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The U.S. Capitol pictured on March 25, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
This story was originally reported by Grace Panetta of The 19th. Meet Grace and read more of her reporting on gender, politics and policy.
The divisions in American politics are usually obvious, often nowhere more than in the House of Representatives. But there are also glimmers of bipartisanship, and, lately, many of those have been driven by women.
At the start of this year, Reps. Brittany Pettersen, a Democrat, and Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican, united forces to challenge House leadership with a push to make the House friendlier for new mothers. In the past few weeks, three of the most outspoken House Republican women broke ranks with their party — and bucked President Donald Trump — in an effort to release more files related to the case of the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
And this week, a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Republican Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida and Democratic Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California came together on a House resolution calling for expanded early screening for Antiphospholipid Syndrome (APS), a blood-clotting disorder that can cause miscarriages and stillbirths in pregnant people.
They credited their cooperation to singer Christina Perri, who learned she had APS after losing her daughter Rosie late in pregnancy in 2020. Perri is now channeling her grief into advocacy. She said in an interview that it was “a privilege” to see lawmakers like Kamlager-Dove and Cammack putting their party affiliations to the side and uniting on an issue so important to her.
“What matters is that we’re women, we’re moms, we just want other women and moms to be okay,” she said. “And I find that really inspiring at a time where everything is just so messy, and I feel grateful to be a part of something like this.”
Women make up half of the U.S. population but hold just 28 percent of seats in Congress. Research has not backed up the notion that women lawmakers are, overall, more bipartisan than men at the federal level. But select instances so far in this Congress show how unlikely coalitions of women lawmakers have united across party lines, challenged party leadership or both.
A major news conference at the Capitol with Epstein survivors last week yielded what four years ago would have been an all but unthinkable scene: Rep. Ro Khanna of California, a progressive Democrat, defending and embracing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a conservative firebrand and staunch Trump ally.
“She has shown so much courage on this issue, so much leadership,” Khanna said of Greene, who was met with an uneven reception by the crowd. “I saw some people, when I was coming here, calling her names. We’ve got to stop that. We’ve got to stop the partisanship on this issue.”
Khanna and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky are attempting to force a House floor vote on the Epstein files resolution with a procedural measure known as a discharge petition, which enables members to circumvent House leadership to get a measure to the floor. Every sitting House Democrat and just three Republicans other than Massie — Greene, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina — have signed the discharge petition, leaving it just one signature short of the 218 required to force a vote.
Never underestimate a woman. We all came here to do work. We all made promises, and some of us live up to them.
All three women have maintained their support for the measure despite fierce opposition from Trump and the White House. At the news conference, Massie called Greene “the bravest woman in Congress.” He also posed the question: “Where are the men?”
“Never underestimate a woman,” Boebert said at the Capitol on Tuesday. “We all came here to do work. We all made promises, and some of us live up to them.”
Shared experiences around pregnancy, childbirth and parenthood have united some House members to work across the aisle.
“I think I can say very candidly now, as a new mom, moms just know how to multitask and learn how to get things done,” said Cammack, who welcomed her daughter Auggie last month. “And that might be why you see more bipartisan efforts coming out of the women, even though we represent a minority in Congress.”
At Tuesday’s news conference, Kamlager-Dove, Cammack and Democratic Rep. Greg Landsman of Ohio all spoke about their experiences with pregnancy losses while building their families.
“What unites us is far deeper than what may appear on the surface,” Kamlager-Dove said. “Many of us share journeys to parenthood that are marked by hope, loss and eventually, resilience.”
Luna, the Florida Republican, and Pettersen, the Colorado Democrat, are also among the handful of House members to give birth while in office — and both missed votes after giving birth. They teamed up on a measure to allow new parents in the House to temporarily designate another member to vote for them, also known as proxy voting. House Speaker Mike Johnson vigorously opposed the effort, leading the duo to turn to a discharge petition. They succeeded in getting 218 votes on their discharge petition and overcame Johnson’s effort to quash the measure on the floor, temporarily grinding House business to a halt. Luna later struck a deal with Johnson, standing down on the proxy voting push in exchange for other concessions (Pettersen and other Democrats criticized the deal as insufficient).
Now, Luna is a member of another bipartisan coalition, this one backing a proposed ban on stock trading for members of Congress. Another member of the group, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a progressive Democrat, said at a September 3 news conference that, unlike in other legislative negotiations, lawmakers turned around a better product than the one they started with.
“It is one of those rare moments where I feel like Washington is working the way it’s supposed to work,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “And it feels foreign. And it feels alien … but I also think it is proof that things can work here.”
Women lawmakers “are better communicators,” Luna told The 19th while leaving House votes on Tuesday. At the September 3 stock trading ban news conference, she indicated she’s prepared to challenge House leadership again if necessary.
“I often feel like an adjudicator in this job,” she said. “And so I guess I’ll be the one to say that we’ve asked nicely for leadership to put this on the floor. If they don’t, I say timeline is end of month: There’s a discharge petition that is ready to go.”
It is one of those rare moments where I feel like Washington is working the way it’s supposed to work.
The most consequential legislation passed by Congress this year has been muscled through without Democratic support, and there have been plenty of moments of acrimony on the floor.
Much of it has been clearly gendered: On Wednesday, as the House considered its annual defense spending bill, Mace erupted at Rep. Sara Jacobs, a California Democrat, during debate over Mace’s proposed anti-transgender amendments to the legislation. Rep. Sarah McBride, a Delaware Democrat who this year became the first openly transgender lawmaker to serve in Congress, has faced repeated attacks and misgendering from some of her Republican colleagues.
High-profile but not expressly political public figures have, in many cases, been the catalysts for bipartisan congressional action.
Years of tireless lobbying by Paris Hilton led to Congress passing a bipartisan bill aimed at preventing child abuse and neglect in youth residential facilities last December. Engineer, author and science TV host Emily Calandrelli’s personal story of being hassled by TSA as a new parent led to the Senate and a House committee passing bipartisan legislation making it easier for parents to travel with breast milk and breastfeeding equipment through airport security. The legislation has not received a vote on the House floor.
And Epstein’s survivors, Khanna said, are “helping us come together as a country.”
“I’ve never done a press conference with Marjorie Taylor Greene before,” he joked at the September 3 news conference.
Both Cammack and Kamlager-Dove credited Perri with using her platform to raise awareness about APS — and bringing them together on a mission to promote the adoption of what they said is a simple test that could spare so many the heartache of pregnancy loss.
“We bonded over a common story of having a miscarriage and wanting answers to questions that were not easy to come by,” Kamlager-Dove said.
“Without her advocacy, without her courage to come forward, this wouldn’t be happening, and so she has been the driver in really bringing us together to make this a reality,” Cammack said.
Cammack said she’s “very confident” about the resolution on APS testing moving forward and getting a vote on the House floor. Perri said the measure’s passing would be “a win for everybody,” and a victory “that feels kind of rare right now.”
“My hope and goal is to have this changed forever, for women to not need to even know about it,” she said. “But until then, I will always speak about it, and I will help move the needle forward.”
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