Slipped into House bill
Tried to copy from bluesky and again got the logged in users warning so looked it up elsewhere.
https://www.cato.org/blog/congress-move-strip-courts-contempt-powers
In Congress, a Move To Strip Courts of Contempt Powers
By Walter Olson
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The House Judiciary Committee on April 28 released budget reconciliation language that would do a truly remarkable thing: ban federal judges from enforcing most contempt of court penalties arising from the violation of court orders.
Paragraph excerpt from final page 116 of House reconciliation bill
Notre Dame Law Professor Sam Bray, a leading scholar on court orders, analyzes the provision here. CNN has also written up a more popular account. It’s important to note that the provision may face removal as violative of the so-called Byrd rule, which generally bars provisions in budget reconciliation that do not primarily advance budget objectives.
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Currently, if the administration or anyone else cited for contempt believes that the judge’s order has a faulty basis, their lawful remedy is to appeal the order to a higher federal court. But if the district judges are no longer in a position to enforce contempt orders, why even bother appealing? The feds (and others, too) could just thumb their noses at them and go on their way.
The one exception arises from the language exempting from coverage court orders in which courts have issued a security bond. As Prof. Bray notes, courts “almost never” require security “when a suit is brought against a government defendant.” So the idea may be that while courts would lose contempt authority in that high-profile class of cases, they could still go on exercising it in a class of cases that the administration finds less irritating.
More recent article:
https://www.justsecurity.org/113529/terrible-idea-contempt-court/