Ranking Member Raskin Urges Senate Republicans to Remove Courts Provision in House Republicans’ ‘Disgusting Abomination’ Bill
Washington, D.C. (June 4, 2025)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, issued the following statement urging Senate Republicans to drop the obscure provision to strip the courts of their inherent power in the House Republican-passed reconciliation package:
“Senate Republicans must remove from their proposed budget reconciliation bill Section 70302, a blatantly unconstitutional measure that allows the Administration to defy court orders by purporting to strip courts of their inherent power to hold to account anyone—including government officials—who defies court orders.
“This provision specifically targets lawsuits against the government—and other suits that serve the public interest. It threatens all past, pending, and future court orders against the Trump Administration—and any future Administration. It essentially gives Trump and his allies license to defy federal judges without consequence. In courtrooms across America, Americans abide by court orders every day, or face contempt findings, yet Congressional Republicans want to force courts to give government officials a special royal treatment.
“As President Trump confronts loss after loss in court, he has begun to chafe under the courts’ authority to administer justice. Congressional Republicans, responding to the Trump Administration’s public attacks on the legitimacy of federal courts, have decided to throw the Constitution and the rule of law out the window. This provision would shackle federal courts’ ability to hold Trump Administration officials in contempt in cases challenging President Trump’s unconstitutional actions. These cases include challenges to the Trump Administration’s blatant abuses of emergency powers to deport people to foreign torture prisons without due process or impose reckless on-again, off-again tariffs against every country in the world, and its outrageous violation of Congress’s legislative and spending authority that threatens medical research, weather forecasting, wildfire prevention, and air traffic control.
“This provision specifically targets cases that serve the public interest, especially cases against the government, where judges do not require bonds prior to issuing an injunction. For more than six decades, federal courts have made clear that it is within a judge’s discretion to determine the amount of an injunction bond or to require no bond at all. Federal courts routinely waive the bond requirement in public interest cases against the government. What bond could a court reasonably require in a case involving the citizenship rights of every child born in America? As a result, hundreds of previous court orders and injunctions could suddenly be rendered unenforceable.
“During the House Judiciary Committee’s markup of the reconciliation bill, Republicans rejected our amendment that would strike this dangerous and unnecessary provision from the bill. Again, at the House Rules Committee, Republicans blocked an amendment that would have removed this provision from the bill, and seemed surprised to learn about the expansive scope of the provision under questioning from Members of the Rules Committee.
“I urge Senate Republicans to do their jobs, defend the Constitution, stop enabling and encouraging the President’s unlawful actions, and stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law. A good place to start would be striking this unconstitutional and ugly provision from an already very ugly bill.”
Background
Congressional Republicans inserted a provision into their so-called “One Big Beautiful” budget bill that targets federal courts’ ability to hold Trump Administration officials in contempt for violating court orders. Section 70302, which would retroactively apply to pending cases against the Trump Administration, would prohibit a federal court from enforcing a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order unless the court required the moving party to provide a bond pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c), a discretionary rule that federal courts have declined to apply in cases filed against the Trump Administration. According to Common Cause, as of March 2025, “46 federal court judges have issued temporary orders that halt the firing of civil servants and the Elon Musk-run Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) access to sensitive government data. They have also issued orders to block the relocation of transgender women inmates to men’s prisons, the pursuit of immigrants inside houses of worship, and the freezing of about $3 trillion in federal funding to states.”