- 6/5/2025
Senate Democrats held a press briefing on the Big Beautiful Bill on Thursday.
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00:00Okay, well, thank you all for coming, and to my great colleagues, great Judiciary Committee members, Durbin and White House and Hirono.
00:10So, we all know that Donald Trump sees himself as a king more than a president.
00:18Trump is not a king.
00:21The Republican so-called Big Beautiful Bill will effectively place a crown on Donald Trump's head.
00:29Buried deep in the Republican bill is a really nasty provision that would strip federal judges of one of their most critical powers, the ability to force their own rulings.
00:41In other words, Republicans want to codify into law Donald Trump's attacks on our judicial system.
00:50They want to gut our federal courts until they're utterly powerless.
00:54They want to buck the Constitution and bulldoze the rule of law.
00:58This is dangerous.
01:00It's reckless.
01:02It's un-American.
01:04And it isn't just a policy difference.
01:06This is an assault.
01:08An assault on the rule of law.
01:10An assault on the independence of the judiciary.
01:12And on the very checks and balances that have defined this country since its inception.
01:18So, today, I'm announcing that Democrats will fight with every tool we have to stop this provision from becoming law.
01:27This evil, un-American provision that flies in the total face, in the face of the Constitution completely.
01:35This provision, as I said, is one of the most direct assaults on the separation of powers in recent memory.
01:46It essentially hands the government officials, including Donald Trump, the license to ignore any ruling from a federal judge that they don't like.
01:59And it strips the courts of any power to hold people accountable if they violate court orders, including the Supreme Court.
02:08Shame on the House of Representatives putting this in, on the Republicans in the House of Representatives.
02:13Shame.
02:16This is so bad.
02:17It's beyond the pale.
02:21So, as we all know, one of the most essential things that the judiciary has, its ability to enforce its own orders.
02:30That's the authority we've given the judiciary.
02:33And this, this proposal would effectively render judicial rulings meaningless.
02:39Just words on paper, with no power to hold anyone accountable.
02:44Let's call it for what it is.
02:47It's the get out of jail free card for Donald Trump.
02:50This is the get out of jail free card for Donald Trump.
02:56Now, let's see here.
02:58This is also a death sentence for judicial independence in America.
03:09It's not democracy.
03:10It's authoritarianism.
03:13It's a move ripped right straight from a playbook of a dictator.
03:17And we all know Donald Trump is a would-be dictator.
03:20So, you have to ask yourself, why now?
03:24Why is he doing it now?
03:26Well, Donald Trump's losing in court over and over and over again.
03:31Our analysis showed that just in the last month, the Trump administration lost a whopping 97% of rulings in federal district courts.
03:39And this came from judges across the political spectrum.
03:43Many of them were Trump appointees or Bush appointees, including judges that Donald Trump appointed have ruled against him.
03:54It drives him crazy that the judges he appointed are actually following the law instead of following his whim, his wish, his desire to be a dictator.
04:04So, rather than respect these rulings, as any president before would have done, Trump and his allies want to rewrite the rules to make himself untouchable.
04:16And so, congressional Republicans, sadly, in a great tragic day for democracy, are trying to bend their knees and bend the Constitution and bail Donald Trump out by letting him ignore the courts and all these court rulings that have been against him.
04:34And listen to this one.
04:37One House Republican even admitted at a town hall meeting in his district that he didn't know this provision was in the bill when he voted for it.
04:46What about all the other Republicans who voted for it?
04:49Republicans in Congress have been happy to roll over and hand the keys of the House and Senate to Donald Trump and unelected billionaires like Elon Musk.
04:59And they're allowing them to run this country into the ground.
05:03They're allowed, they're allowed, they're allowing the whole sinew, the whole fabric of what America is all about to be ripped apart and upended in a way we have never, ever seen before.
05:16The Republicans in the House were so eager to rubber-stant Donald Trump's monstrosity of a bill that they didn't even read all of it.
05:26Or worse, some of them read it and then didn't care.
05:29Because protecting Trump matters more to them than protecting our democracy, than protecting the rule of law, than protecting the Constitution.
05:39Because whether it's Trump or Musk or any other corrupt official, Republicans are trying to create a world in which powerful people face no consequences, no matter what they do.
05:51That's not democracy. That's oligarchy.
05:55No one, not Donald Trump, not Elon Musk, not any crooked politician or billionaire, is above the law.
06:05And if Republicans think they can pull a fast one on the American people by slipping this provision into their bill, they've got another thing coming.
06:15So we Democrats are here to sound the alarm.
06:18We're united. We'll fight like hell using every tool in our toolbox to stop this provision from becoming law.
06:25Next is Senator Durbin. Let me just take all my papers here. Richard.
06:31I think you took the list of people speaking.
06:34Hmm? Yeah, I got it.
06:36You'll leave that?
06:38Yep. I'll leave it.
06:41Thanks, Chuck Schumer. I want to say a kind word about my colleagues from the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sheldon Whitehouse and Mazie Horano.
06:50Something interesting has happened in that committee in recent times.
06:54I've been on the committee long enough to have considered literally hundreds, if not thousands, of nominees.
07:01And I kind of know the line of questioning that will be asked of each of the nominee candidates.
07:06That's changed. It changed this year.
07:09The questions that are being asked are more fundamental to the Constitution.
07:13Basic questions like, do you believe the executive is bound by court orders?
07:19I wouldn't have thought to ask that in previous years, but I had to ask it this year.
07:23Because the question is whether or not, given a court order, Donald Trump or his administration will feel bound to follow it as a rule of law.
07:32The questions are asked and the answers are all over the park.
07:35The uncertainty of these nominees as to what the president would do when pushed to the limit where the court is saying to him, you have to stop doing this or you have to start doing this or you'll be found in contempt.
07:49Donald Trump doesn't like to lose. We know that.
07:51He said it over and over again.
07:53And he's been losing one court case after another because of his outrageous executive orders.
07:59Ninety-seven percent, according to Chuck Schumer, and I don't doubt it, have found against him in the courts and what he's been trying to do.
08:05And when he loses, what does he say about the judges?
08:08Lunatics!
08:09Communists!
08:11These people hate America!
08:13Even the judges that he appointed, for goodness sakes.
08:15He's turned on Leonard Leo, his patron for so many years, and called him a sleazebag.
08:21You can't keep up with this president when it comes to hurling these invectives.
08:25But there's one thing that they did, and they didn't want to make as public a show of it, and that's the provision we're talking about today.
08:32In a thousand-page bill on the budget, they put in a provision to try to make sure that in many cases, Donald Trump can't lose.
08:41How do they do this?
08:42Well, they say, rather, if you want to enforce a court order as a plaintiff, enforcing it, for example, a contempt citation, there has to be a security bond filed.
08:53Well, of course, what that means is if you didn't put the money up front when you filed the case, it comes to enforcement of the order, they're able to challenge it on this basis.
09:02This is another provision by the Trump administration to avoid responsibility, avoid accountability, avoid transparency, and avoid losing.
09:12Well, that's no surprise.
09:14But why is it important?
09:15It's important because it goes to the heart of the Constitution.
09:19Article III courts are the last recourse when it comes to challenging the executive branch, even the congressional branch.
09:26They have to have the power of the Constitution behind them to stand for their decisions and to make those decisions without fear or favor.
09:35If this provision is included in here, and I hope it won't be included, it's going to make it extremely difficult to enforce the law and force court orders.
09:44That's what it's all about.
09:45Trump doesn't want to lose, and he's been losing consistently.
09:48He hates these judges, but he can't remove them.
09:51They're in for life.
09:52And now he's decided to change the procedures of the court so that he can't be forced to enforce court orders.
09:59That is unacceptable, and it goes to the heart of our constitutional democracy.
10:03It's now my pleasure to introduce Judge Gertner.
10:06Yes.
10:07Nancy Gertner.
10:08She's a retired federal district judge and board member of the Democracy Defenders Fund.
10:14Welcome.
10:16Thank you for coming.
10:17I'll come back here.
10:17I want to say...
10:18The sign's not blowing away, so I can come back here.
10:21Unaccustomed as I am to speaking, which, of course, is not remotely true.
10:25I was a federal judge for 17 years.
10:29I was a judge at a very different time.
10:32I enforced a $100,000 damage award against the FBI.
10:37I ruled in favor of plaintiffs, and I ruled against the government, or I ruled in favor of the government.
10:43It depended on the case, and it depended on the context.
10:47I felt free to do that, the kind of freedom that this democracy gives to independent judges.
10:53If I were wrong, I would be appealed.
10:56If I were even wronger, if there's such a word, I would be appealed to the Supreme Court.
11:02That's the system.
11:03Why is Trump proposing?
11:05Why are the House Republicans proposing this bill now?
11:09It's not because the courts are not doing their job.
11:12It's not because of the comments about a nationwide injunction.
11:17This has nothing to do with nationwide injunctions.
11:19As has been discussed, this has everything to do with the stage that numbers of the cases against Trump are at.
11:27Judge Zinnis in Maryland, Judge Bozberg in D.C., Judge Murphy in Boston are on the cusp of contempt proceedings.
11:37They have ordered the government to do, to return Abrego Garcia.
11:41They've ordered the government not to deport people without due process.
11:45And they get dissembling, misrepresentations, ducking, and they are on the cusp of contempt.
11:55That's the reason why we're here.
11:57The judges, by the way, who have ruled against Trump, it has to be said over and over again.
12:03It doesn't matter what party who appointed you, what president appointed you.
12:07What Trump has been doing is so far from legal, that's the explanation for his losing record.
12:17So this comes at a time when numbers of cases, as I said, are on the cusp of contempt.
12:23The contempt power, as the Supreme Court said in 1924, is really essential to the judicial power.
12:29If all a judge could do was say, well, this is wrong, thank you very much, and that's it.
12:34Essentially, the third branch would be without any power.
12:39The third branch would be an empty branch.
12:42The power of contempt is central to that and is exercised very carefully.
12:47This provision, first of all, would require that plaintiffs who are seeking injunctions post a bond require it.
12:56That means, go back to the desegregation cases.
12:59It would mean that the poor plaintiffs who were bringing cases against school boards who were segregating would have to post a bond way beyond their means.
13:08It would mean it would basically limit access to this very important institution, namely the courts.
13:15So this would require a bond.
13:18They would require a bond retroactively.
13:20So think about the body of civil rights and institutional cases that have been brought that now would be in jeopardy if a retroactive bill were passed.
13:35What judges do now is they have the possibility of appointing of Rule 65 allows them to post a bond,
13:44to require people to post a bond if there's substantial damages in the offing.
13:48But typically, judges do not do it in constitutional cases where the individual plaintiffs are, as I have described.
13:58The provision is, as I said, a direct hit on the court.
14:02You cannot use appropriated funds, it says, to enforce your orders.
14:09You can't use the marshals to enforce your orders.
14:13You can't use your, not clear, law clerks to enforce your orders.
14:18Essentially, it would leave the courts as an empty shell.
14:24It also, as I said, required a bond which would wipe out much of the civil rights and civil liberties litigation that we have seen.
14:31If courts can't compel compliance, there is no justice.
14:37There is a famous story about how, you know, if courts have enforced it, let them, courts have come up with this ruling, let them enforce it.
14:48They don't have an army.
14:49They don't have the means of going out and enforcing it directly.
14:53The contempt power is that means.
14:57And what this provision would do would be to try to gut it.
15:01I've watched my colleagues, as they say, go up to the moment of contempt with great care, trying to get the government to do what the law requires,
15:14what the rules that have been appealed and have been supported.
15:19And so now we're at a moment where the contempt power is critical.
15:24Small wonder that it is being attacked.
15:28I think that if this bill is not defeated, this branch will have been transformed, and that would be a tragedy.
15:38Thank you, Judge.
15:39The head of our ranking member of our court subcommittee and a great leader on this issue, Sheldon Whitehouse.
15:45Thank you, Chuck.
15:46It's a great honor to follow Judge Gertner to this podium.
15:50My message is that this provision in the reconciliation bill has to be understood in the context of a campaign,
16:03an orchestrated and coordinated campaign of threats and intimidation against the federal judiciary.
16:11This is just one thread of that campaign.
16:15If you look at what congressional Republicans are up to, it's not just this bill.
16:21It's wanted posters outside their offices with judges' names and faces.
16:28It's articles of impeachment filed against judges for decisions they disagree with.
16:34It's a hearing called District Judges v. Trump, designed to whip up anti-judiciary animus.
16:42It's a bill calling federal judges judicial insurrectionists.
16:48And it's echoed over at the White House by Trump's commentary.
16:53Trump's attacks include calling judges USA-hating, calling them monsters, calling them communists,
17:01calling them radical left lunatics, who could, quoting him again,
17:07very well lead to the destruction of our country.
17:11And then for good measure, his White House throws in an official statement calling judges
17:16leftist, crazy, unconstitutional people.
17:20The third wing of this attack on the judges comes through MAGA, through Elon Musk and through
17:27Laura Loomer and the X platform, which posts information about judges, posts information about
17:34their families.
17:36They seem to particularly like to post judges' daughters in order to create attacks on those
17:47individual judges.
17:52Musk has called them corrupt.
17:53He's called them radical.
17:54He's called them evil.
17:56At the moment, one of the tricks of this campaign of threat and intimidation is to send two judges
18:00and to their families unsolicited pizza deliveries, often in the name of the murdered son of a federal
18:08judge, saying to them, we know where you live.
18:13This is about intimidating you and we are capable of violence.
18:21X has curated over years a horde of what I call flying monkeys.
18:31Disordered people who, when provoked and triggered by Musk, by Loomer, by X, will do the job of
18:40delivering vile and violent threats against the target.
18:45And that has caused the judges to have to take this far more seriously.
18:52Justice Roberts had to make an uncharacteristic public statement saying, if you think we're wrong, appeal, don't threaten impeachment.
19:01He did that because he was getting pressure from district judges who were feeling left hung out to dry in this atmosphere of threat and intimidation.
19:09The judges through the conference have had to create a judicial security and independence task force to deal with this campaign of threats.
19:18And the question we're about to face is whether the MAGA Attorney General, Pam Bondi, in the face of this campaign of threat and intimidation, will allow the
19:30Marshal Service to do its work of investigating those crimes.
19:36Not only investigating those crimes, but investigating those who are orchestrating and coordinating that campaign of threats.
19:44If, in fact, as all the evidence suggests, that campaign leads back to MAGA, then Bondi has every incentive to squelch these investigations.
19:55So keep a sharp eye out for her.
19:59We're up to 162 threats now.
20:02If that's not a campaign, if that's not predication for these investigations, I do not know what is.
20:10And now we have Mr. Zamor, Mike Zamor from the ACLU.
20:16Hi, everyone.
20:17Thank you, Senator.
20:18I'm Mike Zamor from the American Civil Liberties Union.
20:21For over 100 years, our organization has stood against presidents of both parties to defend the constitutional rights of everyone in this country.
20:29And that's because the freedom that all of us count on depends on the government being bound by the law.
20:36But now the majority in the House, as we've heard, has snuck a provision in this bill that they quite literally pulled together in the middle of the night.
20:46That is includes, as Senator Schumer said, a get out of jail free card in some cases to allow the government to ignore court's orders that are intended to stop them from violating the laws and our constitutional rights.
20:59One of the very first actions that President Trump took on January 20th after being sworn in was to sign an executive order purporting to edit out of the 14th Amendment birthright citizenship.
21:11Within hours, we were in court and won an injunction ensuring that our newest citizens would not have their constitutional rights stripped from them as their very first experience in this life.
21:24But the get out of jail free card in this bill would mean that unless plaintiffs have enough money to post a bond, Trump and his cronies could blatantly ignore that injunction and deport newborn babies out of this country.
21:40Babies who are U.S. citizens under the words of our Constitution.
21:45And they would face no consequences. So maybe the billionaires who infest this administration don't get it.
21:54But our constitutional rights do not come with a price tag.
21:59Trump and his allies may well be frustrated that we keep beating them in court, as do so many others.
22:05But they should think really carefully about this step.
22:08Because conservatives were all for courts clipping the wings of administrations and overzealous federal government in other circumstances, say, to limit COVID vaccine mandates and other things.
22:21The ACLU has sued the Trump administration dozens of times already this year.
22:25But we've also sued the Biden administration. We sued the Obama administration.
22:28We sued the Clinton administration. We have sued every single administration because governments need to be bound by the law regardless of what party the president is in.
22:37This is not a Democrat issue. It's not a Republican issue. This is a democracy issue, as Senator Schumer said.
22:43We cannot stand and will not stand for a government that can impose its priorities on the people instead of the other way around.
22:52Senate needs to kill off this provision and ensure that the four words carved over the edifice on that building right across the street, the Supreme Court, maintain their meaning.
23:00Equal justice under law. Thank you.
23:03Thank you. And now another great member of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Girono.
23:08Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here with everyone to point out yet another atrocity that the Republicans have sneaked into this thousand-plus page bill.
23:20The fact is we have a president who does not believe that the rule of law applies to him.
23:24He is governing by executive order. Most of them, I would say, are illegal, leading to over 200 lawsuits filed to stop his illegality.
23:35The only thing that's standing between him and his illegality are the courts. Thank goodness. Thank goodness.
23:43And judges who were appointed by Republicans and Democrats alike have put the question to this administration.
23:54You know, judges like things like evidence, facts. They're not just going to roll over and give the president whatever he wants.
24:02So, of course, there are dozens and dozens of findings and orders that stymie this president and stop him from continuing his illegality.
24:14And, of course, the president doesn't like it. So what do his minions do in the House?
24:20They insert a provision that will make it that much harder for these injunctions and other court orders to be enforced.
24:29What is the point of holding this administration or this regime accountable if you can't enforce those orders, which is exactly what this provision is meant to do?
24:42We can't let him get away with it. We can't let the Republicans get away with it.
24:46In their continuing desire to get patted on the head by this president, they will insert a provision that has absolutely nothing to do with the budget.
24:59So we need to get this provision out of the bill. But, you know, just people should understand this is the kind of thing that this president wants to have done on his behalf.
25:09He will attack anybody who can stand up to him, whether they're law firms, whether they're corporations, whether they're colleges and universities.
25:19His modus operandus is to attack and try to stymie anybody that stands up to him.
25:26And that is why this provision is in this bill to stop the courts from preventing him from continuing in his illegality.
25:35Glad to be here with all of you.
25:39Thank you, Senator Girono. Questions on this subject? Yes.
25:42We obviously don't agree with the president on this bill, but there was some unique bipartisanship this week with Senator Warren and President Trump.
25:48They want to scrap the debt limit. I know you've had discussions with him in the past about potentially doing that.
25:53Would you help Republicans do that if the president wanted to?
25:55I'm not going to gauge in hypotheticals. Yes.
25:58Susie, I'm with Bloomberg Law. Thanks for doing this.
26:00You mentioned wanting to, you know, use every tool that you guys have at your disposal to block this.
26:04Could you elaborate a little bit more? Yeah, let me just say, let me be clear.
26:08If the Senate Republicans go along and include this toxic provision, Senate Democrats will fight to knock it out in the Byrd process.
26:16Our message to Republicans is bring it on. We're going to use every tool in our toolbox to stop it.
26:21Okay. Last one.
26:25Mr. Leader, is there any concern on your part in the Byrd process?
26:28I mean, Thune has shown that he's willing to sort of overrule the parliamentarian on some things.
26:32Are you concerned that if there's a ruling that the other side won't go along with that ruling in the Senate?
26:38Look, we believe that they ought to abide by the parliamentarian as had been done by Democratic and Republican leaders for decades.
26:46Thank you, everybody.