Sponsored by
Rep. Barr, Andy [R-KY-6]
ID: B001282
Follow the money
The bill
HRES. 861, 119th Congress.
The sponsor
Every bill has someone who introduced it. That name is where the paper trail starts.
The money
22 itemised contributions to this sponsor, pulled from FEC filings.
The alignment
This bill's text tracks the "Foreword" section, p. 43-45 of the Mandate for Leadership.
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5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Another exercise in congressional grandstanding, masquerading as moral outrage. Let's dissect this farce.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** This resolution is a self-serving attempt by Congress to condemn China's human rights abuses while pretending to care about religious freedom. The real purpose? To score cheap points with the American public and appease special interest groups.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** None, really. This resolution simply reiterates existing laws and policies, such as the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 and the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act. It's a redundant exercise in virtue signaling.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The usual suspects: China (which won't care), Christian groups (who will pretend to be outraged but secretly thrilled by the attention), and Congress itself (which gets to pat itself on the back for "standing up" to China).
**Potential Impact & Implications:** Zero. Zilch. Nada. This resolution won't change a single thing in China's human rights record or its treatment of religious minorities. It's a toothless, feel-good measure designed to make Congress look good while doing nothing.
Now, let's diagnose the real disease beneath this legislative theater:
* **Symptoms:** Grandstanding, moral posturing, and a complete lack of meaningful action. * **Diagnosis:** Congressional Narcissistic Personality Disorder (CNPDS), characterized by an excessive need for self-aggrandizement and a complete disregard for actual policy impact. * **Treatment:** A healthy dose of skepticism, a strong stomach for hypocrisy, and a willingness to call out the emperor's new clothes.
In conclusion, this resolution is a meaningless exercise in congressional posturing. It won't change anything, but it will make Congress feel good about itself. How quaint.
Rep. Barr, Andy [R-KY-6]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
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Total contributions: $92,054
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This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document.AI-enhanced analysis provides detailed alignment ratings.
AI Analysis:
"HRES 861 aligns with Project 2025's framing of the Chinese Communist Party as a totalitarian enemy and criticizes elite complicity in enabling China's influence, particularly through condemnation of CCP human rights abuses and support for holding Beijing accountable."
— 11 — Foreword Wilson a century ago, the woke Left today seeks a world, bound by global treaties they write, in which they exercise dictatorial powers over all nations without being subject to democratic accountability. That’s why today’s progressive Left so cavalierly supports open borders despite the lawless humanitarian crisis their policy created along America’s southern border. They seek to purge the very concept of the nation-state from the Amer- ican ethos, no matter how much crime increases or resources drop for schools and hospitals or wages decrease for the working class. Open-borders activism is a classic example of what the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”—publicly promoting one’s own virtue without risking any personal incon- venience. Indeed, the only direct impact of open borders on pro-open borders elites is that the constant flow of illegal immigration suppresses the wages of their housekeepers, landscapers, and busboys. “Cheap grace” aptly describes the Left’s love affair with environmental extrem- ism. Those who suffer most from the policies environmentalism would have us enact are the aged, poor, and vulnerable. It is not a political cause, but a pseu- do-religion meant to baptize liberals’ ruthless pursuit of absolute power in the holy water of environmental virtue. At its very heart, environmental extremism is decidedly anti-human. Stew- ardship and conservation are supplanted by population control and economic regression. Environmental ideologues would ban the fuels that run almost all of the world’s cars, planes, factories, farms, and electricity grids. Abandoning confidence in human resilience and creativity in responding to the challenges of the future would raise impediments to the most meaningful human activities. They would stand human affairs on their head, regarding human activity itself as fundamentally a threat to be sacrificed to the god of nature. The same goals are the heart of elite support for economic globalization. For 30 years, America’s political, economic, and cultural leaders embraced and enriched Communist China and its genocidal Communist Party while hollowing out Ameri- ca’s industrial base. What may have started out with good intentions has now been made clear. Unfettered trade with China has been a catastrophe. It has made a handful of American corporations enormously profitable while twisting their business incentives away from the American people’s needs. For a generation, pol- iticians of both parties promised that engagement with Beijing would grow our economy while injecting American values into China. The opposite has happened. American factories have closed. Jobs have been outsourced. Our manufacturing economy has been financialized. And all along, the corporations profiting failed to export our values of human rights and freedom; rather, they imported China’s anti-American values into their C-suites. Even before the rise of Big Tech, Wall Street ignored China’s serial theft of American intellectual property. It outright cheered the elimination of American — 12 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise manufacturing jobs. (“Learn to code!” they would gloat.) These were just the price of progress. Engagement was at every step Beijing’s project, not America’s. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictated terms, only to break them whenever it suited them. They stole our technology, spied on our people, and threatened our allies, all with trillions of dollars of wealth and military power financed by their access to our market. Then came the rise of Big Tech, which is now less a contributor to the U.S. economy than it is a tool of China’s government. In exchange for cheap labor and regulatory special treatment from Beijing, America’s largest technology firms funnel data about Americans to the CCP. They hand over sensitive intellectual property with military and intelligence applications to keep the money rolling in. They let Beijing censor Chinese users on their platforms. They let the CCP set their corporate policies about mobile apps. And they run interference for our rival’s political priorities in Washington. One side of Big-Tech companies’ business model is old-fashioned American competitiveness and world-changing techno- logical innovation; but increasingly, that side of these businesses is overshadowed by their role as operatives in the lucrative employ of America’s most dangerous international enemy. If you want to understand the danger posed by collaboration between Big Tech and the CCP, look no further than TikTok. The highly addictive video app, used by 80 million Americans every month and overwhelmingly popular among teenage girls, is in effect a tool of Chinese espionage. The ties between TikTok and the Chinese government are not loose, and they are not coincidental. The same can be observed of many U.S. colleges and universities. Through the CCP's Confucius Institutes, Beijing has been just as successful at compromising and coopting our higher education system as they have at compromising and coopt- ing corporate America. A casual reader might take the last few pages as surveying a broad array of challenges facing the American people and the next conservative President: supra- national policymaking, border security, globalization, engagement with China, manufacturing, Big Tech, and Beijing-compromised colleges. But these really are not many issues, but two: (1) that China is a totalitarian enemy of the United States, not a strategic partner or fair competitor, and (2) that America’s elites have betrayed the American people. The solution to all of the above problems is not to tinker with this or that government program, to replace this or that bureaucrat. These are problems not of technocratic efficiency but of national sovereignty and constitutional governance. We solve them not by trimming and reshaping the leaves but by ripping out the trees—root and branch. International organizations and agreements that erode our Constitution, rule of law, or popular sovereignty should not be reformed: They should be aban- doned. Illegal immigration should be ended, not mitigated; the border sealed, not
AI Analysis:
"HRES 861 directly addresses the Project 2025 emphasis on confronting the PRC’s malign activities, particularly its persecution of religious minorities, and calls for a stronger U.S. stance to defend human rights and counter China’s aggression."
— 179 — Department of State priority. That said, the next President must significantly reorient the U.S. govern- ment’s posture toward friends and adversaries alike—which will include much more honest assessments about who are friends and who are not. This reorien- tation could represent the most significant shift in core foreign policy principles and corresponding action since the end of the Cold War. Although not every country or issue area can be discussed in this chapter, below are examples of several areas in which a shift in U. S. foreign policy is not only import- ant, but arguably existential. The point is not to assert that everyone in the evolving conservative movement, or, in some cases, the growing bipartisan consensus, will agree with the details of this assessment. Rather, what is presented below demon- strates the urgency of these issues and provides a general roadmap for analysis. In a world on fire, a handful of nations require heightened attention. Some rep- resent existential threats to the safety and security of the American people; others threaten to hurt the U.S. economy; and others are wild cards, whose full threat scope is unknown but nevertheless unsettling. The five countries on which the next Administration should focus its attention and energy are China, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and North Korea. The People’s Republic of China The designs of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Chinese Com- munist Party, which runs the PRC, are serious and dangerous.9 This tyrannical country with a population of more than 1 billion people has the vision, resources, and patience to achieve its objectives. Protecting the United States from the PRC’s designs requires an unambiguous offensive-defensive mix, including protecting American citizens and their interests, as well as U.S. allies, from PRC attacks and abuse that undermine U.S. competitiveness, security, and prosperity. The United States must have a cost-imposing strategic response to make Bei- jing’s aggression unaffordable, even as the American economy and U.S. power grow. This stance will require real, sustained, near-unprecedented U.S. growth; stronger partnerships; synchronized economic and security policies; and American energy independence—but above all, it will require a very honest perspective about the nature and designs of the PRC as more of a threat than a competitor.10 The next President should use the State Department and its array of resources to reassess and lead this effort, just as it did during the Cold War. The U.S. government needs an Article X for China,11 and it should be a presidential mandate. Along with the National Security Council, the State Department should draft an Article X, which should be a deeply philosophical look at the China challenge. Many foreign policy professionals and national leaders, both in government and the private sector, are reluctant to take decisive action regarding China. Many are vested in an unshakable faith in the international system and global norms. They are so enamored with them they cannot brook any criticisms or reforms, let alone — 180 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise acknowledge their potential for being abused by the PRC. Others refuse to acknowl- edge Beijing’s malign activities and often pass off criticism as conspiracy theories. For instance, many were quick to dismiss even the possibility that COVID-19 escaped from a Chinese research laboratory. The reality, however, is that the PRC’s actions often do sound like conspiracy theories—because they are conspiracies. In addition, some knowingly or not parrot the Communist line: Global leaders includ- ing President Joe Biden, have tried to normalize or even laud Chinese behavior. In some cases, these voices, like the global corporate giants BlackRock and Disney, directly benefit from doing business with Beijing. On the other hand, others acknowledge the dangers posed by the PRC, but believe in a moderating approach to accommodate its rise, a policy of “compete where we must, but cooperate where we can,” including on issues like climate change. This strategy has demonstrably failed. As with all global struggles with Communist and other tyrannical regimes, the issue should never be with the Chinese people but with the Communist dictator- ship that oppresses them and threatens the well-being of nations across the globe.12 That said, the nature of Chinese power today is the product of history, ideology, and the institutions that have governed China during the course of five millennia, inherited by the present Chinese leaders from the preceding generations of the CCP.13 In short, the PRC challenge is rooted in China’s strategic culture and not just the Marxism–Leninism of the CCP, meaning that internal culture and civil society will never deliver a more normative nation. The PRC’s aggressive behavior can only be curbed through external pressure. The Islamic Republic of Iran The ongoing protests in the Islamic Republic of Iran (Iran), which are widely viewed as a new revolution, have shown that the Islamic regime, which has been in power since 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini became the leader, is at its weakest state in its history and is at odds not only with its own people but also its regional neighbors. Iran is home to a proud and ancient culture, yet its people have strug- gled to achieve democracy and have had to endure a hostile theocratic regime that vehemently opposes freedom. The time may be right to press harder on the Iranian theocracy, support the Iranian people, and take other steps to draw Iran into the community of free and modern nations. Unfortunately, the Obama and Biden Administrations have propped up the brutal Islamist theocracy that has hurt the Iranian people and threatened nuclear war. For example, the Obama Administration’s 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly referred to as the Iran nuclear deal, gave the Islamic regime a crucial monetary lifeline after the Green Movement protests in 2009, which, while ultimately unsuccessful, did succeed in weakening the regime and showing the world that younger Iranians want freedom.
AI Analysis:
"Both the bill and the Project 2025 HHS section emphasize protecting religious freedom and opposing discrimination against religious believers, but the bill focuses on international condemnation of China's abuses while the Project 2025 policy concerns domestic HHS enforcement of conscience laws and RFRA."
— 494 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise provide a private right of action that would allow victims to seek legal redress in court. At the same time, when it continues to fund governmental and private enti- ties that violate these laws, HHS is spending taxpayer funds unlawfully. Under liberal Administrations, OCR has amassed a poor record of devoting resources to conscience and religious freedom enforcement and is often complicit in approving or looking the other way at the Administration’s own attacks on religious liberty. Congress should pass the Conscience Protection Act so that victims can pursue redress through courts without having to depend exclusively on OCR. In addition: l OCR should return to Trump Administration policies that initiated robust enforcement of these conscience laws. It should restore and fully fund the Office of the Deputy Director for the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division (CRFD) and ensure that it has the necessary delegations from the Secretary to enforce these laws. The Secretary should give adequate delegations to OCR to pursue enforcement of conscience laws, including RFRA, and require all HHS components that provide funding or grants to cooperate with OCR CRFD investigations. The Secretary, the Deputy Secretary, and principals in other HHS divisions should endorse the remedial measures recommended by OCR CRFD and limit territorial objections and slow-down attempts by other divisional officials including OGC. HHS should withdraw funding from any violating entities that refuse to correct their behavior, and OCR CRFD should work with ASFR to ensure that all grant announcements and instruments inform grantees and applicants of their obligations to comply with federal health care conscience laws specifically as a condition of obtaining or maintaining their funding. l A draft OCR RFRA and religious freedom rule from the Trump Administration should be issued and finalized. These regulations would provide a clear process for OCR’s enforcement in coordination with other HHS divisions and existing HHS grants regulations. l HHS should reestablish waivers for state and child welfare agencies for religious exemptions, especially for faith-based adoption and foster care agencies. It should also rescind subjective case-by-case eval- uations for religious and faith-based organizations that request religious exemptions. These case-by-case determinations are currently coordinated with ACF and OCR. The recommended waivers should be granted to all states and agencies that request them, and OCR memos finding that RFRA would be violated if the waivers are not granted should be restored. — 495 — Department of Health and Human Services l HHS should restore OCR authority to review requests for and render opinions on the application of RFRA to requests for religious accommodation of people, families, and doctors who cannot in good conscience take or administer vaccines, including those made or tested with aborted fetal cell lines. l HHS should restore Section 1557, Section 504, and other OCR regulations and fix guidance documents. In 2020, the Trump Administration’s OCR published regulations under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act that restored the agency’s enforcement of that law to the limits of its statutory text, deferred to the ACA’s widespread use of a binary biological conception of sex discrimination, and specified that the regulation must comply with the religious exemption and abortion neutrality clauses in Title IX from which it is derived as well as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and other laws. Courts blocked core provisions of that rule from going into effect. In 2022, the Biden Administration proposed to reinstate a rule contradicting the scope of the statute and imposing nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. It is expected that this rule will be finalized in 2023 even though several courts have issued rulings against the interpretation on which it is based. l OCR should return its enforcement of sex discrimination to the statutory framework of Section 1557 and Title IX. Specifically, it should: 1. Remove all guidance issued under the Biden Administration concerning sexual orientation and gender identity under Section 1557, particularly the May 2021 announcement of enforcement82 and March 2022 statement threatening states that protect minors from genital mutilation.83 2. Issue a general statement of policy specifying that it will not enforce any prohibition on sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in the Section 1557 regulation and that it will prioritize compliance with the First Amendment, RFRA, and federal conscience laws in any case implicating those claims. DOJ should commit to defending these actions aggressively against inevitable court challenges, including under cases such as Heckler v. Chaney.84
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
Policy matches are calculated using a hybrid approach: initial candidates are found using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text, then an AI model (Llama 3.1 70B) provides detailed alignment ratings and analysis. Ratings range from 1 (minimal alignment) to 5 (very strong alignment). This analysis does not imply direct causation or intent.