Tag Archive for: Federal Legislation

30 Trillion Reasons Sex Can’t Change

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Instead of affirming that “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27),” the transgender ideology states, “I create my own image, I can make myself to be male, female, or anything I choose.” (“Embracing God’s Design” by Walt Heyer and Jennifer Bauwens, Ph.D., Chapter 1)

My Story

In the 1980s, I fell for the idea that I could make myself to be female even though I am male. I took cross-sex hormones, had numerous surgeries to feminize my bodily appearance, and for 8 years, identified as Laura Jensen, female. I came to realize that none of it changed my male body into a biological female. I knew I was a fake and not really a female.

Thanks to a loving church, Christian counseling, and leaning on faith, I offered my life to Jesus and Jesus offered me his divine grace. The Lord Jesus redeemed and restored my sanity.

I admitted to God I had been wrong and foolish to identify as a “trans” female. I came to see that I had elevated my fake “female” self above God and family and was living a blatantly sinful and self-centered life, missing out on God’s divine grace. Today I live as the man God created me to be, bringing Him honor with 40 years of sobriety, 29 years of marriage, and a ministry to others wanting to get their life back, as I did.

The Body Testifies to the Truth

My experience taught me that seeking relief in hormones and surgery to “transition” from one sex to the other is a false promise, a bodacious lie, and I think it’s medical fraud. No meaningful “transition” occurs. Hormones and surgery can alter appearance of the body, such as adding a faux penis or fashioning a faux vagina, but these cosmetic changes cannot override the immutable genetic sex created in the womb during fertilization.

As Dr. Paul McHugh summarizes it succinctly: “Sex is not assigned by decree at birth by a parent or medical professional; it is assigned genetically at fertilization by the pairing of sex chromosomes (XX or XY). The genetic assignment is then expressed by the development of anatomical structures (that is, genitalia).”

The human body’s 30 trillion cells provide undeniable evidence of one’s sexual identity, either XX (female) or XY (male). Cross-sex hormones and surgery don’t change the DNA make-up of 30 trillion cells from one sex to the other.

The bone structure differs between the sexes. For example, the pelvis has distinct differences. A woman’s pelvis is wider, shallower, and lighter, with an inlet to accommodate the delivery of babies. The male pelvis is narrower, heaver and thicker, with denser bone structure for supporting the male’s heavier upper body. A surgeon cannot fashion a female pelvis from a man’s pelvis or vice versa.

Sex differences are real and true “sex reassignment” is impossible. Acknowledging the physical impossibility of changing genders matters because vulnerable people are being directed into serious harm by this false ideology.

Congress Should Act Protect Children (and Help Adults)

For over 11 years I have written articles like this one from 2015 about the harmful effects of administering puberty blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones to children.

As an advocate for protecting children from these egregious practices, I’m a huge supporter of passing the Chloe Cole Act which would prohibit performing or facilitating “gender transition” procedures on minors, and allow those harmed to bring suit with an extended statute of limitations of 25 years beyond the minor’s eighteenth birthday. This important bill needs to be passed and signed into law. (See link at the end for how you can help.)

However, the Chloe Cole act will only protect children under 18, representing only 7 to 8% of the procedures performed nationwide and leaving the other 90% who are adults like I was totally unprotected. If the procedures are harmful to individuals under age 18 then it seems reasonable to expect that harms would extend into adulthood as well. But the statute of limitations for bringing medical malpractice suits is pitifully short — in many states only two years. Extending that time limit would allow those harmed to seek redress through the courts.

True Causes – Not Gender Dysphoria

The diagnosis of “gender dysphoria,” or distress with one’s gender identity, given by gender clinics invariably leads to a treatment plan called “gender affirming care.”

The goal of “gender affirming care” is to change the patient’s physical appearance to that of the opposite sex. The lucrative industry of gender clinics, psychologists, endocrinologists, surgeons, and hormone providers (especially Planned Parenthood) fails to consider or treat the underlying basis of the patient’s psychological distress, leaving the patient worse off.

The causes of gender distress include traumatic events, mental illness, addiction, and social contagion. In my 20 years of ministry to distressed “sex change” regretters, I have received thousands of emails from individuals who tell me tragic stories about their childhood and doctors who dismissed it as irrelevant, and who instead wrongly diagnosed them with gender dysphoria and provided hormones and surgery, causing many regrettable outcomes. The people share the traumatic events in their lives: how they or a family member suffered from cancer, a parent was an alcoholic, a sibling or parent died, or they endured sexual or physical abuse.

My doctor didn’t consider the abuse in my childhood and the trauma of losing my father to cancer when I was twenty, but now I see these events played a major part in driving me to erase “Walt” and escape into a female “transgender” identity.

It seems like malpractice for doctors to treat psychological issues with irreversible, invasive surgeries on healthy body parts. I’m happy to see the lawsuits are underway, and those harmed are winning settlements, like Fox Varian and Camille Kiefel.

If you know someone who is struggling with their gender identity, encourage them to look deeper for the cause of their distress, and above all, avoid hormones and surgery.

Summary

Today, with over 80 years of my life in the rear-view mirror, fully half of my life is a testimony to the power and grace of Jesus Christ to redeem and restore the most broken of lives. I can confidently say God created me in His image as male in every cell of my body, and no amount of surgery or hormones could change that.

Vulnerable children and teens need to be protected from harm, and passing the Chloe Cole Act will do that. You can support the Chloe Cole Act by contacting your members of Congress here.

The FRC book, “Embracing God’s Design,” by Jennifer Bowens, Ph.D. and Senior Fellow Walt Heyer and the resources at embracethedesign.com are written to equip Christians to understand this topic and to minister to those who struggle with their identity.

AUTHOR

Walt Heyer

Walt Heyer serves as Senior Fellow in the Center for Family Studies at Family Research Council.

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.

DHS Funding Drama Pits House against Senate

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The Senate and the House of Representatives are still sparring over funding for a critical federal agency, even as air travel is crippled and the threat of terrorist acts looms large. In the earliest hours of Friday morning, while much of America still slept, Senate Republicans attempted to end the impasse they had reached against their Democratic counterparts and end the longest Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown in U.S. history.

The deal was met with outrage by House Republicans, however, as the bill provided funding for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Coast Guard, and other DHS components, but deliberately excluding funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the two DHS agencies responsible for immigration enforcement and border security, labeled problematic by Democrats.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) touted the bill’s passage as a win for Democrats, charging that Senate Republicans “caved to our demands to fund DHS without a blank check for ICE and CBP.” He added, “Democrats held firm in our opposition that [President] Donald Trump’s rogue and deadly militia should not get more funding without serious reforms, and we will continue to fight for those reforms.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) lambasted the funding bill as a late-night “gambit” and a “joke,” suggesting that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and other Senate Republicans likely hadn’t even read the text of the bill they approved. “I’m quite convinced that it can’t be that every Senate Republican read the language of this bill,” Johnson quipped. “It’s pretty alarming.” He cited a portion of the bill clarifying that there will be no funding provided to ICE and CBP, commenting, “We’re not doing that.”

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) spoke forcefully against Senate Republicans for passing the bill and then immediately leaving Washington, D.C. for the Easter recess period. “It is absolutely offensive to the people that we represent that the Senate would send over a bill that doesn’t fund Border Patrol and the core components of ICE,” he told reporters Friday. “It’s absurd. And the fact that they would expect us to take that up and pass it today, as they leave town — I mean, could the Senate be any more lazy than to send to us a bill that doesn’t do the job and then leave town? We’re going to stand up and say no to that. We’re going to send back a bill that’s responsible to the American people.”

Accordingly, House Republicans passed their own funding bill to ensure that the entirety of DHS receives federal funding, faulting Democrats for allowing the agency to be shut down for nearly 50 days now, even as war with Iran heightens national security concerns. “Is our border secure? Are our airports safe? Will hardworking personnel receive their paychecks? Can Secret Service plan for the security of upcoming national events? Do Americans have confidence that their government is doing its job to protect the country? This bill answers those questions with certainty,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) in a statement. “It ends the Democrat shutdown, restores full funding for the Department of Homeland Security, and ensures the men and women on the front lines of safeguarding our nation are paid, supported, and able to carry out their duties without continued disruption. It brings stability back to DHS now — and makes clear where the House stands: with our citizens.”

The House bill is a stopgap measure intended to fund DHS fully for a 60-day period while lawmakers continue battling over long-term funding. Congressional Democrats originally refused to fund DHS starting February 14, in an effort to halt ICE and CBP operations, maligning the immigration agencies as lawless and aggressive following controversial operations in Minnesota earlier. Since then, travelers have been waiting longer and longer periods of time in line at airports as unpaid TSA staff either quit or refuse to show up for work. Late Friday, 209 House Republicans were joined by three House Democrats and one Independent to pass the funding measure, while 203 Democrats voted against it. Eight Republicans and eight Democrats did not vote.

Schumer pledged that Senate Democrats would shut down the House bill, just as they have killed previous House efforts to fully fund DHS, describing the new bill as “dead on arrival.”

In a “Washington Watch” interview Friday night, Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) suggested that the House bill will likely fail in the Senate, instead recommending that DHS be funded through the budget reconciliation process, a theory floated previously by Thune. “The good news is ICE and CBP were funded by the One, Big, Beautiful Bill for a period of time. So we have a way to cure this. What we need to do is get this behind us, get on the same page,” he said. Through the reconciliation process, Johnson suggested, Republicans can pass “a very focused and very rapidly-passed reconciliation bill. My suggestion is let’s pass all of DHS for the Trump term and beyond.” He continued, “Again, it’s going to be a big price tag, but it’s going to be in lieu of appropriations, so Democrats can never use DHS and the men and women of DHS as pawns in their political games.”

Johnson shared that he was “disappointed” that the House rejected the Senate funding package, noting that friendly mainstream media coverage largely protects congressional Democrats from being held accountable by voters. “We can’t force Democrats to do certain things when you have no accountability, no pressure by the mainstream media. So that’s the pickle we’re in as Republicans. It’s not a fair fight. It’s not a level playing field,” he said. “I mean, if we could have passed something we would have done that. We would have done that days ago, weeks ago. But it’s not going to pass. So it’ll be right back in this House’s lap.”

Also on “Washington Watch” Friday, Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) addressed many of the points raised by Johnson. Grothman said that Republican senators who backed the funding bill isolating ICE and CBP “would tell you … we have enough money available right now that we can do a reconciliation package and get the money to fund these two vital organizations before they run out of money.” He continued, “The problem is we have a very slim majority in the House of Representatives, and there is no guarantee that we can put together any package that will only cause us to lose two votes and could easily be one vote.” The congressman added, “Therefore we feel it would be reckless not to pass a bill that is fully funding both ICE and Border Patrol right now.”

In response to the funding crisis, the president issued an executive order demanding that DHS use funding already available to it in order to pay TSA agents. “As the Democrat-caused shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) continues well into its sixth week, America’s air travel system has reached its breaking point. This is an unprecedented emergency situation,” the president wrote. He added that the approximately 50,000 TSA agents who have gone unpaid for weeks have been denied funds by “Democrats’ reckless decision to prioritize criminal illegal aliens over American citizens and shut down DHS until their demand to prohibit enforcement of Federal immigration law is met.”

“If Democrats in the Congress will not act to honor the service of our TSA officers, who are now performing their critical public safety responsibilities without knowing whether they will be able to buy food for their families or pay their rent, then my Administration will take action,” the president announced. “As President of the United States, I have determined that these circumstances constitute an emergency situation compromising the Nation’s security.”

Grothman commented, “Donald Trump solved the biggest problem by … announc[ing] that he is going to fund the people at the airports. And I think that of all the things that Homeland Security does, that’s the one thing that has to get done and the people care about.” He suggested that without the public pressure resulting from the lapse in TSA funding, congressional Republicans may be more likely to fight Democrats to fund ICE and CBP. “So since he has just announced he is going to fund that, I think the other parts of the law, well, hopefully we’ll be able to come to a compromise on them.”

Some Senate Republicans have voiced that they would like to fight Democrats on the issue. Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), for example, said in a Sunday night social media post, “Waiting for a deal to materialize with Chuck Schumer applies no pressure on Senate Democrats to fund DHS. Interrupting their recess and forcing them to debate DHS funding on the Senate floor *would* apply pressure. We can’t reward unprecedented obstruction with two-week recesses.” He further suggested that the president could exercise his constitutional authority to convene an “extraordinary” Senate meeting in order to force debate and a vote.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news 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.

Trump Threatens Not to Sign New Legislation until Senate Passes SAVE America Act

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As foreign conflict rages on and Congress is locked in a feud over Homeland Security funding, President Donald Trump is hammering Senate Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act. In a Truth Social post on Sunday, the president thanked elections activist Scott Pressler for explaining in a Fox News interview the importance of passing the legislation and how it can be done without dismantling the filibuster. Passing the SAVE America Act “must be done immediately. It supersedes everything else. MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE,” the president said. He vowed not to sign further bills until the SAVE America Act is on his desk.

The president also urged senators not to accept a “watered down” version of the bill, but to ensure that key provisions are included: mandatory photo ID to vote and proof of citizenship to register to vote, eliminating mail-in ballots except in a few circumstances, and amendments barring biological males from competing in girls’ sports and halting gender transition procedures from being carried out on children. The bill was approved by the House of Representatives early last month.

In the Fox News interview Trump referenced, Pressler touted poll results showing that over 80% of American voters support the election integrity provisions of the SAVE America Act, such as photo ID and proof of citizenship. “When in American history have 84% of Americans ever come together on an issue before?” Pressler asked. He noted that 76% of black voters, 82% of Hispanic voters, 85% of white voters, 95% of Republican voters, and 76% of Democrat voters support the SAVE America Act’s election integrity provisions. “I ask for Senate leadership, I ask for members of Congress — if you want to do right by the American people that duly elected you into the seats that you are in right now, when we gave Republicans the opportunity to lead and be the adults in the room, pass the SAVE America Act into law,” he urged. Pressler also anticipated that passing the bill will likely produce “a surge of voters com[ing] out in the midterm elections.”

“The Republicans MUST DO, with PASSION, and at the expense of everything else, THE SAVE AMERICA ACT — And not the watered down version. This is a Country Defining fight for the Soul of our Nation!” the president said in a Truth Social post last week. He also called on the Senate to “focus on, exclusively if necessary, THE SAVE AMERICA ACT!!! It’s what everyone wants!!!” With midterm elections looming, the president has also warned senators that the SAVE America Act is “all people care about!!!”

As noted, the SAVE America Act was passed by the House on February 11, but has been stalled in the Senate for nearly four weeks. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-N.D.) has agreed to bring the legislation to the floor for consideration but has yet to schedule a vote. At issue is the filibuster; Senate Democrats have signaled their intention to block the legislation via the filibuster. In recent decades, the “silent filibuster” has become the norm, wherein a senator or party indicates an intention to filibuster, without actually having to filibuster, and the contended bill is simply not brought before the Senate. While Trump and others have suggested eliminating the filibuster entirely in order to push through GOP legislation, others have suggested reverting to the traditional “talking filibuster,” which they admit may be time-consuming but would likely allow Republicans to pass crucial legislation without annihilating Senate traditions and legislative safeguards.

Under traditional Senate rules, the filibuster can be used to delay or prevent the passage of legislation, relying on the Senate’s allowance for unlimited debate. In order to end debate, 60 senators are required to invoke cloture. While the GOP has a majority of 53 in the Senate at present, not all Republican senators have agreed to support the legislation’s passage. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is the clearest example, but others have expressed reluctance to enforce the talking filibuster in order to pass the legislation, claiming that the procedure is too time-consuming.

“The talking filibuster issue is one on which there is not, certainly, a unified Republican conference, and there would have to be,” Thune said after a Senate GOP meeting late last month. “If you go down that path, you’re talking about the need to table what are going to be numerous amendments and an ability to keep 50 Republicans unified, pretty much on every single vote. And there’s just not, there isn’t support for doing that at this point.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

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

EDITORS NOTE: This Washinton 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.

Fear of Islamization of U.S. Sparks a Sharia-Free America Caucus in Congress

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Forty Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives are joining forces in a new congressional caucus to combat what they view as a rapidly growing movement pushing for the Islamization of America as is happening in Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe.

Rep. Keith Self and Rep. Chip Roy, both of Texas, are co-founders of the Sharia-Free America Caucus that seeks to focus public and official attention and action on the multiple ways that the Islamization movement is making rapid progress in establishing large city-scaled developments exclusively available to Muslims transplanted to the U.S. from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

“The American way of life is under siege by radicals from a culture waging war against our Constitution and Western values. We’ve seen what happens when nations allow this infiltration: countries like France and England are on the verge of losing their identity and sovereignty. The same forces are at play here in America today, and if we don’t stop them, they will conquer our country too,” Self said in announcing the formation of the new caucus.

“America is facing a threat that directly attacks our Constitution and our Western values: the spread of Sharia law. From Texas to every state in this constitutional republic, instances of Sharia adherents masquerading as ‘refugees’ — and in many cases, sleeper cells connected to terrorist organizations — are threatening the American way of life. Those who succumb to this political ideology seek to replace our legal system and Constitution,” Roy said in the same announcement.

“Under Sharia law, there is no freedom of speech, religion, or women’s rights. Europe should be a wake-up call to America, showing what the spread of Sharia law looks like. America’s immigration system must brace to take on this battle, not only to preserve our constitutional republic but to take charge in the spiritual warfare and defend our Judeo-Christian values,” Roy continued.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R) of Minnesota is among the members joining the caucus. Emmer’s decision to join the caucus came amid growing national attention focused on the likelihood that Somali Muslims living in Minnesota were involved in a systematic defrauding of state and federal social service and other taxpayer programs at a cost of $9 billion or more.

“Sharia is completely incompatible with the American way of life and threatens the very fabric of our society. It is radical, oppressive, and must never be allowed to gain a foothold in America. I’m thankful to Congressmen Roy and Self for leading this noble charge in the House and looking forward to working together to combat this danger,” Emmer said in a January statement.

Members of the new caucus have introduced legislation designed to halt and reverse the current momentum of Islamization efforts in this country. Rep. Randy Fine (R) of Florida’s H.R. 5512, the No Sharia Act, insists the bill “would restrict courts from enforcing any judgment, decree, or arbitration that relies on Islamic law or any foreign system that violates constitutional rights,” according to Self’s initial announcement of the group’s formation.

Roy’s H.R. 5722, the Preserving a Sharia-Free America Act, is written to “prevent foreign nationals who adhere to Sharia from entering or staying in the U.S.” The Texas Republican’s H.R. 6225, the PAUSE Act, would freeze the immigration system until major reforms can be enacted by Congress and signed into law by the president.

Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville’s (R) S. 3008 and S. 3009 are the Senate versions of the No Sharia Act and the Preserving Sharia-Free America Act.

Representatives from 19 states have flocked to join the caucus, while both co-founders and eight other GOP members of the Texas congressional delegation are members of the caucus, thanks in great part because the Lone Star State has become in recent years a focal point for the growing Muslim presence.

Developers of a massive Muslim-only combined residential and commercial complex near Dallas, initially known as EPIC City, recently opted to change the project’s name to “The Meadows” following public backlash in response to reports that Sharia law would exclusively govern residents there.

Sharia law is the civil and religious law prescribed by the Koran to regulate public and private life. Among much else, Sharia sanctions husbands treating wives as slaves, justifies Islamic men who rape non-Islamic women, requires the death penalty for those who identify as homosexual and death by stoning for adulterers, and forces non-Muslims to convert or face death by beheading.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) signed into law last year a measure designed to prevent housing developments with religion-based segregation of acceptable buyers.

“One of the issues at stake is the freedom of religion,” Abbott said. “Another issue at stake is what’s called the right to contract. The fact is, religious freedom is a central part of the Texas Constitution. But bad actors like EPIC and EPIC City tried to use religion as a form of segregation. We will ensure that we have the laws and law enforcement in place to prevent attempts to build such discriminatory compounds in the state of Texas.”

But critics of the Abbott measure point out that projects like The Meadows continue moving forward.

Independent investigative journalist Amy Mek, for example, describes Texas as “ground zero” in the Islamization process and “Islam’s top U.S. target and epicenter for settlement, enclaves, and long-term dominance.” As evidence for her description, Mek claims there are “over 330 mosques expanding rapidly” across the state, more than 650 “Islamic nonprofits operating here — more than any other state,” and a proliferation within the financial community of “Sharia-compliant finance” policies.

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. ©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.

Defense Bill Squeaks through House with Wins on Life, DEI, Family Leave

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In a city where nothing seems certain — least of all cooperation between the parties (or in them!) — there’s a certain magic about the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The legislation, which is as close to a Christian tradition as Congress gets, is headed to its 65th straight year of passage — a record that should astound anyone in this bitterly divided town. What is it about the troop bill that gets both sides to thaw their icy standoff and work together? And can that reluctant, bipartisan cooperation be replicated?

Unfortunately for Americans, who would love to see the two sides set aside their hostility and at least try to solve the country’s problems, the charm of the NDAA is always short-lived. Imagine if Republicans and Democrats tackled the health care crisis with the same intentionality? That’s not to say there aren’t fireworks, since the parties are more explosive than a boat full of drugs in the Caribbean. But at least in this debate, they seem to have the mutual goal of moving forward, even if they do try to score political points in the process.

On Wednesday, the House did its part to keep history alive, sending the bill to the Senate by an overwhelming bipartisan margin, 312-112. The lopsided tally doesn’t convey the drama that led up to the final vote, when House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had to corral his quarrelsome members, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), and others to flip their “no” votes to yes. But he did it, defying the odds for the millionth time.

What makes the streak even more impressive is that it’s not easy to find a sweet spot on where to spend $901 billion in defense. The current bill, which clocks in at an eye-popping 3,086 pages — longer than most study Bibles — is the product of months of intense debate on everything from Ukraine funding to U.S. investments in China. But this year, the battle that sucked up most of the oxygen in the room was surprisingly extraneous: the taxpayer funding of in vitro fertilization for our men and women in uniform.

In a fight that threatened to overshadow all of the significant wins of the NDAA, Democrats (and some Republicans) continued their crusade to force Americans to foot the bill for fertility treatments that are not only morally controversial but highly ineffective. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s (D-N.Y.) rank-and-file disagreed, demanding that the military’s health care coverage, TRICARE, include a blank check for this kind of “assisted reproductive technology” for every active-duty servicemember.

To understand why this is such a dangerous idea, you first have to know the sinister side of IVF. This is not about “crushing the dreams” of our brave men and women in uniform, as Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) would have people believe. This is about being smart with taxpayer dollars and pushing parents toward alternatives that actually work. Dr. Lauren Rubal, a reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialist, understands parents’ longing for children. She used to offer IVF, she explained to Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Tuesday’s “Washington Watch.” But the more she worked in it, the more concerned she became.

“I think the first thing to say is that these couples are truly suffering,” Rubal emphasized. “And I wanted to help alleviate the suffering, to help them have children.” But things changed on so many levels, she explained. “First of all, medically, I felt more and more like I was putting band-aids over causes, [and] I wasn’t truly addressing the root cause of that person sitting in front of me: body, mind, soul. And in many cases, this is true. We know that IVF is kind of a blanket recommendation for most infertility diagnoses that we have.”

Secondly, Rubal stressed, “there are medical issues with the practice of in vitro fertilization. Of course, part of that, like I said, is not truly addressing the full spectrum of causes that, if we heal, can lead to pregnancies on their own and healthier moms and babies in that process. But,” she paused, “we know there’s an increased risk of complications for moms and babies. And then, finally, the last part of this is really coming to terms with the fact that as I sat there performing my daily work, I began to realize more and more how many embryos were being destroyed in this process of in vitro fertilization.” She thought she was helping life, but as a doctor and Christian, she came to the realization that “if every embryo is a human being that is a unique chromosome complement at his or her earliest stage of development,” they were destroying several tiny humans “to get to that one live birth.”

Probably the most frustrating part of the IVF debate, Rubal insisted, is that people assume that there are no other alternatives. That’s not true. “There is another alternative that, unfortunately, has felt more and more politicized in recent months … called restorative reproductive medicine. And [that’s] identifying those root causes [of infertility] and harnessing the hormone imbalances that may be present, looking at the microbiome, trying to optimize ovulation in that woman, as well as the sperm in that man, and really the timing of intercourse as well, and using medical and surgical procedures to do so.”

In terms of actual results, “this is yielding equivalent rates of live births compared to IVF cycles. The denominators are a little bit different here. And so, it does take more time. But with that being said, there is absolutely hope,” Rubal emphasized. “And it is a moral and … much less financially taxing process for couples.” Sadly, she notes, only 4% of OB-GYNs and family medicine doctors are familiar with how to counsel patients on these options. There’s just not the fertility awareness on these alternatives that there should be.

To be fair, Rubal pointed out, “I think that every single medical professional is trying to do their best with the tools that they’re given. I can speak for myself, and I know that I feel so much more at peace. And this is what I tell patients. Not everything is in our power here, but let’s try to optimize the parts that are, and then we can have a path moving forward in peace.” If people wonder about the effectiveness of her approach, she tells skeptics, “Studies support that we’re having babies based on these restorative reproductive medicine procedures who are healthier, who have less preterm deliveries, less multiples, and are being born at normal birth weight. So really a win-win.”

To her dismay and so many others, this whole conversation has been politicized. If you’re a conservative who believes taxpayers shouldn’t be in the fertility business period, you’re painted as “unbelievably selfish and callous,” as Johnson was for having the courage to keep this dangerous language out of the bill. As it stands, Americans are already footing the bill for IVF for servicemembers whose infertility was the result of an active-duty injury, which is problematic on its own. But opening up the entire force to a pricey IVF free-for-all isn’t the wisest use of American dollars.

And the speaker is to be commended for that stand. “Speaker Johnson took a lot of heat for the removal of the reckless Duckworth language,” FRC’s Quena Gonzalez stressed, “but the reality is that he and others in leadership who took the IVF expansion language out were speaking for a lot of rank-and-file pro-life Republicans who, although they’re just as glad as we are that thousands of babies born through IVF are alive today, cannot ignore the millions more lives lost when unborn children are discard, destroyed, or experimented upon.” Frankly, he said, “An industry that produces only 2.3 live births per 100 children conceived does not deserve public funding, and the military should not be hijacked as a giant social experiment in subsidizing ‘Big IVF’ on the taxpayer’s dime.”

Across the Capitol, Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who’s also an OB-GYN, applauded the change on “Washington Watch.” “I think [the NDAA] is moving in the conservative direction. And I know you and Family Research Council have had a big emphasis and impact on that in particular. I think the policy is moving toward putting some tighter guardrails around [IVF funding]. And the good news is the technology is improving as well … so I always appreciate your input on it.”

Perkins conceded that there’s “a lot of disagreement about it. But where we start … is the sanctity of human life, that every human being has the thumbprint of God, the fingerprint of God on it, and therefore must be treated with dignity and respect. And I think that part of that issue is how this industry has been unregulated. And I think it requires a little more work before we throw taxpayer dollars into it anymore.”

Thanks to conservatives, that wasn’t the only win in the NDAA compromise. Republicans continue to chip away at the wokeness in the Pentagon left behind by the Biden administration, including language that would:

  • Bar males from participating in athletic programs or activities designated for women or girls at military academies (Sec. 559A).
  • Expand and clarify family leave policies for members of the Coast Guard (would include members of the reserve component), allowing members to take leave when they foster a child, not just when they adopt (Sec. 7225).
  • Stop DEI programs and positions, including a prohibition against developing, implementing, and maintaining an employee resource group or affinity group based on certain characteristics, including SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) and religion (Sec. 901).

At the end of the day, the NDAA is a win for conservatives and yet another notch in Mike Johnson’s belt as speaker. “This year’s National Defense Authorization Act helps advance President Trump and Republicans’ Peace Through Strength Agenda by codifying 15 of President Trump’s executive orders, ending woke ideology at the Pentagon, securing the border, revitalizing the defense industrial base, and restoring the warrior ethos,” the speaker said proudly. “Under President Trump, the U.S. is rebuilding strength, restoring deterrence, and proving America will not back down. President Trump and Republicans promised peace through strength. The FY26 NDAA delivers 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.

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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.

House Passes BBB as Conservatives Win ‘Significant Commitments’ on Life, Transgenderism

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Congress has delivered President Donald Trump’s signature legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill, but not without hours of mean-spirited Democratic delay and principled conservative negotiations that secured “major” commitments of executive action and future legislation to promote the pro-life, pro-family cause.

The House of Representatives passed President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1) by a 218-214 vote on Thursday afternoon. All House Democrats voted no, joined by two Republicans: Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). Massie, a libertarian-leaning Republican, opposes the bill’s high deficit and spending levels, while Fitzpatrick accused the White House of “withholding critical defense material” from Ukraine.

The bill narrowly passed the Senate Tuesday, when Vice President J.D. Vance cast the tie-breaking vote. Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) voted against the bill. It now goes to President Trump’s desk.

Democrats in both chambers tried, and failed, to prevent the bill from passing Congress by President Trump’s July 4 deadline. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) forced the Senate to read the full text of the 940-page bill aloud, which lasted nearly 16 hours. Schumer also poked at the president with a procedural motion to strip the act of its formal title, “The One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) stalled proceedings further on Thursday morning with an eight-hour, 44-minute-long filibuster that began at 4:53 a.m. Jeffries all-but admitted he aimed to slow the bill’s passage as a procedural irritant, saying numerous times throughout his speech, “I am going to take my sweet time,” followed by a sustained standing ovation from the small gaggle of Democratic hangers-on who stayed to listen.

“It takes a lot longer to build a lie than to tell the simple truth,” replied House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) in a brief rejoinder to Jeffries’s record-breaking speech. “Scripture has been cited a lot this morning — I think mostly out of context.”

“Today was about performance for some of them,” said Johnson. “Democrats deliver performances, and Republicans deliver results.”

The narrow passage reflected the concern of pro-life conservatives, who withheld their support until obtaining promises from GOP leaders to address the pro-life, pro-family provisions stripped out by the Senate.

As fiscal conservatives, border security conservatives, and national security hawks celebrated the passage of President Donald Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill, pro-life and pro-family leaders wonder aloud why their concerns got eliminated or minimized by the legislation. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said the debate’s primary focus on taxes “reminds me of Bill Clinton back in his 1992 campaign: ‘It’s the economy, Stupid.’ It’s not the economy; it is the moral foundation of a nation that matters.” Some conservatives went as far as to call the watered-down Senate version of the bill “morally bankrupt.”

The revised Senate version of the bill “does not defund transgender surgery for minors. That is a moral issue. It only cuts funding for abortion services for one year, not the 10 in the House bill. That’s morally bankrupt,” Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Wednesday night.

While many pro-life advocates — including SBA Pro-Life America and Americans United for Life — called the bill’s one-year defunding of Planned Parenthood a step forward, some former insiders say the deep-pocketed abortion industry has the resources to wait it out. “While any taxpayer money diverted away from Planned Parenthood is a good thing, defunding our nation’s largest abortion provider for just one year is not the win many of us who believe abortion is abhorrent wanted it to be,” said former Planned Parenthood director and founder of And Then There Were None, Abby Johnson, in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand. “A year is enough time for many Planned Parenthood facilities to hold out to be re-funded. Some will close, but Planned Parenthood as an organization has millions of dollars, wealthy donors, and could support those clinics if they choose.”

Planned Parenthood, which received $792.2 million in taxpayer funding in 2024, reported total net assets of $2.52 billion. “Bottom line: it’s not enough and Republicans should permanently defund the abortion giant, not just for a paltry 12 months,” said Johnson.

“A one-year defunding of Planned Parenthood is no victory; it’s a disheartening concession,” Katie Brown Xavios, national director of American Life League, told TWS. “To receive only a token punishment for those who harm women and kill the innocent is unacceptable.”

Quena González, senior director of Government Affairs at Family Research Council, called the one-year interruption “just a very short pause on defunding” on Wednesday, noting that under the revised bill, “taxpayers will still be forced to underwrite experimental gender transition procedures.”

Family Research Council backed the House version of the bill and reserved the right to score against the Senate version. Ultimately, it reconsidered after House conservatives wrung several promises out of the Trump administration and Hill leadership.

“Last night, we facilitated negotiations and conservations on key policy issues that had been removed or modified from the House version,” announced FRC President Tony Perkins on Thursday morning. “[W]e believe we will see policy outcomes that offset the changes made by the Senate.”

House Conservatives: ‘We Gained, America Gained’

Leaders of the House Freedom Caucus quickly confirmed they had obtained promises for future executive action and legislation to defund abortion and transgender procedures, as well as other policy priorities. “We got significant commitments on spending reductions outside the framework of the bill,” Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) told “This Week on Capitol Hill.” “We said, ‘Let’s talk about some offsets elsewhere. Let’s talk about some things the executive can do to mitigate some of the concerns about what the Senate did with our House bill,’” Harris told Perkins.

“We got a major commitment, a serious commitment on spending reduction,” as well as “a large commitment on social issues. We got an agreement that the administration will add adults to their transgender funding limitation. And we’re going to have a discussion with the administration on the egregious, cross-state trafficking in mifepristone,” he said. “We talked about looking at program integrity in food stamps and in Medicaid,” where improper payments and fraud cost “tens of billions of dollars a year.” And “on the Green New Deal/Green New Scam provisions, the administration has a pretty fair leeway to interpret some of the Senate changes” to provisions of the Biden administration’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act.

Harris also revealed the House Freedom Caucus extracted a promise from the speaker of the House to address the nation’s ever-expanding national debt. “The speaker has agreed to have another vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment, because the last one we had was in November of 2011, trillions of dollars of deficits ago,” he said.

The House Freedom Caucus left the negotiations satisfied. “Everything we did was perfectly in line with the president’s agenda. So he went along with it,” said Harris. “We gained, America gained.”

In a statement sent to The Washington Stand shortly after the vote, Rep. Self confirmed the House Freedom Caucus “moved the bill dramatically to the right on almost every front and at every stage of the process, including overnight, as a small group of us continued working with the White House to address critical policy and spending issues.”

The bill threatened to further divide the Republican Party, as many Republicans reluctantly embraced the bill as the best alternative capable of passing Congress. “People with the same principles, looking at the same facts can actually apply and analyze those facts a little bit differently and reach a little bit different conclusion,” Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas) told “Washington Watch” later on Wednesday. “This is not the end-all, be-all decision for every moral matter that we have to deal with in Congress. This is, at its core, a bill about taxes and liberty.”

Social conservatives have long seen taxes and defense spending prioritized, while promises of pro-life or pro-family action do not come to fruition. However, President Trump has repeatedly said he will govern by the motto, “Promises made, promises kept.”

In part, social conservatives in the Trump administration may be wary of submitting legislation for fear liberal Republicans will exercise their collective muscle in negotiations. Harris noted the Trump administration “didn’t want to have to send this bill back to the Senate,” where senators such as abortion-supporting Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) could assure the bill “would actually get worse.”

What Is in the One Big Beautiful Bill?

As The Washington Stand reported, the surviving provisions largely carry out President Trump’s legislative agenda:

  1. The revised bill increases the child tax credit to $2,200, indexed for inflation, down from $2,500 in the House bill. Without action, the child tax credit would have returned its pre-Trump level of $1,000.
  2. The bill creates “TRUMP” savings accounts for children, indexed to the stock market like a 401(k), with a $1,000 deposit from U.S. taxpayers upon the birth of each child. The bill also furthers school choice by expanding educational savings accounts.
  3. The bill makes permanent tax advantages from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, including expanded personal exemptions and incentives for business research and development. “For working families, The One, Big, Beautiful Bill prevents a looming $1,700 tax hike and instead puts more money in Americans’ pockets — including upwards of $1,300 for tipped workers and $1,400 for hourly workers working overtime. Families will see a nearly $11,000 boost in take-home pay,” House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) told TWS. “Households making under $100,000 will see a 12% tax cut compared to what they pay today. The average family of four will see nearly $11,000 more in their pockets each year. Real wages for workers will rise by as much as $7,200 a year,” Smith added on the House floor. The final bill gives qualifying senior citizens a $6,000 deduction, which the White House Council of Economic Advisers estimates will assure that 88% of seniors on Social Security have no federal income tax liability. It eliminates federal income taxes on tips up to the first $25,000, phasing out for those who earn $150,000 a year (or couples making $300,000). Taxpayers may also deduct up to $12,500 of overtime pay under the same condition; it lapses in 2028. The bill also lets people who buy cars made in America write off up to $10,000 in interest on the car’s loan.
  4. Enhancing border security. “This bill gives President Trump the tools he needs to finish securing the border by providing $175 billion in new funding. It will allow for completion of the border wall, fund ICE deportation efforts, and hire and train new border patrol agents,” agreed Rep. Mark Harris (R-N.C.) in a statement sent to TWS. It also taxes remittances to foreign countries. “It secures our border, funds the largest mass deportation operation in American history, and delivers the tax relief working families deserve,” Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) told TWS.
  5. Securing national defense. The bill increases defense spending by roughly $160 billion, including $25 billion for a domestic “Iron Dome” missile defense system.
  6. Student loan reform. The bill imposes a $257,500 lifetime cap on student loan borrowing and reduces provisions that allow borrowers to delay paying back their students loans.
  7. Underwriting high-tax states and cities. The Senate version of the bill increases the state and local tax (SALT) deduction to $40,000 for the next five years.
  8. Slowing our exit from the Green New Deal. The Senate bill ends tax credits or subsidies for green energy projects, such as wind and solar power favored by the Biden administration, for projects constructed within a year of the bill’s passage and that go into service by the end of 2027. But the latest bill removed a proposed excise tax on companies in those industries that use more than a specified amount of components (such as solar panels or batteries) made in China. The Senate version generally slows down the GOP’s efforts to phase out the Left’s cherished credits.
  9. Slowing SNAP reform. The Senate bill delayed reforms to the much-abused Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, program in certain states.
  10. Reforming Medicaid. Medicaid recipients capable of work and who do not have a child at home must spend 80 hours a month in paid work, community service, or schooling/vocational training. The work requirements would save taxpayers an estimated $325 billion over the next 10 years. The bill also reduces the Medicaid provider tax from 6% to 3.5% starting in the 2028 fiscal year.

Despite some well-received economic news, conservatives say the bill still spends too much money and raises the debt ceiling to $5 trillion.

Rep. Mark Harris warned, “if Washington’s overspending addiction continues, the opportunity to put our country back on a path to a sound financial future is in jeopardy. In the coming months, Republicans must use every tool at our disposal to rein in government spending. This is not the end of our work.” (Emphasis in original.) Still, he said, “The country is much better off today than it was a few days ago. There’s certainty in the average working man and woman’s pocketbook that they’re not going to get a tax increase next year” — and greater faith “that the president is watching out for them.”

Nonetheless, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) promised TWS that conservatives would not rest long before collecting the policy commitments they earned in exchange for supporting the amended legislation.

“Celebrate today,” said Roy. “Fight again tomorrow.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor 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.

The 3 Most Important Votes of the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ Vote-a-Rama

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President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” moved closer to adoption overnight, as Senate Democrats attempted to load the bill with poison pill amendments in the “vote-a-rama.” During the lengthy amendment process, which began at 9 a.m. Monday morning and continues as of this writing, anyone may offer amendments to the 940-page bill. Senate changes have already made the bill less attractive to pro-life, pro-family conservatives. Yet the revised text also removes a controversial, 10-year moratorium on states regulating artificial intelligence.

“The president’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ is quickly losing its glamour in the Senate. The bill now appears to be a contestant in a beauty pageant for a tractor pull,” said FRC Action Chairman Tony Perkins. “The Senate version currently defunds big abortion providers like Planned Parenthood for only one year, instead of ten. That’s a huge disappointment. The first Senate version defunded gender transition procedures in Medicaid (not in Obamacare, as the House did, nor in Medicare or in the tax code, as had been proposed). But the current version will subject even that slimmed-down provision to a 60-vote threshold, meaning the provision will not pass the Senate, and Americans will continue to pay for gender transition experimentation on vulnerable individuals.”

Perkins wondered only if Senate Republican leaders were “completely out-muscled by the parliamentarian, or worse yet, didn’t try to secure the key components of the House version.” Senate GOP inaction “shows an unacceptable lack of political will.”

“Will senators fight to defund abortion providers for the maximum-allowable 10 years? Will they fight to defund gender procedures that bring trauma and life-long harm, or will they be satisfied with a show-vote on gender transition procedures?” asked Perkins.

Here are three of the most important votes that took place over the last 24 hours.

1. The Senate Continues to Defund Planned Parenthood

The Senate version of the bill reduced the 10-year defunding of Planned Parenthood to only one year. But overnight, the Senate narrowly voted down an amendment to strike down even that brief funding interlude, on a 51-49 vote. Two “pro-choice” Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted with the Democrats to fund the nation’s largest abortion business, which committed 402,230 abortions and received $792.2 million in taxpayer funding in 2024.

“The Republicans’ bill will cut millions of women off from birth control, cancer screenings, essential preventative health care — care they will not be able to afford anywhere else,” alleged Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.). “It will take another step towards enacting the Republicans’ plan for a backdoor nationwide abortion ban. How does it do this? By defunding Planned Parenthood.” Republicans, she said, were “happy to cut off this life-saving care.”

But Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life, rebutted the talking point. “Defunding Planned Parenthood is not one of them. Community Health Centers and Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) provide comprehensive healthcare, and there are more of them!” she said. “Let’s fully fund real healthcare.”

“Senate Democrats just failed in their attempt to remove the meager tip (10%) that Senate Republicans were offering to the taxpayers and pro-life Americans,” said Perkins.

Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life of America said, “Let me be clear: Defunding Planned Parenthood for one year would be one small step that we celebrate, while we will still fight for all those at risk by the Abortion Goliath’s predatory & violent business. One giant leap would be full debarment.”

2. Senate Nixes the 10-year Moratorium on States Regulating Artificial Intelligence (AI)

On a nearly unanimous vote, the Senate adopted a bipartisan amendment from Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to eliminate the One Big Beautiful Bill’s controversial, 10-year moratorium on AI regulation. If enacted, the provision would have struck down an estimated 75 existing state laws and barred any further protections for the next decade, including laws against AI-generated child pornography.

Blackburn and Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) had sought a compromise that would reduce the decade-long federal ban on state AI regulations to five years and allow states to protect children from exploitation, and safeguard people’s images and likenesses, provided those regulations did not impose an “undue or disproportionate burden” on artificial intelligence. “Find you a senator who looks at defunding gender transition procedures the way Ted Cruz looks at protecting AI,” joked Quena González, senior director of Government Affairs at Family Research Council, on social media.

But Blackburn eventually broke with Cruz, saying the proposed compromise did not do enough for “those who need these protections the most. This provision could allow Big Tech to continue to exploit kids, creators, and conservatives. Until Congress passes preemptive legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act and an online privacy framework, we can’t block states from making laws that protect their citizens.” On the House floor, Blackburn listed a litany of AI regulations Congress had failed to pass, which states have adopted. On Friday, 17 Republican governors urged congressional leaders to strike the AI moratorium, saying it “threatens to undo all the work states have done to protect our citizens from the misuse of artificial intelligence.”

Cruz withdrew his amendment a little after 4 a.m. Tuesday, paving the way for the House to adopt Blackburn’s amendment on a strongly bipartisan basis: 99-1. Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) cast the lone no vote.

3. Democrats Extend Taxpayer-Funded Benefits to Criminal Illegal Immigrants

Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) offered an amendment that would have reduced federal Medicaid funding to states that cover illegal immigrants charged with serious crimes. Under Senate parliamentary procedure, the measure needed to clear a 60-vote threshold but passed with only 56 votes. One Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, voted against the measure. Meanwhile, five Democratic senators voted in favor: Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Catherine Cortez-Masto of Nevada, and Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock of Georgia. “Illegal aliens should be on a flight back to their home country, not on Medicaid (funded by American taxpayers)!!!” said Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas). On Monday, the Senate rejected an amendment from Blackburn that would have prevented states from allowing illegal immigrants to enroll in Medicaid.

The Senate also rebuffed numerous attempts to maintain or further extend Green New Deal tax credits and subsidies. Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) spoke in opposition to many of the measures, branding taxpayer funding of “mature industries” as “wasteful.”

House conservatives laid much of the blame for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s lost beauty at the footsteps of Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, a former Al Gore adviser. “The Senate parliamentarian over the last few days has said that a lot of our deficit reduction measures were invalid under the Byrd rule. They’ll have to be changed and modified,” Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) told “Washington Watch” regular guest host Jody Hice on Friday. Many have asked for the Senate to overrule the parliamentarian, something Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has repeatedly and recently refused to do. “I’ve asked for her to be fired. I don’t know why you would be the Republican leader of the Senate and have a parliamentarian who was hired by Harry Reid 12 years ago,” Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) told “Washington Watch” Monday.

House conservatives said changing the original text of the bill too much risks upsetting the key agreements that allowed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to pass the House, where Republicans also hold only a three-vote majority. “It was a very carefully negotiated compromise. And as they wander away from that, it becomes less and less likely that it’s going to succeed when it comes back out to the House,” said Harris. “We want this to succeed. We want President Trump to succeed. But the safest thing they could do is take our House bill and just pass it the way we pass it, or make some very small changes.”

“If they try to send it over to the House with a large increase in the budget deficit, then I think we’re going to have to go back to the drawing board,” warned Harris.

House leaders want the bill to meet President Trump’s deadline of July 4, making a speedy House vote likely. “I’ve been talking with [Senate Majority] Leader Thune constantly through the process and with individual senators, encouraging them to change the House product as little as possible,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) told “This Week on Capitol Hill” Saturday.

“I will have to wait about 72 hours for the bill to lay over before we can vote. But the plan would be if it’s in shape that we could use it,” said Johnson. A prompt House vote “would also allow for the president to have a big, beautiful bill signing on Independence Day. And I certainly hope we can keep that deadline.”

As the Senate nears a final text, senators on both sides of the aisle can agree on one thing: They want the nearly day-long marathon known as “vote-a-rama,” to end. “It’s like an all-night party, but without the party,” quipped Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) in the wee hours of Tuesday morning.

“I just want to go home,” agreed Senator John Fetterman (D-Penn.). “I’ve already missed our entire trip to the beach.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor 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.

Thune Plows Ahead with Big Beautiful Deadline Despite Question Marks

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Every couple of years, all eyes are suddenly trained on one of Congress’s most under-the-radar jobs: the Senate parliamentarian. For 13 years, Elizabeth MacDonough has equal parts elated and frustrated parties in their attempts to squeeze major legislation through the reconciliation process. The first-ever woman to hold the job, MacDonough has played the referee through four administrations and an array of different Senate leaders. It’s up to her to settle the bitter disputes over which parts of the Big Beautiful Bill are relevant under the rules and which aren’t. In other words, she’s the most important person to Donald Trump’s agenda that most people have never heard of.

For the last several days, the “parl,” as the position is affectionately nicknamed, has been combing through the fine print of the Senate Finance Committee’s version of the bill to see which parts do, in fact, meet the standards for this specialized budget process. As MacDonough once explained it, “We’re the neutral end of [these partisan battles, which is] very important. Yes, you need to think of that somebody who is not elected, not a party apparatchik.”

That matters, especially now, as the two sides duke it out over what belongs in the president’s signature legislation and what doesn’t. To unlock reconciliation, everything has to abide by the Byrd Rule, which keeps parties from tacking on “extraneous” provisions. Democrats flagged several pieces of the bill that they argue aren’t budget-related, which is the major criterion for surviving the Bryd Bath.

Already, MacDonough has announced some GOP casualties — Byrd droppings — that she’s ruled non-germane. Making matters interesting, some of the victims were programs or provisions that helped sweeten the deal for reluctant House members to sign on. Language that would force the states to pay a bigger share of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or restrictions on temporary restraining orders from lower courts have been struck, at least for now, along with priorities like EPA revisions, overhauls to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, regulatory powers, a mandate to sell the Post Office’s electric vehicles, and more were all struck — sending Seante Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) into a huddle to see which pieces Republicans might rework.

The blows didn’t seem to derail Thune’s timeline, though. “Breitbart News Saturday” asked the majority leader, “Are we still on track for getting the bill out of the Senate by the Fourth of July?” “We are,” Thune replied. Obviously, he pointed out, things are more complicated in the Senate with “laws and restrictions and procedures that we have to operate under that are different than the House. So some of that takes a bit longer,” he conceded, “but as we head into this next week, I’m fully confident that we’re going to be ready to roll, and we have to be,” he said. “We’ve got to deliver.”

One thing he’s learned, Thune admitted, is that “if you don’t put deadlines out there, nothing gets done, and this stuff can drag on and on endlessly. If we want to get the one big, beautiful bill done, the Senate is going to have to act, and we’re going to hopefully act in a way that will enable the House when we send it back over there to them, because they have to pass the same bill that we do.”

Apart from the parliamentarian, the biggest wrench to Trump’s signature bill is getting the House on board with the changes, which were significant. Unlike Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) chamber, the Senate’s version brings the state and local tax deduction (SALT) back to earth from $40,000 to $10,000. Anticipating the House moderates’ anger, Thune tried to tamp down the frustration by pointing out, “We understand that it’s a negotiation. Obviously, there had to be some marker in the bill to start with, but we’re prepared to have discussions with our colleagues here in the Senate and figure out a landing spot.”

Other flashpoints include bigger reforms to Medicaid, a $5 trillion debt ceiling (instead of the House’s $4 trillion), a “gentler” approach to the green energy tax credits that Joe Biden created, and more permanent tax cuts for businesses. Based on the extension of the climate change subsidies alone, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) announced that he wouldn’t vote for the package.

“Rumor is Senate plans to jam the House with its weaker, unacceptable [One Big Beautiful Bill],” Roy vented on X Tuesday. “This is not a surprise but it would be a mistake,” he warned. “The bill in its current Senate form would increase deficits, continue most Green New Scam subsidies, & otherwise fail even a basic smell test… I would not vote for it as it is.”

His Arizona colleague, Andy Harris (R-Md.), agreed. “The currently proposed Senate version of the One Big Beautiful Bill weakens key House priorities,” the chair of the House Freedom Caucus said. “It doesn’t do enough to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid, it backtracks on Green New Scam elimination included in the House bill, and it greatly increases the deficit — taking us even further from a balanced budget.”

Thune responded to critics, stressing, “This is a process whereby everybody doesn’t get everything they want.” Others, like Senator Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), sought to highlight the pros of the bill. “I think we’re going to find more spending cuts,” he explained to Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “I know that won’t break your heart. … It’s plain and simple. We’re going to make the tax cuts permanent. The SALT thing is probably one of the stickier things. But at the end of the day, this bill is going to be good enough that if you voted for it in the House before, there’s no reason for you not to vote for it this next time, because then you’re given a binary choice. Is it better to pass it or not? And at that point, I think that the House will pass it as well.”

House conservatives like Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) say they’re “hopeful” that “we’ll wind up with a product that every Republican in the House and Senate can vote for. We were close in the House.” But no one is quite sure how many congressmen will fall in line.

At the end of the day, Johnson admitted that there’s heartburn on the aspects where the two chambers aren’t on the same page. “But look,” he told Perkins on Saturday’s “This Week on Capitol Hill,” “we’re giving them the space to do what they need to do. I’m in constant communication with Leader Thune over there, my counterpart, and with individual senators who have expressed concerns or questions about why we did what we did in the House version. And so, look, I think this is going along well,” he agreed. “And I certainly hope they make as many minor modifications as possible and not major modifications, because that will make it more difficult for us to pass it, as you know.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer 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.

Analysis: Biden Unaware of Executive Orders ‘Signed’ by Autopen

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President Joe Biden issued 162 executive orders over the course of his Oval Office tenure, but according to a new report, most of them were signed by “autopen,” giving rise to concerns that unelected White House staffers may have had more say in shaping policy than the president. The report is furthering those concerns and suggesting that Biden may not have even been aware of the existence of the orders being signed in his name.

The American energy advocacy group Power the Future published the report Wednesday, examining eight Biden-era executive orders on climate change and U.S. energy policy, and found “no evidence” that Biden ever spoke about or acknowledged the existence of any of these orders. “Not in a press conference. Not in a speech. Not even a video statement,” Power the Future’s report stated. Power the Future Executive Director Daniel Turner said in a statement, “Americans deserve to know which unelected staffers or radical unnamed activists implemented sweeping change through an autopen. The Biden energy agenda destroyed the livelihoods of energy workers and fueled the record-high inflation that broke the budgets of millions of Americans.” He asked, “The question is simple, and deserves an immediate answer: what did Joe Biden know, and when did he know it?”

According to the Oversight Project, dedicated to government accountability, practically every order signed by Biden was signed via autopen, with the exception of his announcement withdrawing from the 2024 presidential election. The Oversight Project cited House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who questioned Biden on an executive order affecting liquefied natural gas (LNG) and reported that the president didn’t remember signing the order. “He looks at me, stunned, and he said, ‘I didn’t do that,’” Johnson recounted. He continued, “And I said to him, ‘Mr. President, yes you did, it was an executive order, like, you know, three weeks ago.’ And he goes, ‘No, I didn’t do that.’ … It occurred to me … he was not lying to me. He genuinely did not know what he had signed.”

“For investigators to determine whether then-President Biden actually ordered the signature of relevant legal documents, or if he even had the mental capacity to, they must first determine who controlled the autopen and what checks there were in place,” the Oversight Project wrote in a social media post. The accountability organization continued, “Given President Biden’s decision to revoke Executive Privilege for individuals advising Trump during his first Presidency, this is a knowable fact that can be determined with the correct legal process…”

The “autopen” has been the subject of significant controversy in recent years due to Biden’s excessive use of the technology. Devices have been around for centuries, allowing individuals to replicate their signature or sign multiple documents at once. Thomas Jefferson, for example, kept an early prototype, then called a “polygraph,” in the White House and another in his residence at Monticello. The device allowed a user to sign multiple documents at once but did require the signer to be present and to actively use the machine.

In the late 1930s, an automated version of the machine was developed, called the “autopen,” which would store a template of a signature that could be reproduced without the presence of the actual signer. The autopen became commercially available in the early 1940s and was quickly purchased by politicians, government officials, celebrities, and others. The first U.S. president to use an autopen was reportedly Harry Truman, although he only used the device to sign checks and answer mail. Likewise, most other presidents — such as John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, or Gerald Ford — who used an autopen relegated their use of the instrument to signing checks, correspondence, and autographs.

George W. Bush considered using the autopen to sign executive orders and legislation and even got the Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) approval to do so, but still insisted on signing such documents himself, flying to Washington, D.C. to sign emergency legislation in 2005, for example. Barack Obama was the first president to use the autopen to sign legislation, giving his approval to sign Patriot Act extensions via autopen while he was visiting France in 2011, the National Defense Authorization Act while vacationing in Hawaii in 2012, and fiscal legislation in 2013.

President Donald Trump has openly refused to use autopen signatures for executive orders and other legal documents. “We may use it, as an example, to send some young person a letter because it’s nice,” Trump told reporters in March. Contrasting his limited use of the autopen against Biden’s much broader use, Trump added, “But to sign pardons and all of the things that he signed with an autopen is disgraceful.” Trump has also suggested that pardons — and, potentially, executive orders — signed by the Biden administration via autopen may be legally “void” if the president didn’t know what he was signing or didn’t authorize its signature.

The Washington Stand asked the DOJ about potential investigations and, if applicable, prosecutions of the Biden administration’s autopen use and was told, “No comment here.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news 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.

Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Has ‘Excellent News for Families’: FRC Analyst

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Pro-family experts are touting multiple provisions of President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” aimed at fulfilling the administration’s promises to facilitate family formation, ease adoption, and benefit homeschool students or those who attend religious schools.

The House Ways and Means Committee passed the 389-page bill on Wednesday morning by a 26-19, party-line vote. “It’s sad that every single committee Democrat voted for the largest tax hike in American history and against additional tax relief for families, farmers, and small businesses,” Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) told The Washington Stand. The bill now moves to the House Budget Committee.

In its current form, the bill contains economic provisions pro-family advocates say they have supported for years.

Increasing the Child Tax Credit

The president’s signature economic bill from his first term, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA), doubled the Child Tax Credit (CTC) from $1,000 to $2,000 and raised the income families can earn as the credit phases out. Without renewal, the child tax credit would be cut in half at the end of this year. The “big beautiful bill” increases the child tax credit to $2,500 for the tax years 2025 through 2028 — the end of the Trump administration. The extra $500 CTC boost adjusts for the rampant inflation of the last Democratic administration, according to its advocates.

If Congress does not vote to maintain the increased CTC, the credit will return to $2,000; however, the bill makes that level permanent and indexes it for inflation each year, rounded to the nearest $100. The bill also requires both parents to have work-eligible Social Security numbers before claiming the credit.

“This is excellent news for families,” Quena González, senior director of Government Affairs at Family Research Council, told TWS. He singled out the bill’s proposal to increase the CTC as the fulfillment of a long-term policy goal of the organization’s. “FRC has long advocated for increasing the child tax credit. We advocated for it to be doubled the last time, and it is good to see it pegged to inflation and made permanent. In the current round of budgeting, where they’re trying to cut hundreds of billions of dollars, this is a really huge nod to the importance of family.”

Many who advocate for a pro-family tax code have singled out the child tax credit, which was created in 1997, as a way to aid struggling families while reducing the reach of government. “The relatively new child tax credit, which will slowly rise over the next several years to $1,000, should instead be immediately increased to at least $2,500 per child and indexed to inflation,” said Allan C. Carlson, then a distinguished fellow for family policy studies at FRC, during a Witherspoon Lecture more than two decades ago. Carlson has championed what he calls “a pro-family income tax” for decades.

AEI scholar Kevin Corinth made an identical proposal in February in AEI’s “Family Friendly Policies for the 119th Congress,” edited by Timothy P. Carney. “A supersized Child Tax Credit will ease the financial burdens on families raising children and those hoping to welcome new babies into the world,” agreed Patrice Onwuka of the Independent Women’s Forum.

Some of the big beautiful bill’s policies have reopened a rift on the Right, as some conservatives believe the government should make no fiscal policy promoting or discriminating against the nuclear family. Others blame tax credits for removing nearly half of all Americans from income tax rolls, shifting the tax burden onto a shrinking number of high earners.

González says the enhanced CTC will help secure America’s economic future by boosting the nation’s sagging demographics. “If you want to make the federal budget sustainable, you need a growing population to do that,” he contended. “This may be the first major policy move in that direction in years, or decades.”

Population levels are plunging globally, falling by more than half since 1950. The U.S. birthrate rose by less than 1% in 2024 to 1.626, according to provisional data released by the CDC last month, up from an historic low of 1.616 in 2023. Both levels are far below the 2.1 level needed for replacement. The pattern repeats throughout the West, where a birth dearth has stunted economic growth. “If we are unable to address our fertility crisis, the U.S. will face an existential economic crisis driven by a steep decline in fertility rates — one that could have an impact measured in the quadrillions of dollars,” wrote Jesús Fernández-Villaverde in The American Enterprise.

Child-Friendly Investment Accounts, Adoption Credits, and More

The “big beautiful bill” delivers numerous other tax policies desired by some pro-family advocates, according to a section-by-section analysis of the bill provided to The Washington Stand by the House Ways and Means Committee.

Make It Easier to Adopt a Child: One provision in the bill (Sec. 110107) gives parents a tax credit to write off up to $16,810 from their taxes in qualified adoption expenses. Under current law, the amount can be rolled over for five years. The new bill does not allow the tax to be rolled over but, beginning in 2025, it makes up to $5,000 of the credit refundable — meaning parents can receive that much money even if they do not owe taxes (have no tax liability); and the refundable amount is indexed for inflation. The credit phases out for those who have an adjusted gross income between $252,150 and $292,150. The bill also gives Native American tribal governments the same authority as states to deem an adopted child “special needs,” making the adoptive family eligible for the full $16,810 potential tax credit (Sec. 110108).

MAGA Accounts for Family Formation: The bill establishes a new category of Money Accounts for Growth and Advancement, or “MAGA accounts” (Sections 110115 and 110116). Beginning in 2026, those with children under the age of eight can contribute up to $5,000 a year (adjusted annually for inflation) to a MAGA account, which is invested in a diversified account that tracks the stock market, each year until the child turns 18. Friends, relatives, employers, and non-profits (including churches) may also make donations to these accounts and — provided the donations go to a broad class of recipients — nonprofits can make unlimited donations. For instance, a veterans organization could offer unlimited support for the children of gold star families.

For children born between 2024 and 2028 — the second Trump administration — the government will deposit $1,000 of taxpayers’ dollars into these MAGA accounts. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) made a similar legislative proposal this week, introducing the Invest America Act on Monday.

When the child turns 18, he may take out up to half of its amount for college, vocational training, to start a business, or to purchase his first home. At age 25, he can withdraw the full amount for those purposes; at age 30, he can remove the full amount of the account for any reason.

The Trump administration has sought to promote family formation. “It is the task of our government to make it easier to have kids, to welcome them into the world,” Vice President J.D. Vance told the 2025 March for Life.

Encouraging School Choice and Homeschooling: The proposed “big beautiful bill” creates a new tax credit for those who contribute to charities that provide scholarships for elementary or secondary students to attend private or religious schools (Sec. 110109). It also allows parents, including homeschoolers, to withdraw funds from tax-advantaged 529 accounts to cover a broader array of educational expenses (Sec. 110110), including:

  • curriculum and curricular materials
  • books or other instructional materials
  • online educational materials
  • tutoring or educational classes outside the home
  • testing fees
  • fees for dual enrollment in an institution of higher education, and
  • educational therapies for students with disabilities.

Decreases Government Policies Encouraging Gambling: One provision modestly discourages gambling by reducing how much wagering losses a person can write off (Sec. 110014). Currently, gamblers can write off only gambling losses up to the amount of their winnings, and other gambling-related expenses in excess of the amount they won. The bill reduces all gambling-related deductions to the amount of his winnings.

González was not alone in praising those parts of the bill. “We are encouraged to see the House Ways and Means Committee increase their response to the needs of American families, especially support for young and growing families through the child tax credit and the foster and adoption tax credit,” said John Mize, CEO of Americans United for Life. “We at March for Life are grateful for the pro-life, pro-family reconciliation bill text released today,” according to a post on the annual pro-life event’s social media account. “These provisions will strengthen a longstanding family that benefits all American families,” said Concerned Women for America LAC. And ACLJ Action held that “this Child Tax Credit update sends a powerful message: We value children. We value parents. And we value the American family.”

The bill’s supporters note its overall fiscal impact, as well. “Instead of a $1,700 tax hike, working families still recovering from Biden’s inflation crisis will now receive on average a $1,300 tax cut and workers will get $3,300 more in real income back into their pockets,” said a press release the committee emailed to The Washington Stand Wednesday morning. “Permanence of the 2017 Trump tax cuts will save 6 million jobs, including 1.1 million manufacturing jobs.”

“This cornerstone of President Trump’s economic agenda will put the interests and needs of working families and small businesses ahead of Washington, bring jobs and manufacturing back to America, and usher in a new golden era of prosperity,” Rep. Smith told TWS.

How much of the bill will survive the Senate legislative process remains to be seen. Senator Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) told Fox Business on Wednesday morning the bill will see Senate action “probably sometime in the early fall.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor 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.

Trump’s First Step Act Was a Monumental Success. His New Administration Has a Chance to Build On It.

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Every April since President Donald Trump signed the first proclamation in 2018, Second Chance Month has served as an annual reminder to recognize the potential of people with criminal records to turn their lives around. The First Step Act of 2018 remains one of President Trump’s most important legacies from his first term. It has been a tremendous success by virtually any measure, and it’s part of a critical but underserved area of legislative reform.

What’s more, it was bipartisan and remains extraordinarily popular.

Polling indicates that most Americans recognize our criminal justice system needs reform — perhaps because Americans also recognize that the success or failure of our criminal justice system has direct implications for them personally.

A striking 81% of likely voters in 2024 said they’d support reforms to the criminal justice system, with the numbers almost equally high across political affiliations. More than three-quarters of Republicans signaled support. Upwards of 80% of Democrats and Independents did as well.

That’s because Americans understand that a functioning criminal justice system has little to do with ideology. It’s about ensuring the institutions we rely on to keep us safe, free, and flourishing do what they were originally created to do.

Continuing to refine and modernize our justice system not only offers Trump a widely-supported opportunity to better the nation; it’s also a chance for him to further cement his legacy as a transformational reformer of American government.

There’s already a promising roster of legislation filed in Congress that would serve as a worthy follow-up to President Trump’s successes in 2018. Take the Federal Prison Oversight Act, the Clean Slate Act, and the Safer Supervision Act as examples. All three would serve as crucial steps toward lasting, system-level reform of our criminal justice system.

The Federal Prison Oversight Act created an oversight body to inspect and regulate federal prisons — but it hasn’t gone into practical effect yet, due in part to funding issues.

Safer, more effective, more accountable federal prisons wouldn’t only benefit the prison staff and population. It would benefit us all. After all, where do incarcerated men and women go after serving their term? They return to us as neighbors. As co-workers. As fellow citizens.

As such, we must ensure that our correctional facilities are, in fact, corrective, not merely punitive.

The American criminal justice system was never meant to become a multibillion-dollar taxpayer-funded industry. And it was never meant to be a self-perpetuating parallel state. It was intended to protect the common good, mete out justice, and return citizens to their communities after they had served a rightly-determined sentence in reparation for their crime.

We should hold people accountable for their mistakes, as we owe it to victims and the public to ensure there are consequences for causing harm. But when we make the path of a law-abiding life more attainable for those who have demonstrated their commitment to rehabilitation, we create a society that is safer and more prosperous for everyone. This should ring true to all of us, regardless of political inclination.

Employment is one of the biggest challenges for those reentering society from jail or prison. Workforce training programs tailored for those returning from incarceration should be expanded and fully funded. Technology offers promising new opportunities, with one study finding that the use of a virtual reality interface to train people in prison on job interviewing contributed to more job offers and lower recidivism upon release.

Tens of millions of Americans have a criminal record, including half of those who are unemployed. Too often, that record functions as a life sentence long after their official sentence has ended. When criminal records are barriers to employment, housing, and education, millions are kept from ever fully reintegrating into society.

One way to alleviate these barriers is to institutionalize automatic record-clearing for eligible individuals through “Clean Slate” laws, which automatically expunge or seal low-level records after a certain period of time for those whose arrests don’t result in convictions or who have remained crime-free. While a dozen states — like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Utah — have enacted this policy, nationwide adoption would eliminate bureaucratic red tape preventing people from moving past their records and contributing more to society.

In addition to implementing job training programs and Clean Slate laws, Congress is also considering the Safer Supervision Act, which would help streamline and reform an overwhelmed and arcane system trying to execute and make decisions about post-incarceration supervision. The Safer Supervision Act would reduce the size of the government, reduce costs, and even reduce recidivism.

Second Chance Month is a useful tool to raise awareness, but it should be seen as the floor, not the ceiling. By implementing policies that support job-training, record-clearing, and community reintegration, we can see to it that second chances are more than just feel-good ceremonies for one month on the calendar. We as a nation — and Trump as our president — have a chance to make our justice system just again.

AUTHOR

Timothy Head

Timothy Head is the president and CEO of Unify.US and the former executive director at the Faith & Freedom Coalition.

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.

10 Beautiful Bills for a Better America

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As Congress debates major issues regarding taxes, tariffs, and trade, it would be heartening for faith, family, and freedom Americans if it found time to pass topical bills that address other pressing concerns such as protecting unborn life, dismantling taxpayer-funded abortion, conscience protections, and more.

A number of these measures have been introduced in diverse forms in past Congresses indisposed to adopt them. Others are ideas whose time had not yet come. But in these still-early days of the 119th Congress, the two chambers of Congress, one of which had time for Senator Cory Booker’s (D-N.J.) around-the-clock oration, might well find room on their schedules to debate measures that accommodate conscience, support mothers and families, and protect an underappreciated national responsibility — the collection and analysis of social metrics.

Here are 10 measures that fit this general description, with the acknowledgement that they are only a sample of proposals that are within striking distance of adoption and worthy of congressional attention even in a crowded calendar.

Hawley Child Tax Credit Expansion

Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) champions an expansion of the child tax credit, a longtime bipartisan proposition, to $5,000 from its current value of $2,000 per child. The credit would reportedly be refundable against payroll taxes, be available during the year in which the child was conceived, and be paid out over the course of the year rather than remitted as a lump sum at tax time.

S. 4524, Lankford Conscience Protection Act of 2024

Reintroduced most recently in June 2024, legislation like this is urgently needed in an environment where existing federal conscience protections languished unenforced in the Biden years, and states like Illinois and Washington are moving to require physicians or pregnancy centers to refer for abortions against their convictions that these actions are morally and ethically wrong. S. 4524 would have reinforced several existing federal conscience laws and grant individuals and institutions a private right of action to assert their conscience claims in federal court. The proposed law would clarify that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) must investigate alleged conscience violations and can suspend federal funds for health-related services if the violators do not respect conscience.

H.R. 796, Miller Second Chance for Moms Act

Introduced on January 28, 2025 by Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.), this legislation would amend the basic federal food, drug, and cosmetics legislation to require the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to mandate a warning label be placed on the abortion drug mifepristone. The warning label would advise women of the availability of an abortion pill reversal (APR) protocol that can often rescue their baby after the woman has taken the drug. It would require the secretary of HHS to create or contract with a 24/7, toll-free hotline to advise women on how to access abortion pill reversal with referrals limited solely to providers of APR.

H.R. 7, Smith No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act of 2025

Introduced on January 22, 2025, Rep. Christopher Smith’s (R-N.J.) bill is an expanded version of previous anti-funding measures and now has 81 House of Representatives co-sponsors. The bill would make permanent the terms of the Hyde Amendment, which permits funding of abortion only in cases of rape, incest, or where a physical disorder, injury, or illness would threaten a woman’s life. It would apply to the full sweep of Hyde Amendment provisions applicable now to annual spending bills. H.R. 7 would also bar federal subsidies for the portion of health insurance premiums that pay for abortion coverage.

H.R. 271 and 272, Fischbach Defund Planned Parenthood and Protecting Life and Taxpayers Acts

These measures, introduced on January 14, 2025, would prohibit Planned Parenthood from accessing any discretionary or mandatory federal funds because of its immersion in the provision and promotion of abortion. The Protecting Life Act would require all federally-funded entities to certify that they will not carry out abortions or provide funds to any other entity that carries out abortions beyond the terms permitted by the Hyde Amendment. The Senate version of the Defund Planned Parenthood Act, S. 203, was introduced on January 23, 2025 by Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and has 11 co-sponsors. In addition, a coalition of 150 pro-life groups has called on Congress to cut funding for Planned Parenthood in the upcoming budget reconciliation bill.

S. 334, Risch American Values Act

This bill carries forward pro-life foreign assistance policy. Introduced on January 30, 2025 by Senator James Risch (R-Idaho), the bill would amend the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to ensure that no appropriated funds may be used to pay for abortion as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to be sterilized. The bill would also bar the use of funds to pay for biomedical research related to techniques of induced abortion or coerced sterilization. The bill has a dozen co-sponsors.

H.R. 627/S. 178, Norman-Ernst Ensuring Accurate and Complete Abortion Data Reporting Act of 2025

Introduced by Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) on the House side and Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) in the Senate, this is a critical piece of legislation that will ensure the demographic and some health implications of induced abortion are tracked and analyzable to the extent possible in a national, public framework. The urgency of this legislation, which would redress a half century of voluntary and incomplete national reporting, is all the greater thanks to the rapid expansion of chemical abortion conducted with little to no medical evaluation or supervision. The bill notes the disturbing facts that not a single data point regarding abortion is publicly available for all 50 states, and that three states, constituting 15% of U.S. abortion volume, share no reports at all with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

H.R. 578, Roy FACE Act Repeal Act of 2025

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) has led the fight against the much-abused Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a law that was weaponized during the Biden administration to target right-to-life demonstrators with vindictive prosecutions and harsh penalties. President Trump, as one of his initial executive actions, pardoned men and women, including grandmothers, who had been sentenced to lengthy prison terms for engaging in protests, while making little or no progress in identifying or prosecuting individuals who attacked churches and pregnancy help centers. Absent repeal of this legislation, Roy says, biased enforcement will promptly resume in a future administration. “Data my office obtained from Merrick Garland’s DOJ showed that 97% of FACE Act prosecutions from 1994-2024 were against pro-life Americans.”

H.R. 722, Burlison, Life at Conception Act

The United States has seen a recent spike in abortions, beginning before the 2022 Dobbs ruling but continuing in its wake, with one source reporting that our nation’s abortion toll has risen to more than one million abortions per year. As Congress and the states look for ways to support mothers, the fact remains that for much of the country, the legal status of the unborn is a void that must be filled. It is lawful in much of the land to dismember a child in the womb; to destroy a child in the third trimester or a human embryo because it is affected by Down syndrome or is not the preferred sex; to set aside a child born alive and deny him or her life-saving care; to use public funds to pay for and promote abortion; to leave a woman alone in a bathroom to expel the new life from her womb; or to ship abortion drugs across state lines with little or no medical support.

To address these wrongs, legislation is needed that not only delivers unprecedented levels of support for men and women to act for the good of their child, but to safeguard each and every innocent life. The Life at Conception Act, with 73 co-sponsors, faces a steep challenge in this Congress but it too would be a beautiful bill, one with the added virtue of honoring our best hope for a better future for America.

AUTHOR

Chuck Donovan

Chuck Donovan served in the Reagan White House as a senior writer and as Deputy Director of Presidential Correspondence until early 1989. He was executive vice president of Family Research Council, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, and founder/president of Charlotte Lozier Institute from 2011 to 2024. He has written and spoken extensively on issues in life and family policy.

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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.

Johnson Races to Ready for Trump: ‘This Is an Around-the-Clock Operation Right Now’

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While miles of fences and concrete barriers line the most iconic spots of the National Mall, there are other preparations underway for Donald Trump’s inauguration – well out of the public eye. As the city transforms into the best and most patriotic version of itself, Republicans are working well into the night on the most significant plans: what the first few days of the new administration will look like.

Under the Capitol dome, which is already draped in red-white-and-blue bunting, members are hurrying from meeting to meeting to cement their plans for the flurry of business that starts after Trump’s oath of office. For House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), it’s the culmination of months of work that started as early as last summer on the campaign trail, when it became obvious that the 45th president had the momentum he needed to win. The 100-days agenda is “very aggressive,” the Louisianan explained as far back as June. “Those days cannot get here soon enough,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins.

Now that the time has come, the speaker is focused on one thing: undoing the damage Joe Biden did to this country’s security, economy, families, and sovereignty. “We’re going to reverse some of the crazy things that this administration did in the areas of public policy,” he previewed to Perkins on Saturday. “All of that begins this month, so we’re excited and working steadily,” Johnson explained. “This is an around-the-clock operation right now, because we have to fix everything.”

Of course, as the speaker understands better than anyone, he’ll need every Republican on the same page to get a single piece of Trump’s agenda off the ground — something that’s proven, as recently as this month, to be a monumental task. The president-elect has tried to minimize some of that tension, bringing members of the House Freedom Caucus to Mar-a-Lago over the weekend to hash out some of the differences that threatened to torpedo Johnson’s reelection as speaker.

“Unity was a huge part of the meeting,” one of the Republicans confirmed. “I think that kind of team-building [and] camaraderie is really important,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) explained to Politico, “because we have a heavy lift in front of us.” Despite the bitter debates the fiscal hawks have had with leadership of late, Donalds reiterated, “It was really much more a fun, enjoyable dinner than a deep policy session.”

Congressman Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) explained to Perkins on Tuesday’s show, “We talked for several hours, as a matter of fact, late into the evening. But it was on border security. It was on crime. It’s how, quite frankly, the Biden administration has used the weapon of the pen [with] executive orders to attack and invade our country and undermine every working American day in and day out.”

One of the recurring themes has also been reconciliation — the process that allows Republicans to move two budget-related bills through the Senate with a simple majority instead of the usual 60 votes it takes to end debate on a proposal. Part of it, Ogles admitted, “is nerdy procedural stuff.” But to make the drastic changes Trump and the American people demand, it’s a crucial piece of the puzzle moving into next week. Right now, there’s disagreement among the GOP over whether the party should bundle all of their major policy goals like tax cuts and border security into one “big, beautiful bill,” as Trump is urging, or two. But there’s also legitimate concern that the president-elect’s strategy might open the door to more spending waste.

Several GOP members of the Senate and House Freedom Caucus are urging the White House to split the priorities into two reconciliation bills (which is the maximum number a majority can advance each fiscal year) so that nothing sneaks into the legislation that derails them.

“You know, Donald Trump is strategic,” Ogles pointed out. “I think he wants to deliver some quick wins for the American people. The election was a mandate to secure the border, to, again, attack crime, to get these folks [who] are illegally. We know we have murderers here. We know we have terrorists here. We need to go find them. We need to deport them. We need to get them out of our country. And so with that, I think organically there’s the opportunity or perhaps even the likelihood that this could end up being two separate bills, because the larger [it is] … the more complicated it becomes, and the more difficult it will be to pass and the longer it will take to pass.” He suggested that if Trump delivers “a smaller bill, then follow[s] up with tax policy,” it will be easier to get done. “We can make sure Donald Trump has a successful 100 days and delivers a secure border for the American people.”

The speaker, who’s been careful to follow Trump’s lead, emphasized that Republicans might disagree on the process, but they do agree on the “overall objectives.” “The debate has been about the sequencing,” he explained to Perkins. “And when we say one large reconciliation bill, that is the best chance that we have to get all of these initiatives done.” As he explained, the House has less room for error than the Senate. “We have a smaller margin. For the first time in U.S. history, there are more Republicans by way of margin in the Senate than there [are] in the House. So they can lose three votes on any given measure, and I can only lose one or two.” In other words, he said, “I have 150 more personalities to deal with and get on the same page.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has a similar problem — but fewer cats to herd. What matters, the speaker insisted, is that he and Thune have a great relationship. “We’ve been talking about this very thoughtfully and deliberately. There’s a handful of [Republican] senators — I wouldn’t say all of them — [who] are very adamant that we ought to do two bills in the House. We believe one bill is the best way.”

The reason, he went on, is simple. “[W]hat they want to do is take some of the border measures and maybe defense spending and do that right out of the blocks very early in January and then leave the larger piece, which is the tax extension of the tax cuts and some of the other very complicated things that we’ve got to do, on a larger package. The problem is, if you take the border and defense spending off of the larger package, those things are very popular among Republicans. And that’s kind of the anchor to get the harder things done. So there’s a risk in splitting them up. I’ve explained that to President Trump in detail. And as of today, now, I think he very much agrees with what I’m saying. And I think he told that to the senators when he met with them this week.”

Ogles and his colleagues do understand the need to get something substantial done in the first 100 days. “And so, understanding how the sausage gets made up here by putting border security with some strategic cuts together in a package, again addressing the debt ceiling, we can move quickly — much more quickly than we can if everything is in there,” he countered. “And then, quite frankly, once you have one ‘big, beautiful bill,’ it ends up typically getting filled up with a bunch of nonsense and pork,” which the hardline conservatives won’t tolerate. But again, the Tennessee congressman underscored, “I think we’ve got to cut where we can cut. Look, we can’t cut our way out of this mess. We’re going to have to grow our way out of this mess. But every cut, every penny, every dollar matters.”

One thing that both sides can agree on is that “we’ve got to change the way this town operates,” Ogles insisted. “[O]ne of the successes we had with this when Mike Johnson was elected — and I was one of the individuals that helped whip those final votes and get him across the finish line — is that you can’t do suspension bills the last day right before you fly out. Because what ends up happening is they put some junk bill together. They sweeten it for the Democrats, and they pass it with a majority of Democrat votes. You can’t do that anymore,” he argued. “You can only do a suspension bill on a Monday or Tuesday.”

Again, he acknowledged, “It’s nerdy. Most people don’t understand why that’s important. But what it does is it stops this town from running over the American people. And so, day in and day out, what we’re trying to do is fix how this place operates.” And yes, “One big, beautiful bill might seem great, but when you understand everything that gets thrown in there, it’s really counterintuitive to the mandate that the American people delivered to Donald Trump and to Congress to fix this country.”

Whatever form the reconciliation strategy takes, Johnson reminded viewers, “We work in the greatest deliberative body in, really, the history of the world. And we get the opportunity [in] the extraordinary moment in history that we’re in, to hold that thing together. … And I can tell you, the Republicans in the House and the Senate are very excited right now.”

At the end of the day, the speaker underscored, “God is the one that raises up those in authority. Scripture is very clear about that. And so with that great responsibility, there are a lot of things that come along with that. And so, I’m encouraging my colleagues to remember that, to keep our perspective. We don’t grasp these gavels or hold on to these titles with any sense of pride or anything else. This is a this is a moment of service. And it is a sacrifice,” and no matter what happens, “we ought to regard it that way.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and 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.

‘Clear and Real Threat’: Johnson Backs SAVE Act to End Non-Citizens Voting in U.S. Elections

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On Wednesday, the House of Representatives will vote on a bill to reverse “the ease with which illegal aliens can register and vote in our elections, including in every single swing state,” said Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) on a video conference call attended by The Washington Stand.

The House will vote on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which requires states to verify that only U.S. citizens can register or vote in U.S. elections. The bill requires applicants to show proof of citizenship and grants states access to federal databases that can verify citizenship. It also orders the Department of Homeland Security to determine whether to initiate removal proceedings if a non-citizen unlawfully attempts to register to vote.

The bill attempts to fix a problem created by the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), often dubbed the “Motor-Voter Law.” The bill, signed into law by President Bill Clinton, requires officials to offer to register those who apply for a driver’s license. While federal law says only U.S. citizens should register, a 2013 Supreme Court opinion held that “the NVRA forbids [s]tates to demand that an applicant submit additional information beyond that required by the [f]ederal [f]orm.”

The form asks applicants to swear on penalty of perjury that they are U.S. citizens — but requires no proof whatsoever.

“In effect, this law, the NVRA, requires states to use the honors system,” Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd (R) told TWS. “There’s no mechanism to ensure that only those registering or voting are citizens,” Speaker Johnson told The Washington Stand. With the SAVE Act, “we can assure American citizens that their vote isn’t going to be canceled out by a non-citizen,” said Byrd.

“The purpose here was basically to mirror the existing language in the NVRA,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), in response to a question asked by TWS, the only question asked during the video call. “We’re just literally amending existing law” to underline and facilitate the states’ responsibility to safeguard election integrity.

Speaker Johnson released a 22-page report late last month documenting the reality of non-citizens registering to vote, and actually voting, in U.S. elections, “As of May 2023, Virginia Department of Elections officials have removed 1,481 registrations,” said the report, and 23% had cast a ballot.

Non-citizens already legally vote in several areas nationwide. “A number of localities are blurring the lines of citizenship by allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections,” said Johnson. Cities and municipalities that allow non-citizens to vote legally include:

  • Oakland, California
  • San Francisco, California
  • Washington, D.C.
  • Burlington, Vermont
  • Montpelier, Vermont
  • Barnesville, Maryland
  • Cheverly, Maryland
  • Chevy Chase (Section 3), Maryland
  • Garrett Park, Maryland
  • Glen Echo, Maryland
  • Hyattsville, Maryland
  • Martin’s Additions, Maryland
  • Mount Rainier, Maryland
  • Riverdale Park, Maryland
  • Somerset, Maryland
  • Takoma Park, Maryland
  • Winooski, Vermont

“We are extremely grateful that the speaker of the House has taken it on himself to push this bill and say this is a significant problem,” said Election Integrity Network founder and Only Citizens Vote Coalition co-founder Cleta Mitchell, which hosted the call.

Speaker Johnson called the issue of non-citizens voting in the United States “a very clear and real threat” to U.S. election integrity. “We know that President Biden and his policies have invited more than 8.6 million illegals into the United States in three years. In fact, I’ve been on the record saying I think the number is more than 16 million.” When Border Patrol agents add in “gotaways,” they safely estimate a total of 10 million illegal border crossings during the Biden administration — more than the population of 41 states. To make matters worse, Johnson told TWS that Border Patrol agents revealed they are not permitted to count all gotaways, unless they “have clear sight and vision of them” fleeing into U.S. territory.

Yale University researchers estimated the total number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. at 16 to 29 million, in 2016.

“Democrats have said they want to make non-citizens voters. We have them on tape,” Johnson told TWS. Democrats, including Democratic socialist organizers, have long described amnesty for the illegal immigrants as the best mechanism to “create a governing coalition for the long-term.”

“The reason why they’ve got that wide-open border is so they can get as many illegals in here and get them to vote, so they can dominate the American vote,” Rep. Mike Ezell (R-Miss.) told “Washington Watch” guest host Jody Hice on Tuesday. “They want to dominate the House, the Senate and the White House. They want to get elected by any means necessary,” even “going against the rules,” Ezell told Hice.

After such an influx of lawless immigration, coupled with indifference to the citizenship of voter applicants, “among the other remedial measures we have to take, [the SAVE Act] is the most obvious one,” Johnson told TWS.

“Election integrity is a cornerstone to this country,” Ezell told Hice.

The bill enjoys strong support nationwide. A recent poll commissioned by Tea Party Patriots found 87% of all Americans, including more than three-quarters of Democrats, believe people should show proof of U.S. citizenship before registering to vote. Similarly, a bipartisan coalition of more than 500 state elected officials have signed a letter from the State Freedom Caucus supporting the SAVE Act.

Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd (R) noted that in 2020, Florida amended its state constitution to say only a citizen can be eligible to vote with 80% support. “We can’t get 80% to agree if it’s night or day,” Byrd told TWS. “It has broad bipartisan support.”

Yet the Biden administration announced on Monday that the administration “strongly opposes” the bill, because “it is extraordinarily rare for noncitizens to break the law by voting in [f]ederal elections.”

“It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in [f]ederal elections — it is a [f]ederal crime punishable by prison and fines. The alleged justification for this bill is based on easily disproven falsehoods,” Biden asserted. “Additionally, making a false claim of citizenship or unlawfully voting in an election is punishable by removal from the United States and a permanent bar to admission,” said Biden, who effectively ended deportations early in his term.

Biden’s statement implied he would refuse to take any action related to the border until the House Republicans submit to his agenda. “If House Republicans really want to do something about securing our border and fixing our broken immigration system, they should vote on the border deal that the [p]resident negotiated,” which would facilitate the entry of millions of non-citizens into the United States but do little to provide border security.

Biden and his fellow Democrats oppose the SAVE Act and “want to try to kill it, because they don’t believe in American sovereignty,” Roy told TWS.

Some members of the House seem “bent on destroying this country,” Ezell said. “As long as I’m breathing, I’m … going to continue to stand for the American people and do what’s right in the eyes of God. That’s my stand.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 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.

Military Funding Bill Passes House, Includes Conservative Priorities

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The U.S. House of Representatives passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) 217-199 Friday, largely along party lines. Conservatives attached a number of amendments, which the mainstream media described as “culture war amendments,” designed to keep social issues out of the military.

The NDAA is an annual, must-pass bill that authorizes appropriations for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and sets DOD policies.

Due to its must-pass, pro-military nature, progressives in Congress have used the NDAA to advance their policy agenda by attaching left-wing riders to a bill they know many Republicans will support. Since retaking control of the House of Representatives, where all such spending bills must originate, Republicans have sought to reverse the progressive Left’s social engineering of the U.S. military by disentangling it from abortion, LGBT ideology, and DEI practices.

Although most Republicans voted for the fiscal year (FY) 2025 NDAA and most Democrats voted against it, due to the conservative-leaning policies included, a handful of members did cross the aisle. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), and Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) voted against the NDAA. Reps. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), Don Davis (D-N.C.), Jared Golden (D-Maine), Vincente Gonzalez (D-Texas), Mary Peltota (D-Alaska), and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) voted for the bill.

Before the bill’s final passage, the NDAA went through the customary amend-a-thon. Members of Congress submitted hundreds of amendments, and they voted on the amendments ruled in order on Thursday. Highlights of those amendments are divided into categories below:

Abortion:

  • Amendment #55, proposed by Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas), prohibits the Secretary of Defense from paying for or reimbursing expenses relating to abortion services. The House adopted it 214-206, with most Republicans and one Democrat (Cuellar) voting “yes” and most Democrats and two Republicans (Reps. John Duarte (Calif.) and Brian Fitzpatrick, Pa.) voting “no.”

Religious Liberty:

  • Amendment #341, proposed by Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas), requires the Secretary of Defense to review and repair the personnel records of military chaplains who suffered forced separation, downgraded performance reports, denials of promotion, schooling, training, or assignment, or any other adverse personnel actions as retaliation for seeking a Religious Accommodation Request (RAR) to the COVID-19 vaccination mandate. The House adopted this amendment “en bloc” (with other amendments considered uncontroversial), which means there was no recorded vote.

LGBT Ideology:

  • Amendment #52, proposed by Rosendale, prohibits the provision of gender transition procedures, including surgery or wrong-sex hormones, through TRICARE and the Department of Defense. The U.S. House adopted it 213-206, with most of the Republicans and one Democrat (Cuellar) voting “yes” and most of the Democrats and one Republican (Rep. Tony Gonzales, Texas) voting “no.”
  • Amendment #53, proposed by Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), prohibits the provision of gender transition procedures, including surgery or wrong-sex hormones, through the Exceptional Family Medical Program. The House adopted it 218-205, with most Republicans and one Democrat (Cuellar) voting “yes” and most Democrats and one Republican (Rep. Neal Dunn, Fla.) voting “no.”
  • Amendment #46, proposed by Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.), prohibits DoD’s military base schools, DODEA, from purchasing, displaying, or maintaining material that promotes radical gender ideology or pornographic content. The House adopted it 221-202, with all Republicans and three Democrats (Cuellar, Davis, and Gonzalez) voting “yes” and most Democrats voting “no.”
  • Amendment #54, proposed by Reps. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.) and Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), prohibits drag shows, drag queen story hours, and similar events. The House adopted it by voice vote, which means the votes of individual members were not recorded.

DEI:

  • Amendment #43, proposed by Reps. Clay Higgins (R-La.), Chip Roy (R-Texas), and Duncan, eliminates the position of Chief Diversity Officer of the Department of Defense and prohibits the establishment of any substantially similar position. The House adopted it 214-210, with most Republicans voting “yes,” while all Democrats and four Republicans (Reps. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (Ore.), Fitzpatrick, Thomas Kean (N.J.), and Mike Turner (Ohio)) voting “no.”

“Misinformation”:

  • Amendment #45, proposed by Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas), prohibits funding of companies whose operations, activities, or products, function to demonetize or rate the credibility of a domestic entity (including news and information outlets) based on lawful speech of such domestic entity under the stated function of “fact-checking” misinformation, disinformation, or mal-information. The House adopted it 218-206 with all Republicans voting “yes” and all Democrats voting “no.”

Israel:

  • Amendment #5, proposed by Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), prohibits U.S. funds from building or rebuilding in the Gaza Strip. The House adopted the amendment by voice vote.

These are the nine amendments tracked by Family Research Council Action, on the organization’s core issues of life, religious liberty, and sexuality, as well as other important topics, such as opposing the DEI worldview, protecting free speech, and supporting the nation of Israel. All nine amendments tracked by FRC Action were passed, making the NDAA for FY 2025 a victory for Bible-believing conservatives.

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. ©2024 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.