Happy New Year, everyone! I hope that your holidays were less dramatic than the opening of the 118th Congress. Thanks to a few holdouts, it took four days and 15 ballots before Kevin McCarthy secured the title of Speaker of the House and Congress could get to work.

So now that the new US representatives have been sworn in, the House rules have been established, and the new term has begun, what do we know about this Congress? What do we expect from them, and how might this session look different from the last one?

  1. We now have a pro–educational freedom majority in the House! This means that any attempts to regulate homeschooling or broaden public education will be stymied for the next two years. There will be attempts to help more families choose public alternatives, but rest assured, HSLDA Action will be there to ensure those attempts don’t infringe on the ability to homeschool as you see fit. While there is still a need for vigilance, since friends can sometimes propose bills with unintended consequences, homeschooling is likely to be in a very safe position for the next two years.
  2. The contentious Speaker of the House election demonstrated that debates have returned to the House floor. The Founders designed the House to be the home of discussion and sometimes raucous deliberation. The Senate was to be the cooler, more level-headed of the two bodies. But for the past several years, debate has been all but forbidden, which is why so many terrible bills have been voted on without the public getting to see any of the discussion surrounding those bills. So while this change means the House may look more chaotic for the next two years, the more the American people get to see of what is actually being discussed, the better informed they will be about the goings-on of their elected representatives.
  3. Another outcome of the fight over the Speaker is a return to what is called “regular order.” All that means is that bills will now go through the normal bill-making process. While that sounds dry and technical, it’s actually a monumental shift: the House of Representatives has not operated under regular order for over 15 years. Instead, the rules have been treated as suggestions, and bills have been moved along the various points of the process at the discretion of House leadership. That has made it extremely difficult for average Americans to understand where in the process a bill is. Many of the concessions Kevin McCarthy made to win the speakership involved restoring those rules.
  4. One last major change on Capitol Hill is that the public can now reenter both the House and Senate office buildings without an escort or prior appointment. This is how business operated on the Hill for decades until COVID-19—and then January 6 happened. Since then, Congressional offices have been all but inaccessible to their constituents. But no longer; the people’s house is being returned to the people.

Clearly, we aren’t looking at a recipe for a highly efficient Congress. But with the changes that have already been made, we can count on more debate, a more transparent process, and therefore more opportunity for the average citizen to be informed and engaged in the legislative process. That is a great recipe for homeschool freedom.