Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton

Maddy summaryThe SWIFT Act of 2026 modifies Social Security rules to improve benefits for widows, widowers, and surviving divorced spouses. It allows these individuals to receive full survivor benefits at any age if they have a disability, removing previous age restrictions and ensuring their benefits are not reduced if they remarry. The law also raises the age limit for children receiving benefits based on a parent's work record from 16 to 18, or 19 for full-time students. Additionally, the bill increases the maximum amount survivors can receive by offering financial incentives for delaying their claim until full retirement age. To help people understand these changes, the Social Security Administration will publish and mail a new information booklet to affected families.

Maddy summaryThis bill requires large multinational corporations to publicly disclose detailed financial information for each country where they operate. Specifically, companies with significant annual revenues must submit reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission showing revenues, profits, taxes paid, and employee counts by location. The law mandates that this data be provided in a machine-readable format and made available online for public access. Additionally, the bill directs the Commission to create specific regulations within one year of the law's enactment to establish the exact reporting standards and deadlines.

Maddy summaryThe Consumer Appeal Rights Enforcement Act strengthens rules for employee benefit plans by allowing the Department of Labor to impose fines on entities that fail to follow claims procedures or external review requirements. It defines violations as either global failures to have compliant processes or individual instances where plans do not provide proper notices, timely decisions, or requested information to participants. Penalties range from $1,000 per participant for global violations to $1,000 per day for individual violations, with options to triple these amounts if issues are not corrected within specific timeframes. The bill also repeals a previous provision that allowed private lawsuits for certain procedural violations, shifting enforcement authority to the Secretary of Labor.

Maddy summaryThe Family Grocery and Farmer Relief Act aims to break up the highly concentrated meatpacking industry by forcing major companies to divest assets and stop operating in multiple meat categories simultaneously. The Federal Trade Commission is authorized to order these divestitures if market concentration remains too high or if a single firm controls a large share of beef processing, with a specific goal of transferring assets to farmers' cooperatives and small businesses. Additionally, the bill mandates that foreign-owned meatpacking firms divest their U.S. operations and prohibits companies from acquiring new assets in lines of protein they do not already process. To support these changes, the legislation provides funding for new competitors and requires the FTC to actively enforce these rules against firms that fail to comply.

Maddy summaryThe Stop CHEATERS Act directs the Internal Revenue Service to increase its enforcement efforts against high-income individuals and large corporations by allocating billions of dollars in additional funding for tax audits, criminal investigations, and taxpayer services through fiscal year 2031. A significant portion of this funding is designated for modernizing the IRS's technology and business systems to improve its ability to detect fraud and noncompliance. The legislation also requires the IRS Commissioner to submit regular reports to Congress detailing plans to shift auditing resources toward wealthy taxpayers and analyzing how much unpaid tax is owed by different income groups.

Maddy summaryThis bill establishes a new independent council within the executive branch called the United States Interagency Council on Housing Affordability and Preservation to coordinate federal efforts on affordable housing. The council will be composed of heads from twenty-one different federal agencies, including HUD, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Labor, who will meet at least four times a year to develop a national strategic plan and review housing programs. Its main duties involve creating a unified strategy to increase affordable housing supply, providing technical assistance to states and local governments, and reporting annually to the President and Congress on housing needs and federal actions. The legislation also encourages states to form their own interagency councils and authorizes $4.8 million per year through 2031 to fund the council's operations.

Maddy summaryThe Foreign Service Test-Free Reentry Act of 2026 allows the State Department to rehire certain former career diplomats without requiring them to take new exams. This provision applies specifically to individuals who were involuntarily separated or retired between January 20, 2025, and January 31, 2030, as part of a reduction in force or similar expedited process. To qualify, these former employees must have been serving in good standing and must not have received low performance rankings in the five years leading up to their separation. The bill aims to streamline the reentry process for these specific groups by waiving standard testing requirements.

Maddy summaryThe Protecting America's Diplomatic Workforce Act limits how many employees federal foreign affairs agencies can fire at once and requires stricter oversight for large layoffs. It caps reductions in force to 50 employees every six months unless agencies provide detailed justifications to Congress explaining why other options were not considered and how the cuts might affect diplomatic missions. The bill also mandates longer notice periods for employees facing layoffs, updates rules to prioritize performance over tenure when selecting who to retain, and requires the State Department to consult with lawmakers before making major changes to its internal manual. These measures directly impact agencies such as the Department of State, USAID, and the Peace Corps by increasing transparency and adding procedural hurdles to workforce reductions.

Maddy summaryThis concurrent resolution does not create new laws or change existing regulations but serves to formally recognize the ongoing need for better physical access in federally funded facilities, especially for people with disabilities. It highlights statistics on disability prevalence and employment gaps while reaffirming support for the Architectural Barriers Act of 1968 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The measure pledges to use universal and inclusive design as a guiding principle for future infrastructure projects and encourages full compliance with current accessibility laws.

Maddy summaryThis bill, known as the Capping Appointed Positions Act, limits the total number of specific high-level roles in the federal executive branch to a maximum of 1,600 positions. It directly affects confidential or policy-determining jobs classified under Schedule C and Schedule G, which are typically filled by individuals appointed rather than hired through standard civil service procedures. The law sets a hard cap for fiscal year 2027 and every year after that, ensuring the combined total of these positions cannot exceed the specified limit. By restricting the quantity of these roles, the legislation aims to control the size of the appointed workforce within the government's executive agencies.