The U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 309 on September 14, 2026. The bill — formally titled the National Law Enforcement Officers Remembrance, Support, and Community Outreach Act — would authorize $6 million in annual grant funding for the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF) over seven fiscal years. Rep. Troy Nehls (TX-22) introduced the House version. Sen. Thom Tillis (NC) introduced the companion measure, S. 3719, in the Senate. As of publication, the legislation sits in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, where it has not yet been scheduled for a vote.
What the NLEOMF Is and Why the Funding Gap Matters
Congress established the NLEOMF as a nonprofit organization in 1984. The organization manages two distinct assets: the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and the National Law Enforcement Museum. Both facilities serve active officers, retirees, families of fallen officers, and the general public. Despite being established by Congress, the NLEOMF does not currently receive ongoing operating appropriations from the federal government. That distinguishes it from most federally affiliated museums, which draw on annual congressional appropriations to cover operations. H.R. 309 would not change that underlying structure — it would create a grant authorization, not a direct appropriation — but it would provide a defined funding stream across seven fiscal years if the Senate passes the bill and it is signed into law.
Officer Safety Data and Wellness Provisions
The grant funding designated by the bill carries specific conditions. According to the legislation, funds are explicitly allocated for officer safety and wellness initiatives. A central component is expanding the collection and analysis of line-of-duty fatality and injury data. Law enforcement agencies draw on that data to establish and refine best practices for officer safety, according to the bill's framework.
The timing of the legislation coincides with a sharp rise in officer assaults. The FBI's Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted report — known as LEOKA — found that the officer assault rate reached a 10-year high in 2025. Agencies reported 90,178 officer assaults that year, a rate of 13.8 assaults per 100 officers. That figure, drawn from the FBI's own report, frames the urgency that bill supporters have attached to expanding injury and fatality data infrastructure at the NLEOMF.
Better data collection at the national level, proponents argue, gives individual agencies a clearer statistical baseline for identifying risk patterns and adjusting tactics, training, or deployment. The bill does not mandate specific programmatic outcomes at the agency level but ties grant eligibility to these safety and wellness purposes.
Museum Access and Public Outreach Requirements
Beyond data and wellness work, H.R. 309 includes provisions governing museum access. The bill mandates free admission to the National Law Enforcement Museum for active officers, retired officers, and families of fallen officers. It also requires dedicated hours for public access to the museum — a provision that structures how the NLEOMF manages its facilities rather than leaving access policies entirely to the organization's discretion.
The legislation further directs grant funds toward public engagement initiatives. Expanding school partnerships is cited as one example. Those outreach programs are designed to give the public access to structured information about law enforcement, according to the bill's stated purposes. Supporters of the measure have argued that structured public engagement can help counter inaccurate information about police that circulates through news coverage and social media. The bill does not define standards for measuring that outcome or create any oversight mechanism tied to it, but the public engagement mandate is written into the grant's authorized uses.
What Happens Next
The bill's path forward depends entirely on the Senate. It currently sits in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. No hearing date or markup schedule has been announced. If the committee advances the bill and the full Senate passes it, the legislation would then go to the president for signature before any grant funding could flow to the NLEOMF.
The seven-year authorization window means agencies and the NLEOMF would have a defined, long-term funding horizon to plan officer safety programs and data initiatives — provided the bill clears the Senate. At $6 million per year across seven fiscal years, the total authorization amounts to $42 million. That funding would not be automatic; grant authorizations require separate appropriations action in most cases, meaning Congress would still need to fund the grants through the annual appropriations process even after passage.
For departments tracking officer safety resources at the national level, the LEOKA data showing 90,178 assaults in 2025 gives concrete weight to the case for expanded data collection infrastructure. Whether the Senate moves the bill before the end of the current session remains to be seen.
