The House Education and Workforce Committee on Tuesday voted to advance a bill that seeks to reform the systemic bias within the federally funded Truman Scholarship Foundation, which awards leftwing students the scholarship over rightwing ones by a margin of 14 to 1.

The committee voted 19 to 13 to recommend to House leadership the “Truman Scholarship Clean House Act,” which would fire the foundation’s current leaders and install rules and new members to allow both Republicans and Democrats to choose the winners of the taxpayer-funded award.

“The time has come to clean house. Every student, conservative or liberal, should be given a fair chance to win this award,” said Rep. Randy Fine, a Florida Republican. “The bill will make sure all Americans have access to this program, not just those who engage in liberal advocacy.”

The act comes after annual research conducted by The College Fix found that of the 653 winners from 2015 to 2025, only 29 conservative recipients were identified compared to 397 liberals, based on their public bios, LinkedIn profiles, and social media accounts.

The Fix’s research also showed how the program is a leftwing talent pipeline, as it spawns Democratic and progressive careers over Republican and conservative ones by a margin of 35 to 1.

An American Enterprise Institute study from 2024 also found just six of 182 Truman Scholars between 2021 and 2023 leaned conservative.

GOP lawmakers cited the research as they voiced support for the bill.

“The bottom line is this has just become a program to train professional leftists, and if that’s the case, and we don’t have a reform like Rep. [Elise] Stefanik’s bill, then we just need to get rid of this altogether,” Rep. Bob Onder of Missouri said.

“My constituents’ tax dollars … do not want to be funding leftwing activists,” he said.

Democrats on the committee voiced objections to the bill, arguing it is unnecessary.

“This is just a power grab,” said Rep. Robert Scott, a Virginia Democrat, adding the bill would “weaponize a historically bipartisan program.”

And Democrat Rep. Lucy McBath of Georgia argued that the bill would divide Americans rather than bring them together, and that just because students support causes perceived as leftwing does not paint a picture of the entire person or their beliefs.

Each year, the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation provides $30,000 to about 50 students for graduate school in exchange for pledging three years of work in public service.

Stefanik’s bill proposes to fire the current board of directors and executive secretary and empower President Trump to name new directors with the advice and consent of the Senate.

To address bias against conservative candidates, the bill would require that interviewers who select Truman winners be approved by a supermajority of the board “to prevent highly biased individuals from serving as an interviewer,” states a summary of the bill.

It would also require “that no more than half of each board of interviewers who select Truman winners be from the same political party, to prevent interview panels from being dominated by one political party,” the summary states.

The legislation would also ban illegal immigrants from eligibility. Moreover, it would establish a code of conduct that scholarship applicants cannot be a felon, cannot have been suspended or expelled, and cannot have served as a leader of a student organization that has been suspended for misconduct.

MORE: Stefanik bill would reform Truman scholars program after years of bias against conservatives