Trump Gets Huge Boost as GOP Slips New Court Rules Into Budget

House Republicans passed Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget early Thursday, advancing a reconciliation package to the Senate that had been jammed through committee hearings held largely in the dead of night.

But in the process of sneaking the budget to the upper chamber, Republicans tacked on an unexpected and dangerous provision that had nothing to do with Medicaid, overtime tax, or reducing the federal deficit. Instead, they added a detail that would hamper federal courts’ ability to “hold government officials in contempt when they violate court orders,” according to Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

The addendum follows repeat losses for the president in the court system. Since January, the judiciary has been the only branch of government standing in Trump’s way when it comes to enacting his executive orders, perhaps most notably on his attempts to end constitutional rights such as birthright citizenship and habeas corpus.

“Now is not the time to limit the ability of federal courts to enforce their judicial orders,” Chemerinsky implored in a column on JustSecurity earlier this week.

A Pew Research Center survey from April indicated that the vast majority of the American public—Republicans and Democrats—want the Trump administration to end an action if it’s deemed illegal by a federal court. But the provision in the reconciliation bill would make that goal all the more difficult by retroactively requiring a “security”—such as a bond—to be paid by a plaintiff before an order is issued.

That detail would effectively render countless court orders, across the board, unenforceable, according to Chemerinsky, since “federal courts rarely have required plaintiffs to post bonds.”

“Even when the government had been found to violate the Constitution, nothing could be done to enforce the injunctions against it,” Chemerinsky noted. “In fact, the greatest effect of adopting the provision would be to make countless existing judicial orders unenforceable. If enacted, judges will be able to set the bond at $1 so it can be easily met. But all existing judicial orders where no bond was required would become unenforceable.”

The budget passed by just a hair Thursday morning, with two Republicans joining all Democrats in voting against it and 215 Republicans voting in favor.

After two Israeli Embassy employees were shot and killed on the streets of Washington, D.C., Wednesday night, Republican Representative Randy Fine responded by suggesting Gaza should be nuked.

Fine was asked on Fox News Thursday morning how the shooting would affect the ceasefire the U.S. has proposed to Hamas and Israel to end Israel’s 19-month bombardment of Gaza, resulting in the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe. Fine’s response was to blame “Muslim terror” and compare Palestinians to the Nazis and imperial Japan during World War II.

“The fact of the matter is the Palestinian cause is an evil one,” Fine said. “We nuked the Japanese twice in order to get unconditional surrender. That needs to be the same here. There is something deeply, deeply wrong with this culture, and it needs to be defeated.”

The bigoted answer from the freshman lawmaker is only the latest example of his prejudice toward Palestinians and Muslims. Last year, when Fine was running for a vacant Florida congressional seat, he threatened Muslim Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar by warning them on X that the “Hebrew Hammer” was coming and telling them to “consider leaving before I get there. #BombsAway.”

Fine has remarked in the past that “we have a Muslim problem in America” and that “while many Muslims are not terrorists, they are the radicals, not the mainstream.” At a minimum, Fine should be censured for his remarks, as Tlaib was censured for much less by House Republicans. But Fine’s GOP colleagues have engaged in similar bigotry against Palestinians, and several others have also called for nuking Gaza. Fine is unlikely to get even the slightest rebuke from any Republican leader, let alone President Trump, who endorsed him last year.

Four Supreme Court Justices wanted to make it legal for taxpayer dollars to fund religious charter schools.

The Supreme Court produced a 4–4 deadlock on Thursday on the question of whether an Oklahoma religious school could take part in the state’s publicly funded charter school programs. While the decision is unsigned, thanks to the even split, it is likely that Chief Justice Roberts sided with liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Elena Kagan in opposition to the measure, while conservatives Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Samuel Alito likely voted in favor of allowing religious charter schools access to public funds. Justice Amy Comey Barret recused herself due to attorneys from her alma mater, Notre Dame Law School, representing the religious schools.

The deadlock leaves in place an Oklahoma ruling that a Catholic public charter school is unconstitutional. But the Supreme Court sidestepped the question, deferring to the lower court decision.

The four judges who voted in favor of the measure seem to be ignoring that earmarking public funds for religious schools is a clear violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. This clause prohibits the government from “establishing” a religion and from blurring the lines between separation of church and state.

“The fact that the Court split 4–4 in this case, with Justice Barrett recused, is not especially surprising,” said CNN Supreme Court Analyst Steve Vladeck. “The surprise is that the court had agreed to take this case up, with Justice Barrett recused, in the first place. That had led some folks to wonder if Chief Justice Roberts might be willing to join the other four Republican appointees in favor of public funding for religious charter schools. Today’s affirmance without an opinion suggests that he isn’t, at least for now.”

* This story has been updated to remove references to the Lemon test.

Elon Musk’s electric carmaker Tesla has been outsold in Europe by a rival company for the first time. 

The continent’s longtime electric favorite was overtaken by Chinese company BYD in April, which sold 7,231 fully electric cars compared to Tesla’s 1,165, according to data from Jato Dynamics.

It’s a major boon for the Chinese electric vehicle company, which only began selling cars in Norway and the Netherlands in late 2022. But Musk’s recent support for Donald Trump and the U.S. president’s far-right, government-destroying policies has influenced buyers, leading to boycotts at home and abroad that have drastically affected Tesla’s margins.

“This is a watershed moment for Europe’s car market, particularly when you consider that Tesla has led the European battery electric vehicle market for years, while BYD only officially began operations beyond Norway and the Netherlands in late 2022,” Felipe Munoz, global analyst at Jato Dynamics, told the Financial Times.

Tesla historically attracted a more liberal consumer base with its electric vehicles, but since Musk went “dark MAGA,” that same base has soured on the tech billionaire and his products. That’s proven especially true in some of Europe’s stronger economies, such as Germany, which has seen Tesla sales in the country fall by more than 70 percent in the beginning of the year, reported Bloomberg. Sales in China—where Tesla has two major factories—similarly plummeted, falling by 49 percent in February.

Musk, however, has brushed off the volatility. Speaking with Bloomberg at the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday, the world’s richest man pointed to Tesla’s rising stock as evidence that bullish investors were likely to ignore his political activism.

“We’ve lost some sales perhaps on the left, but we’ve gained them on the right. The sales numbers at this point are strong and we see no problem with demand,” the Tesla CEO said. “The stock wouldn’t be trading near all-time highs if things weren’t in good shape, they’re fine, don’t worry about it.”  

Republicans narrowly passed Donald Trump’s sweeping budget reconciliation bill through the House Wednesday night, including a last-minute provision that would not require gun owners to register the purchase of silencers.

Georgia Representative Andrew Clyde had already ensured the elimination of a $200 transfer tax on gun silencers. But during negotiations Wednesday, he was able to add another provision altogether removing silencers from the regulatory purview of the National Firearms Act, which imposes taxes on the manufacture, distribution, and import of weapons, according to Politico.

The last-minute addition would strike another $200 tax on the manufacture of gun silencers. But by removing silencers from the purview of the National Firearms Act, lawmakers said that the change also had eliminated the NFA’s registration requirement with the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives.

“The question I have is, this was not in the bill that we were marking up. So, whose vote was bought with this provision that silencers will no longer need to be registered with the ATF or subject to background check purchasers?” asked Colorado Representative Joe Neguse on the House floor Wednesday night.

“What member was on the fence about this bill, and then went to Republican leadership and said, ‘I know you’re eliminating the tax on silencers but if you can just eliminate all regulation on silencers, I will vote for this bill?’”

Georgia Representative Austin Scott claimed that silencers’ exception from ATF registry did not mean that purchasers would not be subject to background checks. Scott, who argued in support of the provision, seemed confused about what it was actually about. He said it was about suppressors, rather than silencers—but that was incorrect.

When a person attempts to buy a firearm, they must complete an ATF form, and the seller then relays information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation website. The NICS staff then performs a check to see whether the buyer has a criminal record or is in any way ineligible to purchase the firearm.

If the purchaser is not required to fill out a form with the ATF to purchase a silencer, it’s not clear how a background check would still be completed.

“Quite frankly, what is in the reconciliation bill does more to support assassins than it does American families,” said Massachusetts Representative Jim McGovern.

There was some laughter in the hall.

“Yeah, well you know what? Talk to law enforcement, talk to people who have been victims of gun violence,” McGovern continued. “I know you think it’s funny, but I don’t.”