The bill
Declaration of Independence Reaffirmation Act of 2026
S. 4828, 119th Congress.
Sponsored by
Sen. Schmitt, Eric [R-MO]
ID: S001227
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The bill
S. 4828, 119th Congress.
The sponsor
Every bill has someone who introduced it. That name is where the paper trail starts.
The money
25 itemised contributions to this sponsor, pulled from FEC filings.
The alignment
This bill's text tracks the "14" section, p. 482-484 of the Mandate for Leadership.
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Held at the desk.
June 22, 2026
📍 Current Status
Next: The bill will be reviewed by relevant committees who will debate, amend, and vote on it.
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!
**Summary of S. 4828: Declaration of Independence Reaffirmation Act of 2026**
**1. Main Purpose & Objectives** The stated purpose of S. 4828 is to “reaffirm” the Declaration of Independence as an Organic Law of the United States, timed to coincide with the nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026. Ostensibly, it seeks to reinforce foundational principles—natural rights, popular sovereignty, and government by consent—by declaring the Declaration a living charter of American identity. In reality, this is legislative placebo theater: a feel-good resolution with zero legal teeth, designed to let lawmakers pretend they’re defending liberty while ignoring the erosion of those very principles in actual policy. It’s the political equivalent of hanging a “Mission Accomplished” banner over a burning building—patriotic window dressing for a Congress too cowardly or corrupt to address real threats to democracy.
**2. Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law** The bill does *nothing* substantive. It amends no statutes, creates no enforcement mechanisms, and alters no judicial precedent. Section 3 merely declares that Congress “reaffirms and re-adopts” the Declaration as Organic Law—a status it already holds under historical and legal consensus (alongside the Articles of Confederation, Northwest Ordinance, and Constitution). Section 4 simply prints the full text of the Declaration, presumably for lawmakers who skipped civics class or need a prop for their next reelection ad. There are no penalties for violating its principles, no requirements for executive or judicial compliance, and no funding allocated to promote civic education. It’s a non-binding resolution masquerading as law—a legislative vitamin pill for a patient suffering from advanced institutional decay.
**3. Affected Parties & Stakeholders** - **Politicians**: The primary beneficiaries. Sponsors (like Sen. Schmitt) gain a patriotic talking point to tout on campaign trails, especially in primary races where “defending Founding Values” polls well with the base. - **Voters**: Treated as gullible rubes who’ll confuse symbolic gestures with substantive action. The bill flatters their nostalgia while ignoring their declining trust in government, worsening civic disengagement. - **Judiciary & Executive Branch**: Unaffected. Courts already cite the Declaration in interpretive contexts (e.g., *Dred Scott*, *Roe v. Wade* dissents), and presidents invoke it routinely—this bill changes nothing. - **Lobbyists & Special Interests**: Largely irrelevant here, unless they’re selling flag pins or Constitution-themed NFTs to capitalize on the anniversary. - **Historians & Civics Educators**: May appreciate the renewed attention—but will rightly note that reaffirming principles while gutting voting rights, enabling gerrymandering, and normalizing executive overreach is like prescribing aspirin for stage-four cancer.
**4. Potential Impact & Implications** - **Legal Impact**: None. As a concurrent resolution (despite being labeled a bill, it lacks House passage and presidential signature in the text provided), it carries no force of law. Even if enacted, it would be judicially unenforceable—a political question, not a legal mandate. - **Political Impact**: Short-term morale boost for partisans craving symbolic victories; long-term cynicism fuel for observers who see Congress prioritizing theater over function. It’s a distraction tactic—like debating the national bird while the budget deficit explodes. - **Societal Impact**: Risks trivializing the Declaration’s revolutionary power by reducing it to a bumper sticker. When lawmakers “reaffirm” equality while passing laws that undermine it, the document becomes a hypocrisy shield rather than a moral compass. - **Broader Implication**: This bill exemplifies the modern legislative disease: substituting ritual for reform. Instead of protecting voting rights, limiting dark money, or restoring congressional authority, lawmakers opt for a patriotic purity test that costs nothing and changes less. It’s not governance—it’s political cosplay. The real declaration we need isn’t a reaffirmation of 1776, but an admission of failure in 2026:
Sen. Schmitt, Eric [R-MO]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
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Total contributions: $52
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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:
"The bill’s reaffirmation of the Declaration’s natural‑rights and limited‑government principles shares thematic ground with Project 2025’s focus on protecting life, conscience, and religious liberty, but it does not directly implement any of the policy’s specific health‑care, family, or emergency‑preparedness measures."
— 450 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Goal #1: Protecting Life, Conscience, and Bodily Integrity. The Secretary should pursue a robust agenda to protect the fundamental right to life, protect con- science rights, and uphold bodily integrity rooted in biological realities, not ideology. From the moment of conception, every human being possesses inherent dignity and worth, and our humanity does not depend on our age, stage of development, race, or abilities. The Secretary must ensure that all HHS programs and activities are rooted in a deep respect for innocent human life from day one until natural death: Abortion and euthanasia are not health care. A robust respect for the sacred rights of conscience, both at HHS and among gov- ernments and institutions funded by it, increases choices for patients and program beneficiaries and furthers pluralism and tolerance. The Secretary must protect Americans’ civil rights by ensuring that HHS programs and activities follow the letter and spirit of religious freedom and conscience-protection laws. Radical actors inside and outside government are promoting harmful identity politics that replaces biological sex with subjective notions of “gender identity” and bases a person’s worth on his or her race, sex, or other identities. This destructive dogma, under the guise of “equity,” threatens American’s fundamental liberties as well as the health and well-being of children and adults alike. The next Secretary must ensure that HHS programs protect children’s minds and bodies and that HHS programs respect parents’ basic right to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their children. Goal #2: Empowering Patient Choices and Provider Autonomy. Basic eco- nomics holds that costs tend to decrease and quality and options tend to increase when there is robust and free competition in the provision of goods and services. Health care is no exception. Health care reform should be patient-centered and market-based and should empower individuals to control their health care–related dollars and decisions. Of course, providers who deliver health care also need the freedom to address the unique needs of their patients. States should be the primary regulators of the medical profession, and the federal government should not restrict providers’ abil- ity to discharge their responsibilities or limit their ability to innovate through government pricing controls or irrational Medicare and Medicaid reimburse- ment schemes. Finally, America’s broken insurance system, run largely through confusing pro- vider networks and third-party payers (employers), induces overconsumption of health care, limits consumer shopping, and hides true costs from patients. The federal government should focus reform on reducing burdens of regulatory compliance, unleashing innovation in health care delivery, ceasing interference in the daily lives of patients and providers, allowing alternative insurance coverage options, and returning control of health care dollars to patients making decisions with their providers about their health care treatments and services. — 451 — Department of Health and Human Services Goal #3: Promoting Stable and Flourishing Married Families. Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society. Unfortunately, family policies and programs under President Biden’s HHS are fraught with agenda items focusing on “LGBTQ+ equity,” subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage. These policies should be repealed and replaced by policies that support the formation of stable, married, nuclear families. Working fathers are essential to the well-being and development of their children, but the United States is experiencing a crisis of fatherlessness that is ruining our children’s futures. In the overwhelming number of cases, fathers insulate children from physical and sexual abuse, financial difficulty or poverty, incarceration, teen pregnancy, poor educational outcomes, high school failure, and a host of behavioral and psychological problems. By contrast, homes with non-related “boyfriends” present are among the most dangerous place for a child to be. HHS should prioritize married father engagement in its messaging, health, and welfare policies. In the context of current and emerging reproductive technologies, HHS policies should never place the desires of adults over the right of children to be raised by the biological fathers and mothers who conceive them. In cases involving biolog- ical parents who are found by a court to be unfit because of abuse or neglect, the process of adoption should be speedy, certain, and supported generously by HHS. Goal #4: Preparing for the Next Health Emergency. The COVID-19 pan- demic demonstrated how catastrophic a micromanaging, misinformed, centralized, and politicized federal government can be. Basic human rights, medical choice, and the doctor–patient relationship were trampled without scientific justification and for extended periods of time. Excess deaths, not due to COVID-19, skyrocketed because of forced lockdowns, isolation, vaccine-related mass firings, and colossal disruptions of the economy and daily rhythms of life. The federal government’s public health apparatus has lost the public’s trust. Before the next national public health emergency, this apparatus must be funda- mentally restructured to ensure a transparent, scientifically grounded, and more nimble, efficient, transparent, and targeted response that respects the unique needs and input of patient populations and providers. Every one of the overreaching policies during the pandemic—from lockdowns and school closures to mask and vaccine mandates or passports—received its supposed legal justification from the state of emergency declared (and renewed) by the HHS Secretary. Tellingly, however, the threshold for what constitutes a public health emergency—how many cases, hospitalizations, deaths, etc.—was never defined. For the sake of democratic accountability, we must know with clarity what will trigger the next emergency declaration and, just as important, what will trigger its end.
AI Analysis:
"The bill's reaffirmation of the Declaration of Independence aligns with Project 2025's emphasis on foundational American principles and civic education, though it does not directly address Department of Education reforms or specific policy changes outlined in the Project 2025 education section."
— 362 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise ENDNOTES 1. Milton Friedman, The Role of Government in Education (1955), https://la.utexas.edu/users/ hcleaver/330T/350kPEEFriedmanRoleOfGovttable.pdf (accessed February 28, 2023). 2. Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, Public Law 89-10. 3. Higher Education Act of 1965, Public Law 89-329. 4. Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief Funds. 5. Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Public Law 93-112. 6. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Public Law 94-142. 7. Perkins Career and Technical Education Acts, Perkins IV, Public Law 109-270. 8. S. 510, Department of Education Organization Act, Public Law 96-88. 9. Ambassador Susan Rice, Gene Sperling, and Clarence Wardell III, Advancing Equity through the American Rescue Plan, pg. 26. May 2022, at https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/ADVANCING- EQUITY-THROUGH-THE-AMERICAN-RESCUE-PLAN.pdf (accessed February 28, 2023). 10. U.S. Department of Education, Overview and Mission Statement, https://www2.ed.gov/about/landing. jhtml#:~:text=ED's%20mission%20is%20to%20promote,offices%20from%20several%20federal%20agencies (accessed February 28, 2023). 11. Jonathan Butcher, “Who Signs Your Paycheck?” Education Next, https://www.educationnext.org/who-signs- your-paycheck-federal-influence-state-education-agencies/#_edn1 (last updated, April 9, 2018). 12. Education at a Crossroads: What Works and What’s Wasted in Education Today, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Committee on Education and the Workforce, U.S. House of Representatives, 105th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 17, 1998, pp. xiii and xiv. 13. Every Student Succeeds Act, 20 U.S.C. § 6301 et seq. (2015). 14. 20 U.S.C. §6571. Under subchapter I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (Improving the Academic Achievement of the Disadvantaged) and Section 20 U.S.C. §1022f; 20 U.S.C. §1098a. Under Title 20, Section 1098a, of the U.S. Code, the Secretary is authorized to waive the requirement for negotiated rulemaking if he or she “determines that applying such a requirement with respect to given regulations is impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest (within the meaning of section 553(b)(3)(B) of [the APA]), and publishes the basis for such determination in the Federal Register at the same time as the proposed regulations in question are first published.” 20 U.S.C. §1098a(b)(2). Congressional Research Service, “Negotiated Rulemaking: In Brief,” April 12, 2021, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46756 (accessed March 13, 2023). 15. H.R. 8767, Empowering Parents Act, 117th Congress. 16. H.R. 5, Parents Bill of Rights Act. 17. H.J.Res. 99, Public Law 115-30. 18. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022. 19. National Center for Education Statistics, “Fast Facts: Title I,” https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=158 (accessed February 28, 2023). — 363 — 12 DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY AND RELATED COMMISSIONS Bernard L. McNamee AMERICAN ENERGY AND SCIENCE DOMINANCE The next conservative Administration should prioritize energy and science dominance to ensure that Americans have abundant, affordable, and reliable energy; create good-paying jobs; support domestic manufacturing and technology leadership; and strengthen national security. Achieving these goals will require bold policy action and reforms that involve the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE); the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC); and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). American Energy Dominance. Access to affordable, reliable, and abundant energy is vital to America’s economy, national security, and quality of life. Yet ideologically driven government policies have thrust the United States into a new energy crisis just a few short years after America’s energy renaissance, which began in the first decade of the 2000s, transformed the United States from a net energy importer (oil and natural gas) to energy independence and then energy dominance. Americans now face energy scarcity, an electric grid that is less reliable, and arti- ficial shortages of natural gas and oil despite massive reserves within the United States—all of which has led to higher prices that burden both the American people and the economy. The new energy crisis is caused not by a lack of resources, but by extreme “green” policies. Under the rubrics of “combating climate change” and “ESG” (environmen- tal, social, and governance), the Biden Administration, Congress, and various states, as well as Wall Street investors, international corporations, and progressive spe- cial-interest groups, are changing America’s energy landscape. These ideologically
AI Analysis:
"The bill focuses on reaffirming the Declaration of Independence as an Organic Law, emphasizing foundational American principles like natural rights and popular sovereignty. The Project 2025 DoD section provided contains only endnotes and no substantive policy text, making direct alignment impossible to assess; however, general themes of constitutional governance and national identity may loosely connect to defense policy foundations."
— 128 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise ENDNOTES 1. U.S. Constitution, Preamble, https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/preamble/ (accessed February 16, 2023). 2. U.S. Constitution, Article I, § 8, https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-1/ (accessed February 16, 2023). 3. U.S. Constitution, Article II, § 2, https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-2/ (accessed February 16, 2023). 4. Established pursuant to S. 1605, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022, Public Law No. 117-81, 117th Congress, December 27, 2021, Division A, Title X, § 1004, https://www.congress.gov/117/plaws/publ81/ PLAW-117publ81.pdf (accessed February 16, 2023). 5. H.R. 3684, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Public Law No. 117-58, 117th Congress, November 15, 2021, Division G, Title IX, §§ 70901–70953, https://www.congress.gov/117/plaws/publ58/PLAW-117publ58.pdf (accessed February 16, 2023). 6. S. 2943, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, Public Law 114-328, 114th Congress, December 23, 2016, Division A, Title IX, § 901, https://www.congress.gov/114/statute/STATUTE-130/STATUTE-130-Pg2000. pdf (accessed February 16, 2023). 7. H.R. 3622, Goldwater–Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, Public Law No. 99-433, 99th Congress, October 1, 1986, https://www.congress.gov/99/statute/STATUTE-100/STATUTE-100-Pg992.pdf (accessed February 16, 2023). 8. U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Security Cooperation Agency, Historical Sales Book, Fiscal Years 1950–2021, p. 7, https://www.dsca.mil/sites/default/files/dsca_historical_sales_book_FY21.pdf (accessed February 15, 2023). 9. Paul K. Kerr, “Arms Sales: Congressional Review Process,” Congressional Research Service Report for Members and Committees of Congress No. RL31675, updated June 10, 2022, p. 1, https://sgp.fas.org/crs/weapons/ RL31675.pdf (accessed February 15, 2023). 10. Keith Webster, “How to Reform America’s Military Sales Process,” The Hill Congress Blog, October 6, 2022, https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/3675933-how-to-reform-americas-military-sales-process/ (accessed February 15, 2023). 11. See Thomas W. Spoehr, “The Administration and Congress Must Act Now to Counter the Worsening Military Recruiting Crisis, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief No. 5283, July 28, 2022, https://www.heritage.org/sites/ default/files/2022-07/IB5283.pdf. 12. Ibid. 13. Ronald Reagan Institute, “Reagan National Defense Survey,” conducted November 2021, p. 4, https://www. reaganfoundation.org/media/358085/rndf_survey_booklet.pdf (accessed February 16, 2023). 14. See Paul J. Larkin, “Protecting the Nation by Employing Military Spouses,” Heritage Foundation Commentary, June 6, 2019, https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/commentary/protecting-the-nation-employing- military-spouses. 15. See Jude Schwalbach, “Military Families Deserve Flexible Education Options,” Heritage Foundation Commentary, April 14, 2021, https://www.heritage.org/education/commentary/military-families-deserve- flexible-education-options. 16. See Chapter 7, “The Intelligence Community,” infra. 17. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA); the National Security Agency (NSA); the National Geospatial- Intelligence Agency (NGA); the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO); and the intelligence and counterintelligence elements of the military services: U.S. Air Force Intelligence, U.S. Navy Intelligence, U.S. Army Intelligence, and U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence, which also receive guidance and oversight from the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (USDI). 18. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). 19. The Department of Energy’s Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis and the intelligence and counterintelligence elements of the U.S. Coast Guard; the Department of Justice’s Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Office of National Security Intelligence; the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research; and the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis.
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.