Cammack Welcomes Baby Girl Amid Debate Over Parental Leave In Congress

Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) on Monday announced the birth of a baby girl, becoming the 15th congresswoman in U.S. history to give birth while serving in office.

Cammack said her daughter, Augusta Dair, was born Aug. 14 “after a very long & tough labor.”

“Baby is doing great and already showing us her sweet and sassy personality while Mom is speedily recovering,” she wrote on X, sharing a photo of her newborn, The Hill reported.

The Florida Republican thanked her husband and her medical team for helping her through what she described as a difficult experience.

“We would like to thank the most incredible team of doctors and nurses that saw us through a very tough and emotional six days. Never could we have asked for a better team to take care of our family,” she said.

Cammack joins a small but growing group of lawmakers who have delivered children while serving in Congress. She is the 15th to do so and the fourth in the past two years.

Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.) welcomed her son in January 2025. Former Puerto Rico resident commissioner Jenniffer González-Colón (R), who served as the island’s nonvoting delegate, gave birth to twins in February 2024. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) delivered her son in August 2023.

The recent string of births has fueled renewed calls for changes to House voting rules to better accommodate new parents. Earlier this year, Luna partnered with Pettersen in a bipartisan push to allow proxy voting for lawmakers on parental leave.

Luna executed a discharge petition on Pettersen’s resolution but ultimately did not force a vote, instead striking a deal with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to formalize a procedure known as “vote pairing.”

Under the arrangement, an absent lawmaker — such as a new mother — coordinates with another member who intends to vote the opposite way. That member then abstains, effectively canceling out the absence. For the Congressional Record, the present lawmaker states how both members would have voted.

The compromise ensures new parents can have their votes reflected even when they are unable to be present on the House floor.

But the effort also caused significant tension inside the Republican Party. In April, Luna announced she was resigning from the conservative House Freedom Caucus over the dispute, CBS News reported.

“With a heavy heart, I am resigning from the Freedom Caucus,” she wrote in a letter to her colleagues, later obtained by CBS News.

Luna’s discharge petition — a maneuver that allows members to circumvent House leadership — had drawn enough support to force a vote on a measure granting new parents 12 weeks to designate a colleague to vote on their behalf after they or their spouse gave birth. The bill also allowed for earlier leave in cases of serious medical conditions or travel complications.

In her letter, Luna accused fellow Freedom Caucus members of pressuring Speaker Johnson to block her effort by threatening to shut down floor proceedings.

“This tactic was not just a betrayal of trust; it was a descent into the very behavior we have long condemned — a practice that we, as a group, have repeatedly criticized leadership for allowing,” she wrote. Luna said her respect for those colleagues had been “shattered.”

She further alleged that Republicans backing her proposal were being warned that their bills would be kept off the floor and their fundraising efforts would go unsupported by the party if they continued their support.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a Freedom Caucus member, argued during the internal debate that allowing proxy voting for new parents would open the door to widespread abuse of the practice.

The controversy underscored how the issue of parental leave — long a bipartisan concern in the private sector — has become a divisive subject within Congress itself.

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