Dem Senate Parliamentarian Delivers a Death Blow to Trump's Goal of Reining in Rogue Judges

Matt Vespa | June 24, 2025 2:00 PM

President Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ is being chipped away. Most provisions now require 60 votes after Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, a Harry Reid leech, decided to gut key portions of the bill. She applied the Byrd rule to almost everything, the move where the parliamentarian deems something ‘extraneous,’ and thus provides that procedural headache.

It’s no longer a 50-plus-one bill right now and is in danger of collapsing. The immigration enforcement measures, the Trump tax cuts, and reforms to social programs are now at risk. On top of that, the push to rein in rogue judges has been outright stripped from the legislation (via NBC News):

Senate Democrats forced the removal of a provision in Republicans' sweeping domestic policy bill that sought to restrict the power of courts to block federal government policies with injunctions or restraining orders.
Democrats are challenging a broad range of provisions in the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" for compliance with Senate budget rules that Republicans are relying on to bypass the 60-vote hurdle in the chamber to advance most legislation.
A Democratic aide on the Senate Budget Committee confirmed that Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, the in-house referee, ruled the provision did not comply with the “Byrd rule,” which says provisions must be directly related to taxes or spending.
Senate Republicans added the provision in the wake of a flurry of federal court rulings that have stymied President Donald Trump's domestic agenda since he took office, including by blocking some of his most aggressive uses of executive power in pursuing his hard-line immigration crackdown and downsizing of federal agencies.
[…]
The language added to the bill would have required anyone seeking an injunction to pay a fee that would be equal to "the costs and damages sustained by the federal government" if it were to ultimately win the case. On major national policies, that amount could be in the billions of dollars and would deter people from filing lawsuits, legal experts said.
Sen. Dick Durbin, of Illinois, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, described it in a statement as an attempt "to limit the ability of individuals and organizations to challenge lawless Trump Administration executive actions by putting those potential plaintiffs on the hook for millions of dollars."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., celebrated the decision to strike the provision.