Version imprimableWhen he signed it, Trump called it “the most popular bill ever signed,” but according to one reliable poll, half of the country oppose it and only one-third supported it. Several progressive organizations—50501, Indivisible, and the Women’s March—organized over 300 “Free America” rallies with thousands of participants raising the call to: “Free America from the grip of greedy billionaires who rig the system for themselves.”
The bill reorders American priorities, cutting social welfare programs in order to give enormous tax cuts to the rich. Trump strong armed Republicans, threatening to oppose their reelection if they opposed him. Some of them wanted even deeper cuts to social welfare in order to reduce the country’s $36.2 trillion national debt, while others opposed Medicaid cuts that would harm their constituents and their own chances of reelection. In the end, only a few Republicans had the courage to oppose him, and the bill passed by four votes in the House and by one vote in the Senate, the tie-breaking vote of Vice-President J.D. Vance.
What’s in the Bill
The most important measures in the bill are these. Cut Medicaid health coverage for low-income and elderly Americans over the next ten years, amounting to $1 trillion, which means 11.8 million adults and children will no longer be covered. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), will be reduced by $287 billion in federal spending over 10 years, affecting millions. The bill also eliminates programs and funds to stop climate change and for environmental justice. The cost of cuts like these immediately became clear. Trump and the Republicans cut the staff of the National Weather Service and slashed the climate budget just as extreme rains and floods drowned 15 children and swept away and presumably drowned another 25 girls in summer camp in Texas.
These cuts made it possible to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and add new ones, reducing taxes principally on the rich by $4.5 trillion.
At the same time, it appropriates $150 billion for the military, for ship building, for the “Golden Dome” missile defense system, and for arms. The military budget will for the first time reach almost $1 trillion. And the budget allocates $45 billion for the construction by private companies of immigrant detention centers, in effect prisons, with 100,000 beds. There is also $46.5 billion to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall and $6 billion for technology and surveillance.
Trump took advantage of the Fourth of July, America’s Independence Day, as B-2 bombers flew overhead, to celebrate the U.S. bombing of Iran and to praise Republican leaders for passing his “Big Beautiful Bill,” claiming falsely that people wouldn’t even notice the cuts because they only eliminated “fraud and abuse.” Trump concluded, “We will have the strongest economy and the strongest borders on earth.”
Democrats believe that the bill will anger voters and make it possible for them to take back the House of Representatives in the November 2026 elections. But the Democratic Party may not be able to take advantage of this opening because it remains divided, between the party’s leaders, who have failed to successfully address the American public, and Democratic Socialists like Senator Bernie Sanders, Congresswoman Alexandria Cortez, who attracted tens of thousands to their anti-oligarchy rallies, and Zohran Mamdani who just won the New York City Democratic Party’s mayoral primary election. The resistance is growing, but must become stronger to have an impact on the elections.
6 July 2025
