Military school can set up a group to pay for sports.
S. 3266 — USMMA Athletics Act of 2026 · Filed by Roger Wicker (R-MS) · 1 cosponsor · Introduced Nov 20, 2025 · Passed chamber
Your members of Congress
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What it does
The bill lets the Secretary of Transportation start a group. This group is owned by the government. It can use the school's name and logo to make money. It can make deals with sports groups and take gifts. All the money pays for sports teams and hiring players.
Who it affects
The United States Merchant Marine Academy's sports teams will get money this way. Sports groups that want to help the school can now make deals.
One thing to notice
The Secretary picks which groups can help the school. The bill does not say what rules the Secretary must follow. The group can make deals without normal bidding rules.
From the analysis of the bill text, linked under Primary records below.
Where it stands
1 cosponsor: 1 Democrats.
- Nov 20, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Nov 20, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation”
- Feb 12, 2026 — Reported out of committee · Congress.gov: “Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of…”
- Aug 6, 2026 — Passed the Senate · Congress.gov: “Passed Senate with an amendment by Unanimous Consent. (consideration: CR S4492-4493; text: CR S4492-4493)”
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 2 reports from Dec 2025 to Jun 2026.
Those reports show $40,000 in lobbying spending. Each report lists about 4 bills. So that money was not all for this bill.
More groups named this bill than 0% of bills with any report.
Roger Wicker, who sponsored the bill, received $125,200 from PACs for the 2026 election.
- U.S. Merchant Marine Academy Alumni Association & Foundation, Inc. — $40,000 in 2 reports
Lobbying is legal. These reports show who lobbied about this bill, not what changed.
Words to know
- Secretary of Transportation — The head of the U.S. department that runs transportation.
- 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.
- sponsored — To sponsor a bill is to introduce it in Congress and put your name on it.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (10,443 characters) on Jul 25, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,778 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 Dec 2025 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 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-11-01.
“Military school can set up a group to pay for sports.” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/s3266/simple Report an error
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