Politics
In Congress, a Push for Proxy Voting for New Parents Draws Bipartisan Support
Representative Brittany Pettersen, a second-term Colorado Democrat, was not planning to have a second child at the age of 43.
“As if our life wasn’t complicated enough!” she said with a laugh as she arranged herself on a couch in her office on Capitol Hill earlier this week, staring down at her pregnant belly just weeks from her due date. She blamed the “mistake” on the confusion of working in two time zones. “It can make things hard with consistent birth control,” she said. “It was not part of the plan.”
Congress has existed for 236 years, but somehow Ms. Pettersen is about to become only the 13th voting member to give birth while in office, and the first from her home state. As Ms. Pettersen tries to plan the next phase of her life, the reality is setting in that this job was not created with someone like her in mind.
There is no maternity leave for members of Congress. While they can take time away from the office without sacrificing their pay, they cannot vote if they are not present at the Capitol. So Ms. Pettersen has taken a lead role in a new push by a bipartisan group of younger lawmakers and new parents in Congress to change the rules to allow them to vote remotely while they take up to 12 weeks of parental leave.
“This job is not made for young women, for working families, and it’s definitely not made for regular people,” said Ms. Pettersen. “It’s historically been wealthy individuals who are not of childbearing age who do this work.”
Before boarding her plane on Thursday to return to Lakewood, Colo., where she planned to remain until after she gives birth, Ms. Pettersen introduced the “Proxy Voting for New Parents Resolution.” It would change House rules to allow new mothers and fathers in Congress to stay away from Washington immediately after the birth of a child and designate a colleague to cast votes on their behalf.
“I feel really torn,” Ms. Pettersen said, “because I’m going to choose to be home to make sure that my newborn is taken care of, but I feel that it’s unfair that I’m unable to have my constituents represented at that time.”
The resolution, she said, “is common sense. It’s about modernizing Congress.”
The idea has been percolating on Capitol Hill for some time, but has become all the more pressing for the new Congress, its proponents argue, because the House is now so closely divided, with Republicans holding the majority by just one vote.
Republicans savaged former Speaker Nancy Pelosi for breaking with centuries of history and House rules by instituting proxy voting during the coronavirus pandemic. Former Representative Kevin McCarthy, as the minority leader, filed a lawsuit arguing that allowing a member of Congress to deputize a colleague to cast a vote on their behalf when they were not present was unconstitutional.
House Republicans also argued that allowing proxy voting would have a negative effect on member “collegiality.” Ms. Luna’s resolution never came to the floor for a vote.
Now, the bipartisan group is trying again. Ms. Pettersen’s resolution was one of the first introduced in the opening days of the 119th Congress. It is slightly broader than Ms. Luna’s original proposal, written to include proxy voting for new fathers.
“I’m not in favor of proxy voting; I think it should be very rare,” said Representative Mike Lawler, a New York Republican who welcomed his second child eight days before the election. “But I don’t think any member should be precluded from doing the job they were elected to do simply because they become a parent.”
Mr. Lawler, a leader of the new effort whose baby is 2 months old, cannot afford to be away from the Capitol while his party holds a one-seat majority.
“I understand the impact when you are given a choice between being home or coming and doing your job,” he said. “It’s not a great choice.”
Mr. Lawler dismissed concerns from House leaders about creating a bad precedent, saying the existing protocols no longer fit the Congress of the modern era.
“You have younger people getting elected to public office at a much higher rate than when these rules were established,” he said. “If we talk about being pro-family, you have to at least recognize that giving birth to a child or becoming a parent should not be an impediment to doing your job.”
Ms. Pettersen said she had considered having her baby in Washington so she could continue voting, but ultimately decided against it.
“It’s unfair to my family and unfair to my newborn if we’re not at home where all of our support and my doctor and support system is,” she said.
Ms. Pettersen is still relatively new to Washington and to motherhood — her son is still in prekindergarten — but the disconnect between her situation and the job of an elected official has been painfully obvious to her ever since she was pregnant with her first child and serving in the Colorado legislature.
Back then, she was the first member of that body ever to go on maternity leave. The only way to get paid while on leave was to categorize her situation as a “chronic illness.”
When she returned, Ms. Petterson successfully pressed to change the law to ensure that future state lawmakers would be given up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave.
Even before she walked the halls of Congress as the rare pregnant member, Ms. Pettersen said she felt like an odd fit for the Capitol.
When she was 6 years old, her mother was prescribed opioids after hurting her back and became addicted to heroine and then fentanyl. She overdosed more than 20 times. Growing up, Ms. Pettersen said, nobody even kept track of whether or not she came home at night.
“I saw Phish shows when I was 12 years old in Kansas and other places,” she said. “Still got straight A’s, though.”
(Her mother recently celebrated her 70th birthday and seven years in recovery.)
Because her parents were behind on taxes, she didn’t qualify for student loans, so Ms. Pettersen paid her way through school in cash, waiting tables, cleaning houses and working various odd jobs. She was the first person in her family to graduate from high school or college.
Beating the odds has made Ms. Pettersen even more determined to try to change her current workplace to make it feasible for more people like her.
“Being pregnant and being a member of Congress, people ask, ‘How are you doing this with your family?’ — all these questions I know my male colleagues don’t get,” she said. “It’s such a double standard.”
By Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Gilad Thaler, Jon Miller, Stephanie Swart, Rafaela Balster, Whitney Shefte and Nikolay Nikolov
May 29, 2026
Politics
Federal judge orders Trump’s name removed from Kennedy Center, says only Congress can rename it
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A federal judge on Friday ordered that President Donald Trump’s name be removed from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, an Obama appointee, said the iconic venue cannot be renamed without an act of Congress, ruling that the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees overstepped its “statutory bounds by unilaterally renaming” the building.
As part of his ruling, the Trump administration will be required to take down all physical signage bearing Trump’s name and eliminate any references to a “Trump-Kennedy Center” from official materials.
TRUMP KENNEDY CENTER’S BOARD VOTES UNANIMOUSLY TO APPROVE $257M RENOVATIONS AND TWO-YEAR CLOSURE
A sign is displayed on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts building. (Getty Images)
“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” Cooper wrote. “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”
Roma Daravi, the Trump Kennedy Center vice president of public relations, said the board plans to appeal the decision.
“We will review the decision carefully though the reality remains — the Center requires an urgent and significant restoration – a truth that even the plaintiff acknowledges,” Daravi said. “With $257 million secured by President Trump and approved by Congress, the resources are in place and we remain committed to pursuing every lawful avenue to ensure the Trump Kennedy Center is restored as a national cultural landmark for all Americans to enjoy.”
The ruling was part of a lawsuit filed by U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
BOARD VOTES KENNEDY CENTER TO BE RENAMED ‘TRUMP-KENNEDY CENTER,’ LEAVITT SAYS
President Donald Trump stands in the presidential box during a tour of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., on March 17, 2025. On Friday, a federal judge ruled that Trump’s name must be removed from he iconic venue. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
Cooper previously denied a request for a preliminary injunction filed by a preservation group to block the planned two-year closure of the Kennedy Center for a rehabilitation project.
Trump secured $257 million from Congress as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to address disrepair and deferred maintenance of the Kennedy Center, which critics say has been neglected and mismanaged before Trump intervened.
The funds appropriated by Congress are spent on maintenance, repairs, security, and capital projects related to the building and site.
Beatty, who serves as an ex officio member of the board, praised Friday’s ruling.
“Today’s ruling rightly affirms that this administration’s efforts to rename and close the Center have no basis in law,” Beatty said in a statement provided to Fox News Digital. “The Kennedy Center is an institution that belongs to the American people, not to Donald Trump. He has desecrated this sacred memorial for his own vanity. I am proud to have fought for the rule of law and to protect this sacred institution.”
Workers install Donald J. Trump signage above the existing Kennedy Center sign in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 19, 2025. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
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Trump’s name was added to the venue last December following a unanimous decision by the board. In February 2025, Trump was elected chairman of the Kennedy Center board after removing 18 trustees appointed by former President Joe Biden.
WASHINGTON — A framework agreement to end the U.S. war with Iran is all but settled, pending sign-off from the presidents of the two warring sides, President Trump said Friday, projecting optimism that a deal could finally be at hand.
Yet doubt cast a shadow over the diplomatic process entering the weekend as Trump faced a politically fraught decision to enter an agreement that would invariably require significant concessions to Tehran.
The negotiations have faced severe headwinds in recent days, with both sides accusing the other of violating a fragile ceasefire that has largely stopped the fighting since April.
On his Truth Social site, Trump said he had summoned his top aides to the White House Situation Room to decide on the deal.
The agreement would see an end to the U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports and the removal of Iranian mines from the Strait of Hormuz, an international waterway through which 20% of the world’s energy supply passes each day. The strait, Trump wrote, will reopen with “no tolls” for “unrestricted shipping traffic, in both directions.”
And “Iran must agree that they will never have a Nuclear Weapon or Bomb,” Trump wrote, noting that Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, the key ingredient for nuclear weapons, “will be unearthed by the United States (which, it is agreed, is the only Country, along with China, with the mechanical capability of doing so!), in close coordination and conjunction with the Islamic Republic of Iran, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, and DESTROYED.”
“No money will be exchanged, until further notice,” he added.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also said the deal would require Iran to disavow the continuation of its domestic nuclear program — a diplomatic feat never before achieved throughout a quarter-century of international negotiations over Iran’s nuclear work.
It is unclear whether Tehran would go that far. And Iran’s negotiators expressed defiance on Friday, stating that there was “no trust in guarantees or words” from the American side.
“No step will be taken before the other side acts first,” said Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament. “We do not gain concessions through dialogue, but through missiles.”
It remains unclear when the Trump administration would ease sanctions on Iran, how extensive that relief would be, or what form it would take — questions that fueled Republican criticism of the Obama-era nuclear deal more than a decade ago.
The working diplomatic document would formally extend the existing ceasefire for 60 days, allowing for a more detailed negotiation to take place over Iran’s nuclear program. But the truce as it currently stands is on perilous ground. Iran launched a ballistic missile on Thursday at Kuwait, a close U.S. ally, after American forces took “defensive” actions against Iranian missile launchers and mine-laying boats it had launched in the strait.
The war has proved historically unpopular with the American public, and has seen oil prices soar since the U.S. military, in partnership with Israel, launched its first strikes against Iran in February.
Bessent said he is hopeful that oil prices would drop quickly once an agreement is signed. But industry analysts say the effects of the war on the oil market could last for months, if not years, with the stability of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz now in question for commercial shippers.
While oil has dropped to under $100 a barrel, markets appeared skittish on Friday over the prospects for a deal, with mixed messages appearing to emerge out of the region.
It is also unclear whether a U.S. agreement with Iran would in any way bind Israel’s hands in its military operations, either in Iran or in Lebanon, where an Iranian proxy militia, Hezbollah, has vowed to keep up the fight.
Israel has ramped up strikes against Hezbollah targets in recent days, jeopardizing a delicate ceasefire negotiated with the Lebanese government, a deal encouraged by the Trump administration in order to grease the wheels for its talks with Tehran.
Trump has been uncharacteristically silent on the prospects of an agreement in recent days, expressing cautious optimism in limited exchanges with reporters.
“It’s hard to say exactly when or if the president’s going to sign,” Vice President JD Vance, who has led the U.S. diplomatic team, told reporters, noting that “the nuclear stuff” is still subject to negotiation. “We’re going back and forth on a couple of language points.”
“I do think that we’ve made a lot of progress here,” Vance added. “Hopefully we’ll continue to make progress, and the president will be in a position where he can endorse the agreement. But obviously, that’s still TBD.”
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