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The original was posted on /r/keep_track by /u/rusticgorilla on 2025-05-21 11:20:10+00:00.
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Over the past few weeks, House committees have unveiled their sections of the GOP’s reconciliation bill, with plans to bring it to a floor vote in the coming days. The proposed legislation would add trillions of dollars to the national debt while cutting critical benefits for low-income Americans in order to deliver substantial tax breaks to the wealthiest individuals.
Most of the media attention has justifiably been focused on the bill’s drastic cuts to Medicaid, which would slash nearly $700 billion from the program’s budget, stripping health insurance from between 8.6 million and 13.7 million people depending on the mechanisms that make it into the final bill. Likewise, cuts to SNAP (food stamps) would drain $260 billion from the program, eliminating food assistance for an estimated 3 million to 3.5 million people. When paired with massive tax cuts for the wealthy, the final bill would result in a 2% loss of income for the poorest 10% of Americans, increasing to a 4% loss in 2029. The wealthiest 10% of Americans, in contrast, will see their household resources grow by 4%. This staggering redistribution of resources codifies wealth inequality into law, cementing a system where the rich grow richer by dismantling the very programs that keep low-income families afloat.
- Author’s note: Late last night, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released an estimate revealing that, due to a budgetary rule, the reconciliation bill would automatically trigger mandatory cuts to Medicare of $490 billion over the 2027-2034 period. House Republicans are attempting to rush the bill through the chamber in order to prevent the public from learning about cuts like this before it is passed.
The damage that will be done by the GOP reconciliation bill, if enacted, extends beyond economics. In this post, we’ll examine some of the overlooked yet critical provisions that endanger the separation of powers, undermine women’s health, and threaten our environment.
Undermining contempt
One of the bill’s most consequential provisions is buried in a single sentence near the end of the House Judiciary Committee’s 116-page contribution to the “Big, Beautiful Bill.” Section 70302 (page 544), titled “Restriction on Enforcement,” would prohibit courts from enforcing contempt citations for failure to comply with court orders unless the plaintiffs have paid a security bond.
Sec. 70302. Restriction on enforcement.
No court of the United States may 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 pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65©, whether issued prior to, on, or subsequent to the date of enactment of this section.
In practice, this creates a two-tiered justice system. Only plaintiffs wealthy enough to pay a bond could force the Trump administration to comply with court orders protecting their constitutional rights. Meanwhile, the administration would face no consequences for ignoring rulings in cases where plaintiffs lack the means to pay, effectively shielding federal actions from judicial accountability in those instances.
The bond that is being sought by the Justice Department in some of the challenges to Trump’s agenda “is almost unpayable by any plaintiff,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, which is a public interest group that has spearheaded several major lawsuits against the administration.
“The purpose of this is to prevent judges from enjoining what they found to be illegal behavior,” he said.
The consequences would be especially dire for immigrants—many of whom lack the resources to hire lawyers, let alone post a bond—caught in Trump’s mass deportation machine. The Trump administration has already ignored court orders despite contempt threats (see Abrego Garcia and the Alien Enemies case). Without even this minimal check, how many will be disappeared into foreign prisons, with no court able to stop it?
AI regulation
Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, introduced a provision earlier this month that would ban localities from enacting any regulation against artificial intelligence.
The relevant passage, found on pages 277-278, declares: “…no State or political subdivision thereof may enforce, during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act, any law or regulation limiting, restricting, or otherwise regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems entered into interstate commerce.”
If passed, this sweeping moratorium would strip states of the authority to protect residents from harmful or deceptive uses of AI by private companies and bad actors:
“This moratorium would mean that even if a company deliberately designs an algorithm that causes foreseeable harm — regardless of how intentional or egregious the misconduct or how devastating the consequences — the company making or using that bad tech would be unaccountable to lawmakers and the public,” [a letter from more than 100 organizations], provided exclusively to CNN ahead of its release, states.
The 141 signatories on the letter include academic institutions such as Cornell University and Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology, and advocacy groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Economic Policy Institute. Employee coalitions such as Amazon Employees for Climate Justice and the Alphabet Workers Union, the labor group representing workers at Google’s parent company, also signed the letter, underscoring how widely held concerns about the future of AI development are.
“The AI preemption provision is a dangerous giveaway to Big Tech CEOs who have bet everything on a society where unfinished, unaccountable AI is prematurely forced into every aspect of our lives,” said Emily Peterson-Cassin, corporate power director at non-profit Demand Progress, which drafted the letter.
Existing state-level regulations would be nullified under the proposed law, including California’s requirement that healthcare providers disclose when they have used generative AI to communicate clinical information to patients and New York’s law requiring employers to conduct bias audits of AI tools used for employment decisions. With generative AI advancing at an alarming pace, states need to be able to use every tool available to stop scams, fraud, and deepfakes from ruining lives—and our democracy.
Planned Parenthood
Another provision of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce section of the reconciliation bill cuts off Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood (page 339).
While federal funds allocated through programs like Medicaid and Title X are already prohibited from directly paying for abortions, current law allows Medicaid to cover other family planning and reproductive healthcare at clinics that also provide abortions. According to KFF, one in ten (11%) female Medicaid beneficiaries aged 15 to 49 relied on Planned Parenthood for contraceptive care, STI services, pap smears, and pregnancy testing in 2021. If passed, the GOP bill would block Medicaid patients from accessing any of these services at Planned Parenthood.
“It’s no surprise that a goal of this reconciliation bill is to force Planned Parenthood health centers to shut down,” Reproductive Freedom for All President and CEO Mini Timmaraju [said](https://reproductivefreedomforall.org/news/reproductive-freedom-for-all-responds-to-the-passage-of-the-gop-budget-out-of-the-house-energy-commerc…
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