# Investigation: H.R. 9495 Sec. 8155 — Title VIII, Section 8155 HR 9495 — 119-hr-9495-rh · 119th Congress Evidence boundary 2026-08-24 · Call 4 of the record Terrain: blocked · 83% confidence Part of [FY27 appropriations riders: what survives?](https://prism.vote/record/fy27-rider-survival.md) ## Screening · Staff Read Terrain: blocked · 85% confidence This provision prohibits federal funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and for Critical Race Theory-related activities. The terrain is blocked: fifteen near-identical provisions appear in the analyzed corpus and none was enacted, including multiple 118th Congress bills that died in Congress and 119th Congress bills still pending. This funding-restriction design has repeatedly failed to pass despite repeated introductions. ## Observation · Brief This exact combined text, barring funds for DEI initiatives, training, and offices and for anything promoting Critical Race Theory, turns out to be reintroduced almost verbatim across seven FY26 House appropriations bills this Congress (Military Construction-VA among them) and appeared repeatedly across FY24 and FY25 House bills. None of the fifteen closest matches in the analyzed corpus was enacted as written. But there is a critical split in the record: a narrower, CRT-only version of this rider, dropping the "DEI initiatives, training, programs, offices, officers, policies" clause entirely and keeping only the "promotes or advances Critical Race Theory" language, did make it into law through PL 118-42 (the FY24 Consolidated Appropriations Act, carrying Military Construction-VA). The floor record explains the split. Rep. Kaptur's floor remarks on the FY24 and FY25 Energy-Water bills describe the House markup explicitly adding "a provision that prohibits funds for any diversity, equity, and inclusion office, program, or training" as a separate rider from the CRT-only provision, confirming these are treated as two distinct asks even when drafted into one sentence. The Statement of Administration Policy trail for H.R. 4366 (which became PL 118-42) shows the arc directly: the initial House-passed version drew a strong-opposition SAP with a veto threat that explicitly objected to language "preventing the Administration from promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion." The Senate amendment that followed drew strong support instead, and the SAP on the final enacted text praised the fact that "hundreds of poison pill provisions ... were rejected," with no DEI objection remaining. The broad DEI clause got negotiated out; the narrower CRT-only clause survived into law. ## Insight · Brief That 2023-24 precedent was set under divided government (a Biden White House, a Republican House, a Democratic Senate). The DEI clause was the casualty of bicameral negotiation; the veto threat was lifted once the Senate amendment removed it. The current setup differs in one respect (unified Republican control removes one point of friction), but the operative constraint has not moved: full-year appropriations bills still need 60 votes in the Senate, and Senate Democrats have shown willingness to force exactly this trade. They accept the narrower, more defensible CRT-only prohibition while stripping the broader "DEI initiatives, training, programs, offices, officers, policies" language, which reads to them as reaching lawful personnel and civil-rights-compliance functions, well beyond curriculum content. On the working assumption for this cycle (a continuing resolution through December 4, with any full-year deal struck in a four-corners negotiation), this rider's realistic path is the one it took in the 118th: survive only in trimmed form, with the CRT-only fragment as the ceiling of what conference will accept. The broad combined text as drafted repeats the same reach that got stripped last time, with no drafting change that would avoid that outcome. ## Observation · Brief This exact rider text ("None of the funds... may be made available for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, training, programs, offices, officers, policies... or any concept associated with Critical Race Theory") has been introduced verbatim, session after session, across at least seven House appropriations vehicles in the 119th Congress alone, and traces back through a near-identical CRT-only predecessor clause used across a dozen 118th Congress appropriations bills. For the one match that sat in a bill that eventually became law (a Military Construction-VA title carried into the FY24 Consolidated Appropriations Act, PL 118-42), the enrolled text at that same section number had been replaced entirely with a grazing-permit extension. The CRT/DEI rider itself did not survive conference; the bill became law, but this cargo was stripped out before that happened. ## Observation · Brief Floor debate on this rider across the Energy-Water and Interior-Environment bills for FY24 and FY25 shows a consistent partisan pattern. Republican sponsors (Norman, Oglees, Brecheen, Miller) offer or defend narrower agency-specific DEI-defunding amendments with strongly ideological framing ("radical DEI agenda," "wokeism"), while Democrats (Kaptur, McCollum) call them "harmful riders" that block bipartisan advancement and cite them as a reason the underlying bill cannot attract the Democratic votes needed for Senate passage or conference. No Statement of Administration Policy is on record for this bill or its closest siblings (H.R. 4121, H.R. 4213). SAPs are typically issued only nearer floor votes on vehicles likely to reach the President, which is itself informative given how far these riders have traveled without one. ## Insight · Brief The record shows this is no one-off. The rider is a redraft chain carried across seven separate 119th Congress vehicles (Military Construction-VA, Interior, Labor-HHS, Homeland, and others), with wording tightened over time (one variant broadens to "this or any other Act," extending the funding bar beyond the single bill). That persistence signals the rider is cheap for the House majority to keep attaching: zero cost, one-line text, no administrative lift. But the pattern across two full Congresses is uniform. Introduced repeatedly, debated on the floor as a partisan flashpoint, and never observed to cross into enacted text. The one case where the host bill did become law is the clearest evidence available: the rider was excised at the conference or enrollment stage while unrelated content took its section slot. That is stronger and more specific evidence than a count of bills that died in committee, because it shows the mechanism by which this kind of rider gets removed even when its vehicle succeeds. ## Observation · Brief On the statutory mechanics: this rider names no specific U.S. Code section to amend. It operates as a pure appropriations bar layered on top of existing statutory mandates for equity-related programs (HBCU, tribal college, and minority-serving institution funding under 42 U.S.C. § 19181 and related Title 20 minority-institution and language-training provisions). Because "diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives" and "any concept associated with Critical Race Theory" are undefined terms, agencies implementing the rider would face real interpretive uncertainty about which existing, otherwise-mandated programs fall inside its scope. That vagueness problem compounds the political friction already visible in floor debate. ## Synthesis · Brief The provision text, mechanism, and cost profile are essentially unchanged from a rider that has now been reintroduced across more than fifteen House appropriations bills spanning two Congresses. In the single instance where its host bill reached the President's desk, the rider itself was removed at the conference or enrollment stage: the section number it occupied in the House-passed text carried entirely different, unrelated content (a grazing rule) by the time the bill became law. Floor debate confirms this is a live and recurring partisan flashpoint. Republican sponsors offer it as ideological messaging, and Democratic members explicitly cite it as one of the 'harmful riders' that keeps the underlying bill from attracting the votes needed to clear the Senate or survive conference intact. No Statement of Administration Policy has been logged on this bill or its nearest siblings, consistent with a rider that dies before reaching the stage where the administration weighs in. On the statutory side, the rider names no specific U.S. Code section, uses undefined terms ('DEI initiatives,' 'any concept associated with Critical Race Theory'), and sits on top of existing statutory mandates for minority-institution and equity-related programs (HBCU, tribal college, and minority-serving institution funding among them). That vagueness and interpretive-conflict problem gives Senate negotiators an additional, substantive reason beyond partisan optics to strip it in conference. ### Viable paths 1. **Ride a must-pass omnibus/consolidated appropriations vehicle and hope conferees leave it in** - Mechanism: House majority attaches the rider in committee/floor amendment to an appropriations title; it travels with the bill into conference. - Evidence: The rider's closest documented instance of a host bill becoming law (MilCon-VA title folded into the FY24 Consolidated Appropriations Act, PL 118-42) shows exactly this path attempted. But the rider's own section was stripped and replaced with unrelated text (a grazing-permit extension) by the time the bill was enrolled. - Tradeoff: This is the only route that has ever gotten the rider's host bill to enactment, but the rider itself has never been observed to survive that route intact. It functions as a bargaining chip Republicans concede in negotiations with Senate Democrats rather than as durable policy. - Example sections: 118-hr-4366-eh-IV.sec-415, 118-hr-4366-enr-E.IV.sec-415 2. **Stay in House-passed text as a messaging marker without expectation of enactment** - Mechanism: Sponsors reintroduce the identical clause across every relevant appropriations bill each cycle regardless of prior fate, using it to stake out a floor position ahead of conference rather than to legislate. - Evidence: Seven near-identical instances of this text appear across 119th Congress vehicles alone (MilCon-VA, Interior-Environment, Labor-HHS-adjacent, Homeland, and others), each carried forward essentially unchanged from bill to bill within the same Congress. - Tradeoff: Zero cost, easy to attach, keeps the issue alive politically, but produces no persistence in law, a pattern more consistent with a recurring floor position than an actual near-term policy path. - Example sections: 119-hr-4121-rh-VII.sec-755, 119-hr-4213-rh-V.sec-546, 119-hr-9260-rh-V.sec-535, 119-hr-9310-rh-V.sec-545 Terrain: blocked · 83% confidence Path forward: The only route with any historical traction is riding a full-year appropriations vehicle through conference, and even there the rider did not survive into enacted text in the one clean example available. Absent a change in Senate composition or Senate leadership's posture toward this category of policy rider, the terrain for enactment of this specific text remains closed regardless of which vehicle carries it. A continuing resolution without a full-year conference process offers even less opportunity: CRs typically hold policy riders like this to prior-year status quo rather than adding new ones. --- Canonical: https://prism.vote/investigations/08bb8c08-804f-4ade-866e-212ff83acf01