Brittany Pettersen’s message to Congress: “Don’t f— with moms.”

That’s what the Colorado congresswoman told reporters after she held her nine-week-old son, Sam, while making an emotional plea on the House floor Tuesday. Pettersen, who represents the state’s 7th Congressional District—the western Denver metro area—defended her proposal that would allow any new parent serving in Congress to vote by proxy, instead of in person, while caring for an infant.

Baby Sam, wearing gray footie pajamas with a star print, cooed and fussed in Pettersen’s arms as she spoke about the challenges of caring for an infant while serving as a member of Congress. “After giving birth, I was faced with an impossible decision,” Pettersen said in her speech, videos of which have been making the rounds on Wednesday.

She wanted to travel to Washington, D.C., to vote in Congress, but that meant picking between two bad choices, Pettersen told her colleagues: either leaving her then-four-week-old baby at home—not a viable option as a breastfeeding mother—or traveling with him and exposing his nascent immune system to germs. She decided to bring her baby to Washington so that she could vote, but it wasn’t easy, Pettersen said. “It is unfathomable that, in 2025, we have not modernized Congress to address these life events that members face,” she said in her speech as she bounced Sam, a burp cloth draped over her shoulder to protect her blazer from spit-up. “No mom or dad should be in the position I was in.”

Read more: Meet Brittany Pettersen, One of Colorado’s Newest Representatives

With her emotional speech, Pettersen scored a win for Democrats. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, had tried to derail her proposal, calling proxy voting unconstitutional—but after Pettersen spoke, nine Republicans broke ranks and joined every Democrat in voting down Johnson’s attempt to block the plan, 206-222.

While the number of women (and mothers) in elected office has increased in recent years, the demographics of Congress are still not close to reflecting those of the nation as a whole. Just 26 percent of current U.S. senators, and 29 percent of representatives, are women, according to the Center for American Women and Politics. Those with young children are even rarer: Less than 7 percent of Congress members in 2023 had minor children.

In an increasingly rare instance of bipartisanship in Congress, Pettersen joined with Florida Republican (and fellow working mom) Anna Paulina Luna to introduce the measure. If it passes, new parents—both moms and dads—in Congress would be permitted to vote with a proxy (an in-person representative designated to cast their vote) for the first twelve weeks of a new baby’s life. After Speaker Johnson tried to use a rare parliamentary maneuver to block his colleagues from voting on the measure, Pettersen gave her speech—and her colleagues squashed Johnson’s bid to derail the petition. The New York Times called it “an embarrassing defeat that paralyzed the chamber and signaled that the proposal could soon be adopted.”

Last month, Johnson told reporters in a press conference that he thinks the proposal is unconstitutional and creates a slippery-slope situation that could lead to remote voting in other instances. “I believe it violates more than two centuries of tradition and institution,” he said. “And I think that it opens a Pandora’s box,” Johnson continued, suggesting that lawmakers with disabilities, illnesses, or other special circumstances could request voting by proxy next.

Some conservatives who oppose voting by proxy connect it to the broader push to return to the office and reduce remote work—a priority of the Trump administration. Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina, told reporters she would never vote by proxy. “I know there’s a new laptop class in America that seems to operate increasingly in a virtual space, but that’s simply not a fact of life for most American workers, and I believe Congress should live by that standard,” Foxx said.

The next steps for the measure are murky. Pettersen’s proposal for voting by proxy must now be taken up for a vote within two legislative business days, but to skirt that requirement—and perhaps to give those nine dissenting Republicans time to change their minds—Speaker Johnson sent members home and canceled votes for the rest of the week. It’s not clear what will happen next.

Pettersen has long advocated for working parents. While serving as a state senator, she helped pass Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, which seeks to close the gender pay gap, and she advocated for the Reproductive Health Equity Act, which protects Coloradans’ right to an abortion. Pettersen also supported efforts to aid Coloradans struggling with substance abuse—an issue that is close to her heart, she told 5280’s Robert Sanchez in 2017, because her mother has struggled with heroin dependency.

Read more: “Sometimes You Have to Build a Wall Around Your Heart”

In 2023, shortly after her election to Congress, Pettersen spoke with 5280 again, telling Shane Monaghan that her plan for D.C. was to keep supporting the progressive causes that she’d already championed on the state level. “Unfortunately, [most of] the Republicans in the Senate are way out of step with the American public,” she said. “What I hope to do is what we’ve done in Colorado.”