Jimmy Stewart’s character in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington ends up fainting on the Senate floor after winning a battle for what’s right.

But his character may have had it easier than Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who waged a years-long fight in both chambers of Congress to revive and expand the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) – which, as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill, will now provide aid to today’s continued victims of WWII and Cold War era nuclear weapon production and waste storage.

The aid program was inexplicably allowed to expire a year ago, despite Hawley’s managing to get it approved twice by the Senate – and even getting it slipped into a defense bill before it was stripped out.

Along the way, Hawley had endless arm-twisting meetings in both the Senate and House, as well as press calls and press conferences that included victims with heartbreaking tales of dying loved ones and chronic cancers.

We tend to think of the Manhattan Project atomic bombmaking as being decades in the past. But thanks to faulty storage of radioactive waste over the years – including in the St. Louis region – people are still getting sick today.

One such victim, Zoey, had a mass removed from her ovary several years ago, but the St. Louis-area native later had to return to the doctor because she was in so much pain.

She’s only 5 years old.

And that mass they removed from her ovary? She was but 3 weeks old at the time.

“I’m going to make my colleagues face it,” Hawley told The Heartlander in an early 2024 interview with The Heartlander. “I’m going to be a real pest on this. I mean, as long as it takes I’m going to be making people vote, forcing this through, until we get it across the president’s desk. That’s what needs to happen here. I’m confident that we will get this enacted and I’m here for it as long as it takes.”

RECA is born again with President Trump’s signature on the Big Beautiful Bill.

Not only is the 1990 aid program revived after going dark for a year, but it’s also been expanded to include Missouri victims and those in other states for the first time.

“The federal government dumped nuclear waste in the backyards of Missourians for decades – and then lied about it,” Hawley said in a press release last month. “These survivors sacrificed their health for our national security at the advent of the Manhattan Project, and their children and grandchildren have borne the burden of radioactive-linked illness for generations since.

“Reviving RECA means acknowledging the debts we owe these good Americans and delivering them the justice and overdue compensation they deserve.”

Hawley added in an X post Thursday: “To all the radiation survivors and nuclear veterans across the country: WE DID IT. Today, we have prevailed. Your country thanks you and honors your sacrifice. #MAHA.”

“HUGE WIN for Missouri – after 5 decades, survivors of nuclear radiation will FINALLY be compensated by the government that poisoned them,” he added in another post.