In the summer of 2025, President Donald Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” became law. It originated in the U.S. House of Representatives, was modified and passed by the U.S. Senate, and signed by the president on July 4.
This massive legislation — totaling near 1,000 pages — used a complicated congressional procedure known as “budget reconciliation” to allow the Senate to pass it with fewer votes than would normally be required, and without bipartisan support.
Most attention on this budget bill centered around issues like the tax code, Medicaid and immigration. However, there was a lot more originally hidden in the reconciliation proposal, including two provisions Campaign Legal Center (CLC) identified that would have severely harmed voters and threatened the rule of law.
Thankfully, due in large part to CLC’s advocacy, these two provisions were removed from the final text of the bill before it became law. Read on to learn more about the successful defeat of these anti-democracy provisions.
An Attack on the Judicial Branch
The first of these outrageous policies would have severely restricted federal courts’ authority to hold government officials in contempt if they violate judicial orders.
A court’s ability to hold bad actors in contempt is a vital enforcement power that judges can use to compel compliance with their rulings.
When somebody chooses to violate a court order, the judge who issued the ruling has a few different options to force them to comply, including holding them in contempt and issuing sanctions, fines, or even jail time until the order is followed.
But the House’s original reconciliation bill would have required anyone suing the government to pay a bond — essentially a fee — before the court could use its contempt power to enforce injunctions or restraining orders meant to halt illegal actions.
Even worse, this provision would have applied retroactively and rendered thousands of prior orders across the country immediately unenforceable through contempt proceedings, no matter how the public has already relied on them.
By restricting courts’ authority, the House bill threatened the power of the judicial branch. On its own, that represented an attack on the rule of law and the separation of powers that underlies our democracy. But in the context of the political moment, a more specific goal was unfortunately clear.
If enacted, this proposal could have helped the Trump administration try to evade nearly 200 judicial rulings that have already halted its activities, including a preliminary injunction sought by CLC that halted Trump’s unconstitutional attempt to change the rules for federal elections.
In response to many of these rulings, the president has resisted compliance and waged intimidation campaigns targeting the judges responsible. And in light of all this, the House bill seemed squarely and unacceptably focused on shielding the Trump administration from accountability when it breaks the law.
After the reconciliation bill passed the House, the Senate revised it. The updated text appeared to respond to criticism from CLC and the public, as it removed the language that would have retroactively undermined existing court decisions. However, the Senate’s proposed changes could have made it even harder for future cases to hold government officials accountable.
Specifically, the modified provision would have required anyone suing the government to pay a bond before they could secure judicial orders halting illegal actions, and that bond would have had to match the government’s claimed losses.
Depending on the case, this could be millions or billions of dollars.
Under this policy, everyday Americans would have inevitably faced major financial barriers to justice, discouraging lawsuits and effectively insulating the government from most legal challenges.
As CLC and our partners adamantly opposed this provision, the Senate parliamentarian ultimately ruled that it violated congressional rules and could not be included in reconciliation legislation. This decision accurately recognized how this dangerous policy change had nothing to do with the federal budget.
Thankfully, sounding the alarm on this anti-democracy provision was successful. CLC urged senators to respect the parliamentarian’s decision, and lawmakers ultimately left all versions of this proposal out of the final bill.
The defeat of this provision is a victory for the rule of law. No government official, including the president, should be able to simply ignore court rulings that find their actions illegal or unconstitutional. Our democracy itself depends on it.
A Potential Flood of False Information in Elections
The second problematic provision would have imposed a 10-year ban on the enforcement of all state and local laws that regulate artificial intelligence (AI), including rules for AI’s use in political campaigns and elections.
Currently, more than 20 states have already enacted laws to address election misinformation and manipulation made easy by new AI tools. These laws are meant to address real challenges for our democracy, like fake content that misleads voters about the candidates or issues on their ballot.
As the technology develops, the public has already seen how AI can be used to depict events that never actually happened, discourage participation in elections, and even create false admissions of election interference.
To protect voters from these harms, CLC and others have called on Congress to pass strong legislation regulating AI’s use in our democratic process. However, Congress has so far failed to act.
In that void, states across the country have stepped up and enacted safeguards, such as prohibiting AI from being used to intentionally deceive voters and requiring disclaimers that inform the public when election ads use content manipulated or generated with AI.
Originally, the House reconciliation bill would have imposed an outright ban on the enforcement of state and local AI regulations. In the face of pushback from CLC, as well as other advocates and elected officials across the political spectrum, the Senate repeatedly watered down this proposal.
First, the Senate would have tied existing funding for broadband infrastructure to compliance with Congress’s ban on regulating AI. In other words, states would have needed to choose between enforcing their AI laws or getting federal support to connect their residents to the internet.
Because all 50 states receive this funding, the effect of the revised provision would have been the same: a nationwide freeze on the regulation of AI.
A subsequent version of this proposal would have conditioned new federal funding for broadband infrastructure on states agreeing not to enforce their AI regulations for 5 years. However, unresolved ambiguities in the legislation likely would have rendered this a false choice, while giving big tech companies new avenues for freezing regulations through lengthy court battles.
As a result, CLC and our partners continued opposing this policy. And in another win for democracy, we ultimately helped push the Senate to vote 99-1 on an amendment that removed all versions of this provision from the final legislation.
Simply put: If the reconciliation package had been allowed to override state AI laws, Congress not only would have failed in its own duty to regulate this technology, but actively infringed on states’ rights to protect their own constituents.
A 10-year ban on enforcing AI laws across the country would have meant a decade of false information that undermines voters’ right to make informed decisions. It would have been more than misguided; it would have been outright dangerous for the future of truth and trust in our elections.
The successful defeat of this provision does not mean Congress is off the hook, and lawmakers should still pass federal safeguards to protect voters from the risks of AI. In the meanwhile, states can at least continue stepping up their own laws to secure our elections.
The Passage of “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”
On May 22, the House passed its version of the reconciliation bill in a vote of 215-214. On July 1, the Senate adopted final amendments and passed its revised legislation 51-50, including a tiebreaking vote cast by Vice President JD Vance. The House then passed this updated bill on July 3, and President Trump signed it into law on July 4.
Following the Senate’s passage of the reconciliation bill, CLC’s President Trevor Potter released a statement about our work to help defeat these two anti-democracy provisions. In it, he vowed that CLC will continue opposing these policies and similar threats if they ever reappear in future bills.
American democracy is already facing unprecedented challenges. The rule of law is under attack, while public confidence in our elected leaders and government institutions continues to falter. If Congress had enacted these two provisions buried in the budget bill, the situation would have only gotten worse.
A crisis averted is not the end. Learn more about CLC’s success in defeating these two provisions, and support our work to advance democracy through law.
