The House Freedom Caucus has lost yet another member, and she's not exiting quietly. On Monday, GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida submitted a letter to the conservative hard-liner group explaining she was resigning "with a heavy heart," after she says her respect for them was "shattered" last week, reports the Hill. Luna claims some of her right-wing colleagues in the caucus didn't like her "modest, family-centered proposal" to allow new parents in the House to vote by proxy, and so they "threatened" House Speaker Mike Johnson to block her petition to hold that vote, warning they'd stymie floor proceedings "indefinitely" otherwise.
"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. She added that "the Constitution entrusts us with a sacred duty to serve, not to manipulate rules for power or to silence dissent. When we abandon that duty, we erode the very foundation we claim to defend."
Axios reports that the 35-year-old congresswoman is the fourth Freedom Caucus member to either be booted or leave the group of their own volition over the past two years. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene defected in 2023 after lending her support to then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, while the caucus kicked out Ohio Rep. Warren Davidson last summer after he endorsed a primary challenger to Bob Good, at that time the caucus' chair; Texas Rep. Troy Nehls resigned from the caucus to protest Davidson's dismissal. The discharge petition Luna launched last month would force a vote on her proposal if 218 House members signed off on it. However, Johnson "is reportedly attempting to add a provision to a broader Republican procedural measure that would effectively kill her vote," Axios notes. (More House Freedom Caucus stories.)
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