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Happy Birthday, America; Here is Your Bigly Prize [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-07-01

With only days before the birthday of America, the Republican party is rushing to take food from some of its people and denying them healthcare when they get sick. The news media pretending that the President of the United States wants more than an elaborate party in the White House Rose Garden on Friday, July 4, is as ridiculous as thinking he knows what is in the Big Beautiful Bill. Part of the proof is his repeated insistence that Medicaid will not be touched, when it is a cruel front-and-center feature of its fiscal underpinnings. “Here's what I want on Medicaid. We're not touching anything,” Trump has repeatedly claimed. Fact-checkers have debunked that notion. Both the GOP-led House and Senate versions of the legislation, which the House narrowly passed in May and the Senate has now passed, contain significant Medicaid policy changes and supplemental funding cuts for food, expected to result in millions of people losing insurance coverage, as reported by CNN. Republicans have strategically chosen the day after the 2026 midterm elections as the effective date for these changes, aiming to mitigate the backlash.

The repeated promises that Mr. Trump later recanted will be taught in history classes for years to come. At the outset of the tariff debate, President Trump promised 90 deals in 90 days. So far, we have concepts of deals and a business community that is confused, dazed, and disheartened. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent admitted to Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo in June that the July 9 deadline for the deals was essentially a pipe dream. “I think we could have trade wrapped up by Labor Day,” which is Sept. 1, nearly two months beyond Trump’s deadline, said Bessent. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed Bessent in a briefing, saying, the deadline was 'not critical,” concluding, “Perhaps it could be extended, but that’s a decision for the president to make,” she said.

Republicans have allowed lies to become their guiding torch, and anyone brave enough to want to change the beacon is snuffed out like a match. The list of GOP comrades who dared have an independent or moral thought is littering the Grand Old Party’s political highway like elephant dung. GOP Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), Liz Cheney (R-WY), and Senators Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and, most recently, Thom Tillis (R-NC), despite overwhelmingly voting for Trump policies, gave principled, disapproving nods to the king, and off with their heads. Kinzinger and Cheney thought that an armed insurrection—encouraged by Trump—against the democratic process was the final bridge too far. Flake and Tillis prioritized serving their constituency and the Constitution over unchallenged loyalty to the president. Tillis questioned the cuts to Medicaid. “What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding’s not there anymore, guys?” Tillis asked in a speech. President Trump threatened to retaliate against Senator Tillis by promising to support an unnamed opponent if he were to attempt to run for reelection.

Tillis is yet another whose loyalty to Trump was rewarded with either jail, disgrace, or resignation. The Senate passed its version of the bill, and now the pressure will be on for the House to reconcile the two versions so Mr. Trump can line the Rose Garden with flags, shoot off fireworks, and tout his legislative achievement as the bigly bill of all time. HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA.

Your Vote is Still Your Voice

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