WASHINGTON ― In a bitter intraparty spat, House Republicans on Tuesday morning used a sneaky procedural maneuver to try to kill a bipartisan effort led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) to let new moms in Congress vote by proxy.

The House Rules Committee teed up the rules for debating a bill later in the day, the SAVE ACT, and snuck language into those rules to derail Luna’s proposal. The two bills aren’t even related; the SAVE Act is a voter suppression bill, while Luna’s legislation would give lawmakers the option of voting by proxy for up to 12 weeks if they are new parents. It’s aimed at new moms but gives new dads in Congress the option to do so, too.

Luna, a far-right lawmaker and loyal ally of President Donald Trump, previously pushed for her bill to get a committee hearing, but was rebuffed by party leaders. So she tried a different tactic: collecting 218 signatures from Republicans and Democrats and then filing a discharge petition, forcing a bill directly onto the House floor and requiring a straight up-or-down vote.

Discharge petitions are rare and almost never work. But in this case, Luna found the support for hers and cleared its path to a floor vote. She teamed up with two other congresswomen, Reps. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) and Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.), to lead on the bill. Both Pettersen and Luna recently gave birth while serving in the House.

“I can tell you we have a long ways to go to make this place accessible for young families like mine,” Pettersen said on the House floor Tuesday, while bobbling her 9-week-old baby, Sam. “I couldn’t fly towards the end of my due date because it was unsafe for Sam.”

But Luna’s colleagues in the far-right House Freedom Caucus strongly oppose her efforts and have vowed to halt all business on the House floor indefinitely to stop her discharge petition. They argued that no lawmakers should be allowed to vote by proxy, even as some did repeatedly during the COVID pandemic.

Luna responded by abruptly quitting the caucus on Monday.

“I have consistently supported each of you, even in moments of disagreement, honoring the mutual respect that has guided our caucus,” she said in a letter to her Republican colleagues. “That respect, however, was shattered last week.”

Here’s a copy of her letter:

The Florida Republican called it “a betrayal of trust” that some Freedom Caucus members pushed for tying her discharge petition to the SAVE Act, a bill that the GOP ― and Trump ― really want to pass. Because of the way the Rules Committee set up the rule for the SAVE Act, a vote to move forward with that bill is also a vote to kill Luna’s discharge petition.

In fact, it’s a vote to kill any future discharge petitions like the one Luna is proposing.

“This was a modest, family-centered proposal,” she said in her letter. “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.”

In a separate letter to all colleagues, Luna said Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has been “blackmailed” by Freedom Caucus members to kill her bill.

During their hours-long hearing on Monday, which restarted again early Tuesday, Democrats in the Rules Committee criticized Republicans for their “unprecedented” efforts to break rules to kill Luna’s discharge petition, something she followed the rules to build support for.

“A majority of this House supports the Luna-Pettersen bill to allow new parents to vote remotely because it is common sense ― and because this is 2025, not 1925,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the panel. “You guys are falling all over yourselves to block mothers with newborn babies from voting remotely.”

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a member of the Freedom Caucus who also serves on the Rules panel, argued that the House should never let anyone vote by proxy.

“When you change the rules to allow proxy voting, then you change the institution,” Roy said.

“It’s really hard to sit here and listen to all that,” McGovern replied. “We’re not talking about blanket proxy voting. We’re talking about proxy voting for new parents.”

For good measure, the Massachusetts Democrat called out GOP members of the committee who voted by proxy during the COVID pandemic: Reps. Michelle Fischbach (Minn.), Ralph Norman (S.C.) and Austin Scott (Ga.).

When Norman scoffed across the table, McGovern said, “Well, you did. Now you want to vote to deny new parents the ability to do that.”

“I’m not gonna sit here and let y’all lecture on hypocrisy,” Norman grumbled. “I’m not going to sit here and let you lecture on abandoning mothers.”

The South Carolina Republican started to say he only voted by proxy “less than 5% of the votes” during the pandemic, but McGovern jumped in, with receipts: “Sixty-three times.”

“I will gladly accept that,” continued Norman. “But proxy voting is wrong.”

Curiously, Johnson has been silent amid all of this. During a Tuesday press conference, he said nothing about the ugly intraparty dust-up, even as the SAVE Act is now heading to the House floor for debate along with its rule tied to Luna’s discharge petition.

Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), who chairs the Republican Policy Committee and speaks on behalf of party leaders, is one of the 218 Republicans who signed onto Luna’s petition. He told HuffPost that he now regrets signing onto it.

“When I signed on the petition, I think I had a different idea of what it was going to be,” said McCormick. “I should have looked a little bit more into detail and see how that was used.”

He said there were “a lot of feelings” about Luna’s petition in Republicans’ Tuesday morning conference meeting. The problem with it, he said, is that it opens “Pandora’s box” in terms of what other exceptions might be made to allow lawmakers to vote by proxy.

“What about end of life? What if your spouse is sick? What if, you know, where does it end?” McCormick wondered. “So, I think it’s something I’ve reconsidered.”

Jacobs, one of the Democrats leading on Luna’s petition, told HuffPost she thinks it has the votes to overcome the House vote to kill it. She said Luna also just formally filed her motion Tuesday morning to discharge her bill, meaning the House now has two legislative days to take up her bill and vote on it.

Luna’s move, just ahead of the House’s plans to begin debate on the SAVE Act rule that would kill her bill, marks quite a ratcheting up of GOP warring.

“We feel good” about the fate of Luna’s bill, Jacobs said.

Regardless of whether the discharge petition survives the rule vote, Democrats said the GOP looks like big hypocrites for putting up such a fight to stop a popular and bipartisan effort to accommodate new moms in Congress.

“Republicans should stop lecturing people on being pro-family when they’re opposing this uniformly,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, told reporters. “It’s clear that Speaker Johnson is doing everything he can to undermine the will of the House.”