Tag Archive for: Political Parties

Waste and Fraud Unmasked by DOGE Sparks Question — Why Didn’t Congress Find It First?

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So much waste, fraud, and inefficiency in federal spending have been exposed since President Donald Trump re-entered the Oval Office three months ago that it raises the question: why didn’t Congress shine the light on such outrages long before Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) came along?

Americans for Limited Government (ALG) President Rick Manning, for example, put it well recently, asking congressional watchdogs what they “have been doing over the past 20 years? Where was their spending oversight? Why have they not forced these systems to be opened up for public review so they could dig deep into the spending on authorized programs to determine whether they are being administered properly, and that the taxpayer has been getting their [money’s] worth?”

Manning’s question makes sense, considering what DOGE has uncovered barely three months into its deep-dive, including trillions of dollars in checks issued by the Department of Treasury — with no coding showing the purpose of the spending, billions of dollars of improper payments to ineligible or fictious Social Security, Medicare, pandemic, and unemployment beneficiaries, and millions of grant dollars to pay for things like transgender surgeries for Latin American men.

To get some answers to the question posed by Manning and others, The Washington Stand dug into the years of demands from congressional investigators to executive branch departments and agencies for millions of documents, threatened and delivered subpoenas, transcribed interviews, whistle-blower reports, and public hearings.

What we found can best be summed up in a comparison of what those sleuths looked at as a measure of their priorities in two years, including 2022 when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress and Democrat President Joe Biden was in the White House, and 2024 when Republicans controlled the House, but Biden remained in office.

More specifically, we focused on one House committee, known in 2022 as the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (HOGR), and in 2024 after the panel was renamed the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability (HCOA).

In 2022, Democrats running HOGR were extremely active, but exposing waste, fraud, and corruption in government was not a priority. In 2024, Republicans focused almost entirely on waste, fraud, and corruption in government, but they met a solid wall of refusals to cooperate from political appointees and career civil servants in the executive branch.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a 30-year Democratic veteran of the House, chaired HOGR in the 116th and 117th Congress with Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, as the Ranking Member in 2022. When Republicans regained the House majority in 2023 for the 118th Congress, Comer succeeded Maloney as chairman. Because it has such wide-ranging investigative authority, the oversight panel is a major newsmaker.

Maloney’s HOGR publicly issued at least 189 official letters to government and corporate individuals and entities, providing detailed background information to explain and justify the panel’s concerns, as well as posing multiple questions to recipients who were expected to answer as if they were under oath. In only a handful of those many letters did Maloney go beyond questions and ask for documents related to the subject and issues in the committee’s investigation.

Sorting the letters according to investigative issues produces the following breakdown:

  • 26 of the 189 letters, or 14%, were focused on one of a wide assortment of left-wing ideological causes such as confirming the failed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution, converting the United States Postal Service (USPS) vehicle fleet to Electric Vehicles (EVs), weaponization of election disinformation, and the availability and accessibility of menstrual products, among others.
  • 17 of the letters, or 9%, focused on allegations that the 20 biggest fossil fuel corporations like Exxon and Shell were exaggerating their efforts to reduce carbon emissions and prevent climate change-caused disasters.
  • 14 of the letters, or 7.4%, concerned Trump scandal allegations, including classified documents kept illegally at his Mar-a-Lago compound, allegations of excessive rates charged to representatives of foreign nations staying at the Trump Hotel in the nation’s capital, improper foreign gifts to Trump, and claims various Trump family members and appointees profited from their positions in government.
  • 11 of the letters, or 6%, dealt with issues related to cryptocurrency.
  • Nine of the letters, or 5%, were devoted to allegations of food and supply-chain inflation.
  • Five of the letters, or 2.6%, questioned whether social media giants like Facebook were sufficiently aggressive in removing disinformation from the internet.
  • Only 14, or 7.4% of the letters covered issues of oversight of government programs such as the propriety of contracts awarded by the departments of Agriculture and Defense to particular firms, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concerning its response to shortages of infant baby formula.

The balance of the letters, 93, covered a wide range of unrelated topics such as allegations former Washington Redskins’ owner Dan Snyder tolerated a work environment hostile to women, accusations New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) wasn’t doing enough to assure mental health care access for Riker’s Island prison inmates, Amazon labor policies and cheers for state-level programs such as New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s (D) “Cumulative Impacts” program.

Only one of the 189 letters was addressed to a federal agency — the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector-General (IG) — concerning the failure to produce documents requested on three occasions about that office bungling its investigation of allegations of sexual improprieties by government workers.

Notably, the HOGR did not ask the Social Security Administration (SSA) about checks being paid to dead recipients or the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) about improper payments to unqualified recipients covered by the Medicaid and Medicare programs. The improper payments issue has been prominent in the work of DOGE.

Maloney, who lost her 2022 re-election bid after serving in the House since 1993, could not be reached by TWS for comment. A spokesman for the Democratic minority members of the committee did not respond to TWS’s request for comment.

The oversight panel was even more prolific in writing official letters during Comer’s chairmanship in 2024, with a total of 210. And where only one HOGR request to a federal agency in 2022 concerned failure to produce requested documents, such requests were at the center of virtually every major controversy involving the committee in 2024.

Comer’s investigators encountered opposition from the Biden administration-led executive branch to virtually every request for documents, not just to those involving the controversial and politically sensitive corruption allegations related to the chief executive’s family business.

“Biden withheld tens of thousands of documents pertaining to his involvement in his family’s corrupt influence-peddling racket that generated millions for the Bidens and their associates. … [The White House] refused to hand over documents pertaining to its war on domestic energy production, which drove up energy costs for Americans and jeopardized our national security. And the Biden administration failed to provide critical information about President Biden’s border crisis. Thankfully, the Biden nightmare is now over, and President Trump is taking action to reverse President Biden’s detrimental policies and is providing transparency to the American people,” Comer told TWS.

For example, an executive order (EO) signed by Biden in March 2021 directed an executive branch-wide campaign to ensure voter access by, among other techniques, funding supposedly non-partisan groups conducting voter registration campaigns. Republican critics contended that those registration campaigns always seemed to focus on strongly Democratic areas.

Comer’s panel made its first inquiry to the Biden White House about the EO on May 13, 2024, seeking all documents concerning the drafting, implementation, and third-party organizations involved, to be produced no later than May 28, 2024.

“The executive order requires the heads of federal agencies to allow ‘approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations and state officials to provide voter registration services on agency premises.’ To date, the administration has not provided a comprehensive list of who these approved organizations are, the process for becoming approved, or any guardrails for agencies in implementing this order,” Comer said.

Three months later, in an August 26 letter to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Shalanda Young, Comer emphasized the delays.

“The committee received a short letter response from Office of Management and Budget (OMB) over one month past the deadline, in which none of the requested documents or communications were produced. Additionally, OMB has not provided a timeline for production of responsive documents despite several requests by committee staff to work with your agency on this matter to obtain the requested documents and communications,” Comer told Young in the letter.

Comer said a subpoena would be on the table if the requested documents were not produced by September 2. The documents were never produced, according to a committee spokesman.

Similarly, the oversight Republicans repeatedly pressed Secretary of State Antony Blinken to produce multiple documents and other unredacted records regarding the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC), headed by former Secretary of State John Kerry.

In a lengthy August 7, 2024, letter to Blinken, Comer pointed to multiple ways in which State Department officials evaded providing requested materials: “In a recent production to the committee regarding the SPEC office’s staff names and payroll information, the department made significant unjustified redactions and has withheld fully responsive information, thus undermining the committee’s ability to effectively perform its oversight functions.”

Comer further pointed out that it was “only after the threat of compulsory process did the department release some documents and communications revealing a sophisticated and targeted coordination between leftist environmental groups and the SPEC office that undermines U.S. foreign policy, energy policy, and national security policy.”

The committee also dug into the federal government’s chronic problem of improper payments, one of the most widely publicized examples of wasteful federal spending highlighted by the DOGE effort in 2025. In a March 26, 2024, statement, the committee noted the latest in a long-running series of reports by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on the vast extent of improper payments across major federal departments.

“The GAO’s new report found there were $236 billion in improper payments in Fiscal Year 2023. Nearly 80 percent of Fiscal Year 2023 improper payments are concentrated in five areas: the Department of Health and Human Services’ Medicare and Medicaid programs; the Department of Labor’s federal pandemic unemployment assistance; the Department of Treasury’s Earned Income Tax Credit; and the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program loan forgiveness. Since 2003, cumulative improper payments have totaled $2.7 trillion,” the statement said.

The panel’s Subcommittee on Government Operations and the Federal Workforce, chaired by Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) was the point of the spear in addressing improper payments, convening three hearings during 2024 to examine the costs, causes, and needed reforms.

Against the backdrop of hyper-partisanship that dominated Congress and the rest of the national political scene throughout the year, Sessions and Ranking Member Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.) demonstrated in those hearings that members of the opposing parties can still work together seeking workable solutions to national problems on Capitol Hill.

Asked by TWS about his relationship with the Baltimore Democrat, Sessions responded that “Mr. Mfume understands this main point: If you’ve got misdirected payments to the extent that we have, that means the people that money is intended for will not get it.”

In an October 29, 2024, joint letter to Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, who heads GAO, Sessions and Mfume recognized the obstacles presented by the lack of congressional access to vital documents and poor record-keeping by agencies.

“The subcommittee seeks to continuously evaluate whether agencies are getting better or worse at ensuring the levels of fraud seen during the pandemic will ‘never happen again.’ Unfortunately, because of limited or unreliable information maintained by federal agencies, the subcommittee has been unable to adequately assess agencies’ progress,” they told Dodaro.

As a result, Sessions, Mfume, and GAO launched a wide-ranging probe of why agencies too often seem incapable of eliminating improper payments and what Congress must do to fix things.

“We’re in the process now, because this is the first time in four years that we’ve had access to excessive amounts of misdirected spending. This is the first time we’ve had that kind of visibility. We knew numbers existed, fed to us by official people about money that was misdirected with, for example, COVID payments,” Sessions told TWS.

“But when you start going $400 billion here and this and that there, you are not really putting it all together for the State Department, USAID, EPA, and so forth,” he added. The Texas Republican is confident that the joint effort he and Mfume launched with GAO will yield concrete, long-term reforms enacted by Congress and signed into law by the president that ultimately will produce victory in the war against wasteful and corrupt spending throughout the executive branch.

AUTHOR

Mark Tapscott

Mark Tapscott is senior congressional analyst at The Washington Stand.

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

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

Senate Overnighter Sets the Stage for GOP to Clear ‘One, Big, Beautiful’ Hurdle

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When President Trump coined the phrase “one, big, beautiful bill” to describe his legislative strategy, there’s one word he left out: “complicated.” For House and Senate leaders, it’s been a two-month dance just to get on the same page about the broad strokes of a plan to implement Trump’s agenda. It’s like writing the rules for a game you haven’t even played yet. And this game, a “mega-MAGA” Twister of tax relief, debt limits, budget cuts, defense and border spending, offsets, baselines, and mind-numbing procedure, is winner-take-all.

Turns out, electing Trump was the easy part. Putting some of his biggest priorities into law is a different story. For weeks, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) have been working around the clock, trying to juggle the party’s personalities with the White House’s non-negotiables — and somehow make it all squeeze through the Senate’s rigid rules and the House’s aggressive timeline.

So far, the two chambers have come to the table with very different perspectives on make-or-break items — from how much fat to cut from government to whether America can afford permanent tax cuts. Right now, the Senate’s main goal is to catch up to the House, which approved its framework three weeks ago. Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is doing his best to get his chamber there, finally publishing the text of a compromise bill on Wednesday.

In it, he gives senators a bit more wiggle room on how much spending to cut (the House insisted on a floor of $1.5-2 trillion), while also clearing the fiscal brush necessary to make the 2017 tax cuts permanent and raise the debt ceiling. “The Senate Plan has my Complete and Total Support,” the president posted when the language was released. “Every Republican, House and Senate, must UNIFY. We need to pass it IMMEDIATELY!”

Of course, passing it “immediately” means enduring one of the truly entertaining traditions of the Senate (unless you’re a staffer): the vote-a-rama. One of the conditions of budget reconciliation — which is the path Republicans are choosing so they can enact Trump’s agenda with a simple majority — is that senators can offer an unlimited number of unrelated, off-topic amendments without worrying about filibusters. That usually means the minority takes the opportunity to make a political point or force the other party to cast a vote on an uncomfortable issue.

It also, veterans of the chamber will tell you, takes a lonnnnnng time. “It’s a total and unequivocal nightmare of epic proportions,” Jim Manley, a former spokesman for then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, insisted with the drama of someone who’s suffered through it. “For those working in the Capitol, it is an extraordinarily stressful time. Normally cheerful individuals become snarling animals as more and more votes are taken,” he reflected. And what’s so frustrating, he said, is that “it’s largely a meaningless exercise.” “The amendments are BS. If they’re designed to do anything, they’re designed to craft 15-second digital attack ads.”

The members either pretend to hate it or actually do, but the stories that come out of vote-a-ramas are legendary. In a chamber that almost never works on Fridays, it’s the closest thing to a Senate sleepover there is. While the political all-nighters are painful for both parties, they always seem to produce funny anecdotes like back-room poker games, stealth happy hours, regional food wars, and coffee — lots of it. There are the iconic images — like former Senator Joe Manchin throwing pepperoni rolls at reporters in 2015 or the parade of mattresses wheeled in for sleepy senators in 2017.

Right now, the hazing is scheduled to begin Friday night and last until who-knows-when. Technically, it could go on until one party cries uncle and stops offering amendments. The most recent vote-a-rama, in February, lasted until 4:51 a.m,

Once the painful process is over, and the Senate finally passes its version of a plan, the cold hard reality is that it’s just the beginning. The House and Senate will have boarded the same train, but it won’t have left the station yet. “It’s a meaningful step,” Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) agreed, “but it’s a baby step, folks,” he said, tempering expectations. “It’s just a blueprint,” Kennedy said. “The real work starts after we do this.”

After a two-week Easter break, the really uncomfortable conversations begin: negotiating every single detail of the final reconciliation package and getting almost every Republican in both chambers to agree. Or, as congressional leadership might call it, torture. While the GOP might have hung together long enough to get a skeletal outline done, that’s nothing compared to sitting down and going through each and every number, arriving at one that satisfies 270 different people. Already, House members are planting flags in the ground about their “must-haves.”

As FRC’s Senior Director of Government Affairs Quena González told The Washington Stand, “Since this budget resolution is designed to pass with only Republican votes, it’s illuminating different interests in the Republican Party. Defense hawks in both the House and Senate want the Senate’s higher ceiling on Pentagon spending ($150 billion vs. the House ceiling of $100 billion) to eventually prevail. President Trump wants his signature tax cuts from 2017 to be permanent and for Congress to raise the debt limit.”

Then, of course, there are the fiscal hawks, who González points out “are worried about the deficit and debt and generally favor the House language that ties a $4 trillion debt ceiling to at least $2 trillion in overall spending cuts — while at the same time, other Republicans are worried that a $4 trillion debt ceiling could be hit before next year’s election (triggering a second debt ceiling deadline that could force Republicans to compromise with Democrats on policy and spending right before an election) and therefore favor the Senate’s $5 trillion debt ceiling.”

And the clock is ticking. For Congress to hit Johnson’s Memorial Day deadline, House and Senate committees would only have until May 9 to produce their pieces of the budget package, Quena warns, and until May 16 for the Finance panel’s debt limit increase.

In other words, it’s a lot to sort through in a short amount of time. The one silver lining for the GOP is that Democrats, at this point, “have no leverage in all of this,” González continued, “because a budget reconciliation process can be passed, albeit very slowly, on a simple majority vote, so without any Democrats.” Their sole focus, he explained, “is basically trying to gum up the works, force painful votes along the way, and generally rooting for blood.”

And right now, there’s plenty to go around. House and Senate Republicans are at very different places when it comes to spending cuts. Conservatives like Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) agree with the House that now is the time to go big. “My sticking point has always been spending, spending, spending,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” Wednesday. “… [W]e don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. So are we willing to fix it? … We went from $4.4 trillion in 2019 to probably about $7.3 trillion this year. That’s a 63% increase [in spending]. There’s no justification for that. A reasonable pre-pandemic baseline would be no more than $6.5 trillion.”

Trump, the senator said, is committed to getting America back to those pre-COVID levels. “And I think, even more importantly, working with us to develop a detailed and rigorous process to actually achieve it. We’ve never had a process to control spending,” Johnson pointed out. “You may be interested to know the appropriation committees were established to control the big spending authorizing committees. Well, that didn’t work. The Budget Act didn’t work. Simpson-Bowles didn’t work. The Budget Control Act didn’t work. So I proposed a process very similar to a private sector budget review process, where you literally go line by line,” he explained.

“I would recommend involving senators, House members, and the administration,” the senator suggested. “And bring administration officials with their budget gurus and CFOs and literally go [through all] 2,400 individual expenditure lines in the 2025 proposed budget. We have to do that work. Nobody ever wants to do that.”

And honestly, Elon Musk’s team has put Congress in a great position to do that. “DOGE can be very useful,” Johnson observed. “Under reconciliation, we can only address mandatory spending, which is bizarre just in and of itself. So that leaves discretionary spending that has to be passed with Senate Democrats’ help. They won’t.” So he’s pushing an old process that several leaders are dusting off called “rescission” that lets the president claw back spending that’s already been approved. “I think they’re going to move forward on this as well. My recommendation was at least one rescission package a month where Elon and his DOGE group basically bundles up billions of dollars worth of spending rescissions, headlined by the most egregious examples of wasteful and abusive spending.”

At the end of the day, Johnson reminded people, “President Trump is a businessperson. If [your managers] say, ‘Hey, listen, I’ll let you grow your budget by the number of customers you’re serving and inflation — and you come back six years later and [those] budgets are 10% higher than that, you’d go, ‘What are you doing?! Knock it down back to the constraints I told you!’ That’d be a one-minute conversation, and it would be done. This would be easy.”

But unfortunately, Congress has let things get out of hand — with a big assist from the Biden administration. Now, as Speaker Johnson told Perkins, “It has to be Republicans who are [the] grown-ups” and govern responsibly.

Hammering out a bill that can pass both chambers’ wafer-thin majorities is the definition of “challenging,” but the Louisianan is “very optimistic about what we need to achieve over the days and weeks ahead of us.” He understands, “This is our opportunity to deliver what will be one of the most consequential pieces of legislation truly in the history of the Congress and our nation. And working together, we will get this done.”

Well, Perkins replied, “If anybody can defy history, it seems to be your speakership.” Let’s hope that holds for what’s certain to be a bumpy couple of months.

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

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

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

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

Proxy Wars: Johnson Fights to Keep House Voting the Way Our Founders Intended

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People wouldn’t blame House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for trying to find some breathing room in his microscopic majority. Last week, Americans saw how seriously Republicans are taking their whisper-thin margins when President Trump pulled his nomination for Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), surprising everyone by sending her back to Congress to provide some much-needed GOP backup. But as much sleep as Johnson has lost trying to count noses on key votes, there’s one gimmick he refuses to consider.

When Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was in Johnson’s shoes — clinging to the slimmest majority in a generation — she got incredibly creative to arrive at the numbers she needed on any given bill. Turns out, having control of Congress when a global pandemic swept through the country was unusually kind to the Democratic Party’s agenda. Recognizing that she couldn’t afford to lose a single vote — especially on the extreme legislation that her more moderate members opposed, Pelosi instituted a rule that let members vote from somewhere other than the House floor. And while the policy was supposed to be a temporary measure in the early months of COVID, the Democratic leaders managed to extend it well beyond the point of rationality.

As The New York Times chronicled, Pelosi’s “proxy voting” was exploited for months as members decided it was “too dangerous” to go to Washington (but perfectly fine to attend packed-out local political fundraisers). “It’s a huge scandal,” Republican Mike Gallagher (Wis.) argued at the time. “Members have been signing their names to a straight-up lie.” “It indulges the worst impulses of the modern congressman,” he insisted, “which is to spend all their time flying around the country, raising money, and avoiding all the nuts and bolts of legislative work.”

When Pelosi first announced a proxy voting system back in May 2020, the idea was so controversial that more than 160 Republicans sued. “Our founders intended that Congress convene and deliberate,” the GOP argued. “The Constitution requires a majority of members be present to constitute a quorum to conduct business.” After all, they argued, since the first session of Congress in 1789 through 2020, members have had to be present to vote. This current ruse, conservatives fumed, is nothing but “heavy-handed partisan maneuvering.”

Two years later, with the public health threat largely behind us, the practice made even less sense. And yet, no-show voting was such a powerful tool for the Left that Democrats were reluctant to let it go. “Despite a narrow, ten-member majority in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been able to control her caucus in part because members who couldn’t make it to Washington could still vote,” Time Magazine pointed out.

When Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, won the gavel, conservatives did away with the Democrats’ racket, insisting that members again be present on the House floor to vote. But now, much to some people’s surprise, the concept is making the rounds again — this time in Republican circles.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) is pressing the issue in what’s been described as a “narrower” version of proxy voting that would only apply to new parents in Congress. Against most Republicans’ wishes, she took the unusual step of forcing the bill through a discharge petition, a weapon typically used by the minority party. Under her proposal, a congressman or woman could designate a fellow member to vote on their behalf for up to 12 weeks while they’re home with a new baby. And while it sounds like a reasonable concept at face value, the implications, conservatives warn, could be far more dangerous than Luna or others realize.

“It’s not like all 435 members are gonna run out and get pregnant, then all of a sudden you’re gonna have a massive vote by proxy,” Luna argued. “That’s simply not possible, also too, not the case.” But Johnson, who’s a devoted family man, still cautions that the idea is a bridge too far. “It sounds good on the surface,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins agreed on Saturday’s “This Week on the Hill,” but where do you draw the line?

“It’s very problematic,” the speaker wanted people to know. “And look, I’ve talked with Anna about this at great length, and she’s also a dear friend. … [H]er motives are pure,” Johnson said. “… She’s in her 20s, she’s a young mom. And she had a baby recently, and she had to miss some votes. And so, she wants to change the rules [to] say any young family that has a baby, that that member of Congress, either the wife or the husband, doesn’t have to show up for 12 weeks. And I just think it’s a real problem.”

The reality is, he continued, “We sympathize with all our colleagues, many of whom face circumstances that prevent them from being present in Congress. But proxy voting raises serious constitutional questions that change more than two and a half centuries of tradition. It abuses our system,” Johnson emphasized, “and it creates a slippery slope toward more and more members casting votes remotely. Because if we could change the rules for this with a discharge petition — which is really a tool of the minority party, not the majority — then all bets are off. You’ll have other people who will bring discharge petitions for a number of other things,” the speaker explained, “and it will just become totally chaotic. So I hope that that doesn’t pass.”

On Monday, Luna sent a fiery letter to the House Freedom Caucus, resigning from the group for their lack of support for her petition. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who was an ardent critic of Pelosi’s proxy voting four years ago, responded, posting, “Respectfully to my friend — this (unconstitutional) rule would ultimately NOT be limited to moms. Cancer patients, dads, & worst of all, people who lazily abuse it (eg, voting from boats). She leaves out [that] her discharge allows no amendments! We should show up to work/vote.”

In response to the criticism, the speaker pointed out, “Look, I’m a father. I’m pro-family. [But] here’s the problem. If you create a proxy vote opportunity just for young parents, mothers and, the fathers in those situations, then where is the limiting principle?”

At the end of the day, Johnson reiterated to Perkins, “This is a Nancy Pelosi invention. Proxy voting had never been allowed in Congress until Nancy got the gavel. And we went to court to stop it. In fact,” the speaker reminded listeners, “I was a plaintiff in the lawsuit. We went and took the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to declare proxy voting to be unconstitutional. The problem is … the court punted, and they said they didn’t [want] to address it. … They thought it would be a separation of powers problem if the court stepped in and told us how to do our business. So … that really underscores the importance of us handling this on our own.”

Of course, the interesting piece of this internal feud is that Johnson, of all people, stood to benefit from a proxy system in a chamber where he’s hanging on to the majority with his fingernails. Instead, he took the ethical path, refusing to make votes easier for his party just because the shoe was on the other foot. As FRC’s Quena Gonzalez told The Washington Stand, “The speaker put constitutional principle above political gain. That’s rare in Washington. It doesn’t earn you many friends,” he admitted, but in the long run, “it will earn him continued respect from his colleagues and opponents.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

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

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

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

New Bill Gives Trump the Legal Power to ‘Reform Our Government and Drain the Swamp’

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Two congressional conservatives have introduced a bill that would give legal authorization for President Donald Trump to slash the federal workforce, stop harmful government programs, and even close entire executive departments without fear an activist judge will stop his money-saving reforms by judicial fiat.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) introduced the Reorganizing Government Act of 2025 in the House of Representatives (H.R. 1295), while Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced the companion bill in the Senate (S.583). The bill would give the president a freer hand to shuffle, pare back, or eliminate tasks inside the federal bureaucracy until December 31, 2026.

“Americans elected [President Trump] to reform our government and drain the Swamp,” announced Lee Wednesday afternoon on X, retweeting a video of Comer’s appearance on “Washington Watch” originally posted by host Tony Perkins. “Our bill gives him even more tools to do so.”

The measure — which passed the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s markup hearing on March 25 by a 23-20 party-line vote — further gives the president the authority to order “the elimination of operations determined to be unnecessary for the execution of constitutional duties.” The president may also act “to reduce the number of federal employees”; eliminate unnecessary and burdensome rules, regulations, and other requirements”; or close “executive departments” as necessary “to eliminate government operations that do not serve the public interest.”

“President Trump campaigned on reorganizing the federal government. We want to get rid of some agencies that have become obsolete. We want to return power and decision-making back to the states and local governments, especially with respect to education. And what my bill does will codify the law,” Comer told “Washington Watch” the day before the bill cleared committee. “It’s very important that this gets passed into law so that some judge doesn’t try to kick [President Trump’s plans] out — or the next administration, whoever that might be, doesn’t try to end the executive orders. We want this to be the law of the land. We believe that we have the votes in Congress to do that.”

The Trump administration’s foes have targeted the administration by filing lawsuits in liberal jurisdictions and then extracting national injunctions against the administration’s policies. The controversial tactic has led constitutionalists to call for the prudent use of judicial impeachments.

“We know that any member of Congress [who] would oppose this reorganization is opposing the mandate that President Trump received,” Comer assessed.

Presidents have a long history of receiving, or requesting, legislation to remake the federal workforce. “This type of presidential reorganization has been employed 16 different times between 1932 and 1981 and has been granted to nine presidents, including John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon,” according to Deseret News, based in Lee’s home state of Utah. “Reagan was the last president granted the Congress-approved reorganization authority” in 1984, “and he used it to dismantle the Community Services Administration and change the U.S.”

Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama requested authorization to reorganize the government without success.

“Between 1932 and 1984, presidents submitted more than 100 plans under this authority,” reported GovExec.com.

If the bill passes, President Trump would have to submit his plan for government reorganization for congressional approval within 90 days. However, the Senate would not be able to filibuster the plan, allowing its cost-saving efficiencies to clear the closely divided chamber with a majority vote, rather than the 60 votes necessary for cloture.

However, Senate Democrats can filibuster the Reorganizing Government Act itself, preventing it from reaching the Oval Office for President Trump’s signature.

“This legislation allows the president to use his constitutional authority as chief executive to reorganize federal agencies, eliminate weaponization, and right-size the government to better serve the American people. Congress cannot afford to sit on its hands in this fight,” insisted Senator Lee. “Reauthorizing presidential reorganization authority is the most comprehensive tool that the president can use to restore good governance to Washington.”

“With a federal budget that has grown from $3.6 billion to $7.3 trillion and over 400 executive agencies, streamlining government operations is essential for cost savings and improved service delivery,” announced the House Oversight Committee.

Despite the passing of the COVID lockdowns, Congress has continued record-breaking COVID-era levels of federal spending. The national debt now tops $36 trillion, and the government paid an unprecedented $1.2 trillion in interest on the debt alone.

“I don’t think anyone with any common sense would think that we can continue to spend $2 trillion a year more than we take in. We have to reduce unnecessary and wasteful spending,” said Comer. “We can do that by reducing the unneeded bureaucracies in America. And I think that that that’s what [The Reorganizing Government Act] will do. And hopefully, this bill has the blessing of President Trump and his entire Cabinet. It’s something that needs to happen.”

His colleague, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), has proposed one of the most ambitious proposals: cutting $2.5 trillion from the federal budget over 10 years. Comer lamented, “The Democrats think that you solve every problem in America by creating another government agency.”

Comer predicted, in the end, every competent member of the federal workforce would line up behind his legislative initiative. “If I were a federal employee who actually went to work every day and worked hard on the front lines, I would be applauding these changes,” said Comer. “We’re going to restore some common sense into some of the federal government decision-making that happens on the front lines in America every day.”

“I hope in the next two or three weeks it will be on the House floor,” Comer anticipated.

“You’ll see: There won’t be a single Democrat vote for it,” he said.

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.

The Party That Woke Broke

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Democrats have been wallowing in the despair of last November’s elections for months, unable — or maybe unwilling — to crawl out of the pit of public opinion they find themselves in. “It’s hard to win if you don’t know why you lost,” Axios’s Alex Thompson observed. But it’s even harder, some would say, if you know and do nothing about it.

To most people, the solution to the party’s problems is simple. After a year of losing ground with virtually every demographic — men, Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, young people, Independents, suburban moms — the polling all points to Democrats being completely out of step with everyday voters. So why not just abandon the extremism Americans rejected? For the party of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, the answer is much more complicated.

The crisis facing Democrats isn’t about their identity; they have one. The crisis is that they can’t moderate their ideology — or embrace it — without severe consequences. As National Review’s Rich Lowry put it, “The reason Joe Biden won in 2020 is he didn’t seem like a progressive, and one reason that his party lost in 2024 is that he governed like one.” For Democrats, ideological extremism is their kryptonite and their lifeblood. It’s what excites the base and repels the populace. In other words, it’s a recipe for long-term political disaster.

And yet, in several instances, the Democrats who’ve tried to soften their positions or build a temporary bridge to sanity have been beaten back into conformity. After the election, Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) dared to say he didn’t want his daughters to play sports against biological boys — like 80% of his country — only to turn around and vote against his girls three months later. “I was just speaking authentically as a dad about one of many issues where I think we’re just out of touch with the majority of voters,” he explained to the angry mob in November. “… I stand by my position.” Or at least he stood by it until the time came to act on it, Americans learned.

But lately, even the barest hints of compromise are punished. Look at the hysteria over Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who needs increased security simply for voting with Republicans to stop a government shutdown — something his own party argued would be a disaster for hard-working families a month earlier. For sticking to that position, there’ve been furious calls for his ouster and a leadership mutiny in party ranks.

Then, there’s California Governor Gavin Newsom (D), who tested the waters earlier this month with his whiplash comments on Title IX. Sitting down with Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk on his podcast, the governor was asked about the issue of trans-identifying athletes in girls’ sports. To most people’s surprise, the progressive replied, “I think it’s an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that.” He emphasized his point by adding, “It’s deeply unfair.”

Newsom, who, by his own admission, has been a “leader” in the “LGBTQ” movement, encouraged his party to admit that a lopsided playing field is cause for concern. He said, “We’ve got to own that. We’ve got to acknowledge it.” His sudden openness to a broader discussion was met with horror on the Left and deep skepticism on the Right — a perfect illustration of the conundrum facing Democrats.

As California Family Council President Jonathan Keller pointed out on a recent episode of the “Outstanding” podcast, “He’s trying to set it up in such a way that … he’s going to look like he’s a moderate.” But frankly, Keller said, “I’m not positive that’s actually going to be an effective strategy from him. I think what it may be effective in doing is getting him destroyed in the primaries,” he said, referring to the root problem for Democrats, which is that what wins primaries is the same thing that loses general elections.

In Newsom’s case, even an insincere shift to the middle is next-to-impossible to pull off, thanks to years of activist baggage. As Kirk wrote after the interview, “I’m under no illusions about why I was invited: Gavin Newsom wants to run for president in three years, and he thinks that talking [to] conservative figures like me increase his recognition, help him present as a centrist, and cast him as a champion of the Left in a time when the [L]eft has no real leaders. … We shouldn’t fall for this… ” he warned. “[A]nd fortunately, swerving to the center won’t be that simple for Gavin. … He knows his current record can’t win him the White House, and so he’s trying to rewrite what that record is.”

Polling proved the governor’s flirtation with rationality didn’t help his case. Of 1,000 California voters, only 24% said the podcast helped them see Newsom as more moderate, while 17% insisted it made them less likely to see him as a moderate. A majority, 59%, said it made no difference. Americans are not so easily fooled. A few soundbites does not a record make.

“Like the national Democrat[ic] Party and the legacy media,” John Nolte stressed, “Newsom has painted himself into a corner where the only way to survive is through the fealty to the 20 percent of hard leftists that make up the left’s base of activist and financial support. … With all their lies and lunacy in support of things like open borders and this transsexual nonsense, Newsom, Democrats, and the corporate media have alienated all the Normal People, probably forever. So that 20 percent is all they’ve got.”

The foot soldiers of the Democratic Party grasp the paradox. They’ve tried, unsuccessfully, for the last nine years to turn the heads of leadership to mainstream positions on things like gender, immigration, education, and energy. “I don’t want to be the freak show party like they have branded us,” one DNC member from Florida complained after the election when it was obvious the Left’s social radicalism had cost them every lever of power in Washington. “When you’re a mom with three kids,” she pointed out, “and you live in middle America, and you’re just not really into politics, and you see these ads that scare the bejesus out of you, you’re like, ‘I know Trump’s weird or whatever, but I would rather his weirdness that doesn’t affect my kids.’”

Others echoed her alarm. “The progressive wing of the party has to recognize — we all have to recognize — the country’s not progressive, and not to the far left or the far right. They’re in the middle,” said Joseph Paolino, a DNC committeeman for Rhode Island.

It felt like, at least from those comments, that the party was finally going to pivot. “This is basically a rebuild job from the bottom up,” former DNC Chair Donna Brazile emphasized.

But what happened when push came to shove? Against the pleas of their non-elite base, the far-left won even greater control of the party — electing woke, anti-gun, pro-trans, defund-the-police, ICE-abolishing, climate change-pimping DNC leaders in Chairman Ken Martin and Vice Chair David Hogg. To the everyday Democrats, who’d been “begging the party to ditch the radical Left,” it was an astonishing betrayal.

“The weaknesses of Democrats among non-white voters, particularly Hispanic and Black working-class voters, is pretty significant,” authors of a new book, “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?” insist. “They’re sort of realizing this is a problem. On the other hand, they’re so invested in this whole vector of cultural issues. They’re worried about the blowback on social media and from the college-educated ‘liberalish’ voters who are increasingly a loyal base of the Democratic Party. Trump understood that and he played upon it. He continues to play upon it. He continues to get votes upon it. And the Democrats are oblivious to it.”

Not all Democrats, it seems. A growing chorus of disillusioned officials are starting to speak up about the continued reckoning that awaits the party in future elections. During snippets of his interview with NPR Monday, Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) sounded outright logical in his assessment. “We can’t just resist. It can’t just be why we’re against Trump and what’s wrong with Trump. … The Democratic brand has been damaged. “

“When you ask people … ‘What do the Republicans stand for?’ They say, ‘Well, Make America Great Again. They want to cut the size of government, they want to give tax cuts, stuff like [that].’” Then, Suozzi said, when you ask, “‘What do the Democrats stand for?’ And I think the people are kind of scratching their head a little bit, they believe in, like, [abortion] and LGBT rights — which I believe in those things too — but I don’t know that you can build a whole party around that.” He talked about running on the border issue in 2024, and his consultants protested, arguing, “‘Well, Tom, that’s a Republican issue. I don’t know if you should be talking [about that].’ I said, ‘No, this is what the people of my district are talking about. We can’t ignore what the people are talking about.’”

Even longtime fixtures of the party are starting to reconsider the wisdom of pandering to a sliver of the country. Trusted Obama advisor Rahm Emanuel took on the misguided messaging of the current party earlier this month, urging local Democrats to beat the drum on “safe streets, strong schools, stable finances. Focus on those three things, and your city’s going to be fine,” he said on “Real Time with Bill Maher.” “Less about the bathrooms, more about the classrooms.”

The party’s fringe had a fit, forcing the ex-mayor to clarify, “I wasn’t looking to have a fight on woke culture. I was looking to have a debate on the failure of eighth graders to read. I don’t think culturally that being not just into the generic woke debate is wrong politically. It’s also [that] the data is pretty clear that people think that’s all we care about.” And in the end, he admitted, “We sunk our party. We’re responsible for that. And we’re also therefore responsible for rebuilding it.”

So far, the Democrats’ only idea for rebuilding has been parading Rep. Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) around the country as the movement’s future standard-bearers. And, yes, CNN polling of the party’s voters did suggest that Sanders and the Squad leader “best represented the Democrats’ core values” — without asking if the majority of Democrats even supported those values in the first place. What they did question is if Democratic leaders are taking the party in the wrong direction, and a majority said “yes.” Either way, Lowry quipped, “If AOC is the Democratic future, the party is even worse off than we think.”

Most of us, FRC Action’s Matt Carpenter observed, “are used to seeing the Democrats operate as a tightly-knit team. For years, they moved in lockstep at the direction of their leaders toward the party’s goals,” he told The Washington Stand. “So it’s a curious thing to see them now rudderless, searching for leadership, searching for an issue to rally around, searching for support from voters and donors, and coming up short. The ground they gained over the years under the leadership of figures like Obama, Pelosi, and even Biden turns out to have left them stranded in the political wilderness.”

Making matters worse, Carpenter pointed out, “They just had their worst performance among minority voters maybe of all time. They are seen as the party of inflation, war, and obsessed with abortion and turning girls into boys and boys into girls. But that’s not even the worst of it for them,” he shook his head. “The worst part of it for the Democratic Party is that they’ve inculcated these ideas into their base. So they cannot retreat from their unpopular positions without watching their base become demoralized, or worse, angry.”

The reality is a painful one for a party in disarray, but Democrats are boxed in without a viable way out — at least for now. They’ve hitched their wagon to a radical, self-aggrandizing Left without looking behind them to see if anyone followed. Now that the wheels have come off, the sobering truth is this: they have no one to blame but themselves.

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

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

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

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

Republicans Continue to Bolster Election Integrity Nationwide

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Following President Donald Trump’s sweeping victory in November’s presidential election, Republicans are still pursuing election integrity measures to ensure that midterm and future presidential elections are conducted fairly and squarely. Courts have handed a series of election integrity wins to the Republican National Committee (RNC) recently, including in swing states Arizona and Georgia.

The RNC filed a lawsuit last year challenging rule changes made in 2023 by Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) to the state’s Election Procedures Manual. The RNC argued that the rule changes diluted safeguards preventing noncitizens from voting, placed unlawful restrictions on challenges to early voting ballots, and even violated state law. Earlier this month, an Arizona Court of Appeals agreed with the RNC and ruled that Fontes failed to “substantially comply” with the state’s laws and rule-making process.

In Georgia, a federal court sided with the RNC in another election integrity lawsuit. A union representing theater workers sued Georgia state election officials and the RNC last year in an effort to expand the deadline for submitting absentee ballots by mail. The RNC skewered the union’s lawsuit, noting that the union lacks standing to sue, does not demonstrate irreparable harm, and cannot link any hypothetical harm to Georgia’s election officials or the RNC. Additionally, the RNC pointed out that once the deadline for absentee-by-mail ballots expires, Georgians can still submit absentee-in-person ballots ahead of Election Day. Earlier this month, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia dismissed the case, citing a lack of standing on the part of the union.

In another election integrity success, Washington’s state Supreme Court ruled in favor of the RNC and state Republicans in a case concerning signature verification. In a brief filed in 2023, the RNC observed that Washington’s voting process allows voters numerous opportunities to correct mistakes such as incorrect or illegible signatures on mail-in ballots but, because errors sometimes still persist that would classify incorrectly signed mail-in ballots as invalid, a handful of left-wing organizations had sued to eliminate the state’s signature verification requirements for mail-in ballots. Washington’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled earlier this month that the state’s signature verification process is constitutional and will therefore be upheld.

Ahead of November’s historic presidential election, the RNC filed hundreds of lawsuits across the country, seeking to ensure election integrity and thwart activists’ efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the election. Victories in states including Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin resulted in noncitizens being purged from voter rolls, ballot counting being carried out instead of paused and resumed the following day, and Republican poll-watchers being returned to polling places after having been kicked out.

In comments to The Washington Stand, FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter said, “It’s great to see election integrity continue to gain steam. With Republicans in control of Congress and the White House, there was a real possibility that complacency would set in and securing the vote would be forgotten. Fortunately, that’s not the case.” He continued, “The RNC and red states have been active on this issue, and it’s not just good policy: politically, it’s a winner as well. Voters overwhelmingly agree noncitizens should not be allowed to vote, unmonitored drop boxes are a problem, voter identification requirements are good, and we should be able to expect election results quickly.”

In addition to the RNC’s efforts, a number of Republican state officials have been working to bolster election integrity at the state and local levels. In West Virginia, for example, the Republican-led state legislature has introduced nearly 100 election integrity bills this legislative session alone, including measures designed to prevent noncitizens from illegally voting and to clear noncitizens, felons, and deceased people from voter rolls.

On April 1, voters in Wisconsin will also cast their ballots for or against a constitutional amendment legally requiring voter identification be presented when voting. While Democrats and progressive activists have long claimed that voter I.D. requirements disenfranchise voters or stifle voter turnout, a recent report from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty shows that voter I.D. requirements actually have no adverse impact on voter turnout.

Carpenter commented, “Ultimately, the reason election integrity is so important is because it improves the legitimacy of the republic. When our election laws are fair and implemented properly, voters can trust in the results. If voters can trust the results, they can be assured the government is legitimate.” He added, “Even if their side lost, they at least know the election system did its job.” Carpenter further stated, “We all have a stake in ensuring our elections make it easy to vote, but hard to cheat. The time to make progress on election integrity is now.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

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

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©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 on Schumer’s Surrender: ‘Buckle Up … [We’re] Building Muscle Memory for Winning’

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Apart from Donald Trump, no one is more unpopular among Democrats right now than the Senate’s Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). The longtime leader infuriated his party Friday, surrendering on the government shutdown and handing Republicans a victory that can only be described as miraculous. Not only was his decision to cave after days of tough talk a shock, it’s also making Schumer the target of “volcanic anger” in his own party. As one Democratic aide put it after the vote, “I’ve never seen anything like it in the time I’ve been in the Senate …” And as far as conservatives are concerned, Schumer had it coming.

This is exactly what the minority leader did to Republicans when the shoe was on the other foot, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins reminded people after the vote. For once, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and the rest of his party gave Senate Democrats a “dose and a half of their own medicine,” he tweeted, referring to all the times Schumer jammed conservatives with legislation they didn’t want. “Congressional Republicans are now doing what conservatives have wanted to see — going toe to toe with the Left and winning.”

To be fair, Schumer’s hype about shutting down the government was just that: hype. After the House passed a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the lights on and got out of dodge, the Senate minority leader’s fate was sealed. His options, Perkins pointed out, were to either shut down the government and let President Trump decide what parts of the government got funded (think DOGE on steroids) or support a continuing resolution that cut billions of discretionary spending. From the Left’s perspective, it was a lose-lose proposition.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t calls for Schumer’s head. On CNN, shortly after the minority leader folded, host Erin Burnett asked former Obama advisor Van Jones, “How angry are Democrats at Leader Schumer?” He replied bluntly, “I’ve never seen this level of volcanic anger at a Democrat, ever.” “Ever,” she said in astonishment. “Wow.”

Making matters worse for the longtime Democrat, President Trump went on Truth Social to poke the bear. “Congratulations to Chuck Schumer for doing the right thing — Took ‘guts’ and courage!” Trump wrote, trolling the opposition. An angry Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) could only shake his head. “When Donald Trump wakes up in the morning and says, ‘You’re doing the right thing, Senate Democrats,’ we don’t feel that is the right place to be.”

Ultimately, 10 Democrats voted to move forward with the bill to keep the government open through September of this year — cementing a political masterstroke by Speaker Johnson at exactly the right time. “I knew when I made this decision, I’d get a lot of criticism from a lot of quarters,” Schumer insisted to reporters. “We had hoped that maybe Johnson couldn’t get the votes,” Schumer said. “But when he did … it put us in a very, very tough place.”

The speaker celebrated the hard-fought win on Saturday’s “This Week on Capitol Hill.” “I’ll tell you what,” he reflected with Perkins, “it’s been a lot of hard work. We kept the team together. The House Republicans are building muscle memory now for winning,” he declared. “We have a string of wins under our belt, and it’s good to be underestimated. You know,” he smiled, “the Hill press corps and the Democratic Party and the mainstream media every day write my eulogy, write our eulogy. They say we’re going to go to loggerheads against one another. And the Republicans can’t stand together. But we have, and we will continue to do that, because we are going to deliver the America First agenda for the American people.”

Asked how he pulled off such a coup and kept the members together, the Louisianan admitted that it took “a lot of time [and] a lot of patience.” It required a painstaking string of meetings, sorting through people’s priorities. And at the end of the day, he concluded, “We all have the same priorities. We want to make the federal government smaller, more efficient, and more effective for the people.” Of course, he pointed out, a lot of conservatives are impatient. “Some of my colleagues want to do everything all at once. They want to cut $8 trillion in federal spending. It’s just not possible to do that.”

Johnson says he likes to use the metaphor of an aircraft carrier. “It took us many decades to get into the financial situation that we’re in,” he remarked. “You don’t turn an aircraft carrier on a dime. It takes miles of open ocean, but you have to begin to turn it. And that’s what we’re doing. This CR is a step in that direction. It freezes funding.” He paused, “Think of this,” he said. “We’re actually going to spend less money year over year for the first time maybe in history. … At least in many decades. That’s an important course correction. And then, for the FY 26 budgeting, we’re going to make a much larger part of that turn. So it’s going to be a gradual, gradual, incremental thing to fix the mess we’re in. But we’re on that trajectory now.”

That’s music to conservatives’ ears after decades of rolling over and accepting runaway spending. “The passage of this continuing resolution is a major win for President Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson,” FRC’s Quena Gonzalez told The Washington Stand, “and all the more so because it is improbable. Just a few weeks ago, it was accepted wisdom in Washington that Speaker Johnson would probably fail to shepherd it through the narrowest possible partisan margin in the House — never mind what its fate might be in a Senate where many Republicans favored a different, two-pronged approach and Democrats were united in opposing anything endorsed by President Donald Trump.” Just a day earlier, Gonzalez pointed out, “Leader Schumer was bragging that Republicans didn’t have the votes to pass the CR and vowed to tank it on the Senate floor.”

What’s even more amazing, he reiterated, is that “a continuing resolution is often a sign of failed governance and kicking the fiscal can down the road.” Not so in this case. “Most conservative leaders in Washington have believed President Trump and Speaker Johnson, who said that this CR is a step toward, not away from, fiscal sanity.” This CR should give the Trump administration time “to staff up and continue cutting government” and, Gonzalez said, “give the House and Senate time to pass a budget and make appropriations.” In other words, he underscored, “Congress has acted to make space for fiscal sanity and good governance to be restored. The proof will be in the pudding.”

For now, Johnson, who’s never had the luxury of operating with any margin for error, thinks that governing with a small majority has helped to bring “a lot of clarity” to his party. “And that clarity is helpful and important to us. And we’re going to continue to do the right thing. So just buckle up and watch,” he urged. “It’s going to be a rocky road, but we’re going to achieve these objectives in the end.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

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

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

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

Democrats’ Refusal to Applaud Cancer Victim Shows They Hate Trump More than They Love America

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The late Billy Graham used to remind audiences that inaction itself constitutes a choice. Among the most important events at President Donald Trump’s second address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night were the things not said or done. Virtually the entire Democratic congressional caucus refused to stand up for, applaud, or sometimes acknowledge a cancer-stricken child, a freed hostage, grieving families, or American heroes. Their purposeful inaction opens a window into the misanthropic progressive mindset, a spiteful approach that harms the national commonweal and undermines their own spiritual well-being.

Democrats understandably are not among the 69% of viewers who told CNN they had a positive view of President Trump’s speech, or the 76% in a CBS poll. No one faults the opposition party for failing to stand and cheer at every applause line in the longest speech delivered to Congress in modern times. But their (non-)response fell well beyond standard partisanship. David Closson, director of the Center for Biblical Worldview at Family Research Council, posted “a partial list of things that Democrats did not clap for tonight,” including:

  • “a kid battling brain cancer
  • “Laken Riley’s family
  • “Corey Comperatore’s family
  • “capturing a terrorist who killed Americans
  • “protecting women’s sports
  • “tax cuts
  • “a police officer’s widow”

Democrats sat impassively as Americans sobbed at D.J. Daniel’s deputization and Republicans stood for a young man bound for West Point. “I don’t know who needs to hear this. But it’s OK to cheer for the kid with brain cancer who wants to be a cop,” counseled constitutional attorney Casey Mattox.

Sitting showed just where congressional liberals stand.

“They don’t stand for anything humane,” said Alexis Nungaray, whose murdered daughter, Jocelyn, President Trump honored. “They don’t stand for us, as citizens. They don’t stand for our security. They don’t stand for honorable things that we need in this country, and it’s just very disgraceful to us as U.S. citizens, that those are the people that we have here in Congress, the House, and Senate. It’s disgusting.”

The breach was worse yet: “Not only did the Dems not applaud or stand for the stories honoring average Americans but neither did their guests in the gallery,” stated Dr. Eithan Haim, a guest of Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).

“The only moment during the speech that generated enthusiastic, collective applause was when Trump mentioned spending hundreds of billions on Ukraine,” the doctor diagnosed. “This was notable since their applause was not meant to celebrate any result of that spending (i.e., a tangible victory for Ukraine or benefit to America) but was in response to the mention of ‘spending’ itself. … Not the celebration of life in our homeland but death of hundreds of thousands in a foreign one.” Indeed, Democrats studiously withheld their applause when President Trump announced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky now accepted U.S. negotiations “to bring lasting peace.”

Congressional liberals acted out a Beltway-driven miasma that confuses excessive foreign aid appropriations, not even with results, but with the vague, vacuous, self-satisfactory sense that spending means “caring.” Thus, they did nothing when the president announced record-low border crossings, the release of a U.S. hostage, or the capture of an ISIS terrorist who killed 13 U.S. servicemembers but cheered his offhand mention of Ukraine — a country with a corrupt government which suppressed the nation’s Orthodox Christian majority and appears to have funneled our foreign aid to the “former” al-Qaeda affiliate which just took charge of Syria.

Some see inaction as an indication progressives have lost their way. Rep. Kat Carmack (R-Fla.) chalked up the Democrats’ immobility to “disarray” caused by historical amnesia. “They have been so subscribed to the identity politics of the last two decades that they lost their identity altogether,” she said.

But did the Left’s refusal to applaud for any positive development in America conceal their hearts, or did it reveal the leadership’s identity as a transnational, post-national, and anti-American movement brimming with malign hostility toward U.S. citizens? Do their actions show the Left has embraced hatred as a policy goal?

Irrational Hatred as a Platform and Spite as a Raison d’Etre

We may gaze further into this abyss by remembering the Left bookended its intransigence with acts of spite. Congressional Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) and Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) refused to carry out their ceremonial duties of escorting President Trump into the chamber, a petty protest Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) deemed “pathetic and embarrassing.” At least half a dozen Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), skipped the proceedings. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) walked out. Literally dozens of Senate Democrats exhibited a collective hivemind of profanity by parroting the same script in a social media video unreflectively titled “S*** that ain’t true.” During the speech, Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) screamed and shook his cane at the president until he got expelled by the sergeant at arms.

After this speech, the official Democratic response, delivered by Senator Slotkin (D-Mich.), merely exhorted liberals to join The Resistance 2.0. She encouraged liberals to embrace the Democratic strategy of attending Republican town hall meetings, where disruptions have been professionally organized and astroturfed by local left-wing agitators and Soros-funded political pressure groups such as MoveOn.org and Indivisible. “Pick just one issue you’re passionate about and engage,” she said, “and doom-scrolling doesn’t count” — a possible rebuke to Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who feigned staring dully at her smartphone during the president’s speech (aside from her awkwardly prolonged applause for Ukraine spending). Warren was not alone. “I could see entire rows of Democrats staring down at their phones,” Dr. Haim revealed.

Slotkin’s rebuttal proved so uninspiring even the official internet feed dropped out halfway through. But the Left’s words confirmed what their silence implied. There is no topic the Left cannot politicize.

As usual, the worst offenders clustered on the same, struggling cable network. Rachel Maddow greeted President Trump’s mention of D.J. Daniel with maximum vitriol. “This is disgusting. The president made a spectacle out of praising a young man who has thus far survived pediatric cancer, as though the president had something to do with that,” Maddow stated.

President Trump did not, in fact, insinuate that he had personally sustained Master Daniel’s lifeforce for six years, entering his veins and fighting cancer cells like something out of “Fantastic Voyage.” But Maddow may not be the only one in MSNBC’s orbit living in a sci-fi reality simulation. Fellow anchor Nicole Wallace, a former George W. Bush speechwriter turned Never-Trump Democrat, shared Maddow’s otherworldly insensitivity.

“I think this was a lesson in finding one thing that you let yourself feel, and I let myself feel joy about D.J. … I hope he has a long life as a law enforcement officer,” claimed Wallace, trying to soften the impact of her callous conclusion. “But I hope he never has to defend the United States Capitol against Donald Trump’s supporters. And if he does, I hope he isn’t one of the six who loses his life to suicide. And I hope he isn’t one who has to testify against the people who carried out acts of seditious conspiracy and then live to see President Trump pardon those people.”

Absent a much-desired miracle, this young man’s life will end too soon; no reasonable person would seek political gain by speculating about its premature termination.

The fact that her constituency feels so ideologically hidebound that it must be reassured that feeling normal human emotions is acceptable if it could conceivably benefit one’s political enemies should have served as a dire warning. Radical, hyperpartisan liberals must realize: Your hatred is costing you your humanity. We have seen such indications in the past, as Democrats castigated anything that might “humanize” President Donald Trump (who has admitted he is, at times, all-too human). It blossomed as the Left bared its unseemly bloodlust for their enemies, cresting with the lionization of murderer Luigi Mangione.

This Lent, Choose Hatred or Humanity

Progressives, the most secular of all voters, must learn that hate is a spiritual malady. Unbounded animosity toward others inevitably turns inward. It is impossible to exclude any person from our love and not ultimately lose the ability to love everyone rightly, including ourselves. Indifference gradually, imperceptibly cools all human affections and depletes our reserve of charity for all of God’s creation. Indulged hatred drains our souls of every remaining trace of God’s imago Dei and turns human beings into stolid, frozen mockeries of humanity.

In the end, hatred is its own punishment, estranging us from the Source of all love. “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” asks the apostle (I John 4:20). Hatred of any person reveals our hellish rebellion against God by despising those made in His image until we agree with Jean-Paul Sartre that “Hell is other people.”

A far greater thinker than Sartre, C.S. Lewis, illustrated the process in his wonderful book “The Great Divorce.” Lewis appears to show Hell as a vast and ever-expanding region in which hatred drives people to move farther and farther away from their fellow man. But in the end we learn, “All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world. …[A]ll loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies and itchings that it contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all.”

These words hold special resonance today, Ash Wednesday, which marks the day the West historically observed the beginning of Lent, the 40 days of fasting and prayer preceding Easter. While some religious traditions emphasize “giving something up,” or physically refusing to eat, true fasting has a much deeper meaning according to “one of the greatest preachers who ever lived.” As we abstain from certain foods, “[l]et also the mouth fast from foul words. For what does it profit if we abstain from birds and fish, and yet bite and devour our brethren?” asked St. John Chrysostom.

To be truly human — to truly love — means that whenever we have the opportunity to express our goodwill, Christians must abstain from abstention. We must never withhold approval from a fellow man, especially to spite a third party. We must celebrate the joy of others as though it were our own. We must radiate the “dazzling rays of light from the Lord’s face,” warming the world in the divine love they stream forth upon all.

The conscious effort to impede divine agape may justly be called Hell — and, sadly, Hell filled the halls of Congress on Tuesday night.

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.

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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.

‘Extremely Online’: The Significance of J.D. Vance’s Social Media Presence

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Vice President J.D. Vance is a “first” in many ways in the vice presidency: Vance is the first U.S. Marine Corps veteran and the first Catholic convert to hold the office, as well as the first man with a beard to hold the office in over a hundred years. Notably, Vance is also the first millennial to attain the vice presidency. This means that the 50th vice president grew up and came into adulthood during the advent of mass internet use and the pioneering days of social media; platforms like MySpace and Facebook were in their infancy as Vance reached the early years of adulthood. The incumbent vice president maintains an active presence on social media — a surprisingly active presence, in fact, making the second Trump administration arguably the most accessible in generations.

In recent years, the world of social media — especially platforms like X and, perhaps to a lesser extent, Facebook — has emerged as the “public square” of the modern day, a space where individuals across the nation and even across the globe can exchange and consume ideas and information. Social media can be used to report news and publicly share photo or video evidence of consequential events in real time, post detailed and edifying threads on subjects ranging from philosophy and theology to history and architecture, raise public awareness of crucial issues, promote and debate political ideologies, and interact not only with other everyday folk but, notably, with the major influential figures of the day.

President Donald Trump has proven himself a social media savant, mastering use of platforms like X and Truth Social to promote and disseminate his policies and ideas and develop a loyal base of supporters to whom he artfully — and often humorously — communicates. However, for all of his prowess and popularity (Trump currently boasts over 100 million followers on X, having surpassed pop stars such as Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga and even the official accounts of organizations like YouTube), Trump largely uses social media to broadcast, rather than interact.

If Trump’s use of social media is comparable to a general marshaling and encouraging his soldiers, then Vance’s use of social media (especially X) is more akin to a member of the famous Oxford Inklings group, not only sharing his own ideas and digesting and debating the ideas of others. Unlike many major political figures, Vance regularly interacts with other accounts on X — not because they are the large official accounts of professional news organizations or the team-run accounts of other world leaders, but because they share or discuss ideas of interest to him, ideas he considers worth debating, clarifying, promoting, confronting, or just engaging with.

When Vance chooses to confront ideas over social media, he does so in much the same way that snarky, terminally-online millennials do. When Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) criticized Vance for demanding that Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffer Marko Elez be reinstated after he was fired due to years-old discriminatory social media remarks regarding Indians, Vance responded, “Grow up.” Referring to Vance’s family and his wife Usha, who is of Indian descent, Khanna, who is also of Indian descent, implied that Vance should condemn Elez “for the sake of both of our kids.” The vice president fired back, “I cannot overstate how much I loathe this emotional blackmail pretending to be concern.” He continued, “I don’t worry about my kids making mistakes, or developing views they later regret. I don’t even worry that much about trolls on the internet.” He asked, “You know what I do worry about, Ro? That they’ll grow up to be a US Congressmen who engages in emotional blackmail over a kid’s social media posts. You disgust me.”

Journalist Mehdi Hasan recently equivocated European nations criminalizing, investigating, and arresting citizens for allegedly posting “misinformation” online with Trump barring an Associated Press reporter from the White House press briefing room, saying to Vance, “I know you’re busy lecturing the Europeans on free speech, but have you seen this?” The millennial vice president replied, “Yes dummy. I think there’s a difference between not giving a reporter a seat in the WH press briefing room and jailing people for dissenting views. The latter is a threat to free speech, the former is not.”

Vance’s refutation of bad ideas is blunt, bordering on rude, but bold. For decades, political leaders have placed a high premium on a sort of false civility, treating grave moral evils like widespread abortion, pornography use, or mass replacement migration as though they deserve equal standing and consideration alongside mere policy proposals. Like many of the millennial generation, Vance has rejected that insincere veneer of decorum, opting instead for brusque — but not necessarily mean-spirited — honesty.

This quest for honesty seems to be a recurring theme in Vance’s social media interactions, although he obviously sometimes misses the mark, especially when it comes to issues like chemical abortions or in-vitro fertilization (IVF), where he has been reticent to embrace the biblical worldview promulgated by the Catholic Church he converted to. But the vice president nonetheless engages with others on social media in an effort not only to explain or clarify his own thoughts but to understand and even consume others’ thoughts.

For example, National Catholic Register Senior Editor Jonathan Liedl, whose X account has less than 5,000 followers, hypothesized in a post that Vance may himself embody the “rightwing religious populist vs tech-bro libertarian civil war in the Trump admin,” rather than that “civil war” being a conflict between Vance, representing “rightwing religious populism,” and tech billionaire Elon Musk, obviously representing the “tech-bro libertarians.” Liedly posited that, “proportionally, there may be a lot less religious populism to go around than some previously thought.”

Vance, who boasts nearly four million followers on X and is the sitting vice president of the United States, took the time to engage with and respond to Liedl’s post. “I’ll try to write something to address this in detail,” Vance replied, explaining that the “civil war” referenced by Liedl “is overstated,” although he admitted that “there are some real divergences between the populists and the techies.” Vance explained that his views on technology and industry are informed by his appreciation for “growth and productivity gains.” Referring specifically to artificial intelligence (AI), his comments on which were the initial impetus for Liedl’s post, Vance explained, “One of my very real concerns, for instance, is about consumer fraud. That’s a valid reason to worry about ‘safety.’ But the problem is much worse if a peer nation is 6 months ahead of the US on AI.” He contrasted his position on technology against his position on “immigration and offshoring,” which he encapsulated, “In general: I dislike substituting American labor for cheap labor.”

According to a profile in The Spectator, Vance is “plugged into a lot of weird, right-wing subcultures” online, a fact which shows through in his speech and his policy advocacy. In the wake of Vance’s ascendancy to the vice presidency and the onslaught of posts he published online, numerous right-wing social media users began noting the similarities between Vance’s posts and the posts right-wingers have been sharing for years, speculating that the vice president may have been quietly following and absorbing right-wing social media accounts for some time.

“Remember when you post that the extremely online Vice President of the United States is reading, absorbing, and listening,” quipped Gab founder Andrew Torba. After Vance explained the Christian concept of the “ordo amoris” or order of loves, the Bendell Werry X account noted that he and other Christian accounts have been posting about the theological concept for years, adding that Vance “really is reading our posts.” Refuge Church Utah pastor Brian Sauvé suggested that Vance uses an anonymous alternate account to follow and interact with right-wing Christian social media users, and others have semi-facetiously tried to identify which anonymous accounts might be Vance’s, with “Lord of the Rings” themed accounts making multiple appearances on the list of possible Vance alternates.

The hypothesizing is more than just frivolous fun: the enthusiasm reveals that for the first time, possibly ever, Christians and right-wingers who have grown up with the internet or learned early on to adapt to it finally feel represented by their government leaders. More than just inspiring enthusiasm, though, Vance’s social media use and the close correlation between the online culture fostered by right-wingers and the posts the vice president has produced demonstrate that a portion of the U.S. population which has long been sidelined, suppressed, silenced, and even demonized has contributed to shaping the ideology of the sitting vice president.

Concerns that Americans have — concerns which would have been ignored by other administrations — are now monitored by the vice president, who can share those concerns with the president. Ideas and values held dear by Americans can now be communicated, almost directly, to the incumbent administration. Given that social media is the public square of the modern day, Vance’s presence on X is the equivalent of having the president’s top advisor spend all day every day holding court and listening to what his countrymen have to say.

Under the second Trump administration, the importance of social media has amplified, truly ensuring that all Americans now have a voice.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

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

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

As Musk Bulldozes Waste, Johnson Warns ‘Deep State Is in Full Panic Mode’

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Elon Musk can’t steal a job no one’s doing. But Democrats disagree, angrily griping that the tech mogul’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is somehow a hostile takeover, a “shadow government” blowtorching the Constitution. That’s absurd, the billionaire has fired back. “The people voted for major government reform, and that’s what the people are going to get. That’s what democracy is all about.” Of course, neither party would know. They haven’t had the stomach for deep cuts in decades.

And it isn’t just Democrats who hate to say goodbye to pet projects and back-home interests. Republicans are white-knuckling through this winnowing process too, the AP notes. “The problem’s in that room,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said, pointing to the House chamber. “These guys, they talk real tough,” but they don’t vote that tough, he lamented. “We’ve got to get some guts, and people have got to hold us accountable,” the Tennessean leveled with reporters. Yes, “we need the waste-cutting,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) agreed, but more importantly, “we need Congress to grow a spine.”

Until then, Trump is relying on Musk’s. After years of watching Congress pledge, but fail, to make sweeping changes, his DOGE is more than ready to slash and burn. “It’s not optional for us to reduce the federal expenses,” the billionaire said. “It’s essential for America to remain solvent as a country.” He’s right, Rep. Pete Sauber (R-Minn.) added. “If there’s anybody who doesn’t believe we can find efficiencies in government, they’ve got to be blind.”

From trans comic books in Peru to supplying al-Qaeda, DOGE is storming through government receipts, shocking plenty of Americans along the way. While taxpayers cheer, Democrats have become almost hysterical, unable to keep up with the rapid-fire pace of the president’s overhauls. Fourteen state attorneys general even resorted to filing a lawsuit, a last-ditch effort to stop the seismic federal downsizing.

“Mr. Musk’s seemingly limitless and unchecked power to strip the government of its workforce and eliminate entire departments with the stroke of a pen or click of a mouse would have been shocking to those who won this country’s independence,” the chief law enforcers of Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Vermont wrote.

“There is no office of the United States, other than the President, with the full power of the Executive Branch, and the sweeping authority now vested in a single unelected and unconfirmed individual is antithetical to the nation’s entire constitutional structure,” they claimed.

Democrats, who seem to have Olympic-level skill at misreading the room since the election, haven’t stopped to think that maybe this is exactly what the country wants. As The Wall Street Journal’s Matthew Hennessey points out, “The left’s DOGE-inspired hysteria is silly — a political blunder. Donald Trump’s campaign promise in 2024 was explicit: Elect me and I’ll hand Mr. Musk a broom to clean out the Augean stables of the administrative state. Voters said, ‘OK boys, get after it.’ I’m no political scientist, but I’m pretty sure that’s the opposite of a coup.”

What’s more, he went on, “If Democrats had any brains, they’d sit back and let it happen. At some point they’ll regain the White House. If DOGE is even moderately successful, the next Democratic president will inherit a leaner bureaucracy, less plagued by waste, fraud and abuse.” Frankly, Hennessey said, unironically, “Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to defend drag shows in developing countries as an essential tool of American soft power?”

To true conservatives, who’ve been fighting this war on waste for years without a real partner in leadership, watching Elon expose hundreds of billions of dollars in outrageous programs has been cathartic. “The reason this has been happening,” House Freedom Caucus Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) argued, “is because Congress has been asleep at the switch.” He and others outlined dozens of these projects — including the embarrassment that is USAID — but when they’ve put up amendments to carve out the most egregious spending, “a majority of Republicans voted against [it].”

But, he emphasized, “It’s a new day in town. The president and Elon are exposing it. Now we can demonstrate that those of us who have been fighting this, we’re on the right side.” And if the GOP knows what’s good for it, they’ll “get on board and to work together in Congress and in the administration to support slashing this waste,” Roy said.

From his perch at the top of the House, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), another conservative who fought this in the rank-and-file, is enjoying the show. “It’s really something,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s “This Week on Capitol Hill.” “The deep state is in full panic mode because Elon Musk and the DOGE team is right over the target, which is why they’re catching so much flak. I tell you, what they’re doing is truly transformational,” he underscored.

“I met with Elon for an hour on Monday night in his office,” Johnson said. “He’s working out of the Eisenhower building, which is right across … from the White House in the old Secretary of War room. And we laughed about how appropriate that is, because he’s effectively declaring war on the big bureaucracy, because he’s seeking efficiencies. And that’s exactly what the American people want, need, and deserve.”

The speaker says that the big question he’s getting is: “Why didn’t Congress know about all of these abuses?” His answer is the same as Roy’s. “We’ve tried. I’ve been in Congress for eight years. We have a really important oversight responsibility that we’re given in the Constitution … and we’ve tried to dig out and find all these abuses. But surprise, surprise, the agencies of the federal government have been hiding all this. They don’t do full disclosure. They don’t want to show us what’s under the rug. And now Elon is finding it. And it is really getting a lot of attention because it’s absolutely crazy stuff.”

Unfortunately for the Left and its big bureaucratic spenders, not only is Musk great at exposing this garbage, “he has a pretty big megaphone with X” to broadcast it, Perkins chimed in. To Johnson, “That is actually the magic of the formula, because Elon has this giant platform on which he can explain this step by step. And that’s what’s gotten the deep state so alarmed because they know that the game is up. … But what’s different about this is it’s not just members of Congress trying to grasp what we can find out of certain pieces of paper that are turned over to us. Elon has algorithms running through the actual programs of the government that have never been done before. And [as he says], the data is impossible to fake or to hide.”

At the end of the day, the Louisianan said proudly, “It’s going to be a massive transformational paradigm shift for how the government operates. It’s really exciting stuff.”

As for the Democrats’ beef that Elon is operating outside the boundaries of executive authority, Johnson says baloney. “It’s exactly the opposite. When Congress allocates money, when Congress appropriates funds for the executive branch agencies, it builds in two things: a lot of broad discretion, of course, for the executive to be able to determine how exactly it’s spent and where and when. And also there is a presupposition that the executive branch is going to use the money as a good steward,” he pointed out. “We don’t have to write that into every piece of legislation. It is presumed. But when that is not happening,” the speaker continued, “it is entirely appropriate for the executive branch of the government and a new commander in chief to go through and scrub the programs and assess where the money is being wasted or stolen. That’s something every single American should applaud. And I can’t believe that the courts are trying to intervene in this.”

Perkins compared it to the Middle East where one civilization or time period would be built on top of another. Eventually, you end up with a big mountain, where one generation built on the ruins of another. “That’s what our federal government has become. It’s just one layer on top of another, and it appears that what Elon Musk is doing is taking a bulldozer and doing some archaeological digs.”

Absolutely, Johnson nodded. “And [he’s] doing it in a way that Congress has not been able to do, because this was, in a literal sense, hidden from us. And so, that bulldozer was a long time coming. I told Elon I was so excited after our meeting this week. I said, ‘Elon, I’m sure you realize this, [but] I think of it in terms [of] a constitutional law attorney.’ He thinks of it as a scientist and a data analyst. But I said, ‘What you’re doing at the end of the day is restoring the original intent of the Framers of the Constitution.’ They wanted a limited federal government that had very careful oversight by the duly elected representatives of the people. And now this effort is empowering us, the elected representatives, to do that once again. It’s really, really incredible stuff.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

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

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

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

The Gulf of America Floods America’s Gulf

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The conqueror always draws the map. And when President Donald Trump issued among his first executive orders a directive to rename what was formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, it was more than simply a naming preference. It was a signal to the world that he was not a man afraid to upset the status quo, even when it came to changing the world’s maps. Without firing a shot, Trump conquered the Gulf of Mexico.

The changing of place names is nothing new. When the biblical Joshua conquered Kiriath-arba, he renamed it Hebron, which you can still find today in a place called Judea, which some now call “the West Bank” but was known long before that as Judea. The Democratic Republic of Congo became Zaire for a few decades, until it became the Democratic Republic of Congo again after another regime change. St. Petersburg, Russia was renamed Leningrad, U.S.S.R for a long minute until it once again became St. Petersburg, Russia. Closer to home, Colonel Sanders’s Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant chain became officially known as “KFC” in 1991 — the year we frowned upon fried foods. One of these is not like the other, but you get the picture. Circumstances change, and names change along with them.

Most married women in the United States (79%) still adopt their husband’s last name, and civilization somehow adapts. But because of its geographic significance, and more likely because it is Trump, not everyone is happy with the Gulf of America. Most notably, the Associated Press — the nonprofit entity that calls itself “the most trusted source of fast, accurate, unbiased news in all formats” — has come out in opposition Trump’s name change:

“The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.”

This is not insignificant. The “AP Stylebook” is indeed the standard style guide to which most news outlets look to write news copy. From everything to how to handle the Oxford comma (you should handle it!), to whether or not to use “canceled” or “cancelled” (use “canceled” in American publications), the AP sets the standards. If you’ve ever wondered why news outlets use the standard abbreviations for states (e.g., “Tenn.” for Tennessee) instead of the postal abbreviations (“TN”), the AP is the reason. Most news organizations will have their own house style that will supersede the AP on certain items, but by and large, the AP is the defining framework for most news copy out there.

However much the AP gives the appearance of being principled when it comes to name changes, it hasn’t exactly borne that out in practice. The AP has led the way in the pronoun wars, and the way in which it has led is nowhere near the way language has operated “for more than 400 years.” For example, in 2017, the AP issued guidance saying, “Not all people fall under one of two categories for sex or gender, according to leading medical organizations, so avoid references to both, either, or opposite sexes or genders as a way to encompass all people.” That same year, the AP approved the pronoun “they” for singular usage. The AP has also long championed the use of preferred pronouns in place of pronouns that correspond to biology.

Put up against that background, the AP’s bucking against the Gulf of America seems awfully arbitrary. As veteran journalist Mark Hemingway aptly pointed out on X, “News organizations will call a man a woman no questions asked, but ‘Gulf of America’ is a bridge too far?” Hemingway wasn’t alone in noticing the double standard. Georgia Congressman Mike Collins (R) quipped, “Stop deadnaming the Gulf of America.”

But it may be difficult for the Associated Press and its fellow Gulf of Mexico protestors to hold the line. Remember Rand McNally, who published all those paper maps and atlases we used to carry around? They’re playing a wait-and-see game:

“Rand McNally will await final legal and public review through the Secretary of the Interior’s office, as required in President Trump’s Executive Order, before making any adjustments to our Atlases and maps regarding the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m betting they fall in line with the change. Big Tech has a bigger footprint than the AP or paper map companies, and following the federal government, both Google Maps and Apple Maps have both incorporated the gulf’s name change.

While Mexico (the country, not the gulf) is now threatening to sue Google for updating its map, much of the opposition has gotten lost in the flooded zone of Trump’s flurry of executive actions. After all, who has time for the Gulf of America when paper straws are under assault?

The Gulf of America’s abrupt name change is symbolic of Trump’s larger sweeping out of America’s cupboard. It’s a political chess move that has no easy escape except to just go with it. Will a future administration restore it to the Gulf of Mexico? Perhaps, but not without having to own the fact that they’d be giving away America.

Name changes are tough, but conquerors aren’t strangers to new names. As Scripture tells us in Revelation 2:17, those who persist in Christ will also get new names:

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.” (ESV)

The Gulf of America is only a body of water, and a name change won’t bridge the gulf between Americans. But it may wake America up to the fact that the tide has indeed changed, and we as a nation will have to change along with it. Only names written in stone don’t get changed. Now that we’ve changed the name of the gulf, let’s strive toward the stone.

AUTHOR

Jared Bridges

Jared Bridges is editor-in-chief of 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.

Johnson on Juggling His Party’s Personalities: ‘There’s No Room for Nonsense’

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While Donald Trump is doing an impressive job getting his agenda off the ground by himself, at some point, he’s going to need Congress to stop huddling and get in the game. Apart from some easier legislative lifts — like the Laken Riley Act — there’s a lot of pressure on the House and Senate to start delivering some concrete wins on the president’s agenda. That’s a complicated prospect when Republicans can’t decide how to get the legislation moving — let alone what should go in it.

Most of the House’s GOP caucus was holed up in Miami last week trying to hash out their differences, but so far, reviews of that progress have been mixed. Some conservatives boycotted the event entirely — leaving plenty of question marks about how well the teambuilding plan is working out. “Their margins are so slim, everyone’s a king or a queen over there. There’s a lot of competing self-interest,” Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) said in an interview. Of course, the Democrats have their own issues, but as National Review’s Audrey Fahlberg points out, they’re “already getting the popcorn ready.”

If there is a truce on the Republican side after Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) reelection, it’s a fragile one. The Louisianan, who’s had to try to govern in this intra-party powder keg, brushed off concerns from some of his more disagreeable members that the GOP still doesn’t have a plan.

“We’re right on schedule,” the speaker insisted to Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s “This Week on Capitol Hill.” “We’ve been plotting this out … for more than a year. We planned for this moment of having unified government [and] unified control of Washington with the White House, the Senate, and the House. And as we’ve discussed so many times, we have to fix everything.” And to “fix everything,” Johnson explained, we need the budget reconciliation process “to check most of those boxes.”

But it’s not easy, he cautions. “[B]ecause there [are] so many components to that legislation [and we’re trying to get] its ingredients right, reaching the right consensus level amongst 217 or 18 Republicans in the House takes a lot of work. And the retreat earlier in the week was a big part of that. … It was a great kind of reset for everyone to be in that room and work it out inside the tent, so to speak, as our big family. And we’re moving along, progressing very well. I think we’re going to get everyone to that equilibrium point so we can move this agenda forward.”

Asked whether there’s a spirit of unity in the caucus, Johnson nodded. “Everyone recognizes the stakes are so high, and we have the smallest margin in U.S. history with the most aggressive and ambitious legislative agenda in memory. So, you put all those things together. There’s no room for nonsense. And I think that has a way of clarifying things for people. … [T]he last time [we had] unified government in 2017, I was here as a freshman in Congress, [and] we had a couple of dozen seats that we could spare — votes that we could spare on anything. We don’t have that any longer. And so that requires everyone to roll up their sleeves, stay in that room, and work out their differences amongst their preferences with their colleagues. So that’s moving along steadily. We’ll get it done,” he tried to reassure people.

True, Perkins said, but we’re talking about “a group of leaders with some very strong personalities.” “I’ve been in those closed rooms,” he continued. “I’ve served with elected officials. They all have great ideas. They were [all] elected to represent their people. And it’s not just something [where] you can say [to them], ‘Do this.’ You’ve got to work toward consensus.”

Absolutely, Johnson conceded, but even so, “There’s a real method to what may seem like madness. You have to trust the process.” That said, he admitted, “It’s going to be a dizzying pace for that first 100 days. There’s a lot of moving parts, as you know, with the smallest margin in history. … We’re going to have 217 Republicans in the House and 215 Democrats for the big chunk of that first 100 days. Meaning: do the math. I can only lose one vote. So because of that dynamic and because of the complexity of the legislation that we’re working on and all the problems that we have to fix — because [of] the nightmare of the Biden-Harris administration — this process has to be a bottom-up, member-driven process.”

There was a time, the speaker recalled, “in the old days,” when Congress had big margins, and there were only a couple of top leaders in the back room making all of the decisions. “And they would go out and dictate to the members that they [needed to] get in line and all do whatever the leadership said, knowing that they could spare a couple dozen or maybe three or four dozen votes at a time. We don’t have that anymore,” Johnson reiterated. “So when I get a piece of legislation to the floor, I have to know well in advance that every single person in my caucus is okay with every one of its provisions. They may not be delighted with all of it,” he acknowledged, “but they’ve got to be prepared and ready to pursue it and advance that legislation. So to do that, to get to that point requires a laborious process leading up to it. So our sleeves are rolled up. We’re in the basements. We’re on the whiteboard sessions with the members. … And it just takes a lot of time on things that are this complicated.”

At the end of the day, FRC’s president pointed out, “This is what people wanted,” adding that one of the main reasons the House Freedom Caucus even exists is because members weren’t allowed to be part of the process. This is representative government, the speaker responded. “And it’s exactly what the framers of the Constitution envisioned — that every constituent, by way of their duly elected representative, would actually have a voice at the table. And that’s what we’re delivering.”

And in case Americans are wondering, Johnson explained, “94% of the House Republicans so far have participated in the process. They’ve been to these lengthy discussion sessions and strategy sessions. They’ve let their voices be heard. They’re part of the process. Only 14 Republicans haven’t yet participated in one of these hours-long discussions [and] debates, and a handful of them are for reasons for logistics and otherwise, and they’ll all be involved by the end of this. And that’s really, really important for us to achieve.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

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

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

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

Costco’s Wholesale Refusal to Cut DEI Draws Warning from 19 States

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It’s a shrinking club, but there are still headstrong CEOs who refuse to bend to the anti-woke winds. None have grabbed more headlines than Costco, the big box holdout who’s clinging to DEI while a stampede of businesses run the other way. After voting down a shareholder resolution last Thursday to return to neutral, the heat is on. And if consumers won’t change the company’s mind, maybe 19 state attorneys general will.

In a surprise move, a coalition of red state law enforcers wrote to the wholesaler, warning them that under the new Trump administration and the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard, these extreme identity politics would no longer be tolerated. “Although Costco’s motto is ‘do the right thing,’” the AGs point out, “it appears the company is doing the wrong thing — clinging to DEI policies that courts and businesses have rejected as illegal. Costco should treat every person equally and based on their merit, rather than based on divisive and discriminatory DEI practices. That reflects President Trump’s executive order encouraging the Private Sector to End Illegal DEI discrimination and Preferences.”

The conservative leaders were referring to one of the president’s earliest orders on January 21, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.” While the action most directly affected federal agencies, there was a lengthy section in the document intended for the private sector, where the administration “encourages” CEOs like Costco’s Ron Vachris to ditch DEI and instead embrace “individual initiative, excellence, and hard work.”

Not so subtly, the AGs note that other businesses have faced lawsuits or are under investigation for refusing to roll back woke internal policies. “For the good of its employees, investors, and customers,” the 19 conservatives concluded, “Costco should ‘do the right thing’ by following the law and repealing its DEI policies. Within 30 days, please either notify us that Costco has repealed its DEI policies or explain why Costco has refused to do so. We look forward to your response.” It was signed by the Republican attorneys general of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

Days earlier, the Costco board had publicly doubled down, declaring that its commitment to “respect and inclusion is appropriate and necessary.” They join the stubborn woke — a collection of companies that refuse to heed consumers’ warnings like Apple and Delta, United, American, and Southwest Airlines.

And they do so at their own peril, Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird insisted. “It’s time to ditch DEI,” she argued. “While other companies right the ship and abandon their illegal, woke policies, Costco has doubled down. I’m putting Costco on notice to do the right thing and eliminate discriminatory DEI,” the Iowan urged in a statement. “No American should be denied an opportunity because they don’t fit the woke mold.”

Interestingly enough, Costco hasn’t been a public target of conservative activist Robby Starbuck’s, who’s generated the most concessions from major U.S. chains like Target, Walmart, and McDonald’s. In an interview with Yahoo! Finance, the corporate giant killer cut the wholesaler a tiny bit of slack.

“It’s a very nuanced thing here, actually,” Starbuck said, “because Costco is not quite in the same box [as other brands like Target]. So Costco doesn’t have extremely radical DEI, but they do have DEI policies that I believe are going to be a major legal liability.” Which is why, he clarified, “We did not approach Costco.”

Instead, the Free Enterprise Project, an arm of the National Center for Public Policy Research, offered an anti-DEI resolution that was voted down by 98% of the shareholders after the board frantically lobbied people to vote no. Starbuck isn’t surprised by that. “If you ever have a shareholder proposal, no matter whether you like it or you hate it,” leaders are going to urge their shareholders to vote against it because they don’t want to cede authority. “[If] these people are going to decide for you something that you believe should be an executive decision, you’re always going to say, ‘Please vote against this because this should be under our authority, our control.’”

Stefan Padfield, the executive director of the project that offered the resolution, isn’t deterred. “Fortunately, the truth about DEI is being exposed as never before, and it is only a matter of time until DEI’s inherent shareholder-value-destroying nature forces even managers like those at Costco to get back to neutral and focus on creating value by providing great products and services rather than engaging in neo-Marxist and neo-racist social engineering projects,” he insisted.

On that, he and Starbuck agree. “I think Costco’s executives are just sort of learning about exactly what their DEI programs do and kind of getting familiar with the legal landscape. I don’t think we’ve heard the last of the Costco story.” Since last week’s shareholder vote, Starbuck says he has reached out to their executives. “Personally, I have engaged,” he said, adding that he would keep the details of those conversations off the record for now. “I have made sure they have all the information,” he explained. “And I think it’s something that they’re going to have to look very deeply at themselves and see if they think that they want to test the waters.”

At the end of the day, Starbuck pointed out, it’s up to management to decide how they want to run their business. “If you see the evidence that this is not making you money or that this is wasting you money, you should get away from it. And that’s why it’s been an easy sell to so many CEOs, because they understand that this has done nothing but bring division. It has cost them money. It’s just been an absolute black hole since the very beginning. It was not what they thought it was going to be. They thought this was going to be about equality. Most of them didn’t even know what ‘equity’ was. And when you actually show them everything their companies are doing, most of them can’t believe it. They think it’s absurd.”

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.

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.

House Girls’ Sports Vote Exposes Democrats as Unrepentant Extremists

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The House bill to protect girls’ sports wasn’t remarkable for passing — it passed last year. What was remarkable is what the vote says about Democrats. In the first big test of whether Joe Biden’s party had learned its election lessons, the answer was a shocking and resounding “no.”

Every Democrat but two — Texas Reps. Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar — ignored the rallying cry of November 5 and stood stubbornly on the side of radical transgenderism, leaving our nation’s daughters vulnerable to injury, lost privacy, and stolen innocence.

Perhaps the most astonishing detractor of Rep. Greg Steube’s (R-Fla.) Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act was Massachusetts’s Rep. Seth Moulton (D), who spent the better part of November fending off the Left’s mob after he had the audacity to agree with 72% of Americans that biological boys don’t belong on girls’ teams, in their locker rooms, or atop their podiums. The Marine veteran spoke frankly and refreshingly about his party’s wildly out-of-step views on transgenderism after the election, declaring, “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

Turns out, he wasn’t afraid to say it — he was afraid to defend it. Proving that his party is still wearing an “ideological straitjacket,” as Moulton called it last year, less than 1% of Democrats sided with parents on an issue that most of us still can’t believe is an issue at all. “One of the most common-sense bills that we’ve had is the bill that says men cannot play in women’s sports,” Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said Tuesday. Not a single Democrat supported the legislation when it was brought up in 2023, but that was before the GOP’s nationwide ad blitz outing the Left’s obsession with biological men in girls’ spaces.

And yet, even in deep blue states like New York, 66% of locals are demanding an end to this transgender madness — just a handful of points shy of the national average. “We all know that New York is a liberal state, so this tells you that this should not be a liberal, conservative or Democrat and Republican issue,” state Senator George Borrelo (R) insisted.

Now, Moulton, who was prematurely anointed as a voice of reason among Democrats, claims the bill is “too extreme.” “I’ve stated my belief that our party has failed to come to the table in good faith to debate an issue on which the vast majority of Americans believe we are out of touch,” the congressman told The Washington Post. “We should be able to discuss regulations for trans athletes in competitive sports, while still staunchly defending the rights of transgender Americans to simply exist without fear of danger or oppression. But instead, we’ve run away from the issue altogether. As a result, Republicans are in charge and continue to set the agenda with extremist bills like this.” As he once said to placate the party’s bosses, “I have nuanced views on these issues.”

Unfortunately for Moulton, voters’ views aren’t nuanced when it comes to defending the dignity and rights of women. If political expedience was the goal, this liberal failed miserably. He stood up to the bullies — then surrendered to them. And while not every constituent would have agreed with him, they’d have at least respected Moulton for going to bat for what he thought was right. Now he’s just another weak-kneed Democrat under the thumb of an inflexible, intolerant party. A fraud. In the words of incomparable Senator John Kennedy (R-La.), maybe it’s time to go to Amazon and buy a spine.

“I remember when Rep. Moulton was more concerned with what was best for his daughters than what his party thought. I wish this year’s Rep. Moulton could meet November 2024 Rep. Moulton and catch some of 2024 Seth Moulton’s courage,” FRC’s Quena González told The Washington Stand. “The flimsy reasons he gave for voting today against protecting women is hogwash. All obfuscation aside, there’s a word for not standing up to your little girls — it’s called moral cowardice. And there’s a word for not standing up on an issue that you concede lost your party the last election — it’s called electoral insanity.”

While it would be easy to get lost in the Democrats’ suicidal tendencies, the reality is, House Republicans did do what the country demanded — moving this crucial bill one step closer to reality. Doreen Denny, who, like many conservatives, has been waiting for the day when reason would prevail in Congress, celebrated with The Washington Stand that “the overwhelming mandate of the November election is getting results on Capitol Hill.” Denny, the senior advisor for Concerned Women for America, applauded the GOP majority “for standing for women.” “Now,” she urged, “it’s time for the Senate to get this bill across the finish line.”

But even Denny couldn’t help but shake her head at the asinine, self-defeating strategy of the Left. “Today’s vote could have been a turning point for bipartisanship on this issue,” she told TWS. “Instead, only two Democrats voted in favor of the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. What a shame. It proves radical special interest groups promoting the trans agenda continue to have a death grip on the Democratic Party.”

The bill’s sponsor, Greg Steube, is flabbergasted that all but two members are willing to gamble on a proposal that has almost three-quarters of the country’s support. “This is going to be an election issue for them in two years,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Tuesday’s “Washington Watch.” “Maybe they think that two years is a long time from now. But we saw this as an election issue just a couple of months ago during the presidential race. … This is an overwhelmingly supported issue across America. So it is very shocking. … But it just shows you how out of touch Democrats are with the majority of America.”

Asked to speculate why Joe Biden’s party refuses to line up behind biological reality and fairness, the Florida Republican says it all comes down to fear. “The bottom line is, politically, they’re afraid of their left flank. And if a progressive Democrat comes along and fights them on this issue, the far Left of their party will root out any type of reason on these issues.”

And not only that, Steube argued, they’ll use lies to do it. Perkins pointed to Democrat Ayanna Pressley’s (Mass.) string of falsehoods on the House floor before the vote. “Imagine you are eight years old, trying out for the soccer team, and your coach demands that you show them your genitals. That is abuse. That is exploitation. That is egregious. But it is exactly what this Republican bill does.” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) went so far as to say the proposal would “unleash predators on girls,” without, as Fox News points out, explaining how.

Look, Steube countered, “None of this that they’re arguing is ever going to happen. It’s a lie. It’s to try to enrage people [to think], ‘Oh, that’s horrible,’ and ‘Republicans are bad.’ … And the mainstream media is going to perpetuate that lie. It’s just unfortunate … [because] the bill is very short. It’s like a page and a half or two pages or whatever it is. Read it for yourself if you don’t believe me. But that’s exactly what it [says]: the gender you were assigned biologically at birth will determine what sport you play.”

Understanding the pressure they must have faced, others, like González, applauded the two members who defected to support the bill. “The Congressional Hispanic Caucus still refuses to admit Republicans,” he pointed out to TWS. “It sounds like at least two Democrats realize that, on the policy of protecting little girls, most Democrats are out of step with actual Hispanics. I guess Latinos aren’t Latinxs after all,” he quipped. “Who knew?”

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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