Tech bills of the week: Improving maternal health; Expanding access for disabled Americans; and more

Tech for maternal health

On Wednesday, Reps. Nikema Williams, D-Ga., Lauren Underwood, D-Ill., Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, and David Joyce, R-Ohio, teamed up to introduce a bill that aims to leverage the benefits of telehealth systems to improve maternal health outcomes.

The Tech to Save Moms Act, which has companion legislation in the Senate, is based on previous recommendations from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to improve remote patient monitoring by offering virtual training and capacity building models to support better virtual healthcare for expecting mothers.

“Too many moms die when basic healthcare is inaccessible for them,” Williams said in the press release. “Moms in Georgia — especially Black moms — know how hard it can be to get the care we need. It’s partly to blame for Georgia having the worst maternal mortality crisis in the country. The Tech to Save Moms Act will take an important step to put healthcare technology within reach for moms and moms to be, helping the entire family spend more time together.”

In addition to having CMS expand telehealth services, the bill would authorize funding for tech-enabled collaborative learning and training for maternity care providers in underserved locations. The bill also establishes a grant program to help develop digital tools designed to improve maternal health outcomes for these regions and commission a comprehensive study on the intersection of technology in maternal care to see where it can benefit. 

Expanding tech access for disabled Americans

House and Senate lawmakers reintroduced legislation on Thursday that would update federal law to provide people with disabilities expanded access to video and communication capabilities. 

The measure — championed by Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., and Reps. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa. — would update the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, which brought accessibility laws up-to-date with advances in technology and communications. Markey was the author of the initial measure, which was signed into law by then-President Barack Obama in October 2010.

The reintroduced proposal seeks to expand the 2010 law by enhancing disabled Americans’ access to emergency services, improving access to video conferencing platforms and updating standards and requirements for closed captioning and audio description on streaming services and devices. 

The lawmakers said in a press release that their measure would also empower the Federal Communications Commission “to ensure accessibility regulations keep pace with emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence and virtual reality platforms.”

In a statement, Markey said the bill “would modernize our digital accessibility rules to ensure that the technologies Americans use to work, learn, get health care, and stay safe are equally accessible to everyone.”

Improving IRS customer service 

Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Bill Cassidy, R-La., reintroduced legislation on April 15 — Tax Day — to require the IRS to create more accessible customer experience platforms for taxpayers.

The measure, which the pair of senators previously introduced in October 2024, would direct the tax agency to establish a dashboard that includes information on processing backlogs and wait times to connect on the phone with an IRS staffer. The bill, in part, also calls for the IRS to expand “electronic access to information and refunds,” as well as “callback technology and online accounts.”

The Trump administration has moved to slash the IRS workforce, including pushing out some 28,000 agency personnel since President Donald Trump was sworn in last January. The administration’s fiscal year 2027 budget, which was released earlier this month, proposes cutting an additional 4,000 staffers and relying on new technology to make up for the workforce reductions. 

“Taxpayers shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to get basic answers from the IRS — and in the last year, those challenges have only gotten worse,” Warner said in a statement. “I am glad to reintroduce this bipartisan legislation on Tax Day to ease some of this frustration by increasing clear communication and making IRS resources more readily available.”

Cracking down on high-income tax dodgers

A group of senators also introduced a bill on Tax Day that seeks to appropriate funds for the IRS “to overhaul technology and strengthen enforcement” as part of a push to crack down on high-income tax dodgers. 

The proposal —The Stop Cheaters Act — is led by Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, and is co-sponsored by 27 Senate Democrats and one independent. 

The lawmakers said in a press release that their measure would provide the tax agency with more than $83 billion in mandatory funds through FY31, “reversing both the rescissions to IRA funding and discretionary spending cuts to the IRS budget.” This would include $25.4 billion for technology and operation support efforts “to overhaul outdated technology and increase the agency’s capacity to detect fraud and noncompliance.”

For every one dollar invested by the federal government under the proposal, the bill’s backers said the measure would raise $13 in revenue.

“As Congress seeks ways to fund much-needed policy priorities and address our growing national debt, there is one common sense solution that should have unanimous bipartisan support: let’s enforce the tax laws already on the books,” King said in a statement. “Our legislation will make sure the IRS has the resources it needs to confront the gap between taxes owed and taxes paid — while ensuring that our tax enforcement professionals are focused on the high-income earners who account for the most tax evasion.”

Modernizing tech to enhance oversight of financial institutions

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers are sponsoring legislation that would require federal agencies that regulate banks and credit unions to assess their technology capabilities. Reps. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., and Bill Foster, D-Ill., are positioning their measure — the FUTURES Act — as a way to enhance the safety and security of the U.S. financial system.

The bill calls for regulatory agencies with oversight of financial institutions to conduct technology assessments to “identify current deficiencies and areas for improvement, including technology plans, procurement practices, workforce impacts, and information intake and analysis.”

Within 18 months of these reviews, the covered agencies would be directed to submit reports to the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee that include “findings, evaluations, and plans for upgrading technology systems and addressing anticipated challenges.”

“To perform the necessary oversight of financial systems our constituents demand, modernization of the regulation technology used is essential,” Stutzman said in a statement. “New threats to our financial institutions arise daily, and Congress must be proactive in our approach to stopping them.”

Leveraging biometrics to keep bad actors from entering the U.S.

Reps. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, reintroduced a measure on Monday that would codify the Department of Homeland Security’s Biometric Identification Transnational Migration Alert Program, or BITMAP. 

The lawmakers said in a press release that the program “authorizes the U.S. government to provide foreign partners with the technical equipment and specialized training necessary to collect biometric and biographic data from individuals using illegal travel pathways, ensuring high-threat individuals are identified before they reach U.S. ports of entry.”

Cuellar said passage of the proposal would help U.S. border security and immigration agents “identify dangerous individuals earlier, expand collaboration with regional partners, and strengthen congressional oversight through firm reporting requirements on partner agreements and program outcomes.”

Protecting AI intellectual property

Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., wants to protect U.S. tech intellectual property with legislation prohibiting adversarial nations from accessing closed-source artificial intelligence models. 

The Deterring American AI Model Theft Act of 2026 was introduced on Wednesday and focuses on protecting proprietary AI model information — such as model weights and general model access — from countries of concern like China and Russia.