WASHINGTON — Support for a resolution to allow recent parents to vote in the House by proxy appears to be waning, as Republicans target those in their ranks who backed the measure.

Florida GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said rank-and-file members who supported a discharge petition, which allows proponents to circumvent leadership and bring the proxy-voting measure to the floor, are facing enormous pressure to drop it.

“I’m not going to be bought,” Luna said on the House steps Thursday. She described various tactics but would not say who had wielded them. “I will tell you that I’ve now been reached out to multiple times offering me positions on different committees, and I don’t want it, because this is bigger than me. It’s about changing the institution for the better.”

Luna, who gave birth while in Congress in 2023, teamed up with Colorado Democratic Rep. Brittany Pettersen this Congress to lead the proxy-voting push. Pettersen, who had her second child on Jan. 25, introduced a resolution that would allow mothers and fathers to tap a colleague to vote in their stead for up to 12 weeks after birth.

Luna filed a discharge petition earlier this month, which quickly hit the threshold of 218 members necessary to force a vote, with a dozen Republicans joining most Democrats. Now that a waiting period has passed, the motion to discharge can be brought up on the floor at any point by Luna or others who signed the petition.

“You have a Republican male who has his wife due in May. You have another Republican that just announced yesterday that she’s pregnant. What if I get pregnant? Is it going to be a problem that we’re not here? I mean, my goodness, the oldest Congress in U.S. history, this will be better for the institution in the long term, and I think many of my colleagues agree,” Luna said.

At an event at the White House on Wednesday, Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla., announced she was pregnant but due during August recess.

“Mr. Speaker, don’t worry. Margins are fine. I’m due in August,” Cammack said.

Speaker Mike Johnson has remained steadfast in his opposition to proxy voting, which was initially allowed by the Democratic-controlled House during the pandemic. Both parties abused the practice, and Republicans filed a series of legal challenges to end it.

Johnson has called proxy voting unconstitutional, and opponents say even a narrow carve-out for recent parents could create a snowball effect. Johnson, through a spokesperson, declined to comment.

Republican leaders have tried to whip against the proxy-voting measure, which could be called to the floor as early as next week, and have also explored procedural tactics to waylay it. There was talk of an attempt to change the discharge threshold to two-thirds of House members to block the effort, though Johnson appeared to throw cold water on the idea Tuesday.

“I am not in favor of raising the discharge threshold to two-thirds because I think it’s unprecedented and I’m tired of making history around here,” Johnson told reporters. “I don’t want to do anything that would be outside the norm of the institution so much as that’s possible.”

Luna alleged that politically vulnerable members who otherwise would have supported the discharge petition were leaned on by some in the Republican Conference.

“There were frontline members that wanted to support, and they were also threatened. So you are going to threaten the majority because we are trying to advocate for us to have a voice in Washington?” Luna said. “What does that say about your leadership?”

Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett, meanwhile, said he wasn’t withdrawing his support from the proxy effort, even if unnamed people tried to entice him with offers to throw weight behind unrelated bills he had introduced.

“Somebody said, if we got those bills on the floor, would you vote against Luna?’” he said. “I was like, ‘Voting against pregnant women, are y’all crazy?’”

Other Republicans appeared less firm in their support.

Rep. Byron Donalds, a member of the Florida delegation along with Luna, said he still supported the resolution but was hesitant when asked about the provision to allow recent fathers to vote by proxy.

“I’m not the biggest fan of the fathers exception. And I’m a dad, I’ve had three kids. Been through it,” Donalds said. “But look, if it helps the women in our process, so be it.”

And Georgia Republican Rep. Rich McCormick said he’d pulled his support completely after learning more about the proposal. “I wish I wouldn’t have signed on to the discharge petition, but I did,” he said.

Asked what changed his mind, McCormick added, “I was just getting better education. … I’m a work in progress, just like everybody else.”

“There’s a lot of people out there that I probably should have talked to before I … you know, look before you jump,” he said.

Meanwhile, Democrats, who compose the lion’s share of support for the proxy-voting push, have resorted to calling out Republican leaders, as well as rank-and-file members, for their seeming hypocrisy on the issue.

Led by Jim McGovern, ranking member on the House Rules Committee, more than a dozen Democrats sent a letter Wednesday night to Johnson demanding answers on an alleged Feb. 7 incident in which Cammack may have voted on behalf of Donalds, who was in California for a taping of “Real Time with Bill Maher.”

“Democrats support efforts to modernize the House of Representatives, including in some cases facilitating secure and accurate remote voting by proxy — though perhaps not to allow Members to jet off to Hollywood to sit for interviews instead of voting,” the lawmakers wrote.

Donalds brushed off the allegations. Cammack, through a spokesperson, did not respond to a request for comment.

“I’m not responding to any letter like that. I would love to see what evidence they have,” Donalds said. “We’ve moved on long past that.”

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Paul M. Krawzak contributed to this report.

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