Nina-Bytes: Reconciliation and a US Enabling Act

NinaIllingworth May 22, 2025May 23, 2025 austerity, authoritarianism, Big Beautiful Bill, blog, budget, CA4, capitalism, Christian nationalism, class war, courts, dictatorship, Donald Trump, El Salvador, FA1, fascism, GOP, Justice, labor class, law, Mike Johnson, MP6, Nina Illingworth, Nina-Bytes, oligarchy, Politics, reconciliation bill, Republican Party, Robert Reich, SCOTUS, US Congress, US Constitution

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Pulling the Pin

As I mentioned in a recent article, the chaos and willfully-induced carnage surrounding the Republican Party’s fight to pass its horrifying Trump-approved “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” has lead me to create a social media thread on my Fediverse blog exploring the myriad of ways it sucks for anyone who isn’t a rich fascist. In that thread I’ve pointed out that this odious piece of Frankenstein legislation is a nazi nesting doll of sociopathic theft and fuckery; there are literally so many things wrong with the GOP’s homicidal class war reconciliation bill that it’s hard to talk about them all individually, and observers are discovering new awful things about it all the time. For a pretty terrifying example of this phenomenon, we need look no further than the discovery of a hidden provision in the “Big Beautiful Bill” that will essentially unravel the US constitution, and at least temporarily grant Swine Emperor Trump the fascist dictatorship of his dreams.

No, I’m absolutely not being hyperbolic when I say that, and to prove the point I’d like to examine this late night blog post by former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who shared it literally hours before House Republicans rammed this murderous, fascist fuckery through to the Senate.

The hidden provision in the Big Ugly Bill that makes Trump king

The key thing to understand here is that the hyper-targeted provision Reich is talking about effectively obliterates the only real power federal judges have over Trump, in relation to multiple high-profile lawsuits and court orders stopping the regime from doing illegal, unconstitutional, fascist bullshit as we speak. Things like abducting and attempting to deport foreign anti-genocide student protestors, or kidnapping migrants and trafficking them to a torture prison in El Salvador, for example.

“Not if the Big Ugly Bill is enacted with the following provision, now hidden in the bill:

“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….”

“Translated: No federal court may enforce a contempt citation.

Obviously, courts need appropriated funds to do anything because Congress appropriates money to enable the courts to function. To require a security or bond to be given in civil proceedings seeking to stop alleged abuses by the federal government would effectively immunize such conduct from judicial review because those seeking such court orders generally don’t have the resources to post a bond.

Hence, with a stroke, the provision removes the judiciary’s capacity to hold officials in contempt.”

Okay, I want to make sure everyone understands what we’re talking about here. While the provision the fascist GOP has snuck into the reconciliation budget bill doesn’t specifically empower Trump to rule as a dictator, in enables it in practice and we have a metric fuck-ton of evidence that Downmarket Mussolini will use it to do so. This is an administration that’s already openly defying court orders, disingenuously interpreting decades-old legislation to grant the President unconstitutional powers, and publicly trying to dismantle judicial oversight of its again, illegal, fascist activities. Literally the only thing hemming the regime in right now, is the reality that the de facto immunity granted to the President by a disastrous 6-3 fascist high SCOTUS decision last summer, doesn’t extend to the rest of the regime. Trump’s minions and lawyers can be held in contempt and prosecuted for ignoring or violating court orders; in fact that’s currently a very real possibility in two separate and ongoing cases about the El Salvador migrant trafficking operation, which should tell you an awful lot about why House Republicans snuck this provision into the bill under the cover of darkness.

Unfortunately however, and as Reich notes, overpowering a couple of federal judges trying to stop the Trump regime from shredding the US Constitution isn’t even rock bottom for this fascist bullshit. The effective elimination of contempt citations would not only render the entire US judiciary impotent and merely advisory, but it would also render the legislative branch (so, Congress and the Senate) unable to curtail, punish, or even investigate executive branch activities, as the President could simply ignore that too without courts being able to hold the regime in contempt. In other words, there would no longer any restraints on the Trump administration except those their consciences provided, and given that these are unhinged genocidal Christian Nationalists, I’m gonna avoid betting on the better angels of their nature. These folks are fascists, and now, House Republicans would like to make Trump their dictator. There is no other way to interpret this provision, which makes it hard to understand why very few people in our mainstream discourse are bothering to raise alarm bells about this horrifying development. This bill cannot make it out of the GOP-controlled Senate, or there won’t be an America left to save anymore.

“With this single provision, in other words, Trump will have crowned himself king. No Congress and no court could stop him. Even if a future Congress were to try to stop him, it could not do so without the power of the courts to enforce their hearings, investigations, subpoenas, and laws.”

In the past I’ve written about the many ways we can observe the Trump administration trying to create a patchwork “Enabling Act” out of emergency powers, novel interpretations of decades-old legislation, and even the resurrection of rarely-invoked war powers to fight a wholly fictitious “invasion” by gangs. With the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in his pocket, the Swine Emperor might finally have the vehicle he needs to fully transform America into a fascist dictatorship. The plain truth here is that the Republican politicians who voted to ram this bill though Congress last night were already would-be thieves and murderers; this provision now makes them the willing architects of Trump’s Pork Reich. As I’ve said many times, the courts will not save us. Either we fight, or this nazi shit takes deeper root, and then heaven help us all.