Boasberg as part of a group of “radical left judges” obstructing his agenda.
In recent weeks, judges have reported
an increase in death threats and other forms of harassment as Trump has led a crusade against them. But aside from the danger of Trump and his media allies attacking judges, the characterization of Boasberg simply does not pass the smell test.
He was first elevated to the federal judiciary by Republican President George W. Bush in 2002
. And while Boasberg has received bipartisan support
, including from Democrats like President Barack Obama, that didn’t stop him from ordering
the release of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016.
The attacks against Boasberg do show that the right is of one mind on these issues, despite occasional intra-family disputes.
Trump has argued that he must have unchecked deportation power to protect the country from violent criminals, but evidence has already emerged
showing that people unaffiliated with gangs are being swept up in his purges and sent to El Salvador.
What Trump doesn’t want is judicial oversight of his actions—which is the literal constitutional role of the federal court system. And Fox News proves that he has plenty of support behind his unlawful actions.
