One More Time: What Congress Got Done in 2025
A final look at the year’s legislative activity.
Good morning and happy Monday!
Including pieces of legislation awaiting his signature, President Trump is on track to have signed 75 bills into law this year.
How many can you name? The One Big Beautiful Bill Act? The Epstein Files Transparency Act? Any others? (Here is the full list, test yourself!)
I’m sure none of us can name them all — I certainly can’t — but my hope is that Wake Up To Politics readers are some of the most informed people around when it comes to this list, and that you can at least say you have some familiarity with with most of the new laws being written by our representatives. In some cases, you might even be more informed on this than the representatives themselves!
Today, for our last installment of “What Congress is Getting Done” of 2025, let’s take a look at some of the bills soon to be signed into law, as well as some other measures that might make it there in 2026.
Helping survivors of human trafficking
According to a 2023 survey by the Polaris Project, a non-profit that seeks to combat human trafficking, 62% of trafficking survivors have been arrested, detained, or cited by law enforcement themselves. Of those, 81% said their encounter with law enforcement came during the time they were being trafficked — and 90% of those with a criminal record said all or some of their arrests were the result of actions that stemmed from their exploitation.
In one prominent case, for example, a 16-year-old girl named Zephi Trevino was charged by Texas prosecutors for her role in a fatal robbery, even though Trevino has said she was being sex trafficked at the time and only acting at the behest of her trafficker. She was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Several states have laws on the books to help trafficking victims in these situations, but the federal government does not. Both chambers of Congress have now passed the Trafficking Survivors Relief Act, which will create a process allowing trafficking survivors to move to vacate their convictions or expunge their arrest records for certain criminal offenses if they can prove that their conduct was “a direct result” or “directly related” to “having been a victim of trafficking.”
The House unanimously passed the bill on December 1, and the Senate followed suit (also unanimously) last week, sending the measure to President Trump’s desk.
Related: The Senate voted unanimously last week to approve the Preventing Child Trafficking Act, which would strengthen interagency coordination to combat child trafficking.
Preventing another Reagan Airport collision
Last week, President Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual defense policy bill, into law. Before the package was approved, some lawmakers expressed outrage about the inclusion of a provision allowing military helicopters to fly near D.C.’s Reagan Airport without using something called ADS-B technology, which transmits an aircraft’s location.
Earlier this year, an Army helicopter collided with an American Airlines plane near Reagan, killing 67 people. The helicopter did not have ADS-B technology turned on, which some victims’ families have blamed for the crash.
Senate Commerce Committee chairman Ted Cruz (R-TX) and ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-WA) responded by introducing the ROTOR Act, a bipartisan bill which would increase oversight of military flights in the D.C. area, including by requiring allowed military aircraft to use ADS-B technology while flying there.
The Senate voted unanimously last week to pass the bill, which reverses the provision of a different bill it had just passed. Families of the Reagan Airport collision victims were in the Senate gallery during the vote.
This is how long it normally takes to create a D.C. memorial
Last week, the Trump administration announced that the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. would now be named “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” No law was passed approving such a change, even though the original name was set by statute in 1964.
Normally, it takes years — even decades — to change the monumental landscape in Washington, D.C., considering all of the thorny politics (and limited space) involved. Case in point: back in 2001, Congress passed a law creating the Adams Memorial Foundation, to begin work on a monument in D.C. to honor John, Abigail, and John Quincy Adams.
The foundation (now known as the Adams Memorial Commission) was given a seven-year timeframe, which has since been extended several times. The most recent authorization, approved in 2020, lapsed earlier this year; the House voted earlier this month to unanimously pass the Adams Memorial-Great American Heroes Act, which would re-up the commission until 2032.
There has been progress, though! The new bill would codify the plot of land that the commission voted this year to set aside for the eventual Adams Memorial, which is set to be placed just south of the White House (to honor John Adams’ status as the first president to live there).
Related: The Wounded Knee Massacre Memorial and Sacred Site Act, preserving the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre (the 1890 battle in which the U.S. military killed almost 300 Native Americans as part of a crackdown against a growing Native religious movement).
And more
President Trump recently signed several of the bills I highlighted on Veterans Day, including the Medal of Honor Act (which would quadruple the annual pension for Medal of Honor recipients, from $16,800 to $67,500) and the Veteran Fraud Reimbursement Act (which would make it easier for servicemembers to be reimbursed for veterans benefits they were defrauded out of).
The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, which would once again allow school lunches to include whole and 2% milk (reversing Obama-era regulations), is currently awaiting President Trump’s signature after passing both chambers unanimously.
The Senate unanimously passed the Lobbying Disclosure Improvement Act and the Disclosing Foreign Influence in Lobbying Act, two bipartisan bills that seek to close loopholes foreign governments can use to conceal their roles in lobbying efforts.
hmmm...Not a thing on carbon debt, climate change, global initiatives on such, etc.? ¿
In my opinion we, as a nation, are slipping into an inability to ask the right questions.
Based on some quick and dirty research and calculations, the average Congress enacted 175 laws each year since 2014. The 75 that were enacted this year was paltry by comparison. I assume that this is indicative of the inability of this Congress to actually do any work. I don't think that you can attribute this entirely to polarization because we aren't that much more polarized now than we have been at other times in the past 10 years. Is it the inability of the current leadership, both of who are relatively new to their posts, to actually move their conferences forward?