If it’s happening in Georgia, you can bet it’s happening all over the country. Embedded bureaucrats are quietly rewriting the policies voters put in place.
Georgia’s Medicaid program exists to serve the state’s most vulnerable — low-income children and foster youth, pregnant women, and disabled adults. It was never meant to be a vehicle for radical politics. But recent revelations about how the state awarded multibillion-dollar Medicaid contracts show exactly how far left-wing ideologues inside government agencies will go to push their agenda.
When the bureaucracy pushes a progressive agenda behind closed doors, the public has no choice but to push back. Loudly. Clearly. Immediately.
Internal documents reveal that senior staff at Georgia’s Department of Community Health inserted ideological land mines into the bidding process for companies seeking to serve more than 1 million Medicaid recipients — most of them children. This included a scenario question focused on how insurers would treat a hypothetical “fourteen (14) year-old, transgender White female (assigned male sex at birth but identifies as a female).”
Responses that didn’t align with leftist orthodoxy were penalized. In other words, companies lost points unless they promised to steer kids toward hormone therapy — despite state laws banning gender reassignment procedures for minors. That isn’t just dishonest. It’s a direct subversion of the law.
Just this year, Georgia’s legislature passed bills barring men from girls’ sports and locker rooms. But inside the state’s Medicaid agency, officials rewarded insurers for endorsing gender transitions for minors. One winning bidder justified its position by claiming such treatments “could come up in the future.” Never mind that they’re illegal in Georgia.
One losing insurer offered to connect the hypothetical child with a range of community resources, including faith-based organizations. That response was met with scorn. A state official actually complained that faith-based groups shouldn’t have been included — because they weren’t mentioned in the scenario.
Never mind that faith-based organizations have served Medicaid populations for decades. They often provide the only consistent care in struggling communities. But for these bureaucrats, churches and people of faith pose a bigger danger to kids than radical gender ideology.
This is no small issue. Georgia expects to spend $4.5 billion next year on Medicaid and PeachCare, the program for uninsured kids. That makes this one of the largest contracts in state history — and leftist staffers nearly hijacked the entire process.
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Lawmakers have a duty to step in now. During the last session, they considered a bill that would have barred ideologically charged questions from state procurements. It didn’t pass. That needs to change.
There’s still time. The Medicaid contracts haven’t been finalized. Legislators must act. They should demand a full rebid, remove these radical questions, and ensure that reviewers score responses based on biology, patient welfare, and fiscal responsibility — not on whether companies genuflect to left-wing doctrine.
Georgia’s leadership has worked hard to uphold conservative values and protect taxpayer dollars. But as we’ve seen in Washington, unelected bureaucrats can — and will — undermine that progress if no one stops them.
When the bureaucracy pushes a progressive agenda behind closed doors, the public has no choice but to push back. Loudly. Clearly. Immediately. We must call it out, correct course, and pass the kind of reforms that ensure this never happens again.
Last year, as millions of Americans were preparing to celebrate the Resurrection, President Biden took the opportunity to add a new holy day to the national calendar.
March 31, 2024 — previously known as “Easter” — would now double as the “Transgender Day of Visibility,” Biden’s proclamation declared. (This was a separate event from the Transgender Day of Remembrance, which fell on November 20.) “Today, we send a message to all transgender Americans,” the president wrote. “You are loved. You are heard. You are understood. You belong.”
One year later, as Christians gathered again to celebrate one of Christianity’s most holy holidays, a new president issued a very different proclamation.
“During this sacred week, we acknowledge that the glory of Easter Sunday cannot come without the sacrifice Jesus Christ made on the cross,” President Trump wrote. “In His final hours on Earth, Christ willingly endured excruciating pain, torture, and execution on the cross out of a deep and abiding love for all His creation. Through His suffering, we have redemption. Through His death, we are forgiven of our sins. Through His Resurrection, we have hope of eternal life.”
What a difference one year can make.
The Trump administration’s commemoration of this Holy Week didn’t just strike a contrast with Biden. President Trump has taken Easter more seriously than any other president in modern American history. That’s a good thing. Easter is the holiest day on the Christian calendar, “celebrating the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ — the living Son of God who conquered death, freed us from sin, and unlocked the gates of Heaven for all of humanity,” as the president’s proclamation put it.
This is not a radical idea. Nor is it some boutique left-wing micro-holiday, dreamed up five minutes ago in a sociology classroom.
Even more broadly, Easter is deeply rooted in the traditions and folkways of the American nation itself. Some 80% of Americans celebrate this holiday — a larger number than the nearly two-thirds of Americans who identify as Christian.
Last week, I introduced legislation that would establish Easter Monday as a federal holiday. This is long overdue. Easter Monday is already recognized as a public holiday in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and most of Western Europe. The United States is one of the only nations in the West that doesn’t formally recognize it as such.
My bill, which I was proud to introduce with Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.V.), would fix that, giving millions of Americans the chance to more fully celebrate the defining moment of the faith that shaped our nation.
This simple addition to the federal holiday calendar is pro-faith, pro-family, and pro-worker. March and April are the only back-to-back months without an official federal holiday. A federal holiday would add a three-day weekend to the two-month stretch from Presidents' Day to Memorial Day, providing American workers and families a much-needed opportunity to gather and relax.
At the same time, it comes with its own economic benefits. Easter weekend already generates around $15 billion for our economy. A three-day weekend could boost that by an estimated 10% to 15%, adding up to $2 billion in economic activity.
This is not a radical idea. Nor is it some boutique left-wing micro-holiday, dreamed up five minutes ago in a sociology classroom, commemorating “Trans Visibility” or “Indigenous Day of Mourning.” It is a federal recognition of a tradition that is inextricably linked to our way of life itself — a tradition that already unites more than three-quarters of Americans.
For generations, many American school calendars gave students the day off for both Good Friday and Easter Monday. We already have a “National Day of Prayer,” signed into law by Missouri’s own President Harry Truman. A federal Easter Monday holiday would go a step farther, allowing Americans to celebrate one of the most extraordinary days in world history: Easter — the day of Christ’s Resurrection.
Our holidays and traditions are part of the story we tell about ourselves. This is not a partisan idea. Easter is not a “Republican” or “Democrat” holiday. Easter is an American holiday. It’s time our federal calendar recognized it as such.
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