(source) RawStory:
This week, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) denied a request by Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-CO) to pass her bipartisan resolution to allow pregnant congresswomen to have other members cast their votes for them by proxy while they are indisposed by maternity care — something affecting her directly at the moment, as her due date is too close for her to fly to Washington, D.C.
“I’ve filed a brief with the United States Supreme Court asserting that proxy vote is unconstitutional," Johnson told NBC News’ Sahil Kapur. "That’s been my belief as a constitutional law litigator, and I don’t see any way around that. And it’s unfortunate. I have great sympathy, empathy for all of our young women legislators who are of birthing age. It’s a real quandary. But I’m afraid it doesn’t fit with the language of the Constitution, and that’s the inescapable truth that we have.”
But this is nonsense, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) wrote in a blistering thread on X, calling out Johnson for his hypocrisy — as he has voted by proxy dozens of times himself.
“He thinks it’s so unconstitutional that he did it — not once or twice — but nearly 40 times?” wrote McGovern. “First, some history. In the middle of COVID, I led efforts to allow Members of Congress who couldn’t physically attend due to the public health emergency to vote remotely so that their constituents would still be represented. It worked. Speaker Johnson is right that he joined a lawsuit claiming voting by proxy was unconstitutional, but that’s not the whole story.”
“First, he LOST! The district court dismissed the lawsuit. The Appeals Court agreed. The Supreme Court wouldn’t hear it. His view lost. Full stop,” wrote McGovern. “Second, he actually REMOVED HIS NAME from the lawsuit! You can’t make this stuff up. He and almost every other House Republican disowned their own lawsuit when it was on appeal. They walked away from it!” And the reason, he wrote, is because Johnson and the other Republicans wanted to vote by proxy themselves.
“He was okay using proxy voting to give himself an early start on August recess while still casting his vote against a commonsense bill to ban assault weapons from our street,” wrote McGovern. “He was okay using proxy voting to catch an early flight home while still casting his vote against a bill to reduce violence in our streets. And no, he wasn’t ill — he spoke at a high school the next day. He was even okay using proxy voting to leave town early while still casting his vote against marriage equality. In fact, Speaker Johnson thought it was alright to use proxy voting for the entire last week of the 117th Congress, including to cast his vote against funding the government.”
Indeed, McGovern noted that plenty of Republicans have called out Johnson’s obstinacy on this issue, with pro-Trump Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) slamming the refusal to allow pregnant women to vote by proxy as “anti-family” and “a slap in the face to the hundreds of thousands of voters who send members to represent them in D.C.”
“So @SpeakerJohnson: If you truly believe proxy voting is unconstitutional, then why did you do it?” McGovern concluded. “Which do you not take seriously — your belief that proxy voting is unconstitutional? Or your oath to uphold the Constitution?”
