America Worst, Codified: Trump’s Horrific, Harmful, Horrendous Bill and Our Future
We who believe in justice, equality, diversity, love, sustainability, peace, and so much more, are still here, and we can still, ultimately, win.
America Worst has arrived in full, right on time for July 4. Cue the war-mimicking fireworks, that ultra-American metaphor for this country’s “virtual” wars and endless militarism. Years in the making, decades of trickle-down, warmongering, and fearmongering insanity have now been codified and more deeply entrenched than ever with President Donald Trump’s huge, horrific, horrendous bill passing the House July 3.
As Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) gaveled in the final results, Republicans chanted “USA, USA, USA” on the House floor, in a truly sickening, pathetic display. They know better: They know they just passed massive tax breaks for the rich at everyone else’s expense, while adding $3.3 TRILLION in debt and slashing healthcare and Medicaid access. They know.
All Americans who are not rich should be angry—very angry. It may take a year or two for much of the pain and suffering to arrive, but be assured, it’s coming (packaged cynically to set in just after the 2026 midterms). Much of the harm will come to Trump voters themselves, working-class and poor people in rural areas that can least afford yet more gutting of already-meager healthcare access. Not to mention the millions who will lose food assistance.
The wreckage and suffering and pain caused by this bill is now fully on the Republicans. They own this disaster entirely.
The pain and hardship and suffering will come. Many Trump voters will lose healthcare; lose food assistance; get less workplace safety and rights on the job; will find their local rivers and streams, their air and drinking water, more polluted and less healthy. Many Trump voters will find far longer wait times—if they’re “lucky”—at local clinics and hospitals due to spending and staffing cuts.
Budgets are indeed moral documents and statements—or, in this case, profoundly immoral and deeply depraved ones. This sickening, sad, shameful bill delivers the ultimate reverse Robin Hood, cutting Medicaid (health insurance for low-income and disabled Americans) by more than $1 trillion over 10 years, cutting off health insurance to about 12 million Americans, and raiding hundreds of billions of dollars from food assistance for low-income Americans.
Lest we forget, this bill decimates our ecological future by gutting renewable energy supports while expanding yet more species-destroying fossil fuels. This less-heralded injury to us all could be the ultimate imperilment, at precisely the time we need the opposite.
All of this is like Reagan redux, along with Trump’s Nixonian vile viciousness and corruption—all on steroids. Actually, Trump and his bill are worse than all of that.
Trump’s disgusting, despicable, disastrous bill could of course ignite a Blue Wave in 2026 and could badly backfire on Republicans. And we can and should work for that, to at least diminish the harm and destruction Trump is causing.
In this razor-close vote battle on Trump’s repugnant, regrettable, regressive bill, the Democrats stayed unified and held strong in their ranks. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) put on an admirable show, breaking the House record with an eight-hour, 44-minute speech to stall things—but, like Sen. Cory Booker’s (D-N.J.) impressive marathon in the Senate some months ago, it was a show, a performance without concrete impact or consequences.
I beg of you, please, do not count on the Democrats, or the Democratic Party, to rescue us or salve the wide-open gaping wounds of America Worst. I know from extensive firsthand experience just how deeply disappointing and inadequate the less-evil, slower-road-to-hell party is. (And yes, I still will fight for Democrats to win, until we get a serious real alternative, because real human lives are at stake and less harm is still less harm.)
With everything on the line, and with a real chance at defeating Trump’s grotesque, galling, grim bill, the Democrats came up woefully short—not on the vote itself, but in organizing their members to prevent this nightmare. The party failed to organize and promote massive phone banks and other actions to mobilize swing-district voters to pressure their representatives against the bill.
This is a critical moment for us to show ourselves, and the world, this hateful, horrendous, harmful bill is not who we are.
I was astounded to find that the Democratic Party (nationally and in California) failed to put serious resources into the one thing that could have prevented this disaster—mass phone banking in the critical districts where it was most needed. There were some efforts, mostly from progressive and liberal groups, mostly to call one’s own reps. I personally urged the party repeatedly to deploy huge phone banks targeting these swing votes, yet there was shockingly little of it. The national and California Democratic Party social media pages offered no opportunities for this critical action to take place. I checked every day and saw no phone banks.
Finally, I called and messaged the California Democratic Party repeatedly, and finally got a call back from an excellent, overworked, dedicated organizer, who emailed me a link to a phone bank calling voters in swing districts here. That is what it took for me, a highly active, involved, and experienced activist, to get plugged in. I immediately shared the phone bank links widely. None of the California Democratic Party social media pages offered the link. Astounding and bizarre.
How can this be? I checked numerous major labor union social media pages and again found no opportunities to affect swing districts. Just a couple posts here and there to call your own rep. How can this possibly be, with everything on the line? Yes, the big unions did protest, and did have some phone banks here and there—but where was the massive, coordinated nationwide push to apply maximal pressure on those potential swing votes to defeat this outrageously awful bill?
With this atrocious legislation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids will expand and intensify even more, sending yet more terror into immigrant communities nationwide, all while racially profiling Black and Brown people, and often detaining and deporting people to viciously dangerous places, putting their lives in danger. How profoundly and deeply cruel and inhumane and rotten. All of this will get worse and will require even stronger resistance.
America Worst is here, folks. Trump is destroying this country before our eyes. But we who believe in justice, equality, diversity, love, sustainability, peace, and so much more, are still here, and we can still, ultimately, win. We all must rise up and resist. We all must do everything we can, and do it far better, in massive, coordinated fashion. We must build toward a real, labor-and-community-centered General Strike. We must continue to stop every bad, rotten, destructive thing Trump does. We must continue building genuine alternatives on and in the ground, in our communities.
Amid this America Worst moment, let’s remember—Trump’s terrible, tragic, trauma-inducing bill does not represent us. Barely half of Congress passed a measure by a president who didn’t even win a popular vote majority (and narrowly won those swing states). This bill is not us. It is the rich enriching the rich, yet again, at our expense. We are far, far better than this. Amid all this America Worst harm and destruction, this is a critical moment for us to show ourselves, and the world, this hateful, horrendous, harmful bill is not who we are.
The wreckage and suffering and pain caused by this bill is now fully on the Republicans. They own this disaster entirely. But if we all rise up, build stronger movements of resistance, and real political alternatives, we can still own the future.
