Congress funds clean ships and bans robot ships for ten years.
H.R. 9454 — Next Generation Shipping Act · Filed by Nanette Barragán (D-CA) · 7 cosponsors · Introduced Jun 25, 2026 · Referred to committee
Your members of Congress
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What it does
The bill sets up a $10 billion program from 2027 to 2036. It pays for ships that use clean fuel or produce zero pollution. It also pays for places to charge and fuel these ships. The bill says the government cannot spend money on ships with no crew. The program must hire workers through union agreements and train maritime workers.
Who it affects
Ship companies, ports, and maritime workers benefit from the program. Union workers are protected because the bill bans funding for crewless ships.
One thing to notice
The bill stops the government from paying for ships with no crew. This protects maritime jobs but may cost more money than using robot ships.
From the analysis of the bill text, linked under Primary records below.
Where it stands
7 cosponsors: 7 Democrats.
- Jun 25, 2026 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Jun 25, 2026 — Referred to House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology · Congress.gov: “Referred to the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, and in addition to the Committee on…”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
1 groups reported lobbying about this bill. They filed 1 reports from Jun 2026 to Jun 2026.
Those reports show $0 in lobbying spending. Each report lists about 3 bills. So that money was not all for this bill.
More groups named this bill than 0% of bills with any report.
Nanette Barragán, who sponsored the bill, received $687,800 from PACs for the 2026 election.
- Island Institute — $0 in 1 report
Lobbying is legal. These reports show who lobbied about this bill, not what changed.
Words to know
- clean fuel — Fuel that causes less pollution than regular ship fuel.
- zero pollution — Ships that produce no pollution when they run.
- crewless ships — Ships run by machines or computers with no people on board.
- union agreements — Deals between companies and worker groups about pay and working rules.
- lobbying — Trying to influence lawmakers about a bill. Companies and groups pay people to do this.
- PACs — Groups that collect money and give it to candidates for office.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the full bill text on Jul 2, 2026; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 14,707 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Jun 2026 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 17, 2026 · page rendered 2026-09-23.
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