Republicans will die with Trump, or democracy will die with them

Republicans in Congress have just passed Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” Widely dubbed the cruelest piece of legislation in US history since the Civil War, it will:

• Remove over $1 trillion from Medicaid, which will leave 12 to 14 million Americans without health care
• Adjust Medicaid payments so most rural hospitals will have to close
• Slash food stamps and food assistance for approximately 42 million Americans, mostly children and senior citizens
• Give and extend already unaffordable, already budget-busting, damn-near-theft tax cuts to wealthy Americans and corporations
• Increase the bloated federal deficit by $3.4 trillion, which will affect interest rates and our children's cost of repaying foreign governments, including China.

What about the political backlash, you ask? Ever so clever, Republicans delayed cuts to medical coverage until after the midterms, so they won’t suffer any professional or political consequences.

An American police state

Equally or more repugnant, mood contingent, the bill specifically funds a new American police state. Draped in anti-immigrant language, the bill creates a standing army of masked ICE agents, and funds enough of them to terrorize any city in the nation. We’ve all seen the videos of ICE goons beating migrants in front of their children — any one of them could have been recruited from Trump’s applicant pool of pardoned felons.

The bill also provides $45 billion to build new immigration detention centers, a 265 percent annual increase to ICE’s detention budget. This funding level is a 62 percent larger budget than the entire federal prison system, where 155,933 inmates are currently incarcerated.

After Trump was somehow re-elected, despite his well-publicized attempt to block the transfer of power when he lost, he acquitted or pardoned rioters convicted of violent felonies and personal violence against police officers during Trump’s January 6, 2021, uprising. Here, Trump at least gets a nod for sinister efficiency: J6 cultists who thrive on hate in service to Trump needed something to do. They were already pumped up and armed and in search of political violence, why not give ’em an ICE badge? If they were recorded while beating Capitol police with vigor, or carrying a noose for Mike Pence because he honored the Constitution over Trump, all the better.

$1 trillion defense budget will not end well

Trump now has $1 trillion— with a T — to spend on defense. Anyone wondering how he’s going to spend it, after shamefully withholding military aid Congress already approved for Ukraine, should consider Pete Hegseth. Trump’s secretary of defense recently testified before Congress and described how national defense, under Trump, is transitioning from a force fighting foreign threats into a “domestic affair”:

“I think we’re entering another phase, especially under President Trump with his focus on the homeland, where the National Guard and Reserves become a critical component of how we secure that homeland.”

Juxtapose that promise with Trump telling reporters the worst threat to national security is “the enemy within,” ie, Democrats, independents, and Republicans who don’t support him, and it all comes into view. Pan wide for Trump’s new gulag agenda: ICE facilities where migrants, political prisoners and journalists are baked alive, fed to the reptiles, or denaturalized and deported.

Republicans have empowered a lunatic

Trump has been handed the most heavily funded law enforcement agency in United States history. This happened just after the Supreme Court handed him the most presidential power in the last 100 years by:

1. Declaring him immune from criminal laws

2. Blocking federal judges from stopping him through nationwide injunctive relief.

Not only did SCOTUS tell a criminal president he was immune from criminal prosecution for anything related to being a president — FYI, rage tweeting childish threats that endanger our national security at 3 a.m. is related to being president; intentionally devaluing the US dollar to boost his own bitcoin grift is related to being president; ordering the execution of all redheads for “national security” purposes would be related to being president — by blocking nationwide injunctions, they knee-capped federal judges doing their best to block America’s Hitler from doing his worst.

In service to Trump, Republicans on the high court banned injunctive relief, despite it’s use throughout the last 100 years, with no discussion or thought about how, under a criminally insane president who wants to put tanks on every street, it might have been important.

This is not a mandate

Despite Trump’s bluster, which Fox News repeats on the nanosecond, Trump was not elected “by a mandate.” He eked out his win by a margin of only 1.5 percent over Harris, while 91 million voters were so disgusted by the election, or so disillusioned, or so stoned, they didn’t bother to vote.

Trump’s abominable bill squeaked by in the Senate by one vote when JD Vance broke the 50-50 tie. It passed by only two votes in the House. No Democrat voted in favor, in either chamber. Polls show most Americans oppose the bill, which suggests one of the following:

• Republicans in Congress assume Americans’ world-renowned short attention span and memory loss will save them, or
• They have faith in Trump’s spin machine to control the narrative and blotto the facts, presented 24/7 by Fox News, OAN, Newsmax and more than 1,500 rightwing radio stations, or
• They know there won’t be a real midterm election.

Whatever pep talk they gave themselves, Congress passed Trump’s bill because Trump demanded it, imposing an artificial deadline of July 4 so no one would have time to read the whole 950 pages.

If anyone, including the Supreme Court and voters, doubted Trump’s death grip on the Republican Party, this should remove all doubt. Republicans will die with Trump, or democracy will die with them.

• Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.