Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told HuffPost he’s waging a pressure campaign on Republicans to strip a disturbing provision from Trump’s tax bill that would gut the judiciary’s power to enforce court orders.
Schumer said he already knows some Senate Republicans are “very uncomfortable” with the provision, as they should be: the language tucked into the House GOP’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill would restrict the ability of courts to enforce their decisions through contempt of court findings. This is aimed at helping Trump and members of his administration, who are already ignoring court orders in his dangerous moment for American democracy.
In effect, this provision, which seems blatantly unconstitutional, would allow Trump to operate as a king, enabling him to ignore laws and do whatever he wants. House Republicans all voted for it last month when they passed Trump’s tax bill, and now it heads to the Senate.
Schumer said he and other Democrats plan to keep calling attention to this provision, with the goal of encouraging Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to quietly strip it from the bill before Senate Republicans even release their version of it. If he doesn’t, Schumer said Democrats will subject the provision to the so-called “Byrd rule,” meaning they’ll have the Senate parliamentarian rule on whether it is relevant to budget matters, which it has to be in order to stay in the bill. It seems incredibly irrelevant.
Schumer is feeling pretty good about Democrats’ chances of yanking this one out.
“We are going to use every procedural tool we can to kill it,” he said. “This is a naked attempt to shield members of the Trump administration from court orders.”