Having spent the morning watching a certain felon take the oath of office, and then deliver a speech only slightly connected to reality (e.g., border crossings are actually at record lows, crime in big cities is way down and presidents don’t get to decide on what to name various geographic features — what, he’s going to order Rand-McNally to start calling it the Gulf of America?), and to have listened to his inclusion a specific statement God saved him from the assassin’s bullet because God believes only Donald Trump can save the world, I’m rather used up.

I’m sure my kindly editor would want me to go on and on about the inauguration, but I don’t think I will (Editor: whew!)

Rather, I’d like to bring your attention to a recent story in Colorado Politics which involves what I think would be about the most American thing there is: motherhood.

The GOP, and specifically House Speaker Mike Johnson, decided against working mothers, so to speak. As it turns out, Colorado U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen, who represents Colorado’s 7th District (the old Ed Perlmutter district) won reelection (huzzah!) while also beginning the process of increasing the district’s population by one. She’s pregnant. You know, that all-American thing called motherhood?

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Now Rep. Pettersen is a devoted public servant, but facts are facts, and when you reach a certain point in a pregnancy, your doctor won’t let you fly anymore. Well, that’s where Pettersen is now, and where she was on Jan. 13, when she was raring to go, albeit remotely. She asked the House to allow for remote attendance and then proxy voting, until she gave birth and was able to return to the floor of the House full time.

Guess what Speaker Johnson said?

Well, he said no, and he refused to accommodate the person who will become the 14th House member to give birth while in office. Johnson, for reasons I don’t understand, refused, and then he ran up against what might be the very first serious test of his leadership.

Remember, he has a tiny majority of Republicans in the House, and he really can’t afford to lose even a single vote. So, imagine his surprise when it turns out no fewer than 16 House members — eight from each party — signed on to letter urging Johnson to make the change to House rules he previously rejected, and to let remote attendance and proxy voting happen for the brief period lawmakers are home with newborns.

Now, if the opposition came only from Democrats, Johnson might well stand his ground to show how tough he is. But as noted above, half the sponsors are GOPers. You will recall from the mess the last GOP speaker selection turned out to be only a tiny number of GOP representatives could make a formal motion to kick the speaker out of the speaker’s chair. Wannabe Speaker Kevin McCarthy had to accept a rule wherein a single Republican House member could move to “vacate the chair,” as they call the process of kicking out a speaker. Johnson is no fool, and as part of his agreement to take over the mess that was and still is the GOP majority in the House, he demanded the number of representatives required to make a motion to vacate the chair be raised, to nine.

Now, let’s do the math here…

Johnson can afford to lose eight GOP votes. The total number of Republicans currently signed on to the “let them work from home” rule is eight. Hmmmm.

So in his very first couple of weeks, Johnson chose to pick a fight with a coalition of pregnant women and those that support them, and he already has more votes against him than he can survive, should the vacate-the-chair question be raised.

I’m betting before too long, Johnson will magnanimously decide that, heck, people who are nine months pregnant can attend hearings remotely and can engage in proxy voting. Or he will slow roll.

As Rep. Petersen herself put it, “Our government works best when the life experiences of the American people are represented, enabling new parents to vote by proxy while they spend time recovering and taking care of their newborn baby is an important step in modernizing Congress and addressing one of the significant barriers young parents face to serving.”  

It’s a bold stand to stand up against working mothers, and I suspect Speaker Johnson will quickly cave, or perhaps he might try to stall until after Petersen has her baby. Either way, it’s quite a first challenge for a speaker, and he’s not handling it particularly well. Heck, Republicans are even going on the record to support Petersen (and therein, to oppose their own speaker).

Johnson, at least for now, is sticking to his, well, I guess, principles, and recently said he “empathized” with women of (get this) “birthing age,” but said since the U.S. Constitution didn’t say proxy voting was OK, he was a hard no. You may recall from earlier columns of mine quite a few things are not in the Constitution, to include my beloved Air Force since the Constitution only calls for an Army and a Navy (Article I, Section 8). For some reason, supersonic fighter aircraft were not considered by our Founders, to say nothing of Mr. Trump’s Space Force. So the “it’s not in the Constitution” argument is pretty weak.

It will be interesting to see if the party that now claims to be the party of regular folks, of basic rights and of compassion, continues to refuse a pregnant woman her seat at the table. Like so much of what they do, I suspect they will stall until it isn’t an issue anymore.

Nonetheless, shame on them. I’m rather pro-family myself. When my late first wife was giving birth, my Air Force commanders had no problem giving me the time off, and a bit of work from home, until such accommodations were no longer needed. It’s a shame to see the GOP House doesn’t have that same level of compassion. Will they flip and cave to pressure?

Stay tuned…

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.