On May 22, 2025, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill, H.R. 1, attempting to turn some of U.S. President Donald Trump's agenda into law. Trump called the piece of legislation "One big, beautiful bill," which was adopted into the bill's unofficial name, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The bill underwent a lot of changes, passing the House by just one vote. It had then faced major pushback from Democrats and even some Republicans in the Senate, but Vice President JD Vance broke a tie to send the bill to Trump's desk. He signed it into law on July 4.
Posts on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and Reddit claimed the measure went even further than as drafted, alleging that the bill contained a provision that would allow the president to "delay or cancel elections — legally."
Snopes carefully reviewed the mammoth 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.
As examples:
- Title III (Housing, Banking and Urban Affairs), includes Section 30001, "Funding cap for the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection," which cut funding for the CFPB almost in half,
- Title VIII (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions), Subtitle B (Loan Limits), contains Section 81001, "Establishment of loan limits for graduate and professional students and parent borrowers; termination of graduate and professional PLUS loans," which dramatically reduced the amount of federal loans that college students can take out.
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 15 times in the bill, on topics as broad as radio frequency ranges, to Medicaid eligibility, to presidential protection, but never in relation to elections. The term "executive" came up 26 times, mostly in relation to government departments with the word in their name, but again, never in relation to elections.