New Republic - Right now, the only thing that’s preventing Donald Trump from going full dictator is the federal court system and our ability to challenge his unlawful, unconstitutional behavior in it. Republicans in the Senate think they have a fix for that, though....
The good news is that Senate Republicans have removed the provision in their Kill Medicaid to Pay for Tax Cuts for Billionaires (“big, beautiful bill”) legislation that would have prevented courts from being able to hold Trump’s people in contempt of court when they refuse to follow court orders.
The bad news is that they’ve replaced it with a provision in Section 70302 of the bill that will make it all but impossible for anybody—other than billionaires and giant corporations—to sue the Trump administration for dictatorial behavior (or anything else) in federal court.
This may have something to do with the fact that over 300 lawsuits have been filed against Trump and his goons, and federal courts have blocked Trump in at least 187 of them, as of this week. Trump has outright won only 7.1 percent of the cases where he or his administration have been sued.
The system Republican senators have inserted to keep you and me—and nonprofit public interest groups and blue-state governors—from suing Trump is pretty straightforward; instead of just filing the lawsuit and paying the typically small fees associated with those filings, you’ll now have to post a bond that could run into the millions or even billions of dollars before your filing can be accepted by the court.
Alicia Bannon, judiciary program director at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, told The San Francisco Chronicle: “If this language becomes law, it will be financially impossible for ordinary Americans to go to court to protect their rights, like trying to make sure they receive Social Security payments or are protected against unlawful deportation. Bonds for those orders could cost many millions of dollars.”
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