Praying for Our Leaders in Government
Executive Branch: Pray for the President and his Administration
The Department of Homeland Security will make an additional 200,000 H-2B seasonal guest-worker visas available to employers ahead of the winter hiring season, to accommodate special employment needs at hotels, ski resorts, and also landscaping.
The Environmental Protection Agency said it will put $1 billion in funds from the recently signed bipartisan infrastructure bill to address the backlog of hazardous clean-up sites. Those sites exist in 17 states and Puerto Rico and span nearly all geographic regions of the country.
Pray for Cabinet Secretaries and the heads of government agencies and their decision-making for the new year.
Legislative Branch: Pray for Senators and Representatives in Congress
Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina said that President Biden’s spending package could put private childcare centers out of business. He stated the Build Back Better Act “intentionally shrinks the supply of providers by killing off faith-based providers, small family childcare homes, kinship care. So not only do we have a skyrocketing cost of $13,000 in additional cost for childcare, we’re also reducing the supply of childcare that exists in the country.”
Representative Jeff Duncan of South Carolina introduced a bill to stop federal funding for cities that allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. His bill follows companion legislation from Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who introduced the measure in the Senate. “Voting in the U.S. is a right reserved for American citizens,” Congressman Duncan said.
Pray for members of Congress as they may face a more “piece-meal” approach to the Build Back Better program in January, and for Senators as they consider HR-1 on federalizing elections.
Judicial Branch: Pray for Supreme Court Justices and Federal Judges
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear appeals in a landmark case involving jurisdiction over tribal land in Oklahoma and whether the state should have concurrent jurisdiction in cases that involve non-native Americans committing crimes against Native Americans on reservation land.
A federal judge dismissed a request by former President Donald Trump to keep his tax returns from a House of Representatives Committee. He said the former president was “wrong on the law” in seeking to block the House Ways and Means Committee from obtaining the returns. The former president says he will appeal that ruling.
Pray for wisdom for the courts as they consider cases that appear to involve just one person but which could create a wider impact or set precedent.
