Praying for Our Leaders in Government
Executive Branch: Pray for the President and his Administration
The Securities and Exchange Commission is taking steps toward setting requirements for public companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions and the physical risks they face from climate change. They recently finished accepting public input on the issue and could propose a disclosure framework before the end of the year. Business groups are pointing to the high costs involved, especially disadvantaging smaller companies and deterring their growth.
Lina Khan, chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission, is promoting the significant loosening of the limits and expansion of the powers of the agency. She wants authority to include economic factors beyond the consumer welfare standard provided for in a 2015 policy regarding regulating “unfair methods of competition” under Section 5 of the FTC Act, such as corporate concentration and income inequality.
Pray for administration officials as they attempt to remedy social ills through regulatory measures.
Legislative Branch: Pray for Senators and Representatives in Congress
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell intimated that attaching a larger reconciliation package to a bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan would kill both bills. He has urged President Biden, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to abandon that notion.
Representative Devin Nunes and other minority members of the House Intelligence Committee are investigating China’s efforts to manipulate and coerce American businesses. They warn that Beijing has launched a “campaign of malign influence across a wide range of U.S. economic sectors.”
Pray for leaders in Congress dealing with controversial and divisive measures.
Judicial Branch: Pray for Supreme Court Justices and Federal Judges
The Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to a Virginia appeals court decision allowing students to use school bathrooms according to their gender identity rather than biological sex. The order not to hear the challenge was not signed, but Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas added that they would have heard it.
The Supreme Court in an 8-1 decision ruled in favor of a high school cheerleader who had “sworn a blue streak” after being rejected for the varsity squad, saying that her speech was protected. In his majority opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer declared, “it might be tempting to dismiss B.L.’s words as unworthy of the robust First Amendment protections… but sometimes it is necessary to protect the superfluous in order to preserve the necessary.”
Pray for the Supreme Court justices as they hand down decisions that will have significant influence over America’s schoolchildren.
