H.R. 4113: Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2025

H.R. 4113 is a reauthorization — its main job is to keep existing anti-trafficking programs alive and tune how they work. The headline money item: the Program to End Modern Slavery, whose authorization expired back in 2020, gets extended through 2029, with its grants required to be awarded competitively and run through the normal congressional notification process.

It also rewrites how the U.S. grades foreign governments. The old "special watch list" becomes the "Tier 2 watch list" throughout the law. A country lands there if its estimated victim count is very significant or climbing without matching action, or if it can't show growing efforts — more investigations, prosecutions, convictions, and victim assistance, plus less government complicity. Stay on that list more than two years straight after repeatedly meeting those triggers, and the country can be downgraded.

A separate piece targets foreign aid itself. The President would have to ensure U.S. assistance doesn't create conditions that fuel trafficking among people left vulnerable by natural or manmade disasters, and build protections into how programs are planned and carried out.

The bill also spells out what counts as "nonhumanitarian, nontrade-related foreign assistance" — the category that can be withheld from central governments that fall short of minimum anti-trafficking standards. That definition carves out narcotics and law enforcement aid, disaster relief, antiterrorism aid, health programs, Food for Peace, refugee and migration assistance, and certain nonprofit or international-organization programs. The President has to flag any additional exempted aid by October 1 each year.

Finally, the bill expands reporting. The annual Trafficking in Persons report would have to cover trafficking for organ removal, and a printed hard copy of that report would have to be available to the public. The office's director would formally report to the Secretary of State. On the money: $23,092,000 a year and another $111,000,000 a year are authorized for fiscal years 2025 through 2029, with the modern slavery program capped at $37,500,000 a year.