Fact Check: Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' doesn't directly allow president to delay or cancel elections
H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, contains a provision allowing the U.S. president to delay or cancel elections.
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Context:
Other provisions in the bill would add restrictions on the judiciary's power to enforce rulings — but the repercussions of a U.S. president delaying or cancelling an election is outside the scope of this claim.
"One big, beautiful bill" is what U.S. President Donald Trump called H.R .1 — the budget bill Republicans in Congress were using as a vehicle in 2025 to turn some of Trump's agenda into law. The lawmakers must have liked the phrasing — the proposed legislation is known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The bill contained large changes and budget cuts. It passed the House by just one vote on May 22 ,and as of this writing, had not yet passed through the Republican-controlled Senate, where it's faced major pushback from Democrats and arguments from a few Republicans that the bill cuts either too much or too little.
But posts on social media sites like Facebook, Reddit and X went further, alleging that the bill contained a provision that would allow the president to "delay or cancel elections — legally."
Snopes carefully reviewed the mammoth of a bill looking for provisions that would match that description. There were none — therefore, the claim is false.
The bill's table of contents provides a brief description of what each section does.
H.R. 1 does contain a provision that would make it more difficult for courts to enforce injunctions against the federal government, and therefore could theoretically abet delaying or cancelling an election. However, this claim is not about the potential repercussions of a U.S. president taking such an action — it is about whether H.R. 1 legally allows the president to do that. It does not.
The bill's table of contents provides a brief description of what each section does.
As examples:
Title IV (Energy and Commerce), Subtitle B (Environment), Part 1 (Repeals and Recissions) contains a list of laws the bill would repeal, including Section 42106, "Repeal and rescission relating to funding to address air pollution at schools."
Title IV, Subtitle D (Health), Part 1 (Medicaid), Subpart b ("preventing wasteful spending") includes Section 44125, "Prohibiting Federal Medicaid and CHIP funding for gender transition procedures."
Nothing in the bill's table of contents even appeared remotely like it would give the president power to delay or cancel elections.
If such a provision were hidden in the bill, it would have to contain either the word "president" or "executive," since that's who the power would supposedly go to. But searching the bill for those keywords also turned up nothing relevant.
The term "president" came up 18 times in the bill, on topics as broad as transnational oil pipelines, to Medicaid eligibility, to radio frequency ranges, but never in relation to elections. The term "executive" came up 44 times, mostly in relation to government departments with the word in their name, but again, never in relation to elections.
Arrington, Jodey C. One Big Beautiful Bill Act. H.R. 1, 20 May 2025, https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1/text.
Hubbard, Kaia "Here's What's in Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill" That Narrowly Passed in the House." CBS News, 23 May 2025, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/whats-in-trumps-one-big-beautiful-bill-medicaid-taxes/.
"Interpretation: Elections Clause | Constitution Center." National Constitution Center – Constitutioncenter.Org, https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/articles/article-i/clauses/750. Accessed 27 May 2025.
Moore, Elena. "Here's What's in the GOP Megabill That's Just Passed the House." NPR, 22 May 2025. NPR, https://www.npr.org/2025/05/21/nx-s1-5406392/trump-republicans-tax-bill-reconciliation-medicaid.
News, A. B. C. "Dems Call GOP's 'big, Beautiful' Bill 'Ugly' for Hurting Low-Income, Helping Rich." ABC News, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ugly-democrats-slam-trump-megabill-hurting-low-income/story?id=122078571. Accessed 27 May 2025.
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