Track bills, resolutions, and amendments moving through Congress
James T. Woods Act
The bill strengthens federal tools, sentencing, and program support to deter and punish online threats, sextortion, and coercion targeting minors — improving protections and prosecutorial clarity — but increases federal criminal exposure, raises civil‑liberties and due‑process risks, and will add enforcement, correctional, and administrative costs.
Designating April 2025 as "Second Chance Month".
The resolution raises national awareness and encourages reform for people with criminal records, but it is purely symbolic—creating no funding or legal changes and risking unmet expectations or defensive reactions that could delay real policy change.
Justice for Murder Victims Act
The bill closes a gap that allows homicide prosecutions when death is delayed—improving accountability and predictability—while narrowing federal capital eligibility and raising risks of prosecuting very old cases and related government costs.
Eric’s Law
The bill trades stronger finality and a clear, non-death outcome after two deadlocked juries in federal capital cases for increased retrial-driven costs and emotional burden on victims' families and somewhat reduced judicial flexibility.
Biosecurity Smuggling Deterrence Act of 2026
The bill increases criminal penalties to strengthen deterrence and prosecutorial clarity for biological-agent importation and smuggling, but at the cost of mandatory minimum sentences that raise incarceration costs, risk coerced pleas, and may chill legitimate research and shipments.
Federal Firearms Licensee Protection Act of 2026
The bill strengthens penalties to deter thefts and improve safety at licensed gun businesses, but does so by imposing mandatory minimum sentences that increase incarceration, limit judicial discretion, and raise costs for taxpayers.
Federal Death Penalty Prohibition Act
The bill ends the federal death penalty—removing a severe, unequally applied punishment and sparing current death-row inmates from execution—while provoking concerns about reduced accountability and imposing short-term costs and delays from resentencings.
Sentencing Commission Improvements Act
The bill gives public defenders a formal seat to bring defendant perspectives into sentencing policy, improving representational balance but offering only nonvoting influence and adding some administrative burden.
Smarter Sentencing Act of 2026
The bill shifts federal drug sentencing and guideline processes toward shorter, more proportionate penalties and faster reform plus greater transparency, trading potential public‑safety and fiscal risks, administrative burdens, and possible diversion of savings away from rehabilitation programs for reduced incarceration and improved access to legal information.
Protect America Act
The bill strengthens immigration enforcement, penalties, and conditional federal funding to compel local cooperation and protect officials, but does so at the cost of greater legal and financial exposure for jurisdictions, harsher detention and penalty regimes for noncitizens, and increased risk of chilling protest and nonprofit advocacy.
Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities and Fallen Law Enforcement Act of 2026
The bill trades expanded federal enforcement tools, clearer federal-local cooperation incentives, and new remedies for victims and protections for officers against increased federalization, greater fiscal and litigation exposure for States/localities, reduced local autonomy and immigrant protections, and higher incarceration and administrative costs.
ICE Protection Act of 2026
The bill strengthens penalties and closes prosecutorial loopholes for vehicle- and weapon-involved assaults—boosting deterrence and tools for law enforcement—but does so by imposing mandatory minimums that raise incarceration costs, constrain judicial discretion, and risk unequal impacts on marginalized groups.
Welfare Fraud Deterrence and Recovery Act of 2026
The bill increases recoveries and enforcement capacity against welfare fraud and creates stronger incentives for reporting and interagency coordination, but it also imposes severe criminal, civil, and immigration penalties—plus data‑sharing and compliance rules—that substantially raise risks for immigrants, low‑income people, small entities, and state agencies.
Safer Detention Act of 2025
The bill makes it easier and more certain for vulnerable inmates to seek and receive home detention or compassionate release, at the cost of shifting program costs to probation systems, families, and taxpayers and increasing administrative, litigation, and public-safety concerns.
Amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit the consideration of acquitted conduct at sentencing.
The bill strengthens liberty and fairness for acquitted defendants and clarifies sentencing law, but does so by removing certain conduct from consideration—potentially leading to lighter sentences for some offenders and creating a temporal disparity between past and future defendants.
First Step Implementation Act of 2025
The bill widens opportunities for resentencing, juvenile record sealing, and rehabilitation supports—helping many incarcerated young people and those with juvenile records reenter society—while imposing meaningful administrative costs, leaving limits on confidentiality and certain eligibility, and creating potential public‑safety concerns for a subset of offenders.
PURE Act
The bill trades away rigid purity/quantity-based sentencing in favor of harm- and offender-focused sentencing that can reduce incarceration for low-level offenders and ease lab burdens, but it raises risks of inconsistent or lighter punishment for high-volume traffickers, potential public-safety impacts, and distributional effects on taxpayers and marginalized communities.
SAFE Act
The bill strengthens and modernizes sentencing guidance to better punish child sexual abuse and improve public safety, at the cost of higher sentences, increased taxpayer correctional expenses, and raised due-process and complexity risks for defendants and the courts.
Back the Blue Act of 2025
The bill increases protections and penalties for attacks on public‑safety personnel and expands armed‑response permissions to enhance immediate security, while concentrating federal power, curbing post‑conviction and civil remedies, raising death‑penalty use, and creating public‑safety, fairness, and fiscal risks.
Ideologically Motivated Violence Accountability Act
The bill strengthens penalties and formal recognition for ideology‑based targeting to deter violence and aid victims, but it expands death‑penalty exposure and raises significant civil‑liberties and implementation fairness concerns.
Safer Supervision Act of 2025
The bill shifts federal sentencing and supervision rules to reduce incarceration time and supervision burdens and improve probation staffing and transparency, but it trades off increased public‑safety and administrative risks, potential inequities from greater judicial discretion, added government costs, and privacy concerns.
Fair Sentencing Act
The bill seeks clearer, more uniform sentencing by excluding perceived gender identity as an automatic mitigating factor and updating statutory references, but it risks removing an avenue of leniency for vulnerable defendants, disproportionately harming marginalized groups and prompting litigation and rushed guideline changes.
Treatment Court, Rehabilitation, and Recovery Act of 2025
The bill can modernize and expand DOJ grant authority to boost resources for law enforcement and victim-service nonprofits, but replacing the existing statutory framework risks disrupting current grants and could narrow eligibility or reduce funding for some recipients.
Stop Illegal Reentry Act
The bill aims to strengthen and clarify immigration reentry enforcement by expanding penalties and placing operational control with DHS, but it increases criminal exposure for some immigrants, raises costs and detention burdens, and concentrates prosecutorial power in an enforcement agency at the expense of oversight and civil-liberty concerns.
DC CRIMES Act
The bill tightens the youth-offender age classification and increases public juvenile data transparency to improve juvenile-program targeting, but it excludes 19–24-year-olds from youth protections, raises privacy and administrative costs, and locks in D.C. sentencing rules that prevent local reform.
LETITIA Act
The bill strengthens enforcement and raises penalties to hold public officials to account for bank, loan, and tax fraud (and clarifies prosecutorial rules), but it expands exposure to harsh, sometimes mandatory punishments and creates fiscal, administrative, and fairness trade‑offs for taxpayers and government employees.
Graham Hoffman Act
The bill strengthens and clarifies federal protection for first responders and allows federal prosecution when states do not act, at the cost of expanding federal criminal jurisdiction (and its resource burdens) and creating higher-stakes federal sentencing and procedural limits on when federal charges can proceed.
Trafficking Survivors Relief Act of 2025
The bill substantially expands avenues for trafficking survivors to clear records, obtain sentence relief, and access services and protections, but does so at the cost of increased litigation, administrative and fiscal burdens, and trade‑offs between privacy, transparency, and certain public‑safety concerns.
Restoring the Armed Career Criminal Act
The bill strengthens public-safety and sentencing clarity by restoring a firearm-conviction predicate and imposing mandatory, long enhanced sentences for repeat felons, but does so by expanding mandatory penalties, reducing judicial discretion, raising prison costs, and risking disproportionate harm to racial minorities and currently incarcerated people.
Enhanced Penalties for Criminal Flag Burners Act
The bill strengthens penalties to deter and punish use of incendiary devices in federal crimes and protect people and federal property, but does so at the cost of higher incarceration expense and increased risk of prosecutorial overreach and free‑speech impacts unless narrowly applied.
