One Big Beautiful Bill

Early this morning the House passed Trump’s budget which he calls the “One Big Beautiful Bill”. It was close vote, 215 to 214, and passed despite opposition from two Republican factions – one opposed because it cuts too much from Medicaid; the other because it doesn’t cut enough. It now goes to the Senate where it may not be as easy.

This is the continuation of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts which he made a major campaign promise. It is partially balanced with cuts to government services including (despite Trump's assurances that it would not) to Medicare and Medicaid. There are many things wrong about this bill:

·         It adds several $ trillion to the national debt

·        The tax cuts overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy

·        It cuts Medicare by $500 billion

·        More than 8 million Americans will lose Medicaid benefit

    ·        It cuts $300 billion from SNAP (food stamps) program

    ·        It slows the switch to renewable energy by eliminating subsidies

But these aren’t the worst part of the bill. Hidden inside is a harmless looking clause that will make Trump’s administration untouchable.

“No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c), whether issued prior to, on, or subsequent to the date of enactment of this section.”

It looks benign but what it means is that the courts lose their only power to enforce their rulings. U C Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky wrote May 19 in Just Security: “[This] provision in the proposed spending bill would restrict the authority of federal courts to hold government officials in contempt when they violate court orders. Without the contempt power, judicial orders are meaningless and can be ignored.”

Cherimensky was the first to warn about this clause in the budget bill on Monday. Thom Hartmann picked up on it Tuesday (where I first saw it) and on Wednesday Heather Cox Richardson and Robert Reich wrote about it in their substacks.

As I mentioned above, the bill passed the House with this clause intact early this morning. It remains to be seen whether the Senate will do anything about it. They could rule that this clause is not about spending so does not belong in this bill. If The Senate does not strike the clause and it becomes law, Chemerinsky writes “the courts should declare it unconstitutional as violating separation of powers.”

Good luck with that!

So what’s the deal about security? The rule in question requires judges in certain circumstances to set a bond. Chemerinksy writes:

Rule 65(c) says that judges may issue a preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining order “only if the movant gives security in an amount that the court considers proper to pay the costs and damages sustained by any party found to have been wrongfully enjoined or restrained.” But federal courts understandably rarely require that a bond be posted by those who are restraining unconstitutional federal, state, or local government actions.

Courts can set the bond at zero or a small manageable sum. That might work for future court rulings but the wording of the clause in this bill refers to enforcement and applies to all existing judicial orders, making them essentially unenforceable.

For anyone following the news, there is no mystery of why the Republicans would like this to become law. Much of what Trump and his regime have been doing is not only illegal but unconstitutional. As a result they have been losing most of the court cases trying to prevent their worst abuses. The regime’s evading and stalling tactics have been eroding the patience of the judges, several of whom are very close to charging government officials with contempt. This clause would protect them from such contempt charges and allow them to continue their destruction of America with impunity.

Sources

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/why-the-one-big-beautiful-bill-is

https://www.justsecurity.org/113529/terrible-idea-contempt-court/

https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-final-checkmate-republicans-move-7a2

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-21-2025

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-hidden-provision-in-the-big-ugly