Following (with added links) is Robert Reich’s take on the passage of this bill, one that he labels the “Big Ugly Bill.”
Trump’s 940-page Big Ugly Bill was passed today by the House and is now on the way to the White House for Trump’s signature.
It is a disgrace. It takes more than $1 trillion out of Medicaid – leaving about 12 million Americans without insurance by 2034 – and slashes food stamps, all to give a giant tax cut to wealthy Americans.
It establishes an anti-immigrant police state in America, replete with a standing army of ICE agents and a gulag of detention facilities that will transform ICE into the most heavily funded law enforcement agency in the government.
It will increase the already-bloated deficit by $3.4 trillion.
It’s also disgraceful because of how it came to be.
Trump was elected with only a plurality of American voters, not a majority. He eked out his win by a margin of only 1.5 percent.
His Big Ugly Bill squeaked by in the Senate by one vote, supplied by JD Vance, and by just two votes in the House. No Democrat in either chamber voted for it.
Polls show most Americans oppose it.
It was passed nevertheless – within an artificial deadline set by Trump – because of Trump’s total grip on the Republican Party.
Republican lawmakers feared that Trump would go after defectors with public attacks or endorsements of primary challengers.
They also feared withering blowback from conservative media, “Maga” diehards, and Trump himself on social media.
After North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis announced his opposition to the bill, Trump posted on Truth Social, “Tillis is a talker and complainer, NOT A DOER! He’s even worse than Rand ‘Fauci’ Paul!”
Then Trump pledged to back a primary challenger to Tillis, and Tillis announced he would not seek reelection. Trump called that “good news” and threatened primary challenges against other Republican fiscal conservatives standing in the way of the bill’s passage.
Other presidents in my lifetime have been able to summon majorities of lawmakers for unpopular causes – I think of Lyndon Johnson and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – but none with the retributive threats, social media fury, and potentially violent base of supporters that Trump is now wielding.
Needless to say, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts made America more inclusive. Trump’s Big Ugly Bill makes America crueler.
The best analogy isn’t to Lyndon Johnson. It’s to the “strongmen” of the 1930s — Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and Franco.
That such a regressive, dangerous, gargantuan, and unpopular piece of legislation could get through Congress shows how far Trump has dragged America into modern fascism.
– Robert Reich
“This Is Fascism”
RobertReich.substack.com
July 3, 2025
“This Is Fascism”
RobertReich.substack.com
July 3, 2025
Related Off-site Links:
Outrage Pours in After House GOP Approves “One of the Most Catastrophic Bills Passed in Modern History” – Common Dreams (July 3, 2025).
GOP Budget Bill Slashes Medicaid for Millions, Cuts Taxes for the Rich, and Funds ICE at Historic Levels: An Interview with Rep. Ro Khanna – Democracy Now! (July 3, 2025).
America Worst, Codified: Trump’s Horrific, Harmful, Horrendous Bill and Our Future – Christopher D. Cook (Common Dreams, July 3, 2025).
See also the following chronologically-ordered Wild Reed posts:
• Marisa Kabas: “We’re Witnessing a Coup By an Unelected Billionaire Propped Up By a Felonious President”
• Protesting Trump’s “Dystopian” Immigration Policies
• Timothy Snyder on Resisting the Oligarchs’ “Logic of Destruction”
• “This Is Essentially Viktor Orbán’s Playbook”
• “An Extremely Clever Ruse” by and for the Rich: Owen Jones on Elon Musk’s Coup
• “To Be a Rib in This Body of Our Country”
• Quote of the Day – February 21, 2025
• Ralph Nader: “We’re Heading Into the Most Serious Crisis in American History. There’s No Comparison”
• Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism
• “This Is How Democracy Unravels”
• Jason Stanley on How Fascism Works
• James Greenberg on Trumpism: “The Tactics Are Unmistakable”
• Tony Pentimalli on Trump’s “Death Warrant for Democracy”
• The Reckoning Is Coming
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like”
• Peter Bloom: Quote of the Day – June 10, 2025
• Brent Molnar on the Silence of the Generals
• “Protesting Is What Patriotism Looks Like in Public”: The “No Kings” Protests of June 14, 2025
• Norman Solomon: Quote of the Day – June 16, 2025
• Naming the Pattern . . . and Its Source
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – June 20, 2025
• “No Kings”? Absolutely. But Also “No Oligarchy”
See also:
• Neoliberalism vs Neofascism: Cornel West on the State of U.S. Politics (2024)
• What the Republican Party Now Stands For
• Chris Hedges on the End of the American Empire
• Will We Let Fascism Come to America?
• Robert Reich: Quote of the Day – April 11, 2023
• Jeff Sharlet on the Fascist Ideology of Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene
• Chauncey Devega on the Ongoing Danger of the Trump Cult (2022)
• Historian Nancy MacLean: The Threat to American Democracy Is at “Red-Alert”
• “Come for the Racism, Stay for the Autocracy”
• William D. Lindsey: Quote of the Day – August 12, 2022
• “How Can One Overreact to a Mortal Threat to American Democracy?”
• Republicans Pose an “Existential Threat” to American Democracy (2021)
• Dan Rather on America’s “Moment of Reckoning”
• The Republican Party in a Nutshell
• Insurrection at the United States Capitol
• Trump’s Legacy (2020)
• “Fascism Is Upon Us”
• “We Have an Emergency On Our Hands”: Marianne Williamson On the “Freefall” of American Democracy
• President Trump, “We Hold You Responsible” (2019)
• Quote of the Day – October 28, 2018
• In Charlottesville, the Face of Terrorism In the U.S.
• Trump’s America: Normalized White Supremacy and a Rising Tide of Racist Violence
• Progressive Perspectives on the Election of Donald Trump (2016)
• Trump’s Playbook
• Progressive Perspectives on the Rise of Donald Trump
No comments:
Post a Comment