Dear John,
As we watched the Republicans’ ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ scrape through the Senate this week by a vote of 51-50 (thanks to a tie breaking vote from JD Vance), and then pass the House, I was struck by the incredible scope of the cruelty contained within its 900-plus pages—from the headlines all the way down to the fine print.
The bill’s effects are wide-ranging, and unless you’re one of the Republicans writing it—or one of their billionaire buddies—it’s very likely that you or someone you know will be impacted. The largest-ever cuts to Medicaid since the program was started, that will leave millions without healthcare. Cuts to SNAP that will leave children to go hungry at a time when grocery prices are higher than ever. Defunding Planned Parenthood, forcing closure of as many as 200 clinics that serve as community health centers, and threatening the closure of many rural hospitals. No matter where you look in the bill, women who are the working poor and who are primary caregivers to children and the elderly will be left to pick up the pieces.
The bill will also benefit the oil industry at the expense of clean energy alternatives—and of course, it includes yet more funding for building prisons and detention centers, hiring more ICE and border patrol agents, and increasing military spending. All so that the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and corporations passed during the first Trump administration can be not just permanently extended, but increased.
In the lead-up to the bill’s Senate passage, tensions were high—even among Republicans. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis from North Carolina, who pledged to not vote for the bill, called it a betrayal in a rousing speech on the Senate floor. "What do I tell 663,000 people [in North Carolina] in two years, three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding is not there anymore, guys?" Tillis asked. "The people in the White House advising the president, they're not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise."
By and large, Americans are quite aware of the great betrayal currently taking place at our nation’s capital. Across a number of recent polls, majorities of Americans oppose the legislation, particularly when it came to issues like taxes and Medicaid. If you, like me, are desperately searching for a silver lining, here’s where you’ll find it: democratic and republican strategists alike warn there’s no doubt that how members of Congress vote on the bill will play a role in determining the outcome of next year’s midterm elections. Although the impacts of the Medicaid cuts will not be felt immediately—Republicans have deviously structured the cuts to go into effect after the midterm elections, knowing that it will hurt millions of people, and could potentially flip the House and even the Senate—even Republican political strategists are agreeing: with voters across party lines feeling riled up, the bill has the potential to seriously shift power in next year's elections.
Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, the Supreme Court’s final rulings of the term posed significant challenges to immigrants and their families, and further advanced other right-wing causes like book banning—see the articles included below for further analysis of these rulings’ impacts.
As we all try our best to enjoy the long holiday weekend in the shadow of what’s going on in Washington, D.C., I want to leave you with a healthy dose of hope—I encourage you to listen to the first episode of our latest podcast, Looking Back, Moving Forward. Through the pages of Ms., consulting editor Carmen Rios chronicles how feminists have fought back throughout history—and what we can learn from that legacy as we continue to fight forward, for a better democracy and world.
For equality,
