Senate GOP Strips Provision From Tax Bill That Would Let Trump Rule As A King

WASHINGTON – Senate Republicans have quietly removed a provision from the House GOP’s massive tax-and-spending bill that would have allowed President Donald Trump to circumvent the courts and essentially serve as a king.

Late Thursday, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released the panel’s proposed text for the GOP’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill. The House passed its version of the bill last month, so now the Senate is making its changes. Each committee is tasked with putting together language for its relevant section in the legislation.

The text that Grassley released for the bill’s judicial section doesn’t include this jarring, one-sentence provision that House Republicans buried in their 1,116-page bill:

Translated, this provision would restrict the ability of any court, including the Supreme Court, to enforce compliance with its orders by holding people in contempt. Contempt citations are an essential tool for the courts; they allow judges to threaten fines, sanctions or even jail if people disobey their orders. The provision in the House GOP’s bill also would apply retroactively to all temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions, leaving courts with no real way of enforcing orders they’ve already handed down.

Among those orders? The 184 court rulings that have temporarily halted unlawful actions taken by the Trump administration. And Trump has already been ignoring orders from judges to stop deporting migrants without giving them due process.

Every House Republican voted for this provision when they voted to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Even if they didn’t know it.

Senate Democrats had been pressuring their GOP colleagues to take this language out of the bill when they unveiled their version of it. Not only does this provision appear to violate the constitutional separation of powers, it also violates Senate rules. Republicans are relying on a fast-track legislative process known as budget reconciliation to move the bill, which means everything in it must be related to budget matters. Restricting judges’ abilities to hand down contempt orders has nothing to do with budgets. 

Senate Republicans almost certainly knew this when they stripped it from the bill. Leaving it in could lead to problems for passing the broader bill, which is Trump’s signature domestic policy legislation ― a package that slashes nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid and food assistance programs to pay for a massive tax cut for rich people.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told HuffPost last week that he knew some GOP senators were “very uncomfortable” with this contempt provision, and said Democrats planned to use every procedural tool possible to remove it.

“This is a naked attempt to shield members of the Trump administration from court orders,” Schumer said.