Tag Archive for: federal government

Trump, House GOP Chairmen Mount Unprecedented Reform Effort to Prevent Waste, Fraud in Federal Spending

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President Ronald Reagan signed a little-heralded executive order in 1981 that fulfilled his campaign promise to appoint men and women who were “meaner than a bunch of junkyard dogs” to the 33 then-newly created posts of Inspectors General (IG) to fight waste and fraud in major federal departments and independent agencies.

“We are going to follow every lead, root out every incompetent, and prosecute any crook we find who’s cheating the people of this nation,” Reagan declared. Reagan’s IGs and those who followed them in successive presidencies regularly exposed hundreds of millions of dollars in mismanagement and corrupt spending. Even so, year after year, IGs kept finding new examples of waste, fraud, and abuse. Reagan’s IG appointees included Democrat Richard Kusserow at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), who, among much else during his 11-year tenure, pioneered stopping payments to dead people by comparing Social Security benefit recipients’ lists with the government’s death records.

The problem during the Reagan era and beyond was the fact that there were only a total of 74 IGs in a federal government that literally has only the vaguest idea of how many total programs it is funding. Then, in a widely quoted 2024 report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) — the investigative arm of Congress — estimated that in the years 2018 to 2022, losses to waste, fraud, and abuse likely ranged from $233 billion to as much as $521 billion.

But the same report also cautioned that “all federal programs and operations are at risk of fraud. Therefore, agencies need robust processes in place to prevent, detect, and respond to fraud. While the government obligated almost $40 trillion from fiscal years 2018 through 2022, no reliable estimates of fraud losses affecting the federal government previously existed.”

Plus, GAO said, its “estimate does not include fraud loss associated with federal revenue or fraud against federal programs that occurs at the state, local, or tribal level unless federal authorities investigated and reported it.” And the report noted that the “federal government does not know the full extent of improper payments,” that is, those made to, for example, fictional recipients or recipients receiving larger benefit checks than exceed their eligibility.

In other words, in the nearly four decades between Reagan’s junkyard dogs and the period covered by the 2024 GAO report, Washington officials really didn’t know how many federal tax dollars were actually lost every year. Even with the new estimate, officials conceded that gaps in available data across the government produced “challenges in producing fraud estimates, such as limited available fraud-related data and use of varying terms and definitions of fraud for recording data. These data gaps and variability result in information that cannot be readily compared or consolidated to determine the extent of fraud across the federal government.”

It’s now 2026, and they still don’t know for sure, but one thing has become all but certain: Far more of the federal government’s $7 trillion in annual spending than previously estimated is lost every year to professional criminal fraudsters, undeserving and even dead benefit recipients, over-priced procurement contracts, unjustified reimbursements, and numerous other ways.

That realization is driven by the results of the unprecedented efforts starting in January 2025 of President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, and others on Capitol Hill to go after waste, fraud, and abuse on a scale never before attempted and with weapons too long ignored.

Veteran federal spending analyst Cato Institute Director of Budget and Entitlement Policy Romina Boccia summarizes the state of play.

“We’ve had episodic anti-waste crusades before, like the Grace Commission in the Reagan years, post-Katrina oversight, Great Recession stimulus failures, and COVID-relief fraud investigations. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has brought broad public attention to the possibility that weak financial controls are a government-wide problem rather than a program-specific one. What makes this moment different is that the conversation is moving beyond isolated scandals toward questioning whether the federal government actually has the systems and incentives necessary to track taxpayer dollars in real time,” Boccia told The Washington Stand.

Initially, Trump depended on billionaire Elon Musk overseeing DOGE, which, among much else, uncovered the startling fact that Department of Treasury officials could not trace an estimated $4.7 trillion in federal payments because they weren’t assigned Treasury Account Symbol (TAS) tracking codes. But Musk left the government after four months of running DOGE.

Trump subsequently turned to Vance to head the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, which quickly began to get results. In a May 26 statement, the White House press office listed the task force’s major accomplishments since February. Among those accomplishments are halting $260 million in Medicaid payments due to rampant fraud allegations, 11 individuals charged in a big real estate and loan fraud preying on seniors, hundreds of additional high-risk hospice and home health providers across California, and much else.

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Comer, Arrington, and other House anti-fraudsters are moving multiple pieces of legislation designed to eliminate gaps in the government’s anti-waste and fraud investigative tools and upgrade executive branch operations with tougher management accountability requirements.

Comer and Arrington, for example, on April 23 introduced the “Stopping Fraudulent Payments Act” and the “Pre-Payment Fraud Prevention and Treasury Data Access Act.” Both proposals were marked up and reported by the oversight panel on April 29. They were written following panel hearings earlier in the year that focused on widespread fraud in state-administered federal programs in Minnesota and California.

The former proposal “tackles the widespread ‘pay and chase’ problem by preventing federal agencies from making payments when an agency has determined there is an elevated risk of fraud or the payment is likely to be improper. The bill also gives the U.S. Treasury new authority to return payment requests to agencies if they appear to be at risk for fraud. These reforms shift agency actions from recovery to prevention that protects taxpayer dollars,” according to a statement issued by Comer.

The latter proposal “strengthens the federal government’s financial oversight and controls by directing the U.S. Treasury to work with agencies to verify payment and payee information before payments go out the door. It reduces fraud by expanding tools like the Do Not Pay (DNP) system and ensuring federal agencies have better access to accurate data to identify improper and fraudulent payments.”

Boccia and colleague Tyler Thurman reported recently that the DNP “is under-utilized and under-equipped, and agencies are not required to respond when it flags potential errors,” and that it “has a proven track record. In a three-year pilot that gave DNP access to the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Death Master File, the system identified or prevented $113.5 million in improper payments at a cost of just $4.6 million — a 23-to-1 return on investment, in the first year alone. After such remarkable success, Congress permanently authorized SSA to share its full death data with DNP.”

Boccia and Thurman also point out that DNP “screens well for deceased enrollees, but only $1.5 billion in FY 2024 overpayments were death-related. Far larger drivers of overpayments — income and financial data ($80.2 billion), employment status ($68.9 billion), and identity ($31.6 billion) — are not fully accounted for in DNP’s current databases.” The two Comer-Arrington proposals introduced in April remedy this problem. The Comer-Arrington proposals also address the fact that agencies aren’t mandated to act whenever DNP identifies an improper payment. The proposals require agencies that wish to proceed with a payment flagged by DNP to first take corrective action and verify the payment before certification.

In addition, Boccia and Thurman note, the “DNP is woefully underused. Only 4 percent of eligible programs across the federal government fully utilize DNP. Many states lack access to DNP, instead relying on outdated and fragmented data systems with significant gaps in eligibility verification.The Timely and Accurate Benefits Act (H.R. 1755) from Rep. William Timmons (R-SC) would help close this gap by expanding DNP’s availability to state agencies and requiring them to use DNP or other real-time data-matching tools for fraud prevention and eligibility determinations.”

Finally, according to Boccia and Thurman, federal departments and agencies “aren’t using the data they already have,” and they cited a Congressional Research System (CRS) report that “found that 73% of data access-related overpayments between fiscal years 2021 and 2024 — $556.6 billion — were human errors resulting from agencies failing to use the data that already existed. Ensuring administrators know how to use the tools available to them is one potential solution, and the Federal Fraud Prevention Workforce Training Act (H.R. 8428) from Reps. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) would help by establishing a training program on fraud risk management and the use of tools such as DNP for federal and state agencies administering federal programs.”

Only time will tell if the new approach produces needed results. In statement made earlier this week as he introduced legislation to reform the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, House Budget chief Arrington captured the profoundly serious need for genuine progress against all waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending, saying, “Washington’s abject failure to protect tax dollars has resulted in an unprecedented scale of fraud that threatens not only the sustainability of our safety net programs, but also the future economic viability of our nation.”

AUTHOR

Mark Tapscott

Mark Tapscott is senior congressional analyst at The Washington Stand.

WATCH: President Trump cancels $29 BILLION in NGO grants on behalf of the hardworking American taxpayer

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

DOJ Report Reveals Biden Admin.’s Expansive Religious Liberty Violations and Hostility to American Christians

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The presidency of Joe Biden was a dark, though relatively brief, chapter in American history, replete with widespread prosecution and persecution of American Christians. President Donald Trump repeatedly pledged on the campaign trail to establish a federal task force to investigate and eradicate the anti-Christian bias evinced and enacted by the Biden administration, and has delivered on that promise. On Thursday morning, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) published a 209-page report entitled, “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias within the Federal Government,” detailing not only the numerous abuses of the Biden administration but also the remedies put in place by the Trump administration.

“Our Nation’s origin and system of government bear the imprint of a Christian worldview and ethic, even as its laws protect religious pluralism. Christian beliefs, in conjunction with contemporary political thought and economic realities, influenced colonial settlers in their decision to overthrow tyranny and pursue independence,” the report’s introduction states. “After the Revolutionary War, Christians then informed the structure and contents of the United States Constitution, its amendments, and contemporaneous state constitutions.”

“But, when Christian beliefs about morality and human nature conflicted with the Biden Administration’s views, religious rights often suffered,” the report’s introduction continues. “The Biden Administration generally tolerated religious beliefs that were privately held but zealously pursued actions to limit Christians’ ability to act in accordance with their faith. This affected matters of deep personal importance to nearly every American: life, family, marriage, and self-identity,” it continues. “The Biden Administration’s policies regularly clashed with a Christian worldview and burdened traditional religious practices. These conflicts frequently arose over abortion, gender ideology, and sexual orientation. Ultimately, the Biden Administration penalized Christians who lived in accordance with their beliefs.”

The report details 14 “key findings” regarding the Biden administration’s abuse of power and violation of religious liberties, ranging from a two-tiered justice system and aggressive prosecution of pro-life activists to the coercive violation of conscience rights and the rabid promotion of LGBT ideology. The taskforce also identifies several “remedies” that the Trump administration has enacted to ensure that the federal government is not weaponized against American Christians.

“No American should live in fear that the federal government will punish them for their faith,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, chair of the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, in a statement. He said that the Biden administration’s actions “devastated the lives of many Christian Americans,” adding, “That devastation ended with President Trump. The Department of Justice will continue to expose bad actors who targeted Christians and work tirelessly to restore religious liberty for all Americans of faith.”

During an appearance on “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Thursday, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Camille Varone further emphasized that the report was “a whole of government effort,” noting that “the task force has 17 cabinet level members and other agency heads. But there were other agencies who were hearing about the work we were doing and were excited to participate. And so the report has findings from far more than just the task force members.”

Below are the report’s key findings and the Trump administration’s proposed actions to eradicate anti-Christian bias from the federal government.

FACE Act Weaponization

The DOJ previously published a report tracking how the Biden administration used the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act to aggressively target pro-life Americans, while largely ignoring the law’s provisions protecting pro-life pregnancy resource centers and houses of worship. The new report characterizes the Biden administration’s DOJ as “an enforcement arm” for the abortion industry.

Over the course of Biden’s tenure in the White House, his DOJ “routinely” collaborated with pro-abortion non-governmental organizations (NGOs) — chiefly the National Abortion Federation, Planned Parenthood, and the Feminist Majority Foundation — to prosecute pro-life Americans. The Biden DOJ would regularly request information from the abortion agencies relating to pro-life protests, prayer vigils, and other pro-life activities. In several cases, the Biden DOJ would even launch prosecutions at the request of pro-abortion NGOs, all while “mostly disregard[ing] pro-life groups.”

Varone also observed that “non-governmental organizations could poke around on the internet in ways that the department couldn’t. There were so many different documents that we found from the National Abortion Federation and Planned Parenthood compiling dossiers where they were monitoring pro-life Americans — collecting information about their travel, their whereabouts, their social media posts, including posting of Bible verses. There were even information about the cars that they drove and photos of some of their children. And they compiled all of this to give it to the Department of Justice, to the people who were charged with prosecuting under the FACE Act in case something might happen [that the DOJ] may view as a potential crime.”

The Biden DOJ also withheld evidence requested by defense attorneys for pro-lifers and regularly pursued harsher penalties for pro-lifers than for pro-abortion activists. “The Biden DOJ pursued significantly higher sentences (near the top range of sentencing guidelines) for pro-life defendants, while pursuing more lenient sentences against the handful of pro-abortion defendants that it charged,” the report notes. On average, the Biden DOJ requested an average sentence of 26.8 months for the 21 pro-life defendants it successfully prosecuted, while requesting an average sentence of only 12.3 months for the six pro-abortion defendants it prosecuted. The most stringent sentence was handed to Lauren Handy, who was sentenced to 58 months (nearly five years) in prison. The Biden DOJ originally requested that she be sentenced to 78 months (six-and-a-half years).

Upon taking office last year, Trump pardoned the pro-life activists targeted by the Biden administration and directed his DOJ to dismiss “with prejudice” three civil lawsuits against pro-life defendants. The Trump DOJ also issued a directive ordering that prosecutors “may only bring FACE Act civil actions and prosecutions in extraordinary circumstances or in cases presenting significant aggravating factors.”

Targeting Traditionalist Catholics

In 2023, it was revealed that the Biden administration’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) illegally targeted American Catholics devoted to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, the liturgy celebrated prior to the Second Vatican Council, and even spied on traditionalist Catholic parishes. The FBI’s Richmond, Virginia, field office drafted a memo labeling “radical traditionalist Catholics” as potential “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” and detailing plans to infiltrate and spy on traditionalist Catholic parishes. While the Trump DOJ notes that the FBI’s Weaponization Working Group will release a more in-depth report “detailing the day-to-day weaponization of the Richmond Field Office against conservative, practicing Catholics on the basis of guilt-by-association because one career criminal attended a local Catholic church,” the DOJ’s report provides an “overview” of the discrimination.

Citing the recently-indicted Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Richmond field office labeled traditionalist Catholics as potential “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” and began crafting its memo, which was originally intended to be circulated nationwide across the agency. The arrest of career criminal Xavier Louis Lopez for possession of weapons including Molotov cocktails, improvised napalm, and hollow-point bullets provided an opportunity for the Richmond FBI to target a Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) parish with which Lopez was affiliated. Although Our Lady of Fatima parish in Richmond “played no role whatsoever in Lopez’s acquisition or possession of the destructive devices,” the FBI interviewed the pastor, Father James Hewko, who asked to speak with the parish’s legal representation before speaking to the FBI about Lopez. The FBI subsequently monitored both Hewko and his uncle, in addition to interviewing and monitoring others associated with the parish.

Trump’s FBI Director, Kash Patel, has vowed that this “weaponization and politicization of law enforcement” will never be “allowed to happen again.” The FBI’s Weaponization Working Group will disclose further details.

Targeting Concerned Parents

In 2021, as parents across the country were voicing their discontent with radical LGBT policies at local school board meetings, Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, issued a DOJ-wide memo alleging that parents who protest at local school board meetings should be treated as potentially violent domestic extremists. Garland recommended forming a DOJ task force to explore the use of domestic terrorism statutes against parents and “recommended that United States Attorney’s Offices and FBI Field Offices coordinate with local law enforcement and school districts, and that the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center assist by directing credible threats to appropriate law enforcement partners.”

Although some within the DOJ warned that the actions of parents at school board meetings were almost certainly protected under the First Amendment and, even when parents did take action that constituted crimes, those crimes were often not federal offenses. “Those concerns did not win the day,” the Trump DOJ’s report notes. Garland revised his memo, but still urged the Biden DOJ to target concerned parents, who were characterized as “threats” to school boards. The Biden DOJ “quickly acted to follow through.” While the Biden DOJ’s criminal division was “skeptical,” Garland and his team forged ahead with plans to prosecute parents who protested at school board meetings via “possible application of color of law provisions that criminalize conduct that interfere with those participating in programs receiving federal financial assistance.”

Investigation of Christian Charities

Under Biden, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) weaponized the Johnson Amendment against Christian nonprofit organizations. The Johnson Amendment is a U.S. tax code provision prohibiting most nonprofit organizations from endorsing or explicitly opposing political candidates. Biden’s IRS, the Trump DOJ’s report explains, used the Johnson Amendment to target “Christian churches and non-profit institutions, particularly those who espoused traditional Christian views that could be construed with a political valence, scrutinizing their statements for violations.”

The Biden IRS seemingly singled out churches and nonprofit organizations that were characterized as supportive of Republican candidates and conservative issues, while failing to apply the Johnson Amendment to churches and nonprofit organizations aligned or affiliated with Democrats, even those that explicitly supported Democratic candidates or politicians. The investigations were not limited to the speech of pastors, but sought wide-ranging information on the finances and operations of targeted churches and nonprofit organizations. “The Biden IRS’s pattern of enforcement,” the Trump DOJ’s report says, “raised serious concerns about the IRS attempting to regulate what certain pastors could say from the pulpit and chilled the speech of many other clergy.”

The Trump administration’s Treasury Department has subsequently revised its standards for application of the Johnson Amendment, clarifying that houses of worship can communicate to their congregations regarding moral and political matters in accord with their respective teachings without falling afoul of the Johnson Amendment. “Bona fide communications internal to a house of worship, between the house of worship and its congregation, in connection with religious services,” neither “participate” nor “intervene” in political campaigns, “any more than does a family discussion concerning candidates.”

Fining Christian Universities

The Biden administration’s Department of Education levied hefty fines against Christian colleges and universities, while largely failing to pursue similar penalties against secular, non-religious institutions for similar regulatory violations. According to the Trump DOJ’s report, the “average fine against a Christian school was $815,000, compared to $228,571 against public and private institutions.” The two largest fines levied against Christian universities were against Grand Canyon University ($37.7 million) and Liberty university ($14 million).

The fines against Liberty University were for supposed violations of the Clery Act, which provides the public with information regarding a university’s safety. The Trump DOJ’s report notes that the fines against Grand Canyon University and Liberty University “dwarfed the fines levied against Pennsylvania State University ($2.4 million) for 11 Clery Act violations involving the school’s failure to report sex offenses relating to its assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky’s serial child molestation, and against Michigan State University ($4.5 million) for its failure to disclose sex offenses committed by Larry Nassar, a team physician who sexually assaulted hundreds of athletes.”

Under the Trump administration, the Department of Education has not only dismissed its case against Grand Canyon University, but rescinded its fine and has “also committed to no longer disproportionately targeting Christian colleges and universities and to affirming the rights of Christian colleges and universities to act in accordance with their faith-based identity.”

Conscience Violations

In numerous cases, the Biden administration also failed or refused to prosecute federal conscience violation cases, allowing institutions to coerce Christians into violating their sincerely held religious beliefs or penalizing them for adhering to their Christian morals. In one example, the Biden DOJ dropped a lawsuit against the University of Vermont Medical Center for compelling Christian employees to participate in committing abortions.

“This case is emblematic of the Biden Administration’s approach to conscience enforcement: When the scope of federal protections was legally contested, the Administration generally chose the interpretation least protective of religious objectors and resolved active enforcement matters through administrative means, if possible, rather than litigation,” the Trump DOJ’s report comments. “Government inaction of this kind is an especially damaging source of anti-Christian bias precisely because it is difficult to see and harder to remedy.”

Anti-Christian Policy

The Biden administration’s anti-Christian bias was not relegated to enforcement actions, but also to policy choices. The administration supported the “Equality Act,” which would have “fully eliminate[d] statutory religious protections for Christians and other religions that hold traditional social values” by barring, without exemption, “discrimination” on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity in areas such as public accommodations and facilities, education, federal funding, employment, housing, credit, and the jury system. Although numerous academics and religious leaders warned that the legislation would amount to a significant infringement on First Amendment rights, the Biden administration forcefully supported the legislation in Congress.

“Although the Biden Administration was ultimately unsuccessful in its push to enact the Equality Act, it sought to implement the same policy goals wherever possible through executive actions, guidance memoranda, and rulemakings,” the Trump DOJ’s report announced. The administration’s “overbroad” application of the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in Bostock v. Clayton County targeted Christians and Christian organizations for their biblical worldview on biological sex and human sexuality, while Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) worked overtime to entrench transgender ideology in the federal bureaucracy and classify gender transition procedures as necessary and life-saving medicine.

Biden’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) “dismissed sincerely held religious beliefs regarding sexual orientation and gender identity as ‘discrimination in hiring … cloaked as religious practice,’” while the Department of Education likewise shifted its non-discrimination policies to promote and hide gender transition procedures for children. The Departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Labor, and Agriculture all similarly revised their guidance on key statutes and legal precedents, such as Bostock and Titles VII, IX, and X of the Civil Rights Act, to shield progressive agenda items.

In many cases, when Christians and other professionals or professional organizations suggested, based on empirical evidence and research, that gender transition procedures (especially for children) may not be harmless or beneficial, the Biden administration and its agencies often sidelined or outright silenced those voices, or ignored them. For example, when the British government published the extensive Cass Review, detailing the significant dangers posed by exposing minors to gender transition procedures and ultimately terminating the British government’s support for the practice, the Biden administration “maintained that the report did not alter their support for minors’ access to sex-rejecting procedures and medical intervention.”

The Biden administration’s policy decisions also encouraged state and local governments to bar Christian couples from participating in foster programs, claiming that the couples’ sincerely held religious beliefs on biological sex or human sexuality would pose a threat to children who identify as transgender or homosexual. Other actions targeted talk-based Christian therapy designed to assist those struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction and even attempted to bar Christians from practicing therapy in many areas.

Numerous executive actions were also taken by the Biden administration to proliferate the practice of abortion, even after the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Biden administration actions attempted to skirt federal statutes barring taxpayer funding from being used for abortions and directly used federal agencies to facilitate abortions. The Biden administration regularly replaced departmental faith offices with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices and repeatedly sidelined Christians and Christian organizations.

Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), for example, hosted 59 meetings and roundtables with non-Christian faith-based organizations to discuss potential terrorist threats and safety. The Biden DHS hosted only two such meetings with Christian organizations. The Trump DOJ referred to Family Research Council’s report on increasing hostility against Christians to note that the “disparity is notable given that Christians comprise an estimated 62 percent of the U.S. population and have faced increased hostility and violence in recent years.”

Other Biden administration actions that targeted Christians included adverse employment actions, such as eliminating religious discrimination safeguards in the EEOC and issuing blanket denials of religious exemption requests, particularly those related to COVID-19 restrictions and mandates. According to a survey of federal employees, nearly one third (30.1%) were denied pay based on their religious objections to COVID-19 mandates, while others were denied travel, reassigned, lost their security clearances, or were formally reprimanded. Nearly one fifth (18.3%) reported having been removed from their posts and nearly 12% said that they were fired.

What’s Next?

While the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias will continue its work through 2027, it has already begun working to eradicate anti-Christian bias from the federal government. Pursuant to the taskforce’s recommendations, most federal agencies have opened and operate faith offices, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has issued memos reinforcing religious liberties, and the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) has issued guidance on religious liberty protections afforded by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, in addition to other actions taken by federal agencies. The task force will publish further remedial actions taken in its 2027 report.

Religious liberty advocates have thanked the Trump administration for its efforts to tackle the issue of anti-Christian bias and the weaponization of the federal government against Americans of faith, but have warned that there is still much work to be done. “This is a very good report on the pervasive anti-Christian bias under the Biden administration; capturing many of the domestic religious liberty concerns we have noticed in recent years, especially on marriage, family, sexuality, and life issues — as well as hostility against Christianity in general,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins in a statement. He noted that hostility towards Christians skyrocketed under Biden’s tenure, including violent attacks on pro-life pregnancy resource centers and Christian churches. “Yet, as this DOJ report shows, the Biden administration did very little in response and instead weaponized its resources to target Christians including imprisoning grandmothers praying outside of abortion centers.”

“This report does raise questions about what comes next. And what happens the next time a radical progressive like President Biden comes to power? We must ensure this targeting never happens again under any future administration,” Perkins asserted. “We must ensure that the bedrock of American society and culture is placed on a firm footing in which freedom is respected for everyone. What better time to do this than our nation’s 250th birthday? Religious freedom is seldom handed to the passive; it is claimed by those who exercise it even when a hostile culture says they may not.”

“Now is the time to take this insight and put in safeguards at the federal, state, and local levels that will prevent future Democrat administrations from hollowing out the First Amendment, making it difficult for them to pervert America,” Perkins continued. “Ultimately, the preventative prescription to anti-Christian bias from our own government is Christians sharing the gospel and living out their faith in a God honoring way. While we should press on the government to act justly, it’s up to the church to change the culture that has given rise to this anti-Christian bias.”

During “Washington Watch” Thursday, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Varone indicated that the DOJ is currently investigating whether leftist NGOs violated the law in their dealings with the Biden administration. “At minimum, it would violate best practices,” she noted. “And so we’d start with that. There are concerns that some of the conduct here may have gone further. I can’t get into specifics because DOJ handles all of its internal personnel and investigations privately. But as the report mentions, appropriate referrals have been made.”

Travis Weber, vice president for Policy and Government Affairs at FRC, said in comments to The Washington Stand, “With this report, President Trump and his administration have issued an important corrective to the anti-Christian bias that was tolerated, advanced, and/or enabled for too long by the Biden administration. Yet we must not stop here, but rather must determine next steps and consider how this hostility manifests in our culture and the local communities on which our country is knit together.” He added, “For America to flourish in the long-term, we must move beyond the political ‘see-saw’ we are currently on and regain that ‘common ground’ of national consensus on which freedom rests.”

“We must remember that what the Trump administration is responding to politically is — more deeply — a cultural and spiritual issue,” Weber observed. “We are often ‘responding’ to bias and hostility. Instead, we need to think proactively about how to shift our culture back toward a respect for freedom and faith — and the role that both play in society, for the benefit of ALL members of society. As the Trump administration considers what to do with the findings detailed in this report, Christians in America also need to be asking ourselves the same question: ‘What’s our next step?’”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

EPA Exonerates Carbon Dioxide

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday committed “the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history,” as EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin described it, by eliminating an Obama-era verdict against carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The 2009 Endangerment Finding functioned as the bottommost block in the Left’s Jenga tower of climate regulation, and the Trump administration hopes to save U.S. taxpayers more than $1.3 trillion by knocking it clear.

“The Trump EPA is strictly following the letter of the law,” Zeldin proclaimed, “returning commonsense to policy, delivering consumer choice to Americans, and advancing the American Dream.”

America’s two-decade mistake of treating carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant began during the Bush administration, when left-wing activists and progressive-leaning states sued the administration for not regulating carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act of 1963.

On April 2, 2007, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, in which a 5-4 liberal majority determined that carbon dioxide was a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, finding that its definition includes “any physical, chemical … substance or matter which is emitted into or otherwise enters the ambient air” and “embraces all airborne compounds of whatever stripe.” It directed the EPA to study whether carbon dioxide was worthy of regulation.

Of course, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant under any common understanding of the word. A pollutant is a substance that contaminates the surrounding environment with something foreign or harmful — like an oil spill or the harmful compounds that cause acid rain. Carbon dioxide, however, is the primary product of human (and animal) respiration and the primary input to the photosynthesis of plants.

Along with water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2) is produced in any combustion reaction involving hydrocarbon-based (CHX) fuels and oxygen gas (O2) — whether in a simple fire or in cellular energy production. It is therefore the natural byproduct of any carbon-based form of energy production, whether by wood, charcoal, coal, natural gas, oil, or some other product.

However, on December 7, 2009, Obama administration EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson found that atmospheric carbon dioxide (and five other gaseous compounds) “threaten[ed] the public health and welfare of current and future generations.”

This finding “led to trillions of dollars in regulations that strangled entire sectors of the United States economy, including the American auto industry,” Zeldin lamented. “The Obama and Biden administrations used it to steamroll into existence a left-wing wish list of costly climate policies, electric vehicle mandates and other requirements that assaulted consumer choice and affordability.” Since then, the U.S. government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars propping up green energy projects that were not ready for economic prime time, leading to widespread blackouts and lost investment in impractical electric vehicles. At the same time, the endangerment finding has been used to rachet up the fuel efficiency requirements on cars, making those cars more expensive in the process.

However, the EPA cited two more recent Supreme Court decisions that it said justified its decision to rethink the law. The first was West Virginia v. EPA (2022), which struck down a Biden-era carbon tax scheme based on the Endangerment Finding on the ground that such “major questions” of policy should be decided by Congress, not an agency. In 2024, the Supreme Court issued Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which overruled the infamous Chevron test and reframed the level of deference due to agencies in rulemaking.

Following these decisions, President Trump issued a day-one executive order, “Unleashing American Energy.” In the order, Trump authorized an “immediate review of all agency actions that potentially burden the development of domestic energy resources,” which would include the 2009 Endangerment Finding.

The EPA’s decision came after an extended public comment period of 52 days, four days of virtual public hearings with testimony from more than 600 individuals, and approximately 572,000 public comments on the proposed rule. The extent of the feedback illustrates the magnitude of its consequences for American energy and business.

As a result of that review, the EPA concluded that the Clean Air Act “does not provide statutory authority for EPA to prescribe motor vehicle and engine emission standards in the manner previously utilized,” and therefore “the 2009 Endangerment Finding made by the Obama Administration exceeded the agency’s authority to combat ‘air pollution’ that harms public health and welfare, and that a policy decision of this magnitude, which carries sweeping economic and policy consequences, lies solely with Congress.”

Notably, the EPA ran “the same types of models utilized by the previous administrations and climate change zealots” and found that, “even if the U.S. were to eliminate all GHG emissions from all vehicles, there would be no material impact on global climate indicators through 2100.” The only effect such auto emissions standards would have is to make life more difficult for American consumers.

President Trump was present at the White House press conference announcing the EPA’s decision. “We are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding, a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers,” he said. “This determination had no basis in fact — none whatsoever. And it had no basis in law. On the contrary, over the generations, fossil fuels have saved millions of lives and lifted billions of people out of poverty all over the world.”

Naturally, the left-wing response to the announcement was furious. NBC News memorialized the 2009 Endangerment Finding as “the legal finding that it [the EPA] has relied on for nearly two decades to limit the heat-trapping pollution that spews from vehicle tailpipes, oil refineries, and factories.” Unmentioned was the way that carbon dioxide also “spews” from human lungs with every exhalation, or the way that its “heat-trapping” quality prevents the earth from turning into the dark side of Mercury at night.

Of more substantial impact, major environmental groups have promised to challenge the decision’s legality. The Trump administration would likely have to ask the Supreme Court to overturn Massachusetts v. EPA.

In the meantime, however, the Trump administration has smashed the rule “referred to by some as the ‘Holy Grail’ of the ‘climate change religion,’” as Zeldin put it. It “didn’t just regulate emissions, it regulated and targeted the American dream,” he said. Even more fundamentally, the Trump administration has exonerated the essential, natural compound of carbon dioxide. As Interior Secretary Doug Burgum weighed in, “CO2 was never a pollutant.” And it should never have been regulated as one.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

What Constitution? Progressive States, Cities Join WHO Network after U.S. Withdrawal

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For the past decade, left-wing Democrats have calibrated their actions by assessing whatever Donald Trump wants, and doing the opposite. This tactic is evident everywhere, but far fewer people understand how close this pattern comes to triggering a constitutional crisis.

One recent example came after the Trump administration officially withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO) on January 22. “Like many international organizations, the WHO abandoned its core mission and acted repeatedly against the interests of the United States,” announced Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy. “Although the United States was a founding member and the WHO’s largest financial contributor, the organization pursued a politicized, bureaucratic agenda driven by nations hostile to American interests.”

The U.S. Congress reserved the right to withdraw from the WHO when it joined the U.N. organization in 1948. President Trump initiated the process in the waning months of his first administration in response to its mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic. President Joe Biden suspended this withdrawal in 2021, but President Trump reinitiated it in 2025. Each of these policy reversals came as American voters decided to exchange one party for the other.

Now, some of Biden’s fellow Democrats have decided that they will simply refuse to follow the Trump administration’s foreign policy lead and engage with the WHO on their own.

On January 23, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) announced that his state was “becoming the first, and currently the only, state to join WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network (GOARN).” Newsom met with WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus during the World Economic Forum “to detect and respond to emerging public health threats.”

In Newsom’s announcement, foreign policy disagreement with the Trump administration features prominently. “The Trump administration’s withdrawal from WHO is a reckless decision that will hurt all Californians and Americans,” Newsom declared. “California will not bear witness to the chaos this decision will bring. We will continue to foster partnerships across the globe.”

On February 3, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) made a similar announcement for similar reasons. “By withdrawing from the World Health Organization, Donald Trump has undermined science and weakened our nation’s ability to detect and respond to global health threats. I refuse to sit idly by and let that happen,” Pritzker protested. “By joining the World Health Organization’s coordinated network, GOARN, we are ensuring that our public health leaders — and the public — have the information, expertise, and partnerships they need to protect the people of our state. Across our state and alongside valued partners around the world, Illinois will continue to put science, preparedness, and people first.”

The Illinois Department of Public Health outlined the benefit from WHO membership resources, such as “Direct access to global early-warning alerts and outbreak intelligence,” “Opportunities for technical collaboration and surge support during major public health events,” “Participation in international training, exercises, and best-practice exchanges,” and “Stronger coordination between state-level public health systems and global response efforts.”

Never one to miss a bandwagon hurtling to the left, the New York City government under Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) also jumped on board the trend on February 5. “New York City is a global city with 8.5 million residents and more than 12 million international visitors every year,” explained New York City Acting Health Commissioner and Chief Medical Officer Michelle Morse. “To best prevent disease outbreaks and public health emergencies and to protect New Yorkers and visitors from them, the NYC Health Department is joining hundreds of public health institutions worldwide that share critical public health information to support life-saving prevention and response efforts. Infectious diseases know no boundaries, and nor should the information and resources that help us protect New Yorkers.”

The problem with all of this talk of international cooperation and its benefits is that American states and cities are not allowed to have their own foreign policy. Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution stipulates that “No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation.” In fact, “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress … enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power.”

The original reason for the 13 “States of America” to become “United” was to present a unified front on matters of foreign policy. State governments have sovereignty, but only over their domestic affairs. Once that principle is breached, once individual states begin forging independent side-partnerships with foreign governments, American unity would be fundamentally compromised, and American security with it.

Consider the implications of California universities collaborating with the Chinese Communist Party on defense research, or the Texas Military Department sharing intelligence with a foreign power, independent of the federal government.

What California, Illinois, and New York City are proposing is a uniquely unconstitutional manifestation of nullification, where states unilaterally declare federal law to be null and void in their territory.

The Constitution Center records at least “three prominent attempts by states at nullification in American history.” Kentucky tried to nullify the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. South Carolina tried to nullify federal tariffs in 1832 (with slavery providing an ugly backdrop). Arkansas tried to nullify Brown v. Board of Education in 1957.

For decades, progressives have derided southern states for their past nullification attempts. Now, it appears that such derision was based on the unfounded belief that progressive values would always (or eventually) prevail in the U.S. federal government. However, progressives have grown increasingly alarmed with their lack of power over federal policy, to the point that they have begun embracing their own versions of nullification.

For instance, Pritzker recently opined, “We need ICE out of our cities and, frankly, out of our state.” What is this but an attempt to dictate where federal officers can enforce federal law? Any expression of “ICE Out” is really an endorsement of the constitutionally illegitimate principle of nullification. (In contrast, a declaration that state or local law enforcement “does not enforce federal immigration law” is simply a recognition of the fact that states enforce state laws, and the federal government enforces federal laws.)

On December 10, 1832, President Andrew Jackson described nullification as “the strange position that any one State may not only declare an act of Congress void, but prohibit its execution,” and that “the true construction” of the Constitution “permits a State to retain its place in the Union and yet be bound by no other of its laws than those it may choose to consider as constitutional.” Such a position, Jackson argued, was absurd, “having for its object the destruction of the Union.”

Only one element of uncertainty may save the decision by progressive jurisdictions to join the GOARN network from being an indefensible violation of the Constitution. One could make a case that GOARN’s cooperation is not so much with a foreign government or international organization as with a global network of research institutes. GOARN has at least 365 partner institutions, of which 36 are in the United States.

Under this theory, these three progressive governments are not directly rejecting the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the WHO; that point might save them constitutionally, but it defeats the whole point of their choosing to join GOARN as a way to stick a finger in Trump’s eye.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Minneapolis Mayhem, ICE Updates, and More

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President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda has arrested headlines for over a year, but violent riots and a series of fatal shootings have intensified scrutiny over immigration raids in Minneapolis. Earlier this month, 37-year-old Renee Good was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent when she struck the agent with her vehicle after impeding enforcement operations. Just last week, 37-year-old Alex Pretti was shot and killed by U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) agents when he showed up armed to protest immigration enforcement operations and involved himself in a physical altercation with law enforcement. Subsequently, the president deployed Border Czar and former ICE chief Tom Homan to Minneapolis to take control of operations. Here are the latest updates.

‘Noem, Go Home?’

In the wake of the violence in Minneapolis, multiple Democratic legislators have called for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign, threatening to impeach her if she does not leave of her own volition. Now, Republicans are joining Democrats in clamoring for Noem’s ouster. According to Fox News, frequent Trump critics Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) have joined Democrats in calling on the president to fire Noem. “I think the President needs to look at who he has in place as the Secretary of Homeland Security. I would not support her again,” Murkowski said, referring to her vote to confirm Noem, “and I think it probably is time for her to step down.”

Tillis faulted Noem and, more broadly, the Trump administration, especially White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, for stalling a partly-bipartisan amnesty push for illegal immigrants. “I don’t know if it’s lost yet, but if it is an opportunity lost, I put it squarely on the shoulders of people like Noem and Stephen Miller,” Tillis said. Referring to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’s) handling of Pretti’s death, he added, “Those two people told the president, before they even had any incident report whatsoever, that the person who died was a terrorist. I mean, that is amateur hour at its worst.”

Following Pretti’s death, Noem referred to him as a “domestic terrorist” and official DHS channels, citing the handgun and multiple magazines Pretti brought with him when interfering with federal law enforcement, claimed that he sought to “massacre” federal agents. The characterization has been criticized as premature and has reportedly inspired some frustration within DHS’s ranks, particularly among ICE agents, who fear that they are being blamed for some of the more aggressive riot control tactics used by USBP.

The president has asserted that he will not ask Noem to resign, but he did reportedly question his Homeland Security Secretary in a two-hour Oval Office meeting Tuesday. According to The New York Times, Noem and her top advisor, former Trump campaign official Corey Lewandowski, met with the president, who was joined by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Communications Director Steven Cheung, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, to discuss the optics surrounding Pretti’s death and Noem’s response. The New York Times reported that no indication was given that either Noem or Lewandowski was at risk of losing their jobs.

Notably absent from the Oval Office meeting was Miller, the chief architect of Trump’s immigration policy over the past decade and one of the president’s closest and longest-serving allies. According to Axios, Noem faults Miller for DHS’s response to Pretti’s death, with the Homeland Security Secretary saying that Miller told her to label Pretti a domestic terrorist and a threat to federal law enforcement personnel. “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done at the direction of the president and Stephen,” Axios quoted Noem as saying. Unnamed sources reported that Miller “heard ‘gun’ and knew what the narrative would be: Pretti came to ‘massacre’ cops,” but that the USBP agents involved in the shooting were quick to shut up and lawyer up, impeding the White House’s fact-finding in the matter.

However, other sources faulted USBP Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino for the miscommunication. “Bovino should be blamed,” one unnamed source told Axios, “not Stephen.” According to Miller and several other sources, Bovino and USBP quickly relayed potentially incorrect or incomplete information immediately following Pretti’s death, resulting in DHS’s controversial messaging. “The initial statement from DHS was based on reports from CBP on the ground,” Miller told the New York Post. “Additionally, the White House provided clear guidance to DHS that the extra personnel that had been sent to Minnesota for force protection should be used for conducting fugitive operations to create a physical barrier between the arrest teams and the disruptors,” he noted. “We are evaluating why the CBP team may not have been following that protocol.”

Not a Pretti Picture

More information is emerging surrounding the controversial shooting of Pretti. A preliminary DHS review of the incident found that Pretti and another rioter were physically obstructing federal agents, despite being told multiple times to move out of the way. Pretti resisted arrest and struggled with USBP agents, when one agent shouted that Pretti had a gun, a loaded Sig Sauer handgun. Shortly afterwards, at least two federal agents began firing at Pretti, discharging roughly a dozen times. It was not until after Pretti had been shot that another agent announced that he had taken Pretti’s weapon from him. USBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility Investigative Operations Directorate also confirmed that the agents involved were wearing bodycams and that footage has been collected.

While many have touted Pretti’s credentials as a Veterans Affairs nurse, CNN reported that Pretti was already “known” to federal agents due to interfering in previous operations, including a physical altercation in which his rib was broken, just a week before he continued inserting himself into law enforcement operations and was killed. According to a Fox News report, Pretti was a member of an anti-ICE organization that used complex communications and tracking networks to plan obstructions to law enforcement operations. Pretti and others were already waiting for federal agents at the site where Pretti was killed. Pretti’s ex-wife confirmed that he had also been involved in the violent riots that rocked Minneapolis in 2020, following the death of George Floyd.

The president has committed to a thorough investigation of the events surrounding Pretti’s death. “We’re doing a big investigation. I want to see the investigation. I’m going to be watching over it. I want to see it myself,” he told reporters Tuesday. “I love all of our people. I love his family, and it’s a very sad situation,” he continued, advising anti-ICE activists not to bring guns to confrontations with federal law enforcement.

Lives on the Line

Pretti’s armed altercation with federal law enforcement agents and subsequent death comes in the midst of increased violence and threats against ICE personnel and other federal agents. According to a Breitbart News analysis, recent months have seen an 8,000% increase in death threats against ICE agents, including threats against their families, and a 1,300% increase in violent assaults against ICE agents. Breitbart quoted a voice message left on an agent’s phone as an example of the threats made against law enforcement personnel:

“I hope your wife dies. I hope your mom and dad die. I hope everything wrong that could go in your life happens. I hope you have the most miserable life. I hope you get hit by a bus. I hope you’re paralyzed, and your wife leaves you, and starts getting [expletive] by [other men] every day. You are a traitor to the American people, to the values that made our country. You should kill yourself. You’re [expletive] disgusting.”

According to the Washington Examiner, DHS is currently investigating the case of a woman who attempted multiple times to purchase firearms “to protect herself from ICE Agents, and also to kill ICE Agents.” In another instance, Virginia Commonwealth University fired a nurse for a series of social media posts advising anti-ICE activists to use paralytic drugs and poison ivy brews against ICE agents and encouraging single women to use dating apps to meet ICE agents and then poison their drinks.

DHS Assistant Secretary for Communications Tricia McLaughlin partly faulted Democrats for the rise in hostility, citing the dehumanizing rhetoric they use against federal law enforcement officers. “Comparing ICE day in and day out to the Nazi Gestapo, the Secret Police, and slave patrols has consequences,” she warned. “Every day there are more assaults, more vehicle-ramming attacks, more attempts to kill our officers.”

Twin Cities Stalemate?

After having been deployed to Minneapolis this week, Homan has already begun negotiating with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) to ensure that immigration enforcement operations can continue with as little conflict as possible, pressuring the two Democrats to end their “sanctuary” policies and cooperate with ICE. “We all agree that we need to support our law enforcement officers and get criminals off the streets. While we don’t agree on everything, these meetings were a productive starting point and I look forward to more conversations with key stakeholders in the days ahead,” Homan reported Tuesday evening of his meetings with Walz and Frey. “President Trump has been clear: he wants American cities to be safe and secure for law-abiding residents — and they will be.”

Walz is evidently considering cooperating with the Trump administration, much to the outrage of his constituents. Anti-ICE activists stormed the Minnesota state capitol building Tuesday and staged a mass protest outside Walz’s office, chanting slogans such as, “ICE out now!” and “Do your job!” The governor had met with Homan Tuesday afternoon and had spoken with Trump previously, in what the president characterized as “productive.” He later quipped, “It couldn’t have been a nicer conversation. It’s hard to believe that’s the same guy I watch on TV or the debate not doing so well, because we had a reasonable and good conversation. If you believe it, he’d like to get this over with!”

In an interview following his meeting with Homan, Walz classified the Border Czar as “a professional,” which he said was not his experience of Noem and Bovino. “The tone was different, there was a tone shift,” he said of his talk with the Trump immigration official. While insisting that he would still like to see ICE leave Minnesota altogether, Walz admitted, “It was progress. Look, I never got a call from Bovino or Noem, nothing.” However, the governor still faulted federal operations for unrest in Minneapolis, rather than his own actions and rhetoric. “They started this fire.”

Frey also spoke with Homan, but has continued to reject the administration’s requests to end “sanctuary” policies. “Surprisingly, Mayor Jacob Frey just stated that, ‘Minneapolis does not, and will not, enforce Federal Immigration Laws,’” the president reported in a Truth Social post Wednesday morning. “This is after having had a very good conversation with him. Could somebody in his inner sanctum please explain that this statement is a very serious violation of the Law, and that he is PLAYING WITH FIRE!”

Appearing on “Washington Watch” Tuesday night, Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) stressed the damage done by Democrats’ anti-law enforcement rhetoric, in addition to the importance for Republicans to follow through on the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. “All the other jurisdictions around the country where ICE is doing that job, they have cooperation from local officials, so there are no problems,” Harris observed. “The problems are when you have a governor and a mayor openly telling people in Minnesota to go against the Constitution, go against the ability of the federal government to enforce immigration law,” he continued. “You have a rogue governor and a rogue mayor, that’s the problem in Minnesota.”

“Republicans were elected to the majorities with President Trump to close the border and to begin the deportation of the 10 to 12 million people who crossed the border illegally under the Biden administration. We have to get that done,” Harris emphasized. “Unless you think that the 10 to 12 million people who came in illegally under the Biden administration should be invited to stay forever, you need ICE.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

New Trump ‘Tech Force’ to Recruit Silicon Valley Stars to Fix Government IT Problems with AI

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A new phase of President Donald Trump’s Artificial Intelligence Action Plan (AIAP) will recruit top Silicon Valley and other information technology stars to join Tech Force, a cross-agency initiative to tackle the federal government’s toughest digital challenges, U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Scott Kupor said Monday.

“This is a clarion call,” Kupor said in a statement. “If you want to help your country lead in the age of AI, we need you. The US Tech Force offers the chance to build and lead projects of national importance, while creating powerful career opportunities in both public service and the private sector. I am grateful to President Trump for prioritizing America’s leadership in AI and empowering a cross-government effort to close our nation’s AI talent gaps.”

The statement described the new initiative as “a critical aspect of this directive — a government-wide effort to surge teams of top engineers, data scientists, and technology leaders to tackle the government’s most complex and large-scale challenges and deliver on the president’s vision. In collaboration with leading technology companies, participants will receive world-class technical training and work closely with senior managers sourced directly from industry.”

Tech Force is a joint initiative centered in OPM — the federal government’s central civil service human relations agency — and collaborating with departments of State, Treasury, War, Interior, Agriculture, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation and Energy.

In addition, initial agency collaborators will include the IRS, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, and the General Services Administration (GSA), which is the office supply and house-keeping operation for the Washington bureaucracy. Also involved in Tech Force will be the Chief AI Officer for the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, the Special Adviser to the President for AI and Crypto, the White House Office of Public Liaison and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

From the private sector, participants in the opening stages of Tech Force activity will include Adobe, Amazon Web Services, Anduril, Box, Dell Technologies, Docusign, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, Palantir, Robinhood, SAP, ServiceNow, Snowflake, Synopsys, Workday, and xAI.

“In addition, Tech Force is partnering with NobleReach Foundation — a nonpartisan talent platform that brings together America’s best and brightest across industry, academia, and government, via initiatives such as its NobleReach Scholars Program — to recruit technologists and support the program,” the OPM statement said.

During a Monday call-in news conference with reporters, Kupor cited three examples of the kinds of problems Tech Force participants will be engaging in throughout the federal establishment.

“At the Department of War, they have a bunch of stuff around drones and hypersonic weapons, things of that sort where they need development work. At the Department of Energy, they are developing a big integrated platform to connect all the world’s best supercomputers and AI systems, so the applications there would be either scientific domains, quantum mechanics, and so forth. At the IRS, there is a big platform buildout, there’s the new Trump Account, the new savings tool that’s been rolled out,” Kupor explained.

The initial phase of Tech Force, Kupor explained on the call, will seek to recruit 1,000 top technologists, then have departments and agencies compete for the available candidates for particular problems. The OPM chief estimated that the top slice of the 1,000 — approximately 130 persons — will be at the General Schedule (GS) 13 or 14 grade levels, which are paid $195,000 annually.

The program’s planners hope to attract both young individuals who plan on making careers in government and others who expect to work for the government for a defined period of two or so years, then return to the private sector. The OPM will function as the “centralized recruiting center,” Kupor said. He also expects the Tech Force initiative on AI to prompt similar efforts to recruit private sector talent to address other problem sectors in the federal administrative state.

“GSA is proud to partner with OPM and the Trump Administration to answer the president’s call to fast-track AI adoption across the federal government,” Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Josh Gruenbaum said in the statement. “The U.S. Tech Force will be a true force multiplier, creating a pathway to bring in top private-sector talent to help drive a new era of American AI leadership inside the federal government and deliver for the American taxpayers.” The FAS is part of GSA and is the chief supply service for the daily operations of federal departments and agencies.

“The US Tech Force is America’s elite corps for the AI revolution, mobilizing the nation’s best minds to lead on digital frontlines, defend our global edge and secure our future in technological leadership,” U.S. Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) Gregory Barbaccia added in the statement. “It is a call to service for our nation’s best technologists to join a mission-critical corps that will ensure our competitiveness, modernize our government infrastructure and lead the world in innovation from education to medicine.”

The Federal CIO is an interagency coordinating forum for department and agency CIOs “for improving agency practices related to the design, acquisition, development, modernization, use, sharing, and performance of Federal information resources.”

AUTHOR

Mark Tapscott

Mark Tapscott is senior congressional analyst at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

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The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Interest Rates, Affordability, and America’s Economic Checkup

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America’s economic ship continues to drift downstream in an ebbing tide, as the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee voted at its Wednesday meeting to lower interest rates by a quarter percentage point, signaling the central bank’s ongoing unease about the health of the U.S. job market. Wednesday’s decision was the Federal Reserve’s third consecutive rate cut, and it brings the target federal funds rate down to between 3.5% and 3.75%.

Yet the board showed unusual division over the decision. The final vote was 9-3, the first time in six years that three governors have dissented in one vote. The dissenters even disagreed among themselves, with Trump loyalist Stephen Miran favoring a larger rate cut of one-half percentage point, while Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee and Kansas City Fed President Jeff Schmid opposed any rate cut.

In fact, division on the Federal Reserve board runs even deeper than this vote suggests. The board is comprised of 19 members, although only a rotating 12 members vote at any given meeting. However, all 19 officials offer quarterly projections for where they think interest rates should be set. On these predictions, six of the 19 officials penciled in no rate change at the December meeting. This means that four of the seven non-voting board members opposed the interest rate cut. Had different governors been on rotation this month, the vote to cut rates by a quarter point may well have failed.

The dissension arises from the inherent tension between the Federal Reserve’s dual mandates. “The Committee seeks to achieve [1] maximum employment and [2] inflation at the rate of 2% over the longer run,” the Fed explained in a Wednesday press release. “The Committee is attentive to the risks to both sides of its dual mandate and judges that downside risks to employment rose in recent months.”

The U.S. unemployment rate has ticked up from 4.1% in June to 4.4% in September, while the U.S. economy added only 193,000 jobs in the five months from May through September (the economy added 193,000 jobs in May 2024 alone). For a majority of the committee, these anemic employment figures justified yet another interest rate cut.

Meanwhile, the dissenting minority fretted over an equal danger in the opposite direction. On Wednesday, the Fed reiterated its commitment to maintain 2% inflation over the long run. Yet the 12-month inflation rate in September stood at 3.0%, up from 2.3% in April. This inflation rate is “50 percent higher than what the Fed says it wants inflation to be,” noted National Review’s John Puri, disapprovingly. And “We should expect 3 percent inflation to continue because absolutely nothing is being done to stop it.”

Thus, while America’s economic ship is floating down a hazardous channel, the navigators are divided over which sandbar is more dangerous.

One dynamic worthy of further exploration is the change in the Federal Reserve’s posture since earlier this year. For months, the Federal Reserve held interest rates steady as President Trump publicly badgered it to cut rates. Yet it has ended the year by cutting rates at three consecutive meetings. Is this a sign that the Fed finally capitulated to the president’s wishes after he installed his own man on the board? That seems an unlikely move for Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whose term expires in May anyway.

The other possibility is that the Federal Reserve changed its behavior in response to changing economic conditions. On Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced $12 billion “in one time bridge payments” for struggling farmers. The press release blamed the farmers’ struggles on “four years of disastrous Biden Administration policies.” But it also named specific causes of pain, “temporary trade market disruptions and increased production costs,” which sound more like side effects of Trump’s tariff regime.

In any event, a November POLITICO/Public First poll found that Americans still remained concerned with pocketbook issues. When asked to name up to three “top issues facing the US at the moment,” its 2,000 respondents named economic issues as the top two concerns. More than half (56%) complained that the “cost of living is too high,” while 32% dinged “the poor state of the economy in general.”

Hopefully, a perplexed Federal Reserve board can navigate America into open water, and soon, so that the average household can find a moment to breathe. Send those economists back to the drawing board to theorize about a way to reduce unemployment and inflation at the same time.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

RELATED VIDEO: Trump is working hard to bring down the cost of living through bigger paychecks & lower prices

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

Partner with The Washington Stand to bring news from a biblical worldview to readers nationwide. From now until December 31, every gift will be doubled through our year-end Challenge Match.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Sanctuary State Illinois Releases Nearly 1,800 Violent Illegal Immigrants

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Since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term to present day, Illinois’s sanctuary state policies have led to the release of nearly 1,800 illegal immigrants. Their crimes, however, are not limited to illegally crossing the border, but also include charges of murder, assault, burglary, robbery, and sex crimes.

This data was released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Todd Lyons on Monday. According to a press release from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Illinois officials have already failed “to honor ICE detainers,” which has “resulted in the release of 1,768 criminal illegal aliens since January 20.” The crimes of these convicted immigrants, many of whom are now roaming free within the state (or elsewhere), include the following: five charges of homicide, 141 charges of assault, 23 charges of burglary, four charges of robbery, 24 charges of dangerous drugs offenses, 15 charges of weapons offenses, and 10 charges of sexual predatory offenses.

As the DHS went on to highlight, “There are currently 4,015 aliens in the custody of an Illinois jurisdiction with an active detainer. The crimes of these aliens include 51 homicides, 1,134 assaults, 107 burglaries, 36 robberies, 275 dangerous drugs offenses, 120 weapons offenses, and 813 sexual predatory offenses.” Some egregious cases, as emphasized by the DHS, of illegal immigrants released by Governor Pritzker and other state sanctuary politicians, include:

  • Victor Manuel Mendoza-Garcia — “arrested and convicted for 3 counts of aggravated kidnapping/ransom and sentenced to 18 years in [the] Illinois Department of Corrections in Cook County Court in Illinois. ICE’s detainer for Mendoza-Garcia was not honored. On November 12, ICE arrested Mendoza-Garcia where he remains in ICE custody.”
  • Juan Alberto Caro Marin — arrested and convicted of aggravated criminal sexual abuse/victim/family and sentenced to six years in [the] Illinois Department of Corrections. ICE’s detainer for Caro Marin was not honored. On November 9, ICE arrested Caro Marin where he is currently in ICE custody.
  • Amilcar Waldo Gonzalez-Jimenez — “arrested and convicted for 1 count of driving under the influence and domestic battery and 2 counts of criminal sexual assault. ICE’s detainer for Gonzalez-Jimenez was not honored. On November 13, ICE arrested Gonzalez-Jimenez.”
  • Jose Manuel Fuentes-Vargas — “arrested for domestic battery, violation of protection order, and convicted of sexual assault of a victim less than 13 years of age. ICE’s detainer for Fuentes-Vargas was not honored. On October 30, ICE arrested Fuentes-Vargas where he is currently in ICE custody.”

Several other examples put forth by the department included criminals who targeted children. Notably, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul (D) received a letter from ICE in September. The agency requested state officials cooperate with ICE efforts to detain illegals, but Raoul’s office never responded.

As part of the newly released data, Assistant Secretary of the DHS Tricia McLaughlin asserted that “Governor Pritzker and his fellow Illinois sanctuary politicians are releasing murderers, pedophiles, and kidnappers back into our neighborhoods and putting American lives at risk.” She called “on Governor Pritzker and his administration to stop this dangerous derangement and commit to honoring the ICE arrest detainers of the more than 4,000 criminal illegal aliens in Illinois’ custody. It is common sense. Criminal illegal aliens should not be released back onto our streets to terrorize more innocent Americans.”

According to a letter from Lyons shared with Fox News, Illinois has “tens of thousands of criminal illegal aliens” in custody that Lyons urged “should be swiftly removed from the United States and not be returned to our streets to wreak havoc on law-abiding citizens.”

As Erin Schniederjan, research assistant for Homeland Security, shared with The Washington Stand, “Illinois should repeal the TRUST Act, in which doing so would allow local law enforcement to participate in federal immigration enforcement. Illinois residents should also be empowered to sue state officials who obstruct federal law enforcement. The new ICE-out legislation Governor Pritzker just signed facilitates residents to sue federal law enforcement for enforcing federal immigration law, but Illinois residents still can’t hold state officials accountable for obstructing federal law enforcement.”

As Schniederjan went on to explain, “Sanctuary policies allow illegal aliens to be protected, and unrightfully so. Protecting illegal aliens, many of them being violent criminals, only puts communities at risk. Think of all of the crimes that could have been prevented and people that would still be with us if sanctuary policies didn’t exist.” Ultimately, she added, “If Illinois and other states alike actually cared about their residents, they would work with federal law enforcement to remove the illegal aliens who have no right to be here in the first place.”

Schniederjan concluded by calling for accountability: “The federal government can hold states accountable for harboring illegal aliens by revoking state and city funding.” Otherwise, “sanctuary jurisdictions will prioritize illegal aliens over their own citizens to maintain political power.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

Partner with The Washington Stand to bring news from a biblical worldview to readers nationwide. From now until December 31, every gift will be doubled through our year-end Challenge Match.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Payroll Costs of the Federal Swamp Exploded 24% during Biden Era

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There were 5% more federal workers — 2.77 million in 2020 to 2.90 million in 2025 — when Joe Biden left the White House, but the costs of paying this vast legion of bureaucrats exploded 24% during the same period, according to a new report by a nonprofit government watchdog.

Much of the skyrocketing payroll costs is due to spiking paychecks going to employees making more than $100,000 annually in salary during the 2020-2024 period, according to Open the Books (OTB), the Illinois-based nonprofit that maintains the world’s largest, most current internet database of public spending:

  • Federal workers making $100,000+ annually increased 49% from 532,784 to 793,537.
  • Those making $200,000+ saw their ranks grow 82%, from 37,631 to 68,445.
  • Bureaucrats being paid $300,000+ rose 84%, from 7,692 to 14,143.

Federal worker compensation increased so widely in the government workforce that the average pay exceeded $100,000 in 117 of 127 executive agencies and the White House. In 2024, 31,452 federal employees outearned every one of the country’s 50 state governors. The average salary of all 50 state governors was just under $150,000 in 2024. New York has the highest-paid chief state executive at $250,000.

Most federal workers are paid according to the General Schedule, which includes 15 grades and 10 pay steps within each grade. The lowest-paid federal worker is a GS-1 who at Step 1 was paid $21,986 annually in 2024. By advancing to Step 10, a GS-1 worker would see an increase in pay to $27,502.

At the highest level of the GS schedule, the GS-15, Step 10, which in 2024 received $159,950. Step 1for the GS-15 was paid $123,401. Most workers in the GS-13 to GS-15 are in supervisory positions. These salary figures do not include the cost of federal employee benefits, which on average add an additional 30% to the total compensation for each position.

The next rung up from the General Schedule is the Senior Executive Service (SES), which includes five levels with pay ranging in 2024 from $147,649 to a maximum of $221,900. Members of the SES are typically the highest-ranked career workers.

Other pay classifications in the federal workforce include those covering law enforcement, administrative law judges, and senior-level science and professional positions.

The highest paid federal worker at the end of 2024, according to the OTB report, was cardiologist Gary H. Gibbons, who was director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health and earned $519,246 last year, a 28% increase from the $406,095 he received in 2021.

Gibbons was the second-highest paid federal employee that year, trailing only Anthony Fauci, then-Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), who got $417,608. When Fauci retired early in 2023, his salary had jumped to $480,654.

Currently, the president of the United States is paid $400,000 annually, while the vice president gets $235,100. Trump returns each of his paychecks to the U.S. Treasury.

Among the 20 largest federal departments and agencies, the Department of War tops the list, with 189,272 employees making more than $100,000 annually. The average salary for the 761,524 total workforce was $82,516. The Small Business Administration (SBA) ranks 20th, employing 7,878 employees.

The SBA was notable for being the only federal department or agency in the top 20 to see its payroll costs go down between 2020 to 2024, with a 26% decline in the workforce total, but only a 3% decline in the total cost of that payroll.

Of the other 19 departments and agencies in the top 20, 15 saw significant increases in both their total number of employees and the cost of their payroll. The average workforce jump for the 15 was 10%. On the total payroll cost side, 19 of the top 20 saw an average cost increase of 23%. The Department of Health and Human Services (39%), Department of Veterans Affairs (38%), and the Department of Energy (37%) had the biggest payroll cost hikes.

Asked about the above figures, U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) spokesman Rachel Cauley told The Washington Stand that “so far under Trump, the government workforce has shrunk by almost 300,000 positions.” After the federal government was shut down on October 1 due to the inability of Congress to approve a budget for Fiscal Year 2026, Trump was talking about firing some portion of the approximately 670,000 federal workers classified as “non-essential,” but to date, none of those employees have received notice of being terminated.

Many of the reductions in the federal workforce under Trump are the result of the activities of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), formerly headed by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. Caucuses were formed in both the Senate and House to support the DOGE effort to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government.

And U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Scott Kapur told TWS that “these numbers demonstrate what most people now recognize — the Biden administration did not take seriously their role as stewards of taxpayer dollars. The Trump administration is very clear about its responsibilities to Americans.”

Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.), a member of the House DOGE Caucus, lauded the OTB report.

“President Trump is leading the charge to cut waste, fraud, and abuse through DOGE. I’m proud to serve on the Congressional DOGE Caucus, where I voted to claw back nearly $10 billion in reckless spending — including shutting down the left-wing slush fund at USAID. This report proves there’s more swamp to drain, and I’m ready to deliver more DOGE cuts in Congress.”

AUTHOR

Mark Tapscott

Mark Tapscott is senior congressional analyst at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Dems Feel the Squeeze as Schumer’s Shutdown Approaches Historic Levels

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When Democrats flipped off the lights of the government, no one was quite sure how long the tantrum would last. Now, more than a month later, it seems almost ironic that the record-tying day of the shutdown falls on November 4, when tens of millions of voters head to the polls to make a rare, off-year statement. But this time around, that statement won’t just include how Americans feel about dozens of ballot initiatives and candidates — but Republicans’ leadership and Democrats’ defiance.

To a lot of observers, Election Day might finally be the break federal workers have been waiting for. “They’re setting everything up for next week,” Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) told Politico Friday. “If they [agree to open the government] before Tuesday, then their base may not show up because it looks like they caved. … That’s why they’re setting everything up to open next week. We’ll be open next Wednesday, or Wednesday night, or Thursday.”

RealClearPolitics’ White House Correspondent Phil Wegmann agrees. Maybe, he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “This Week on Capitol Hill,” “if Democrats are able to put a few points on the scoreboard” by winning a few big races in New Jersey or Virginia, “they’ll be more eager to come to the table here in D.C.” Even so, Wegmann insisted, “It’s been remarkable. We have seen Republicans, for the most part, stay in lockstep — both in the House and the Senate. And I think that’s because they’re taking their cues not just from President Trump, but also from Majority Leader [John] Thune (R-S.D.) [and] Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). The only reason I want to point that out is because we began the year with a lot of consternation in the Republican ranks, but as of right now, they’re standing pat.”

Unfortunately for Johnson and Thune’s party, so are Democrats. The difference is, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) party is feeling the squeeze. After 14 votes to reopen the government by Republicans, America’s business and union leaders have publicly turned on Democrats. Airlines like Delta and United are calling on Congress to pass a clean continuing resolution (CR), which is what the GOP has lobbied for from the beginning. Then, adding to the Democrats’ PR nightmare, a “broad coalition of business associations” — including banking, real estate, retail, manufacturing, technology, wholesalers, and even the Chamber of Commerce — piled on. The groups, which represent corporate behemoths like Walmart and Apple, didn’t mince words when they warned that every day, “the larger and more durable the economic damage becomes — and some of it might never be recovered.”

In what may be the Democrats’ most surprising critics, five unions — including the American Federation of Government Employees and Teamsters—broke with Schumer’s party, demanding they pass a clear CR.

Even the media, Schumer’s most reliable cheerleaders, have tired of the party’s rebellion for individual gain. “Schumer has allowed the shutdown to drag on because he’s worried about fending off a primary challenger in 2028, and he’s still smarting from blowback he got from angry liberals after he agreed to fund the government this spring,” The Washington Post’s editorial board declared. As for the grand façade that Democrats are fighting to keep health care costs low, the Post argued, “Keeping the government open should be separated from policy disputes about how to spend taxpayer money. It is wrong that Democrats have held the government hostage for a month in hopes of extending costly Obamacare subsidies, just as it was for Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to shut down the government in 2013 for 16 days in a bid to defund the Affordable Care Act altogether.” The answer, they contended, “is to reopen the government with a clean funding bill.”

Speaking of the Obamacare tax credits, which is apparently the political hill Democrats are willing to die on, Wegmann reminds people that what we’re talking about here “is the extension of former President Biden’s expansion of Obamacare, which was designed to be temporary. It was a COVID-era measure, and it made a lot more individuals eligible for coverage.” As even Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) insisted, Democrats are the ones who, in 2022, wrote the legislation to end these subsidies in 2025.

And the reality is, Paragon Health Institute emphasized in damning research, health care costs wouldn’t really be rising because these tax credits end. By their calculations, sunsetting these subsidies “accounts for only 4 percent of the expected 20 percent average premium increase next year.” In other words, their experts wrote, Democrats can’t blame the “sharp jump in premiums” on the end of these subsidies. “The real drivers are the same structural flaws that have plagued Obamacare since 2014 and rising health care costs,” Paragon’s Gabrielle Kalisz explained.

The real problem, many stress, is “the premium increase to higher medical utilization, inflation, health care consolidation (which the ACA contributed to), and surging costs for expensive drugs — especially GLP-1 weight-loss and diabetes medications, specialty drugs, and biologics (including new gene therapies). Insurers also cite workforce shortages, price transparency measures, and tariffs as nominal contributors to increasing premiums.”

Under these pandemic credits, Kalisz says, “the federal government has been paying 93 percent of the premium for the typical enrollee. Even after the COVID Credits expire, the federal government will still cover more than 80 percent of the typical enrollee’s premium through the regular subsidy. Taxpayers, not consumers, will remain the overwhelming source of revenue for insurers selling ACA exchange plans.”

No wonder Republicans have never voted for these subsidies, FRC’s Perkins shook his head before raising some of the major problems with Obamacare. “First off, many of them see these subsidies as propping up a program that doesn’t work because it is anything but affordable as its name, Affordable Health Care Act, [implies].” In a slap to taxpayers, Obamacare isn’t subject to the Hyde Amendment. “So it funds abortion and now funds these transgender surgeries in particular for minors.”

If the White House wants to negotiate with Democrats on this issue as a condition of ending the shutdown, they do so at their own peril, Wegmann cautions. “They’re going to [face] a lot of heat from Republicans and the pro-life lobby. … Hyde has never applied to Obamacare. There’s nothing in the statute that prevents these dollars from going to abortion,” he reiterated. “… Just this summer, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, you had Maryland dip into a $24 million Obamacare fund to provide abortion services for women coming from outside of that state. So for conservatives and pro-life lobby, this is a bright line. This is their brick wall.”

That may be why, when Perkins asked Speaker Johnson what he’d like people to pray about, the Louisianan said, “For God’s wisdom and guidance. We do live in a great nation. We can’t take it for granted,” he emphasized. “… And we need to get past all the bitter partisanship. We need to get the government open and do the basic responsibility that we’re given by God. I think we will. I’m optimistic.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Dems Cling to Woke Policies, Rhetoric as State and Local Elections Loom

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Democrats Skip Town after Nixing a Bill to Pay Federal Workers during Shutdown

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It’s an ironic day to celebrate the “spirit of bipartisanship” in the Senate, but 23 days into a government shutdown, that’s exactly what both parties sat down to do. When Senators Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.) decided to host a special chamber-wide lunch (complete with fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and blueberry crumble), no one could’ve dreamed that the two sides would be hunkered down on opposite sides of a funding war with no signs of budging. But at least for a couple of hours on Thursday, Democrats and Republicans broke bread — even if they couldn’t break through their differences.

Humble pie obviously wasn’t on the menu, as leaders retreated from the delicious spread to their separate corners, voting down bills that would’ve broken the logjam — or at least made the ordeal easier on cash-strapped staffers, who are working around the clock (thanks in large part to grandstanding filibusters) without paychecks. Asked if Democrats could possibly be talked into realistic negotiations, Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Wednesday’s “Washington Watch.”

Looking ahead to Thursday’s votes, he worried Democrats would, in fact, shoot down the push to compensate some federal workers. After all, Marshall pointed out, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has already rejected the idea of paying our military. “We have Capitol Police up here,” the senator reminded everyone. “My staff is working without paychecks as well.” And yet, Democrats refuse to even make those exceptions. “I don’t know what their off-ramp looks like right now,” Marshall admitted. “It’s a dire predicament for them right now.”

Marshall’s prediction was right. On Thursday, all but three Democrats — Senators Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), and John Fetterman (D-Pa.) — voted to leave federal workers in a lurch. The outcome surprised even House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who had hoped Congress would “do something that makes sense around here for once.” Instead, Schumer’s party was left scrambling to explain why they thought our troops and other government employees should work for free. “I’m fine to support it,” Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said before, ironically, voting no. “I think we need to pay our military, but I want to define and limit it in a way that provides pay to essential workers who serve our public safety and our national defense.”

Ossoff, meanwhile, a surprising outlier in his party (who also happens to be facing a tough reelection next year), explained his break with Democrats by telling reporters, “Military servicemembers, TSA workers, and air traffic controllers are among those who simply must come to work, and they should be paid for that work.”

For now, Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), whose bill failed to find the magical 60 votes it needed to start signing paychecks for certain workers, stood outside the only thing the chamber can agree on — Paul and Peter’s bipartisan lunch — and insisted, “I’m going to work over the weekend, our staffs, figure out how to take my bill, make it acceptable to Democrats. Hopefully, we can pass it early next week. That’s my game plan. Wish me luck.”

But it’ll take a lot more than luck this time around. And although Democrats are publicly stoic, the optics certainly aren’t helping Schumer’s party. While he’s being showered with praise by the fringe Left for rebuffing Republicans’ attempts to sit down and find a solution, Americans are feeling the squeeze. And instead of seeing Democrats spring into action to help them, they see leadership content to sit back and try to score political points. “Every day gets better for us,” the New Yorker bragged to the press. This, while everyday people work without pay, offices are understaffed, and routine benefits trickle out at half speed. November 1 is rapidly approaching, The Daily Signal’s Elizabeth Mitchell told Perkins on “This Week on Capitol Hill,” “which is when SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] funding will run out.” That’s food for low-income people, moms and kids. Surely, that’s “another thing that’s putting pressure on Democrats,” she underscored.

But if families are hurting, Schumer’s party says, that’s just too bad. Democrats have their upcoming elections to think about. “Shutdowns are terrible, and of course, there will be families that are going to suffer,” House Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) said, while claiming they take that problem “very seriously.” “But it is one of the few leverage times we have,” the number two House Democrat explained to Fox News.

“So there you have it,” Breitbart’s John Nolte wrote. “Even though Republicans have made clear that they are willing to negotiate with Democrats on the health care issue… Even though President Trump has said this is a priority… Democrats refuse to open the government. They are openly admitting here [that] they are willing to make American families suffer just to gain leverage.”

And exactly what leverage have they gained? While Democrats have a slight edge among voters in the blame game, it’s nothing compared to the shellacking Republicans took for turning off the government’s lights in 2018. And Donald Trump’s approval rating has actually climbed as a result. According to Reuters/Ipsos, Trump’s approval is at 42% — up two from a couple of weeks ago.

Speaking of the president, he knows exactly what’s fueling this shutdown: Schumer’s insecurity. “He’s shot,” Trump stressed Wednesday. “This poor guy. I feel sorry for him. I’ve known him for a long time, but I think he’s mentally gone. He’s been beat[en] up by young radical lunatics. And I think that Chuck Schumer is — he’s gonzo. I really do.” Referring to the threats from his extreme flank, the president predicted that the minority leader wouldn’t run again. “It shows that he’s losing in every poll. … I’m just giving you the facts. I think Chuck is probably finished.”

The New Yorker’s colleague, Senator Jon Husted (R-Ohio), can’t help but notice that Schumer’s grip on power is slipping. “I think we all know that Chuck Schumer is feeling the pressure of younger Democrats who think he’s a failure as a leader. And so, he’s trying to prove to his political left base that he can fight back against President Trump,” the Ohioan noticed. “But fighting back against President Trump is at the expense of what’s best for the American people in this case,” he told Perkins on Thursday’s “Washington Watch.” “And I think ultimately, this is a terrible thing for everyone. But it just proves that they’re not interested in being serious about trying to serve the American people.”

“Remember,” Husted paused, “this is a clean CR that we’re asking them to vote for — meaning that there [are] no politics in it, no games. We’re spending at Biden-era levels in these agencies. So why should they be against that? And it would only create funding through November the 21st, at which time we will have to go through this again. So even if you vote for the CR and you get people funded, then do that, and then we’ll keep negotiating about whatever you want.” Until then, Husted said, “Chuck Schumer is going to have to decide that he cares about the American people and not just his own political fortunes.”

In the meantime, senators are headed home without a solution — again. Obviously, it’ll take a lot more prayers like Senate Chaplain Barry Black’s to bring Democrats to the table. “We continue our importunity for the ending of this shutdown,” he prayed, “particularly praying for our Capitol Police and the many others who are serving without monetary compensation. We pray also for those who are not considered essential workers. Lord, reward them all.”

If God needs a shortcut, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said, “I have great news. The clean CR would pay everyone. We just need five more Democrats to support it.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Dems’ Shutdown Strategy Benefits Health Insurance Firms That Give Millions in Campaign Contributions

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Congressional Democrats claim their refusal to end the government shutdown unless President Donald Trump and Capitol Hill Republicans agree to make permanent Obamacare’s temporary COVID-related tax credits is intended to protect the health care coverage of millions of low and middle-income Americans.

But an analysis by The Washington Stand of campaign contributions data compiled by OpenSecrets.org suggests such solid-wall support for the shutdown also shields a health care insurance industry that gives hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Democratic incumbents, challengers, committees, and PACs.

The temporary COVID-related tax credits are hugely important sources of revenues for many of the largest health care insurers that are active in the Obamacare segment, according to Economic Policy Innovation Center Researcher Gudai Bulgac. And the tax credits are significant incentives for fraudulent enrollment.

“The Biden COVID Credits are paid directly to health insurance companies from the U.S. Treasury. Since the funds do not go to individuals, millions of people have been fraudulently enrolled and often do not even know that they have been signed up. About 40 percent of people who are fully subsidized by Biden’s COVID Credits did not make a single claim for a medical procedure or medication in 2024,” Bulgac reported earlier this month.

“This allows the insurance companies to collect thousands of dollars in credits from the government per enrollee while incurring little to no cost. An estimated $27 billion in these improper payments to insurance companies were made in 2025 alone as many insurance companies jumped to take advantage of these credits,” Bulgac continued.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), for example, is viewed as the Democrats’ chief shutdown strategist. The New York Democrat’s Impact leadership PAC received $271,284 in contributions from Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group and the St. Louis-based Centene, two of the 10 biggest health care insurance firms that depend on Obamacare for significant portions of their annual revenue.

The Schumer PAC received an additional $78,024 from Indianapolis-based Elevance, which was formerly known as Anthem, as well as $49,024 from Rhode Island-based CVS Health. That brings the Schumer PAC’s total haul for the period 2019 to 2024 to $398,332. Each of these four firms are among the 10 biggest health care insurance firms in the Obamacare universe, as ranked by Venteur.

UnitedHealth Group is the biggest health care insurance firm in Obamacare, and its political contributions to Democrats far exceed those to Republicans. In the 2024 election cycle, $988,411, or nearly 59% of all the firm’s donations went to Democrats.

Centene gave $38.88 million to Democratic Senate contenders during the 2018-2024 period, compared to $19.16 million to GOP Senate candidates. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris was the recipient of Centene’s biggest individual contribution, at $225,262 out of a total of $634,223 to six Democrats during the 2024 campaign cycle. The Centene total to the four GOP recipients in the firm’s top 10 came to $348,478, slightly more than half the Democrat total.

Bulgac explains another key factor in Centene’s significance in the behind-the-scenes shutdown influences.

“Centene is the largest Obamacare insurer by market share,” he noted. “Their Obamacare membership nearly doubled from 3.3 million enrollees in 2023 to 5.9 million in 2025. This comprises 21 percent of their total membership of 28 million, with their Medicaid membership making up an additional 12.8 million enrollees. In their 2024 10-K filing for their investors, Centene stated that ‘[r]evenues from CMS are significant to the Marketplace segment.’ In other words, Centene is heavily reliant on payments from the federal government to sustain their business.”

Molina, which ranks ninth in the top 10 of Obamacare insurers, further illustrates the importance of the temporary COVID-related subsidies, Bulgac writes. “Molina also noted in their 10-K that they ‘expect [their] Marketplace enrollment to increase by almost 50 percent in 2025, to a total of 580,000 members by the end of the year … This would represent an estimated Marketplace premium revenue increase of approximately 60 percent in 2025, while continuing to maintain [their] target margins.’”

A more balanced picture is seen with CVS Health political contributions. Republican recipients during the 2024 cycle, led by the Congressional Leadership Fund’s $575,000, received $832,805, while Democrats got $551,352. Among Senate candidates, Democrats in the 2024 cycle received $18.99 million, while Republicans got $28.53 million from CVS Health.

Curiously in the context of the intense partisan deadlock between Senate Republicans and Democrats that occasioned the present shutdown, the excessive influence of health care insurance firms on American politics is a bipartisan concern, according to the Pew Research Center.

“Of the eight groups and institutions we asked about in this survey — such as Congress, the general public and federal courts — health insurance companies are the one that a majority of Americans agree has too much sway in health policy. Just 9 percent say they have about the right amount of influence, and an equal share say they don’t have enough,” Pew reported in a July 10 survey analysis.

“Although politics and health policy are often deeply entangled, this dim opinion of health insurance companies’ influence is an area of notable partisan agreement. Roughly equal shares of Democrats (including those who lean to the Democratic Party) and Republicans (and GOP leaners) express this view. Similar shares of Democrats and Republicans also say Congress has too much influence on health policy, although this view is less widely held than it is for health insurance companies,” Pew said.

Among Republicans, 71% said health care insurers have too much influence of federal health policy, while 69% of Democrats said the same thing.

It is important to understand that the Obamacare temporary subsidies that Democrats backed in 2021 and now demand be made permanent were effective in expanding enrollment by lower and middle-income families because the government made premiums artificially cheap.

“Since enhanced subsidies began in 2021, the market enrollment has grown tremendously, rising from 11 million people in 2020 to 25 million today. Again, Democrats and Republicans interpret this growth in opposite ways. Democrats see it as a sign of success, whereas Republicans are concerned about waste and over-use,” states Mark Shepherd, Harvard Kennedy School associate professor of public policy.

In other words, more customers paying the government subsidized premiums keeps more revenue flowing into the health care insurers’ coffers, while terminating those subsidies could dramatically reduce such revenues for the companies.

AUTHOR

Mark Tapscott

Mark Tapscott is senior congressional analyst at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Energy Department Cuts $7.56 Billion in Green Projects

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has terminated nearly $8 billion in green energy projects, it announced Thursday, determining “that they did not meet the economic, national security or energy security standards necessary to justify continued investment.” The cancellations delivered on President Trump’s agenda to “protect taxpayer dollars and expand America’s supply of affordable, reliable, and secure energy,” the DOE argued.

The DOE terminated 321 awards for 223 projects, coming to a grand total of $7.56 billion. More than a quarter (26%) of these awards — amounting to $3.1 billion — were granted by the Biden administration between President Trump’s November 2024 victory and his January 2025 inauguration, the department said.

In May 2025, Energy Secretary Chris Wright directed program offices to request more information from awardees for a case-by-case review of awards that would “identify waste, safeguard taxpayer dollars, protect America’s national security, and advance President Trump’s commitment to deliver affordable, reliable, and secure energy for the American people.”

“Following a thorough, individualized financial review,” the DOE continued, it “determined that these projects did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs, were not economically viable, and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.”

Although the DOE did not provide a complete list, the canceled awards include those for projects “intended to suck carbon dioxide from the sky” and California’s “state’s hydrogen hub, the Alliance for Renewable Clean Hydrogen Energy Systems, or ARCHES.” (“Clean hydrogen” involves splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen using renewable energy.)

In fact, most of the canceled awards were attached to green energy projects in Democrat-controlled states. White House Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Russ Vought called attention to this fact in a tweet. “The projects are in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA.” However, some canceled projects were also identified in Tennessee, Florida, and Iowa.

The October 2 cuts were actually the second round of award cancellations announced by the DOE. On May 30, the department announced the cancellation of 24 awards totaling $3.7 billion, 16 of which were granted after Election Day.

The May award cancellations came amid the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) vigorous efforts to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse across the federal government, and they received pushback from congressional Democrats at the time.

This time, the DOE announced the award cancellations amid a government shutdown, as Democrats in Congress have plenty more pressing matters attracting their attention.

Although some news reports have tied the DOE cuts to the Trump administration’s hardball shutdown tactics, the only connection is the timing; the DOE did not rely on any shutdown rationale in cutting the grants, and the end of the shutdown will not reinstate them. However, award recipients do have 30 days to appeal the termination.

California Governor and prospective presidential candidate Gavin Newsom (D) reacted furiously to the cancellation of green energy awards in his state, “In Trump’s America, energy policy is set by the highest bidder, economics and common sense be damned,” he complained. “We’ll continue to pursue an all-of-the above clean energy strategy that powers our future and cleans the air, no matter what D.C. tries to dictate.”

Newsom’s mention of “economics” in defense of green energy subsidies is curious, since any form of energy (or any product whatsoever) that is forced to rely on government subsidies is, by definition, not economically viable. If green energy is economic, it can survive without government subsidies.

Wright’s decision to cancel green energy spending comes days after the Energy Department and Interior Department jointly announced on Monday a plan to ramp up production of fossil fuels.

The Trump administration plans to reopen 13 million acres to coal mining, after new mining was forbidden by the Biden administration. The administration will also lower royalty rates, repeal regulations on the coal industry, and provide $625 million in government subsidies recommissioning and modernizing coal plants, expanding coal power into rural communities, and improving waste management systems to extend coal life.

The Trump administration has chosen its preferred fuel, and it has decided to turn away from costly green energy subsidies to less costly coal subsidies.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

On a Surprising ICE Arrest and Asking the Right Questions

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On Friday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced the most jaw-dropping apprehension of an illegal immigrant. ICE arrested Ian Andre Roberts, a native of the small South American nation of Guyana, whose last work authorization expired in 2020. What made this arrest so surprising weren’t the crimes committed by the detainee (although there were a few), but the way that he apparently hid for years in plain sight — even in a position of public leadership and trust.

When ICE arrested Roberts, he was working as the superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools, drawing a base salary of $286,000. The inherent dissonance of that statement has people scratching their heads across the political spectrum.

Yet there seems to be no reason to doubt the facts ICE has marshalled in this case, even if their enforcement record has not been perfect this year. ICE argued that Roberts had an existing weapon possession charge from February 2020, leading to a final order of removal issued by a federal immigration judge in May 2024. Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa), who represents the Des Moines area, tracked down the removal order through a FOIA request, and a redacted version was published by local station KCCI.

After ICE provided the school board with evidence, they voted 6-0 to place Roberts on unpaid leave in a Monday night meeting. The Iowa Board of Educational Examiners had already revoked Roberts’s license on Sunday.

A further reason to trust ICE’s case is the behavior of the defendant himself. When officers approached his vehicle in a targeted immigration enforcement traffic stop, Roberts fled away from the scene and abandoned his car near a wooded area. In his car, ICE found a loaded handgun, a hunting knife, and $3,000 in cash. After losing his professional license and being placed on unpaid leave, Roberts resigned his position as Des Moines Public Schools superintendent.

The first decision (to run) raises suspicion. The second decision (to resign) suggests a finality, that Roberts knows there is no way for him to regain the position. In other words, resignation is not the move of someone tripped up by a simple misunderstanding, which could be straightened out in just a few days.

Despite these facts, some people still contended that Roberts had received unfair treatment. Roberts’s lawyer, Alfredo Parrish, complained that the school board had “thrown away the valuable tool of due process” in placing his client on unpaid leave, although they did give Parrish a chance to respond.

Likewise, former Democratic state Representative Ako Abdul-Samad urged the school district to “place him on paid leave until the facts are in. He argued, “When there’s an officer shooting, that officer is placed on paid leave until all the facts are in, right? We’re asking the same thing.”

These are partisan questions, and not very compelling ones. Roberts did receive due process — last year, in an immigration court. The result of that process was a judge’s final order of removal, and the school board has neither the legal competence nor the legal authority to gainsay that verdict. This removal order, then, becomes the only relevant fact. Those complaining about the swiftness of Roberts’s defenestration from the Des Moines School District simply want to relitigate the judge’s verdict in the court of public opinion, when Roberts’ case was already settled a year ago under the Biden administration.

Still others want to have it both ways. Des Moines School Board Chairwoman Jackie Norris, who is also running as a Democrat for U.S. Senate, proposed that “two things can be true at the same time — Dr. Roberts was an effective and well-respected leader, and there are serious questions related to his citizenship and ability to legally perform his duties as superintendent.”

This is still a partisan proposal in that it is obviously designed to appeal to a segment of voters. But it is more plausible in that respects the established facts and declines to openly flout federal immigration law.

Yet even this solution raises more (and better) questions. For instance: can a superintendent be trusted if he obtained his position under false pretenses? Does Norris believe that good results (Roberts was “an effective … leader,” she said) excuse lawbreaking? What sort of character example has Roberts set for students in Des Moines public schools?

ICE Enforcement and Removal (ERO) St. Paul Field Office Director Sam Olson had his own question: “How this illegal alien was hired without work authorization, a final order of removal, and a prior weapons charge is beyond comprehension and should alarm the parents of that school district.”

Indeed, the story grows even stranger, because Roberts’s career extends far beyond this one position. After entering the U.S. on a student visa in 1999, Roberts spent more than two decades building a career as an education administrator. During that time, he worked in Maryland, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. He wrote books, spoke at conferences, and engaged in political debates. During that time, he was also issued multiple traffic citations and was charged with at least one gun-related offense. Roberts was not exactly the sort of illegal immigrant who hides off the grid.

It seems that Roberts crept along by claiming to be a U.S. citizen when it was necessary. At the time of his hiring in Des Moines, Roberts filled out paperwork claiming that he was a U.S. citizen, as well as providing a driver’s license and Social Security card. How did he have a Social Security card — not just the number, but the card too?

Roberts also affirmed “under penalty of perjury” that he was a U.S. citizen when registering to vote in Maryland in December 2016, according to USA Today. The state of Maryland had itself created a voter record for Roberts in January 2012 (although there is no record that Roberts ever voted).

One possible solution is that Roberts’s main fault, if viewed charitably, was serial resumé inflation (an increasingly visible problem across academia). Roberts has long claimed to hold a doctoral degree from Morgan State University, but the university said Roberts never obtained a degree from the school. The problem is that falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen is a far more serious offense, with far stiffer penalties; U.S. citizenship is far more important than a degree from this or that school.

Other questions could be asked about Roberts’s record. For example, since his work authorization expired in 2020, but he has still gathered a healthy salary, has he (or how has he) paid his taxes?

However, the question with the broadest application is this: how did Des Moines Public Schools, or any of Roberts’s other previous employers, verify his eligibility to work? Did they simply take his word for it? The U.S. Department of Justice plans to investigate the district’s hiring practices. Whatever shortcomings they find will likely prove instructive to many other businesses (or school districts) also.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with  permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Democrats Box Themselves into a Shutdown America Blames Them for

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While the country keeps a weary eye on the latest spectacle on Capitol Hill, some D.C. establishments are trying to have a little fun with the government shutdown. On Wednesday, a local restaurant called Butterworth’s tried to lighten the mood by offering a themed drink menu, including a “furlough-rita” and a “continuing rye-solution.” It’s one of the few bright spots in an otherwise tense standoff that shows no signs of ending.

For Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), it’s a tricky spot to be in. Not only is the hypocrisy aspect dogging Democrats (Speaker Mike Johnson’s X feed has Democrat leaders on a loop decrying the stupidity of shutdowns), but no one is quite sure what Democrats expect to gain by grinding the government to a halt. Even the few brownie points Schumer might gain from supposedly “standing up to Donald Trump” are crumbs compared to the buzzsaw of public opinion, which even the liberals at The New York Times polled as bad news for the minority.

There was no sugar-coating it for the Left in the Gray Lady, which found that a full 65% of Americans objected to Democrats moving forward with a government shutdown. In “a further dagger” to the heart of Schumer’s party, even his own base is surprisingly split (47% for, 43% against).

Making matters worse, Democrats have no real case for pulling the plug on federal funding. As outraged as they may be over the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, trying to overturn President Trump’s signature legislation, after he won the popular vote, and in a Congress controlled by Republicans no less, is a fool’s errand.

Even Democrats like John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who’s sounding more reasonable by the day, recognize what a frightening precedent that would set. “I’ve at least been one [who] says, ‘Hey, now, I would love to restore a lot of those health care things.’ That’s the right outcome,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union,” “but that’s a dangerous tactic if you’re going to shut the government down for one of our policies. I condemned it when the Republicans threatened to do that thing. And it’s entirely wrong for us to do the same thing.”

Old soundbites are becoming increasingly stubborn things for his party, as footage from some of the most extreme Democrats echoes like bad campaign ads. “It’s not normal to shut down the government when we don’t get what we want,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has argued. “Families will be hurt. Farmers will be hurt,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) is caught saying. “This shutdown — you know who’s going to feel the pain?” radical Democrat Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) asked last year. “You know who it hurts? You. Everyday people and the most vulnerable. Seniors, veterans, working families, hungry kids, y’all.”

Even the man who’s putting his party in this precarious position sang a very different tune almost one year ago. “If the government shuts down, it will be average Americans who suffer most. A government shutdown means seniors who rely on Social Security could be thrown into chaos,” Schumer claimed.

So what changed? For the minority leader, his grasp on power. After Schumer’s March decision to cooperate with Republicans and keep the government open, he was savaged by the radical fringe. How dare he engage in civil debate! How dare he give the appearance of bipartisanship! Resist Trump or step down!

As his Oklahoma colleague, Senator James Lankford (R), told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” Tuesday evening, “This is all about Chuck Schumer’s personal politics, all about it. Multiple Democrat[ic] senators that I’ve talked to have said, ‘Hey, we should just keep it open. We should keep it going — except for Chuck Schumer and his politics that he’s in right now.’ So we’re there; I get it,” he shrugged. “We’ve got the socialists that [are] leading the mayoral race in New York City right now. The New York politics have shifted hard, hard, hard to the far, far, far Left. And Chuck Schumer is trying to be able to fight off the far-left socialists in his own party on it. And we’ll see where that goes.”

Vice President J.D. Vance also cut through the media’s noise to the heart of the issue. “The primary reason the government is shut down,” Vance claimed, is because “Chuck Schumer is terrified he’s going to get a primary challenge from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez” in 2028. “Here you have a career politician who is more afraid of his reelection … than he is doing what’s right for the American people,” Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) agreed. “This is what happens when you have a career politician.”

In the meantime, any slim hopes that insiders had for a quick end to this standoff came to a predictable end on Wednesday when both parties offered their versions of a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the lights on. The Democrats’ bill, which essentially overturns Trump’s signature OBBB legislation, failed again 47 to 53. The seven-week extension from Republicans, which had the backing of two Democrats — Fetterman and Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto — and one Independent, Angus King of Maine, also didn’t manage to attract any new cross-aisle support, striking out by a 55-45 vote.

Of course, the irony of the situation — and there are several — is that by keeping the government closed, Democrats are effectively handing the keys to Trump. “In a shutdown,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) reminded everyone on “This Week on Capitol Hill,” “the president gets the power of the purse. Donald Trump. [So] they’re not even going to achieve their goal,” he shook his head.

Worse than that, some argue, they’ve supercharged the White House to radically overhaul federal agencies. Under the executive branch, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has a “surprising amount of discretion” in deciding whether the furloughed employees come back at all. Employees whose work “is not consistent with the President’s priorities,” as OMB Chief Russell Vought put it, could pay personally for Schumer’s gamble. Vought has “the power to tell agency leaders to move past the usual furloughs — “temporary, nonduty, nonpay status” — to RIFs [Reductions in Force] — being permanently fired,” Donald Kettl warns.

“Vought could choose the programs that the administration has been wanting to eliminate and give a very big haircut to others,” he continued. “The result would be a dramatic, instantaneous shift in the separation of powers.” The reality is, “The Trump team could kill programs unilaterally without the inconvenience of going to Congress. To top it all,” he added, “this would all be perfectly legal.”

Trump himself has warned of the dire consequences of Democrats not cutting a deal to pass the CR. “We’re doing well as a country, so the last thing we want to do is shut it down,” the president explained, “but a lot of good can come down from shutdowns. We can get rid of a lot of things that we didn’t want,” he said, referring to jobs and spending Republicans have been trying to eliminate.

That’s the trap Democrats find themselves in. “They could roll over and agree to all of the administration’s demands, as they did back in March,” Kettl points out. “That would weaken the party further as leaders try to right the ship. Or they could refuse to give in, trigger a shutdown — what the Republicans are already calling a ‘Schumer Shutdown’ — and then stand back to watch an awesome stripping away of their power. Either way, the Democrats lose. It’s like an old western, where cowboys ride into a box canyon with no way out.”

It’s a sad hill to die on, especially since there’s absolutely nothing controversial in the GOP’s short-term proposal. “I had a lot of colleagues who wanted us to load this up with our priorities, but the leaders decided we should do this in good faith,” Johnson reiterated to reporters. “… There is nothing we can pull out of this bill to make it any leaner and cleaner, it’s absolutely sparkling clean.” If anything, Democrats should be tickled pink that the government is being flooded with the same dollars it enjoyed under their own president.

And yet suddenly, the speaker told Perkins, “They want to throw in $1.5 trillion in new spending. That’s with a ‘T.’ They want to have American taxpayers give free health care to illegal aliens. … They want to give a half-billion dollars to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting so they can prop up left-wing media outlets. … We’re not doing that,” he vowed. “The American people did not vote for that stuff. And they’re playing games with very serious issues.”

Quena González, Family Research Council’s senior director for Government Affairs, has been talking both to congressional insiders who have seen this coming for months and to regular citizens who were surprised to read about the shutdown in the news. “Proverbs 29:2 says that when the rulers of the land are righteous, the people rejoice, but when the wicked are in authority the people groan,” he observed. “The current stand-off, in large part over subsidies to fund abortion under the guise of ‘health care,’ is an opportunity for Americans everywhere to pray for wisdom for those in authority.”

In a sign of how dire the political situation is becoming, the Senate (whose work week rarely begins before Monday night and which famously rushes to the airports on Thursday morning) is now toying around with coming back on Friday to vote, once again, on the clean CR. Wednesday at sundown to Thursday at sundown is Yom Kippur, the Jewish high holiday associated with personal reflection. “We can only hope,” González added, “that on reflection righteousness will prevail.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.