BURSTRep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) announced Monday that she is leaving the House Freedom Caucus amid her battle with GOP leadership and hard-line Republicans over her push to allow proxy voting for new parents.
In a letter to Freedom Caucus members, Luna said the “respect” among lawmakers in the group had been “shattered last week” as some conservatives tried to thwart her effort to hold a vote on parental proxy voting.
Luna accused Freedom Caucus members of threatening to “halt floor proceedings indefinitely” if Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) did not change House rules to block her push.
“With a heavy heart, I am resigning from the Freedom Caucus,” Luna wrote in the letter obtained by The Hill. “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.”
The House Freedom Caucus declined to comment.
The announcement, to be sure, did not come as a surprise, since Luna signaled last week that she would likely depart the hard-line conservative group amid her dispute with many of its members. Monday’s letter, however, makes that move official, and is the latest escalation in the battle over parental proxy voting.
Luna successfully executed a discharge petition for Rep. Brittany Pettersen’s (D-Colo.) resolution that would allow members who give birth or lawmakers whose spouses give birth to select another member to vote for them for 12 weeks. Pettersen gave birth to a son in January and has brought the newborn to high-profile votes in the Capitol during his infancy, while Luna had a son in August 2023 as she was serving Congress.
Luna gathered 218 signatures for the petition — including 11 from other Republicans — enough to send the legislation to the floor despite leadership’s opposition. Since then, Johnson and his lieutenants have been searching for ways to stop the resolution from reaching the floor, as top lawmakers argue proxy voting is unconstitutional.
One idea being floated is adding language to “turn off” the privilege that would force leadership to consider the proxy voting legislation, which would likely involve adding it to an unrelated procedural resolution. If that path is utilized, Luna and her discharge petition co-signers would have to remain united and defeat the procedural hurdle, either by voting it down or working to force the vote another way.
The House Rules Committee was scheduled to meet Monday afternoon to discuss legislation for the week.
In her letter, Luna accused hard-line Republicans of having “threatened the Speaker, voting to halt floor proceedings indefinitely—regardless of the legislation at stake, including President Trump’s agenda—unless he altered the rules to block my discharge petition.”
She also alleged that Freedom Caucus members on the House Rules Committee — there are three, Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas), Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) — of pushing to “change our rules of governance by trying my petition to a rule that would kill it and attaching it to the SAVE Act.”
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. The legislation is slated to receive a vote on the House floor this week.
“The intent was clear: to misrepresent me and the members supporting this pro-life, pro-family initiative—one of the most significant in congressional history—as obstructing the President and opposing election integrity,” Luna wrote. “This tactic was not just a betrayal of trust; it was a descent into the very behavior we have long condemned—a practice that we, as a group, have repeatedly criticized leadership for allowing.”
“To those involved, I ask: Why?” Luna added. “Why abandon the principles we’ve championed and resort to such conduct? The irony in all of this is that I Have never voted by proxy, yet one of our own on the Rules Committee that is so adamantly opposed has done so over 30 times.”
In addition to her letter to Freedom Caucus members, Luna also penned a note to all House Republicans airing her allegations regarding tactics used by hard-line conservatives to halt her discharge petition. She called the actions — particularly the effort involving the SAVE Act — “a disgraceful betrayal.”
“The intent is clear: to misrepresent me and supporters of this pro-life, pro-family initiative—one of the most significant in congressional history—as obstructing the President’s agenda and opposing election integrity,” Luna wrote. “This is a disgraceful betrayal, a return to the manipulative tactics we have condemned, and the 119th Congress aimed to leave behind.”
“I cannot remain in a group that would smear me as being against election integrity and extort the Speaker to derail a just cause,” she later added. “This undermines our integrity and the future of this body. Supporting female representation and new families is not a fringe issue—it is a cornerstone of a vibrant, representative Congress.”
Emily Brooks contributed.