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      RFK Jr drops Covid-19 boosters for kids and pregnant women from CDC list

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      The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, announced that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would remove Covid-19 booster shots from its recommended immunization schedule for healthy children and pregnant women.Legal experts said the Trump administration appointee’s decision, which Kennedy announced on social media, circumvented the CDC’s authority to recommend such changes – and that it is unprecedented for a health secretary to unilaterally make such a decision.“I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that as of today, the Covid vaccine shot for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule,” Kennedy said in the announcement.Kennedy claimed Joe Biden’s administration last year “urged healthy children to get yet another Covid shot despite the lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children”.The secretary was flanked by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner – Dr Marty Makary – and the head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr Jay Bhattacharya. Neither the head of the FDA nor of the NIH would typically be involved in making vaccine administration recommendations.Bhattacharya said the announcement was “common sense and good science”.Removing the booster shot from the recommended immunization schedule could make it more difficult to access – and it could affect private insurers’ willingness to cover the vaccine. About half of Americans receive healthcare through a private insurance company.Such a unilateral change is highly unusual if not unprecedented for a typical US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary. And it could leave the HHS department open to litigation, said one vaccine law expert.“The secretary has never been involved in making Covid-19 vaccine recommendations – any vaccine recommendations,” said Dorit Reiss, a law professor at the University of California San Francisco who has closely followed attempts to circumscribe access to Covid-19 vaccines.It is not clear whether the social media announcement was accompanied by formal documentation of the change. Annual Covid-19 booster shots were still recommended for children on the CDC’s website Tuesday morning. It is unclear how Tuesday’s announcement could affect federal programs, such as Vaccines for Children, which provides shots to uninsured and under-insured children.“I am surprised at the open contempt they are showing to the process and not even pretend to do it in a substantive and deliberative way,” Reiss said. “If only because I would think they want to make it as litigation-proof as they can.”The change further sends conflicting messages about the importance of Covid-19 vaccination during pregnancy. The CDC says people are at increased risk of severe illness if they contract Covid-19 during pregnancy, including heightened risk of hospitalization and the need for intensive care.That evidence was acknowledged by Makary in a similarly unprecedented article in the New England Journal of Medicine, which announced changes to the way the FDA would license Covid-19 vaccines. In that article, pregnancy and recent pregnancy were listed among “underlying medical conditions that can increase a person’s risk of severe Covid-19”.Further, there is evidence that mothers who are vaccinated pass protective immunity to infants. Infants younger than six months are at the highest risk of severe disease among children, with the risk to children younger than four years old on par with that of 50-64-year-old adults, according to the Journal article.Typically, changes to vaccine administration recommendations are first considered by the CDC’s advisory committee on vaccine practices (ACIP), a group of independent vaccine experts. ACIP meetings are public, meaning in a normal process Americans can watch experts debate the validity of different approaches in real time before a vote. Although the CDC does not always take the group’s advice, it often does. The CDC was without a permanent director as of Tuesday, a little more than four months into Donald Trump’s second presidency.ACIP recommendations are then counter balanced by recommendations from the FDA’s vaccine and related biologics products advisory committee, which has a similar structure and transparency measures. That group met five days earlier to recommend strains to include in this fall’s Covid-19 booster shot, settling on the JN.1 lineage.Kennedy’s announcement comes as the Trump administration has packed HHS with “Covid contrarians” – a colloquial term used by researchers to describe people, typically critics, who do not accept mainstream public health’s recommendations to prevent Covid-19.Congressional Republicans allied with Trump have also continued to flog the Biden administration’s response to the pandemic in hearings. Vaccine hesitancy has become much more common among Republican party voters than it once was, a Gallup poll has found. More

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      Trump’s West Point speech brought partisanship to the home of the US military − 3 essential reads

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      President Donald Trump’s speech at the graduation of the class of 2025 from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point included segments that were clearly scripted and portions that were obviously not.

      During the unscripted portions, Trump, who wore a bright red “Make America Great Again” campaign hat during his entire appearance on May 24, 2025, delivered remarks that hit many of his frequent partisan political talking points. That included attacking presidential predecessors Barack Obama and Joe Biden, describing immigrants to the U.S. as “criminals” and trumpeting other policy accomplishments in his first and second terms.

      That level of partisanship in a military setting – on the campus of the nation’s first military academy, and before an audience of cadets and their families, many of whom are veterans – is unusual in the United States.

      The Conversation U.S. has published several articles discussing the importance to democracy of keeping the military and partisan politics separate. Here are three highlights from that coverage.

      A Jan. 12, 2021, message from the nation’s top military officers reminds all service members: ‘We support and defend the Constitution’ – not any particular person.
      Joint Chiefs of Staff

      1. Cadets focus on the Constitution

      During the West Point ceremony, the graduates themselves took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” And all of them had studied the significance of that oath, including in classes like those taught by Joseph G. Amoroso and Lee Robinson, active-duty Army officers who graduated from West Point and later served as professors there.

      As Amoroso and Robinson wrote, those classes teach cadets that, like all military personnel, they serve the Constitution and the American people, not a particular person or political party:

      “(O)ur oath forms the basis of a nonpartisan ethic. In the U.S., unlike in many other countries, the oath implies military leaders should be trusted for their expertise and judgment, not for their loyalty to an individual or political party. We emphasize to cadets the rules and professional expectations associated with this profound responsibility.”

      Read more:
      Military personnel swear allegiance to the Constitution and serve the American people – not one leader or party

      2. A tradition of nonpartisanship

      Retired U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Samuel C. Mahaney, who teaches history, national security and constitutional law at Missouri University of Science and Technology, observed:

      “(S)ince the days of George Washington, the military has been dedicated to serving the nation, not a specific person or political agenda. … (N)onpartisanship is central to the military’s primary mission of defending the country.”

      Mahaney wrote that if Trump’s actions during his second term meant a change from the centuries of precedent, “military personnel at all levels would face a crucial question: Would they stand up for the military’s independent role in maintaining the integrity and stability of American democracy or follow the president’s orders – even if those orders crossed a line that made them illegal or unconstitutional?”

      Presenting a key question for military personnel.

      Read more:
      Trump’s firings of military leaders pose a crucial question to service members of all ranks

      3. Dating back to the founding of the nation

      Marcus Hedahl and Bradley Jay Strawser, professors of philosophy who teach military ethics at the U.S. Naval Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School, respectively, explain the reason for this long-standing focus on keeping politicians and politics separate from military action.

      “To minimize the chance of the kind of military occupation they suffered during the Revolutionary War, the country’s founders wrote the Constitution requiring that the president, an elected civilian, would be the commander in chief of the military. In the wake of World War II, Congress went even further, restructuring the military and requiring that the secretary of defense be a civilian as well.”

      As they observed, “… the framers always intended it to be the people’s military – not the president’s.”

      Read more:
      Threatening ‘the enemy within’ with force: Military ethicists explain the danger to important American traditions

      This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives. More

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      Trump’s West Point speech brought partisanship to the home of the US military − 2 essential reads

      by

      President Donald Trump’s speech at the graduation of the class of 2025 from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point included segments that were clearly scripted and portions that were obviously not.

      During the unscripted portions, Trump, who wore a bright red “Make America Great Again” campaign hat during his entire appearance on May 24, 2025, delivered remarks that hit many of his frequent partisan political talking points. That included attacking presidential predecessors Barack Obama and Joe Biden, describing immigrants to the U.S. as “criminals” and trumpeting other policy accomplishments in his first and second terms.

      That level of partisanship in a military setting – on the campus of the nation’s first military academy, and before an audience of cadets and their families, many of whom are veterans – is unusual in the United States.

      The Conversation U.S. has published several articles discussing the importance to democracy of keeping the military and partisan politics separate. Here are two highlights from that coverage.

      A Jan. 12, 2021, message from the nation’s top military officers reminds all service members: ‘We support and defend the Constitution’ – not any particular person.
      Joint Chiefs of Staff

      1. Cadets focus on the Constitution

      During the West Point ceremony, the graduates themselves took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” And all of them had studied the significance of that oath, including in classes like those taught by Joseph G. Amoroso and Lee Robinson, active-duty Army officers who graduated from West Point and later served as professors there.

      As Amoroso and Robinson wrote, those classes teach cadets that, like all military personnel, they serve the Constitution and the American people, not a particular person or political party:

      “(O)ur oath forms the basis of a nonpartisan ethic. In the U.S., unlike in many other countries, the oath implies military leaders should be trusted for their expertise and judgment, not for their loyalty to an individual or political party. We emphasize to cadets the rules and professional expectations associated with this profound responsibility.”

      Read more:
      Military personnel swear allegiance to the Constitution and serve the American people – not one leader or party

      2. A tradition of nonpartisanship

      Retired U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Samuel C. Mahaney, who teaches history, national security and constitutional law at Missouri University of Science and Technology, observed:

      “(S)ince the days of George Washington, the military has been dedicated to serving the nation, not a specific person or political agenda. … (N)onpartisanship is central to the military’s primary mission of defending the country.”

      Mahaney wrote that if Trump’s actions during his second term meant a change from the centuries of precedent, “military personnel at all levels would face a crucial question: Would they stand up for the military’s independent role in maintaining the integrity and stability of American democracy or follow the president’s orders – even if those orders crossed a line that made them illegal or unconstitutional?”

      Presenting a key question for military personnel.

      Read more:
      Trump’s firings of military leaders pose a crucial question to service members of all ranks

      This story was updated to highlight two articles from The Conversation’s archives. More

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      NPR sues Trump administration over funding cuts it says violate first amendment

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      National Public Radio, the US public broadcaster that provides news and cultural programming to more than 1,000 local stations, has filed a federal lawsuit against Donald Trump’s administration, challenging an executive order that cuts federal funding to the public broadcaster as an unconstitutional attack on press freedom.The lawsuit, which landed on Tuesday in federal court in Washington, argues that Trump’s 1 May executive order violates the first amendment by targeting NPR for news coverage the president considers “biased”.“The intent could not be more clear – the executive order aims to punish NPR for the content of news and other programming the president dislikes,” NPR’s CEO, Katherine Maher, said in a Tuesday statement. “This is retaliatory, viewpoint-based discrimination in violation of the first amendment.”NPR, which Maher describes as non-partisan news, was joined by three Colorado public radio stations in seeking to have the order permanently blocked and declared unconstitutional.The executive order instructs federal agencies to “cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS” and eliminate indirect sources of public financing. The White House defended the move, claiming NPR and PBS “have fueled partisanship and left-wing propaganda with taxpayer dollars”. The White House cited a few examples it said demonstrated bias, including editorial decisions around coverage of transgender issues, the Hunter Biden laptop story and Covid-19’s origins.Trump’s criticism of public broadcasting notably intensified after a former longtime NPR editor wrote a viral article in the Free Press claiming the organization had become too progressive and left-leaning, with some of the article’s subject matter making it into the executive order as well. Maher herself has also been caught in the crossfire, with past posts about “white silence” in the wake of the George Floyd murder getting spotted on social media, before she was in journalism and ran NPR.The lawsuit describes the order as “textbook retaliation and viewpoint-based discrimination” that threatens “the existence of a public radio system that millions of Americans across the country rely on for vital news and information”.NPR says its funding structure has evolved since its 1970 founding. Today, member station fees comprise 30% of its funding, corporate sponsorship provides 36%, while just 1% comes directly from federal sources. The non-profit media organization now employs hundreds of journalists whose work is broadcast by local stations across the United States – and vice versa puts a national spotlight on local news stories with on-the-ground context and reporting – and is part of the White House press corps.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“NPR has a first amendment right to be free from government attempts to control private speech as well as from retaliation aimed at punishing and chilling protected speech,” Maher said in the statement. More

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      Trump has ‘never evolved, which is dangerous’, his niece Mary Trump says

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      Donald Trump has “never evolved” and “isn’t close with anybody”, according to Mary Trump, the US president’s niece and a vocal critic of his business and political career.The daughter of Donald’s older brother, Fred Trump Jr (nicknamed Freddie), Mary Trump told the Hay festival in Wales – where she was discussing her latest book about the Trump family, Who Could Ever Love You – that she no longer has relationships with anyone in her family apart from her daughter.She described herself as “the black sheep of the family”, calling her grandfather, Fred Trump, Donald’s father, “literally a sociopath”, and adding: “Cruelty is a theme in my family.”She explained that much of her understanding of her uncle comes from when she was in her 20s and Donald hired her to ghostwrite his second book.“I can’t say we got closer, because Donald isn’t close with anybody,” she said, but working with him for six months in his office, she got “a little bit more insight”.“He is the only person I’ve ever met who’s never evolved, which is dangerous by the way,” she said. “Never choose as your leader somebody who’s incapable of evolving – that should be one of the lessons we’ve learned, for sure.”She also described the president as “one of the most provincial people I know, and that does not serve us well, at all”.Reading from her book, she described the moment a friend of her father’s, Anna Maria, met Donald for the first time. “When she first encountered Donald, he was a cocky, rude teenager, who was intensely jealous of his older brother, Freddie.“Donald didn’t have any friends, so she felt sorry for him, but whenever they included him, they regretted it. Nobody in Freddie’s circle could bear to be around this arrogant, self-important, humorless kid.“Over the years, Anna Maria watched Donald devolve into an even more arrogant adult with a widening, cruel streak.”In the book she also recounts Donald throwing a baseball at his young nieces and nephews when he was in his 20s and she was eight years old. Her brother bought her a catcher’s mitt for Christmas one year, and she “realised it was probably to protect me from having every bone in my hand broken from Donald throwing a baseball at me as hard as he could”.Mary also told audiences that after Donald’s older sister, Elizabeth, was born, doctors told his mother “that it would be very dangerous for her to have more children” because of her health issues. “She did, and the next one was Donald. About which I will say nothing more,” Mary joked.His mother later became very ill, meaning Donald, “at a very crucial developmental period, did not have his primary caregiver, and the only person left was his dad, the sociopath. So you can imagine how that sort of changed the trajectory of Donald’s life.”Mary is a psychologist whose previous books, Too Much and Never Enough and The Reckoning, also involve her uncle. She distanced herself from him around the time he began his first presidential term in 2017.In 2021, the former president sued her for $100m for giving the New York Times information for its investigation into his finances. The lawsuit sends “a very clear message to me”, she said. “But what if everybody capitulates? Then what? Well, then we lose, and that’s unacceptable.”She added that she does not “understand people who are afraid of Donald, because he’s so pathetic. I would be embarrassed to be afraid of him.” More

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      The anti-woke warriors used to defend free speech. Now they make McCarthyism look progressive | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Thoughts and non-denominational prayers to all the anti-woke warriors out there. It may seem as though everything is going their way now Donald Trump is back with a vengeance, but the poor things have run into a bit of a branding problem. For years, the anti-woke crowd positioned themselves as fearless free thinkers taking on the intolerant left. The journalist Bari Weiss wrote a fawning New York Times piece in 2018 describing rightwing voices such as Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens as “renegades of the intellectual dark web” (IDW).Now, however, the people who used to position themselves as oppressed truth-tellers operating in what Weiss’s article called an “era of That Which Cannot Be Said”, have a state-sanctioned microphone. They’ve won. But in winning they’ve made it difficult to continue the charade that they give a damn about “cancel culture”. Look around: some of these self-styled free speech warriors are doing everything they can to ruin the lives of everyone who doesn’t 100% agree with them.Most conservatives don’t seem to mind that their hypocrisy is now on full display. But, according to a recent piece on the news site Semafor, a handful of people within the anti-woke media ecosystem are starting to have something of an identity crisis. “One didn’t have to be especially prescient to spot those ‘anti-woke’ types who would just slowly become Maga flunkies,” said the libertarian journalist Michael Moynihan, who had a short stint at Weiss’s publication the Free Press before becoming disillusioned.Remember when the right railed against people losing jobs for old comments they’d made? In 2018, for example, the Atlantic fired the conservative columnist Kevin Williamson after the backlash about a 2014 podcast appearance in which the 60-year-old had suggested women should face hanging for having an abortion. Cue a million furious tweets from the “renegades of the IDW” about how, as Ben Shapiro put it on X, “virtually everyone is vulnerable if they run afoul of the Left’s interests”.Now, however, there’s no denying that virtually everyone is vulnerable if they run afoul of the right’s interests. Semafor’s piece notes that “One [Free Press] investigation that exposed two low-profile employees at PBS who had focused on diversity and got them fired rubbed even some of its allies the wrong way”.At least the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) employees at PBS “only” got fired. Canary Mission and Betar US, two pro-Israel groups, have been compiling “deportation” lists of pro-Palestinian activists on college campuses and sharing them with the Trump administration. Betar US has also warned that it is going to expand its focus beyond immigrants to naturalised US citizens.These organisations are just a couple of cogs in a massive dissent-crushing machine. The Christian nationalist Heritage Foundation, which spearheaded Project 2025, is behind a dystopian plan called Project Esther that cynically weaponises very real concerns about antisemitism to shut down criticism of Israel and quash pro-Palestinian activism. And you can bet these censorious projects won’t end with Palestinians: at the rate we’re going, pro-choice sentiment will soon be considered “anti-Christian” and anyone espousing it will get deported. If that sounds far-fetched, let me remind you that last month the veterans affairs department ordered staff to report their colleagues for “anti-Christian bias”.Drunk on their power to deport and defame, some on the right have officially lost the plot. For months a number of conservative voices have been engaged on a mission to cancel Ms Rachel, a children’s entertainer whose real name is Rachel Accurso. If you have small children, Ms Rachel needs no introduction. For everyone else, she wears a pink headband and sings songs such as Icky Sticky Bubble Gum. Ms Rachel’s videos have always been gently inclusive: she incorporates sign language and she has frequently had Jules Hoffman, a non-binary musician, on her show. On her personal social media she has also advocated for issues such as paid family leave.The right tried to cancel Ms Rachel over Hoffman’s gender identity back in 2023. Now they’re trying to cancel the beloved star again; this time for the “crime” of speaking up about Palestinian kids and featuring a three-year-old double amputee from Gaza in a video. The fact Accurso is humanising Palestinian children is driving some rightwing voices so berserk that they’re smearing her as antisemitic, asking the US attorney general for an investigation, and spreading the ridiculous and completely baseless lie (which the New York Times bizarrely chose to amplify) that she is being funded by Hamas.Welcome to our “new era of That Which Cannot Be Said”: one that may make McCarthyism seem progressive. It would seem the new renegades of the intellectual dark web are those of us who think you shouldn’t bomb starving babies in their sleep just because they are Palestinian.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Europeans are concerned that the US will withdraw support from NATO. They are right to worry − Americans should, too

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      The United States has long played a leadership role in NATO, the most successful military alliance in history.

      The U.S. and 11 other countries in North America and Europe founded NATO in 1949, following World War II. NATO has since grown its membership to include 32 countries in Europe and North America.

      But now, European leaders and politicians fear the United States has become a less reliable ally, posing major challenges for Europe and, by implication, NATO.

      This concern is not unfounded.

      President Donald Trump has repeatedly spoken of a desire to seize Greenland, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark, a NATO member. He has declared that Canada, another NATO member, should become “the 51st state.” Trump has also sided with Russia at the United Nations and said that the European Union, the political and economic group uniting 27 European countries, was designed to “screw” the U.S.

      Still, Trump – as well as other senior U.S. government officials – has said that the U.S. remains committed to staying in and supporting NATO.

      For decades, both liberal and conservative American politicians have recognized that the U.S. strengthens its own military and economic interests by being a leader in NATO – and by keeping thousands of U.S. troops based in Europe to underwrite its commitment.

      President Donald Trump speaks at a NATO Summit in July 2018 during his first term.
      Sean Gallup/Getty Images

      Understanding NATO

      The U.S., Canada and 10 Western European countries formed NATO nearly 80 years ago as a way to help maintain peace and stability in Europe following World War II. NATO helped European and North American countries bind together and defend themselves against the threat once posed by the Soviet Union, a former communist empire that fell in 1991.

      NATO employs about 2,000 people at its headquarters in Brussels. It does not have its own military troops and relies on its 32 member countries to volunteer their own military forces to conduct operations and other tasks under NATO’s leadership.

      NATO does have its own military command structure, led by an American military officer, and including military officers from other countries. This team plans and executes all NATO military operations.

      In peacetime, military forces working with NATO conduct training exercises across Eastern Europe and other places to help reassure allies about the strength of the military coalition – and to deter potential aggressors, like Russia.

      NATO has a relatively small annual budget of around US$3.6 billion. The U.S. and Germany are the largest contributors to this budget, each responsible for funding 16% of NATO’s costs each year.

      Separate from NATO’s annual budget, in 2014, NATO members agreed that each participating country should spend the equivalent of 2% of its gross domestic product on their own national defense. Twenty two of NATO’s 31 members with military forces were expected that 2% threshold as of April 2025.

      Although NATO is chiefly a military alliance, it has roots in the mutual economic interests of both the U.S. and Europe.

      Europe is the United States’ most important economic partner. Roughly one-quarter of all U.S. trade is with Europe – more than the U.S. has with Canada, China or Mexico.

      Over 2.3 million American jobs are directly tied to producing exports that reach European countries that are part of NATO.

      NATO helps safeguard this mutual economic relationship between the U.S. and Europe. If Russia or another country tries to intimidate, dominate or even invade a European country, this could hurt the American economy. In this way, NATO can be seen as the insurance policy that underwrites the strength and vitality of the American economy.

      The heart of that insurance policy is Article 5, a mutual defense pledge that member countries agree to when they join NATO.

      Article 5 says that an armed attack against one NATO member is considered an attack against the entire alliance. If one NATO member is attacked, all other NATO members must help defend the country in question. NATO members have only invoked Article 5 once, following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S., when the alliance deployed aircraft to monitor U.S. skies.

      A wavering commitment to Article 5

      Trump has questioned whether he would enforce Article 5 and help defend a NATO country if it is not paying the required 2% of its gross domestic product.

      NBC News also reported in April 2025 that the U.S. is likely going to cut 10,000 or more of the nearly 85,000 American troops stationed in Europe. The U.S. might also relinquish its top military leadership position within NATO, according to NBC.

      Many political analysts expect the U.S. to shift its national security focus away from Europe and toward threats posed by China – specifically, the threat of China invading or attacking Taiwan.

      At the same time, the Trump administration appears eager to reset relations with Russia. This is despite the Russian military’s atrocities committed against Ukrainian military forces and civilians in the war Russia began in 2022, and Russia’s intensifying hybrid war against Europeans in the form of covert spy attacks across Europe. This hybrid warfare allegedly includes Russia conducting cyberattacks and sabotage operations across Europe. It also involves Russia allegedly trying to plant incendiary devices on planes headed to North America, among other things.

      President Joe Biden speaks during a NATO summit in Washington in July 2024.
      Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images

      A shifting role in Europe

      The available evidence indicates that the U.S. is backing away from its role in Europe. At best – from a European security perspective – the U.S. could still defend European allies with the potential threat of its nuclear weapon arsennal. The U.S. has significantly more nuclear weapons than any Western European country, but it is not clear that this is enough to deter Russia without the clear presence of large numbers of American troops in Europe, especially given that Moscow continues to perceive the U.S. as NATO’s most important and most powerful member.

      For this reason, significantly downsizing the number of U.S. troops in Europe, giving up key American military leadership positions in NATO, or backing away from the alliance in other ways appears exceptionally perilous. Such actions could increase Russian aggression across Europe, ultimately threatening not just European security bu America’s as well.

      Maintaining America’s leadership position in NATO and sustaining its troop levels in Europe helps reinforce the U.S. commitment to defending its most important allies. This is the best way to protect vital U.S. economic interests in Europe today and ensure Washington will have friends to call on in the future. More

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      A hidden measure in the Republican budget bill would crown Trump king | Robert Reich

      by

      If enacted, Donald Trump’s Big Ugly Bill as it emerged on Thursday from the House of Representatives would result in the largest redistribution of income and wealth in American history – from the poor and working class to the rich.Hidden within the bill is also a provision that would allow Trump to crown himself king.For months now, Trump has been trying to act like a king by ignoring court rulings against him.The supreme court has told Trump to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Ábrego García, a legal resident of the United States who even the Trump regime admits was erroneously sent to a brutal prison in El Salvador.Trump has done nothing.Lower federal courts have ordered him to stop deporting migrants without giving them a chance to know the charges against them and have the charges and evidence reviewed by a neutral judge or magistrate – the minimum of due process.Again, nothing.Judge James Boasberg, chief judge of the federal district court for the District of Columbia, issued a temporary restraining order preventing the Trump regime from flying individuals to the prison in El Salvador without due process.Judge Boasberg has found that the Trump regime has willfully disregarded his order.Is there anything that the courts can do in response to Trump’s open defiance of judges and justices?They have only one power to make their orders stick. They can hold federal officials in contempt, and enforce such contempt citations by fining or jailing them.It’s a radical remedy, rarely used. But several federal judges are at their wits’ end.Boasberg said that if Trump’s legal team does not give the dozens of Venezuelan men sent to the Sallvadorian prison a chance to legally challenge their removal, he’ll begin contempt proceedings against the administration.In a separate case, the US district court judge Paula Xinis has demanded that the Trump administration explain why it is not complying with the supreme court order to “facilitate” the release of Ábrego García.Xinis has even questioned whether the administration intends to comply with the order at all, citing a statement from the. homeland security chief, Kristi Noem, that Ábrego García “will never be allowed to return to the United States”.According to Xinis, “That sounds to me like an admission. That’s about as clear as it can get.”So what’s the next step? Will the supreme court and lower courts hold the administration in contempt and enforce the contempt citations?Trump and his Republican stooges in Congress apparently anticipated this. Hidden inside their Big Ugly Bill is a provision intended to block the courts from using contempt to enforce its orders. It reads:skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to 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 …”Translated: no federal court may enforce a contempt citation.The measure would make most existing injunctions – in antitrust cases, police reform cases, school desegregation cases and others – unenforceable.Its only purpose is to weaken the power of the federal courts.As Erwin Chemerinsky, UC Berkeley School of Law dean and distinguished professor of law, notes, this provision would eliminate any restraint on Trump.“Without the contempt power, judicial orders are meaningless and can be ignored. There is no way to understand this except as a way to keep the Trump administration from being restrained when it violates the Constitution or otherwise breaks the law …“This would be a stunning restriction on the power of the federal courts. The Supreme Court has long recognized that the contempt power is integral to the authority of the federal courts. Without the ability to enforce judicial orders, they are rendered mere advisory opinions which parties are free to disregard.”In other words, with this single measure, Trump will have crowned himself king.If it is enacted, no Congress and no court could stop him. Even if a future Congress were to try, it could not do so without the power of the courts to enforce their hearings, investigations, subpoenas and laws.The gross unfairness of Trump’s Big Ugly Bill is bad enough. It would worsen the nation’s already near-record inequalities of income and wealth.But the provision inside the bill that neuters the federal courts is even worse. It would remove the last remaining constraint on Trump, and thereby effectively end American democracy.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More