By Dr. Mark Creech
Return America
A little more than a week ago, North Carolina lawmakers reconvened for a couple of days. Although various piecemeal actions were taken on the budget, the House and Senate have yet to agree on resolving their differences. Without a final budget, the legislature has attempted to pass “mini-budgets” or stopgap spending measures to fund critical or high-priority areas such as Medicaid, health programs, and disaster relief while overall negotiations continue. The central sticking point between the two chambers is over issues such as tax cuts, teacher pay levels, the scope of spending cuts or reallocations, and how to fund vacant positions. Because of this delay, many proposed pay raises, new program expansions, and other spending changes are on hold until a final budget agreement can be reached.
Lawmakers are slated to reconvene on October 20, 2025.
In the meantime, state legislators moved several bills that many Christian patriots would consider significant. Return America actively supported two of these measures, while the others were carefully monitored.
Let’s examine six bills whose provisions are especially relevant to Christian who ground their political convictions in biblical truth.
“Iryna’s Law” was written after the recent brutal murder of a young Ukrainian woman, Iryna Zarutska, on a Charlotte light rail train. The bill makes North Carolina tougher on violent criminals by ending cashless bail, forcing judges to look at an offender’s past record before release, and requiring stricter rules like bonds, house arrest, or electronic monitoring for repeat offenders. It also requires mental health evaluations for violent defendants with a history of mental illness, and it speeds up death penalty appeals so that capital punishment, stalled in North Carolina for nearly 20 years, can actually be carried out again. The bill makes public transportation crimes even more serious. The initiative is meant to stop dangerous people from slipping through loopholes and hurting others again.
HB 307 passed both chambers and was sent to the Governor on September 23, 2025. The Governor had 10 days to either sign or veto a measure. Governor Josh Sein signed the bill into law on October 3, 2025.
Return America actively supported this legislation and communicated with lawmakers as recently as October 2, 2025. You can read the communication sent here: History, Justice, and the Duty of NC Lawmakers.
This was another huge win for Return America!
HB 192 – Defund Planned Parenthood & Cost Transparency.
Any bill related to the practice of abortion should be a top-tier concern for Christians. A bill aiming to defund Planned Parenthood strongly resonates with pro-life convictions.
The first part of the measure deals directly with Planned Parenthood. It requires the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services to remove Planned Parenthood and all of its related organizations from the state’s Medicaid program. This means Planned Parenthood can no longer get Medicaid money for services in North Carolina. The bill also ends any contracts Medicaid might have had with Planned Parenthood and tells the state to find other medical providers to take over the care that Planned Parenthood used to provide for low-income patients. In short, the law cuts off taxpayer-funded Medicaid dollars from going to Planned Parenthood in North Carolina.
The second part of the bill deals with hospitals and surgical centers, adding new rules to make hospital and surgical center billing fair and transparent for patients.
Return America actively supported the passage of HB 192. It passed the Senate and was sent to the House, where it now resides in the House Rules Committee for later consideration.
HB 87 – Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA).
Christian families often want the ability to send their children to Christian schools or homeschool with less financial burden. School choice is a significant issue for those who see Christian education as vital.
HB 87 allows North Carolina to join a federal program that gives people tax credits when they donate to scholarship organizations. Those groups then use the money to provide scholarships that help families cover private school or homeschooling costs. For Christian families, this means more financial support to choose an education that reflects their values and faith rather than being limited to the public school system. The bill also requires the state to publish a list of approved scholarship groups so donors know their contributions qualify.
This legislation passed both chambers in July of this year, but Governor Josh Stein vetoed it. He argued that the measure would divert billions of dollars away from public schools. He believes this would “hollow out public schools” instead of strengthening them.
Conservatives argue that school choice programs help low- and middle-income families the most. Moreover, for many Christian conservatives, this is ultimately about protecting the right to raise children with moral and biblical values. Public schools are increasingly shaped by unacceptable secular and progressive ideologies.
HB 87 was scheduled for a veto override on September 22. However, apparently, there weren’t enough votes present in the chamber to secure an override. So, the bill was withdrawn from the calendar and sent to the House Rules Committee.
HB 87 has been calendared for a veto override in the House on October 20, 2025.
HB 171, SB 227, and SB 588 aim to eliminate the use of “DEI” (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs in North Carolina’s government and schools.
HB 171 – Equality in State Agencies/Prohibition on DEI. This bill focuses on state agencies and prohibits them from using DEI policies in hiring, training, or operations. DEI promotes progressive ideologies on race, gender, and sexuality that run contrary to a biblical view of humanity and justice. This bill is seen as a way to keep government functions neutral and free from political or ideological agendas.
SB 227 – Eliminating DEI in Public Education, eliminates DEI in K-12 public education, while SB 558 – Eliminating “DEI” in Public Higher Ed, applies to eliminating DEI from higher education (universities and community colleges). Together with HB 171, these bills ban DEI offices and programs across K-12 and higher education in North Carolina.
For many Christian parents, this is especially significant because they see DEI as a vehicle for indoctrinating children with unbiblical ideas about identity, morality, and truth. By removing DEI from public schools, the bill protects children and young adults from being pressured into accepting ideologies undermining their family’s faith and values.
Together, these bills represent a broad push to roll back DEI across government and education, ensuring that taxpayer dollars aren’t used to advance agendas that faithful Christians believe contradict biblical principles.
Governor Josh Stein vetoed these three bills in July. The Governor argued that DEI is necessary for fairness, effectiveness, and freedom while portraying these bills as divisive, censoring, and damaging to education and government.
Unfortunately, the Governor defends an ideology that injects politics into our schools and agencies. At the same time, conservatives believe true fairness means protecting students, employees, and taxpayers from divisive agendas that undercut biblical truth and equal opportunity.
All three bills have been calendared for a veto override in the House on October 20, 2025.
