WASHINGTON (OSV News) — House lawmakers on April 30 passed a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security after a lengthy shutdown.
The same week, President Donald Trump pulled the nomination of Casey Means for surgeon general after she failed to secure enough Senate support, and Louisiana was expected to delay its House primaries after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down its current congressional map.
— House approves bill to fund DHS
The House approved in a voice vote a partial DHS funding measure that the Senate passed over a month ago, ending a 76-day shutdown for DHS.
The Senate measure was the product of negotiations between Republicans and Democrats who agreed to fund the agency except for the immigration enforcement agencies that fall under its purview. But House Republican leadership declined for several weeks to take up the measure since it did not fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Border Patrol.
However, House Republican leadership reversed course after the White House requested that the bill be passed immediately, and before the House was expected to take a 12-day recess.
However, the stalemate continues over reforms regarding federal immigration officers after the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two American citizens in Minnesota who were killed by federal agents in separate incidents.
— Trump pulls Casey Means nomination
Trump said in a post on his social media website, Truth Social, on April 30 that he is nominating Dr. Nicole B. Saphier, a Fox News contributor and a radiologist, as surgeon general, after his previous nominee, wellness influencer Casey Means, failed to secure enough support in the Senate to be confirmed.
“Nicole is a STAR physician who has spent her career guiding women facing breast cancer through their diagnosis and treatment while tirelessly advocating to increase early cancer detection and prevention, while at the same time working with men and women on all other forms of cancer diagnoses and treatments,” Trump wrote. “She is also an INCREDIBLE COMMUNICATOR, who makes complicated health issues more easily understood by all Americans.”
Means, an ally of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., faced significant hurdles to her confirmation after taking controversial positions on a range of topics, from vaccines to psychedelic drugs. Her confirmation was opposed by some pro-life organizations, notably the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, after she declined to take a position on mifepristone, a drug commonly, but not exclusively, used for first trimester abortion.
Trump took aim at Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., for opposing Means’ confirmation, accusing him of “intransigence and political games.” Cassidy had not stated a position on Means, but faces a Trump-backed primary challenger, after being one of seven GOP senators to vote to impeach Trump in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Cassidy is among the lawmakers who have argued the Trump administration should roll back the Biden administration’s eased restrictions on mifeprostone, which remain in place.
— High court rulings on Louisiana House district map, New Jersey pregnancy centers
Louisiana is expected to delay its House primaries, previously scheduled for May 16, to give state lawmakers time to redraw congressional maps in the Pelican State after the Supreme Court struck down its current map.
In a 6-3 ruling on April 29, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana’s congressional map that created a second majority-Black congressional district was “an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”
The ruling left in place Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, but critics of the ruling, including members of the high court’s minority in the case, said it gutted the landmark 1965 law, a product of the Civil Rights Movement that sought to protect the voting power of racial minorities.
However, a key Senate primary in the state, where incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., faces a challenge from the Trump-backed Rep. Julia Letlow, R-La., is expected to proceed.
The Supreme Court also unanimously ruled April 29 that a group of faith-based pregnancy centers in New Jersey can challenge in federal court an investigation by that state’s attorney general alleging they misled people about their services and seeking information about their donors.
First Choice Women’s Resource Centers operates five centers in the Garden State that provide some medical services, including ultrasounds, to women experiencing unplanned pregnancies. They argued hat an investigation by then-New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin, a Democrat, that sought information about their donor communication infringed on their First Amendment rights.
— Trump DOJ accuses Biden administration of anti-Christian bias
A report published by the Department of Justice on April 30 accused the Biden administration of “anti-Christian bias” in its approach to policy issues related to abortion, marriage and gender, among others.
The report, which does not carry any legal force, marked an opportunity for the Trump administration to critique its predecessors and its Democratic rivals as they prepare for the upcoming midterm elections, and to tout what it called “The Trump Administration’s Work to Right Prior Wrongs.”
It was the product of a task force created by Trump to investigate “anti-Christian” bias in the federal government. The task force was criticized by those who argued such claims were without merit or were an effort to favor a particular religion.
Reactions to the report varied widely, with some praising the effort and others arguing it was a distraction from other issues.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said in an April 30 statement the effort was “a very good report on the pervasive anti-Christian bias under the Biden administration; capturing many of the domestic religious liberty concerns we have noticed in recent years, especially on marriage, family, sexuality, and life issues – as well as hostility against Christianity in general.”
Meanwhile, the Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance and a Baptist minister, said in an April 30 statement, “Trump’s radical DOJ’s new report is abominably hypocritical.”
“To find anti-Christian bias, the Trump administration should look in the mirror at its own targeting of Christian communities and leaders who dare to oppose its extreme agenda,” Raushenbush said. “From attacking Pope Leo (XIV) to (Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde), to so many others, this president has repeatedly threatened and clashed with many of the most prominent Christian denominations in our country.”
Kate Scanlon is a national reporter for OSV News covering Washington. Follow her on X @kgscanlon.
