North Rim Restoration Act of 2025
Download PDFSponsored by
Rep. Crane, Elijah [R-AZ-2]
ID: C001132
Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Subcommittee Hearings Held
December 11, 2025
Introduced
Committee Review
📍 Current Status
Next: The bill moves to the floor for full chamber debate and voting.
Floor Action
Passed House
Senate Review
Passed Congress
Presidential Action
Became Law
📚 How does a bill become a law?
1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.
2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
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!
Bill Summary
Another brilliant example of congressional incompetence, masquerading as a benevolent effort to restore the Grand Canyon after a wildfire. Let's dissect this farce.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The North Rim Restoration Act of 2025 (HR 5729) claims to authorize emergency contracting flexibilities for the National Park Service to expedite recovery efforts in areas impacted by the Dragon Bravo Fire. How noble. In reality, it's a thinly veiled attempt to funnel taxpayer money into the pockets of favored contractors and donors.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill grants the Secretary of the Interior emergency acquisition flexibilities, allowing for expedited contracting without proper oversight or competitive bidding. This is a recipe for disaster, as we've seen time and again with no-bid contracts and their inevitable cost overruns. The bill also requires regular reports on expenditures, but don't hold your breath – these will likely be as transparent as a swamp in Louisiana.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The usual suspects are involved here:
* National Park Service (NPS): Will receive the emergency contracting authority, which they'll undoubtedly use to enrich their favorite contractors. * Contractors and vendors: Will benefit from no-bid contracts and lax oversight, ensuring a windfall of taxpayer dollars. * Donors and PACs: Have likely already lined up to "contribute" to the sponsors' campaigns in exchange for favorable treatment.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** This bill is a textbook example of crony capitalism. By granting emergency contracting authority without proper oversight, Congress is essentially handing over a blank check to the NPS and their contractor friends. Expect cost overruns, waste, and abuse of taxpayer funds. The only "restoration" that will occur is the restoration of the politicians' campaign coffers.
**Diagnosis:** The patient (HR 5729) suffers from acute symptoms of corruption, cronyism, and incompetence. The underlying disease? A severe case of "Donor-itis," where politicians prioritize their donors' interests over those of the American people. Treatment? A healthy dose of transparency, accountability, and a strong antibiotic to combat the influence of special interest groups.
**Prognosis:** Poor. This bill will likely pass with minimal scrutiny, as Congress is too busy lining up for their next campaign contribution fix to care about the consequences. The American people will be left footing the bill for this boondoggle, while the politicians and their donors reap the benefits. Business as usual in Washington D.C.
Related Topics
đź’° Campaign Finance Network
Rep. Crane, Elijah [R-AZ-2]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
No PAC contributions found
No committee contributions found
Cosponsors & Their Campaign Finance
This bill has 7 cosponsors. Below are their top campaign contributors.
Rep. Gosar, Paul A. [R-AZ-9]
ID: G000565
Top Contributors
10
Rep. Maloy, Celeste [R-UT-2]
ID: M001228
Top Contributors
10
Rep. Biggs, Andy [R-AZ-5]
ID: B001302
Top Contributors
10
Rep. LaMalfa, Doug [R-CA-1]
ID: L000578
Top Contributors
10
Rep. Tiffany, Thomas P. [R-WI-7]
ID: T000165
Top Contributors
10
Rep. Hamadeh, Abraham J. [R-AZ-8]
ID: H001098
Top Contributors
10
Rep. Ciscomani, Juan [R-AZ-6]
ID: C001133
Top Contributors
10
Donor Network - Rep. Crane, Elijah [R-AZ-2]
Hub layout: Politicians in center, donors arranged by type in rings around them.
Showing 38 nodes and 45 connections
Total contributions: $241,303
Top Donors - Rep. Crane, Elijah [R-AZ-2]
Showing top 19 donors by contribution amount
Project 2025 Policy Matches
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.
Introduction
— 154 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise insurance at prices lower than the actuarially fair rate, thereby subsidizing flood insurance. Then, when flood costs exceed NFIP’s revenue, FEMA seeks taxpay- er-funded bailouts. Current NFIP debt is $20.5 billion, and in 2017, Congress canceled $16 billion in debt when FEMA reached its borrowing authority limit. These subsidies and bailouts only encourage more development in flood zones, increasing the potential losses to both NFIP and the taxpayer. The NFIP should be wound down and replaced with private insurance starting with the least risky areas currently identified by the program. Budget Issues FEMA manages all grants for DHS, and these grants have become pork for states, localities, and special-interest groups. Since 2002, DHS/FEMA have provided more than $56 billion in preparedness grants for state, local, tribal, and territorial governments. For FY 2023, President Biden requested more than $3.5 billion for federal assistance grants.13 Funds provided under these programs do not provide measurable gains for preparedness or resiliency. Rather, more than any objective needs, political interests appear to direct the flow of nondisaster funds. The principles of federalism should be upheld; these indicate that states better understand their unique needs and should bear the costs of their particularized programs. FEMA employees in Washington, D.C., should not determine how bil- lions of federal tax dollars should be awarded to train local law enforcement officers in Texas, harden cybersecurity infrastructure in Utah, or supplement migrant shelters in Arizona. DHS should not be in the business of handing out federal tax dollars: These grants should be terminated. Accomplishing this, however, will require action by Members of Congress who repeatedly vote to fund grants for political reasons. The transition should focus on building resilience and return on investment in line with real threats. Personnel FEMA currently has four Senate-confirmed positions. Only the Administrator should be confirmed by the Senate; other political leadership need not be con- firmed by the Senate. Additionally, FEMA’s “springing Cabinet position” should be eliminated, as this creates significant unnecessary challenges to the functioning of the whole of DHS at points in time when coordinated responses are most needed. CYBERSECURITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AGENCY (CISA) Needed Reforms CISA is supposed to have two key roles: (1) protection of the federal civilian government networks (.gov) while coordinating the execution of national cyber defense and sharing information with non-federal and private-sector partners — 155 — Department of Homeland Security and (2) national coordination of critical infrastructure security and resilience. Yet CISA has rapidly expanded its scope into lanes where it does not belong, the most recent and most glaring example being censorship of so-called misinformation and disinformation. CISA’s funding and resources should align narrowly with the foregoing two mission requirements. The component’s emergency communications and Chem- ical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) roles should be moved to FEMA; its school security functions should be transferred to state homeland security offices; and CISA should refrain from duplicating cybersecurity functions done elsewhere at the Department of Defense, FBI, National Security Agency, and U.S. Secret Service. Of the utmost urgency is immediately ending CISA’s counter-mis/disinforma- tion efforts. The federal government cannot be the arbiter of truth. CISA began this work because of alleged Russian misinformation in the 2016 election, which in fact turned out to be a Clinton campaign “dirty trick.” The Intelligence Commu- nity, including the NSA or DOD, should counter foreign actors. At the time of this writing, release of the Twitter Files has demonstrated that CISA has devolved into an unconstitutional censoring and election engineering apparatus of the political Left. In any event, the entirety of the CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee should be dismissed on Day One. For election security, CISA should help states and localities assess whether they have good cyber hygiene in their hardware and software in preparation for an election—but nothing more. This is of value to smaller localities, particularly by flagging who is attacking their websites. CISA should not be significantly involved closer to an election. Nor should it participate in messaging or propaganda. U.S. COAST GUARD (USCG) Needed Reforms The U.S. Coast Guard fleet should be sized to the needs of great-power compe- tition, specifically focusing efforts and investment on protecting U.S. waters, all while seeking to find (where feasible) more economical ways to perform USCG missions. The scope of the Coast Guard’s mission needs to be focused on protecting U.S. resources and interests in its home waters, specifically its Exclusive Economic Zone (200 miles from shore). USCG’s budget should address the growing demand for it to address the increasing threat from the Chinese fishing fleet in home waters as well as narcotics and migrant flows in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. Doing this will require reversing years of shortfalls in shipbuilding, maintenance, and upgrades of shore facilities as well as seeking more cost-effective ship and facility designs. In wartime, the USCG supports the Navy, but it has limited capability and capacity to support wartime missions outside home waters.
About These Correlations
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.