Last Week(s) in Congress (12/15/25–1/2/26)
An update will be shared every week that Congress is in session. This will inc lude a short summary of the past week in Congress, as well as a listing of all education-related bills introduced in the House and Senate, relevant Committee and Floor activity, and education-related hearings.
Congress ended 2025 much the way that it entered it – in a holding pattern, with a lot of unanswered questions on the horizon. What’s to come with appropriations? Will Congress act in response to the Department’s IAA’s? Join Sligo Law Group and friends from throughout the Education arena on Thursday, January 15 to discuss the year ahead. Register here!
· H.R. 6711 (Espaillat, D-NY), to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to provide additional amounts of loan forgiveness to teachers of English learners and teachers of bilingual and dual language immersion students (Education and Workforce).
· H.R. 6713 (Espaillat, D-NY), to amend the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act to ensure that certain education and workforce development benefits administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs are treated as income by landlords evaluating the ability of a servicemember, veteran, or a spouse or child of a servicemember or veteran, to pay rent (Veterans’ Affairs).
· H.R. 6718 (Lawler, R-NY), to amend the definition of professional degree in the Higher Education Act of 1965 (Education and Workforce).
· H.R. 6725 (David, D-GA), to amend the National Apprenticeship Act in order to increase and expand the national apprenticeship system to include the immediate recruitment, employment, and on-the-job earn as you learn training of young African Americans, and to promote the development of equitable hiring standards necessary to safeguard the diversity of apprentices (Education and Workforce).
· H.R. 6739 (Dingell, D-MI), to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to expand the definition of professional degree (Education and Workforce).
· H.R. 6753 (Landsman, D-OH), the Campus Housing Affordability Act, to amend the Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, the Judiciary, the District of Columbia, and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006 and the United States Housing Act of 1937 to allow for housing assistance to certain individuals enrolled as students at an institution of higher education (Financial Services).
· H.R. 6795 (Hayes, D-CT), to amend the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act to improve direct certification (Education and Workforce).
· H.R. 6800 (Kustoff, R-TN), to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to terminate the tax-exempt status of terrorist supporting organizations (Ways and Means).
· H.R. 6806 (Nadler, D-NY), the Antisemitism Response and Prevention Act, to direct the Attorney General to establish within the Department of Justice the Office of the National Coordinator to Counter Antisemitism (Judiciary; Education and Workforce; Homeland Security; Transportation and Infrastructure).
· H.R. 6809 (Owens, R-UT), to amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to reduce losses of life through better school safety standards and responses (Education and Workforce; Judiciary; Homeland Security; Oversight and Government Reform).
· H.R. 6819 (Scott, D-GA), to reduce State administrative costs for administration of both the supplemental nutrition assistance program under the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 and the summer electronic benefits transfer program for children under the Richard B. Russell School Lunch Act (Agriculture; Education and Workforce).
· H.R. 6857 (Frankel, D-FL), the Protecting Students on Campus Act of 2025, to require institutions of higher education participating in Federal student aid programs to share information about title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, including a link to the webpage of the Office for Civil Rights where an individual can submit a complaint regarding discrimination in violation of such title (Education and Workforce).
· H.R. 6860 (Hageman, R-WY), to amend the General Education Provisions Act to provide a private right of action to parents and eligible students to protect certain education-related rights (Education and Workforce).
· H.R. 6862 (Harder, D-CA), to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to delay, until July 1, 2030, the termination of authority to award certain Federal Direct PLUS loans and the implementation of limits on certain loans for graduate and professional students enrolled at institutions with certain public health designations (Education and Workforce).
· H.R. 6865 (Hunt, R-TX), to amend section 505 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 to prohibit the provision of Federal financial assistance to States and public institutions of higher education that provide certain higher education benefits to aliens who are not lawfully present in the United States (Judiciary; Education and Workforce; Oversight and Government Reform).
· H.R. 6932 (James, R-MI), to rescind unobligated amounts made available to the Department of Education for fiscal year 2026, and transfer such amounts to States in accordance with section 611 of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (Appropriations).
· H.R. 6937 (Greene, R-GA), to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to eliminate the H-1B program (Judiciary; Energy and Commerce; Ways and Means).
· S. 3487 (Kim, D-NJ), a bill to ensure that borrowers who have performed qualifying public services are eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions).
· S. 3507 (Cotton, R-AR), to prevent any alien who is not lawfully admitted for permanent residence from obtaining in-State tuition rates at public institutions of higher education (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions).
· S. 3538 (Banks, R-IN), to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to eliminate origination fees on Federal Direct loans (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions).
· On December 16, the House Committee on Education and Workforce, Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education, held a hearing entitled “Benched: The Crisis in American Youth Sports and Its Cost to Our Future.”
· On December 16, the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity, held a hearing entitled “Detrimental Delays: Reviewing Payment Failures in VA’s Education Programs.”
· On December 16, the House Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, held a hearing entitled “Partisan and Profitable: The SPLC’s Influence on Federal Civil Rights Policy.”
· On December 15, under suspension of rules, the House passed S. 222, the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act of 2025, to amend the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act to allow schools that participate in the school lunch program to serve whole milk.