Fact check: Will ‘big beautiful bill' really allow Trump to delay election?

Al Jazeera

2 days ago

A liberal group and social media users shared posts that say President Donald Trump's 'one big beautiful bill' for tax and spending would let him reschedule or eliminate elections.
'If the Senate passes the 'one big beautiful bill' and Trump signs it, that's it. It becomes law,' said the viral graphic on Meta and X. 'And here's what that really means. He can delay or cancel elections – legally.' The post included a long list of other claims about what the bill would accomplish; for this fact-check, we are focusing on the elections claim.
The group Being Liberal, which calls itself 'one of the oldest social media liberal political brands', took down the graphic after we reached out for comment. The group told us it didn't create the post and removed it because the elections claim wasn't accurate.
The earliest reference for the graphic we found online was from an anonymous blog post on May 23.
The bill does not give Trump power to delay or cancel elections, an action that would be unconstitutional.
'The bill would not directly give the president any authority over elections,' said Eric Kashdan, senior legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, a group that advocates for voting rights and this year sued the Trump administration over a voter registration executive order.
A spokesperson for House Speaker Mike Johnson, Griffin Neal, told PolitiFact, 'The bill obviously does not provide the President of the United States with the authority to cancel or delay elections.'
The US House passed the tax and spending bill May 22 and it now moves to the Senate, where lawmakers could make changes. Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate majority leader, said he hopes the bill can be sent to Trump by July 4.
The bill includes one provision related to democracy and checks and balances; it would expand the executive branch's power by curtailing judges' ability to hold people in contempt of court. Provision critics said it could take away the courts' power to restrain the federal government if it violates the Constitution or breaks the law.
We found no provision in the bill that says the president can delay or cancel an election.
In July 2020, amid the pandemic and a surge in voting by mail, Trump floated the idea of delaying the election. At the time, he was running for re-election.
But the Constitution empowers Congress to set the date by which states must choose their presidential electors, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found in 2020.
'Since 1845, Congress has required states to appoint presidential electors on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, which represents the date by which voters in every state must cast their ballot for President,' the report said.
Congress still has that power, said Edward Foley, an Ohio State University constitutional law professor.
The Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 added a new definition of 'Election Day' that makes it clear that a voting extension can occur only through state law specified in advance and under tightly restricted conditions, such as a catastrophe, Foley said.
That means Election Day 'cannot otherwise be cancelled or delayed' and the president plays no role in any alteration of Election Day, Foley said.
Congress can change the Election Day date by enacting a new statute, as it did with the Electoral Count Reform Act, Foley said.
Erwin Chemerinsky, a University of California, Berkeley law professor, told PolitiFact nothing in the bill lets Trump cancel or delay elections.
'The Constitution provides that elections for Congress be held every two years and for President every four years,' Chemerinsky said. 'There is no constitutional authority to cancel elections.'
The bill includes a different provision that some experts called a threat to democracy, but not at the ballot box.
Section 70302 would make it harder for judges to find a defendant in contempt of court for ignoring a judge's orders. Here's how: The legislation would require plaintiffs to pay a security bond before a judge could find the defendant in contempt of court. That would mean judges could no longer waive the security bond requirement, something that frequently happens in cases against the government.
The section references a federal rule that says a court may issue a preliminary injunction or temporary restraining order only if the plaintiff pays a security bond to cover costs and damages by any party 'found to have been wrongfully enjoined or restrained'.
A security bond is an insurance policy to protect someone wrongfully accused of wrongdoing from financial losses during litigation, Kashdan said. The courts can require plaintiffs to pay money that the court holds until the end of the litigation
'If they win, they get their money back,' Kashdan said. 'If they lose, and the person they sued had a right to do whatever it was they were prevented from doing during the lawsuit, they get to keep that money to help compensate them for any losses they experienced during the litigation.'
However, 'those seeking such court orders generally do not have the resources to post a bond, and insisting on it would immunise unconstitutional government conduct from judicial review,' wrote Chemerinsky for the website Just Security, which publishes a Trump litigation tracker. 'It always has been understood that courts can choose to set the bond at zero.'
A March White House memo that criticised organisations for suing the federal government said enforcement of the security bond rule 'is critical to ensuring that taxpayers do not foot the bill for costs or damages caused by wrongly issued preliminary relief by activist judges and to achieving the effective administration of justice'.
The House bill provision raised concern among groups that have defended the judiciary's role to provide a check on Trump's power.
As of May 23, at least 177 court rulings have temporarily paused Trump administration actions, according to The New York Times.
Social media posts say the Republican tax and budget bill will let Trump 'delay or cancel elections – legally'.
We found nothing in the bill that would let Trump cancel or delay elections. A provision would make it harder for judges to hold people in contempt of court, but that is not the same as cancelling elections.
Only Congress can change a presidential election's date, not the president, and this bill doesn't change that.
We rate this statement False.