Congress has passed the ACT for ALS Reauthorization Act, the bill Tanea Brooks, known to AEW fans as Rebel, asked wrestling fans to support.
The Senate passed the House version of the bill, H.R. 8205, on Monday, September 28, completing congressional action. The bill now goes to the President to be signed into law.
Gail Kim credited Brooks and the wrestling community in a post on X on Tuesday.
“You guys!! You all helped to make this happen. @RebelTanea you have truly been an inspiration and have made a real difference. Look at what you’ve helped achieve in such a short amount of time with incredible support of the Wrestling community!” Kim wrote.
Brooks was diagnosed with ALS earlier this year and revealed it publicly in May. She became an ambassador for I AM ALS, a patient-led advocacy group, in June, and has used her platform to push for the bill’s reauthorization. Earlier this month, she asked wrestling fans to sign an I AM ALS petition that was delivered to Congress, warning that lawmakers might push the vote to the end of the year or later.
“Renewing it will secure another $500 million for ALS research and treatment access,” Brooks wrote at the time. “ALS deserves your support, and needs it now. We can’t afford to wait.”
The original ACT for ALS, short for Accelerating Access to Critical Therapies for ALS, became law in December 2021 and was set to expire on September 30. The House passed H.R. 8205 in July, and the Senate passed its own version in August. The two versions had not been reconciled until the Senate took up the House bill on Monday.
I AM ALS said on its website that it submitted more than 20,000 signatures to Congress demanding the reauthorization. The organization celebrated on X, saying the bill passed “with ONE DAY to spare” and thanking supporters for their emails, calls, meetings and petition signatures.
According to the Congress.gov summary, the bill extends the ACT for ALS programs through fiscal year 2031. That includes National Institutes of Health grants for research on investigational drugs for ALS patients who are not eligible for clinical trials, Food and Drug Administration grants for research into treatments for ALS and other neurodegenerative diseases, and a public-private partnership between the FDA and NIH that supports the development and review of those treatments. The FDA must also publish a five-year plan on how it will support the development of ALS drugs and access to investigational drugs.
The Les Turner ALS Foundation pointed to programs built under the original law, including the ALS Knowledge Portal, the ALL ALS Consortium and the FDA’s Rare Neurodegenerative Disease Grants Program, as work that will now continue.
In the House, the bill was introduced by Rep. Mike Quigley and Rep. Ken Calvert. The Senate version was introduced by Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Sen. Chris Coons.
More information on ACT for ALS and ways to support I AM ALS are available at iamals.org.
