In the wake of an explosive government report revealing that the largest banks in the U.S. disproportionately canceled banking services for dozens of conservative and Christian organizations during the Biden years, outcry is growing for increased government oversight and regulations to ensure Americans are no longer refused basic financial services for exercising First Amendment-protected religious freedom and free speech rights.

The report, released on Wednesday by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), examined the nation’s nine largest banks, finding that all nine had policies that denied or limited the “access to financial services to Americans because of their political or religious beliefs or lawful business activities” between 2020 and September 2025. The report noted that a number of banks cited the Biden administration’s policies disfavoring the firearms industry and private prisons as reasons for suspending banking services to such clients.

Lawmakers like Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) are expressing deep concerns over the report’s findings. “[W]e can talk a lot about other issues in this election, but we are really in danger of losing what the United States of America is,” he emphasized during “Washington Watch” Thursday. “Because if we have federal regulators, in essence, threatening banks, browbeating banks into saying we are not going to do business with conservative organizations, including mainstream things like gun manufacturers or drilling for oil, that’s a really scary place we’re going in America. And it is the definition of totalitarianism. We use the totality of power of the government to force people to behave and say the things the government wants said.”

Steve Curtis knows firsthand what it’s like to have your bank force you out with little warning. As international director and acting Asia Regional Director for Timothy Two Project International, which provides underprivileged pastors from around the world with formal theological training, he described what happened to his organization in 2020.

“We had a banking relationship with Bank of America, and everything had gone well,” he recounted during “Washington Watch” Thursday. “In fact, we had just recently been bumped up a tier to the preferred customer level because we had flawless transactions. … [Then] we get a letter in November of 2020 [saying] they’ve decided not to do business with organizations like ours, and they didn’t give any reason about that. And they said in 21 days, all the cards are going to be turned off [as well as] the accounts [and asked] us where to send a certified check. … And we had people all around the world that were depending on using these cards for their own expenses [and] to fund the workshops that we conduct around the world. So it really caught us off guard.”

Curtis further explained how the debanking adversely affected his ministry. “[A] lot of our people around the world travel to these workshops, and they do so in difficult conditions. They might travel through the mountains or through the bush of Africa to get to the place where the workshop is going to be held. And there were times when our people on the field couldn’t pull the money out of the bank to be able to conduct those workshops.”

What particularly perplexed Curtis about Bank of America’s actions was that his ministry was not involved in political activities. “What we do is as innocuous as it can get. … We’re not even really engaged in evangelism because we’re equipping the pastors who are engaged in their areas. So we’re not doing anything that would be on anybody’s radar unless they were targeting us because of our position as a faith-based organization. We don’t even publish anything political. … It’s strictly about God’s word, and that’s all we’re concerned with.”

David Zervos, who serves as counselor in the Office of the Secretary of the Treasury, says that the extent of the rot in the U.S. financial system is deep after the Treasury Department combed through almost two-thirds of the U.S. banking system and over 100,000 complaints. “A lot of the targeting was done under the veil of ESG or DEI or BLM or one of those acronyms that had been so aggressively pushed during the Biden administration against their foes,” he observed during “This Week on Capitol Hill” over the weekend. “And so, this is a bombshell report.”

Zervos went on to note that Biden administration officials used the threat of “reputational risk” to pressure financial institutions to debank conservatives. “[Their] reputation [was something] that they were nervous about … would cause them to be under a microscope by the folks in the Biden administration,” he described. “Activities that might raise red flags for those that were in power during that period [were] things related to climate or diversity, equity, and inclusion and the like. So that gave them a blanket to really just sweep up a lot of folks, [causing them] enormous trouble managing their finances, not just their personal finances, but their business finances as well.”

For victims like Steve Curtis, the time is now for the current administration to push on the accelerator to implement regulations prohibiting debanking, just as some states have already done. “I think they’re doing the right thing by pushing for regulation of this and removing the reputational risk standards that the banks were using. That’s really the crux of the matter. And Idaho, Tennessee, [and] South Carolina [have] already enacted policies that would move in that direction. I think every state needs to do that as well.”

Rep. Grothman also pointed out that legislation is currently being considered in Congress, but it will need bipartisan support to succeed. “[I’m] co-sponsoring bills with several congressmen and we hope those bills will move. But the problem we have is we have to have the Democrats on board. I think the Republicans will be on board on this, but as long as you have that 60 [vote] rule in the Senate, you’re not going to have legislation preventing this unless we get some Democrats on board. And they should be on board because this has already been used against liberal organizations as well.”

As for the Treasury Department and other financial agencies, Zervos underscored that the debanking issue has their full attention. “[For] the folks here at Treasury and the rest of the financial regulators like the SEC, the FDIC, the CFTC — this is a huge priority. The report is a first start, and the continuation is going to happen over the next few years and hopefully many more years to come as we continue to hold on to the power base that we built and stop the power base from abusing it.”