The Daughters of the American Revolution is a private women's group founded in 1890. It has about 175,000 members in 3,000 chapters. To join, you have to prove by bloodline that an ancestor of yours helped the American side in the Revolutionary War.

It is a genealogy club. It runs historic preservation projects, hands out scholarships, and puts up plaques.

In June, its members held a vote about who gets to be in it. Then two Alabama congressmen decided the members got it wrong, and asked Congress to fix it.

The members already decided — and it wasn't close

On June 27, 2026, delegates at the DAR's 135th Continental Congress in Washington voted on a proposal to bar transgender women from the organization.

They rejected it, 1,481 to 984.

That's about 60% of the delegates voting to keep the group open. These are the DAR's own dues-paying members — women who traced their own bloodlines back to the 1770s to get in. Nobody made them vote that way. There was no court order, no federal mandate, no lawsuit. They talked it over at their own convention and they took a side.

Even the people on the losing end of that vote said so out loud. Laura McDonald, treasurer of one chapter that backed the ban, put it plainly afterward: "I do believe the will of the assembly was heard today."

That's what a private organization governing itself looks like.

Two weeks later, Congress got involved

On Wednesday, July 15, Rep. Ben Cline of Virginia introduced the Daughters of the American Revolution Membership Integrity Act. It would amend the DAR's federal charter to write a membership rule into law — one the members had just voted down.

Twenty Republicans signed on as cosponsors. Two of them were Gary Palmer of Hoover and Robert Aderholt of Haleyville.

Palmer put out a statement on Friday explaining why:

"It should be common sense that to be a part of the Daughters of the American Revolution, you have to be a daughter. Unfortunately, common sense has become a casualty of the left's radical agenda."

He went further:

"Congress will not allow radical activists to erase womanhood from one of our nation's oldest patriotic organizations."

Read that sentence again, because the word doing the work is Congress.

The "radical activists" he's describing are 1,481 members of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The thing he says Congress "will not allow" is the outcome of their vote. Palmer is not defending the DAR from outsiders. He is proposing that the federal government override the DAR's own membership, at the request of the faction that lost.

Cline was equally direct about the goal, saying his bill "amends the DAR's congressional charter to ensure biological men cannot become members." According to Cline's office, the dispute traces back to a nondiscrimination provision the organization adopted in 2024, which DAR leadership reads as barring chapters from rejecting applicants for being transgender.

The bill hasn't had a committee vote yet.

What small government means, apparently

Both of these men run on getting Washington out of people's lives.

This is a bill to have Washington rewrite the bylaws of a private women's club, because the club's members voted the wrong way. It is the federal government reaching into a volunteer genealogy society to settle an internal argument about paperwork.

There's no crisis here. Nobody is being defrauded. No public money is at stake. No Alabamian's life gets better or worse depending on the DAR's membership roster. The only thing that changes is that a group of women who voted one way get overruled by a group of congressmen who weren't in the room.

And Cline's own reasoning gives away how thin the ground is: he says the organization has "departed from those founding principles by embracing a radical, leftist gender ideology." The "radical, leftist" body in question is the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Meanwhile, back in Alabama

Here's what Palmer and Aderholt could be spending a week on instead.

In Palmer's district, an estimated 19,869 people in AL-06 are projected to lose health coverage because of the cuts he voted for — 18,200 losing Affordable Care Act coverage and 1,669 losing Medicaid, according to the Joint Economic Committee. Another 22,024 households in AL-06 rely on SNAP to buy groceries, including 12,136 with children and 6,774 with a senior over 60.

In Aderholt's district it's worse. An estimated 23,527 people in AL-04 are projected to lose health coverage — and he chairs the House subcommittee that writes the health funding bill. North Alabama leans hard on food assistance: 36,500 households in AL-04 are on SNAP, about 13% of every household in the district, including 17,377 with kids and 12,922 with a senior.

Those are the people who would show up at a town hall to ask about it. Which is part of why neither man holds one.

Palmer has called constituents who come to ask questions "paid agitators" — "These are not constituents, most of them." He offers Pastries with Palmer instead: a coffee chat, not a public forum where everyone hears the question and the answer.

Aderholt hasn't held a public in-person town hall in years. When constituents in Northport organized their own in March 2025 and left an empty chair for him, he didn't come. He says he prefers "one-on-one" meetings at his district offices — private, one voter at a time.

So the pattern is: no public forum for the 23,527 people losing their health insurance, but a press release and a cosponsorship for a membership dispute inside a 175,000-member heritage club.

The tell

Palmer said Congress "will not allow radical activists to erase womanhood."

Nothing was erased. A private organization held a vote, counted the ballots, and 1,481 of its own members chose to keep their group as it is. The losing side went to Washington. Two Alabama congressmen picked up the phone.

If you're a working family in Hoover or Haleyville watching your grocery bill and your insurance premium climb, this is where your representative's attention went in July.

Source

Reporting by Sawyer Knowles for Yellowhammer News, July 20, 2026. Photo: Yellowhammer News.