Despite what Republicans say, they did not have a mandate for this.
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.
In Washington, the same ritual repeats. The president claims a mandate. Congressional leaders nod. A sweeping ideologically loaded piece of legislation is introduced. Critics warn of catastrophic consequences. Supporters declare it historic. Reporters call it a “signature” initiative. Somewhere, quietly, lobbyists prepare talking points, corporations draft press releases, and the people most affected by the policy in question try to figure out what just happened.
This time, the production was called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” On July 1, the Senate passed it: a multitrillion-dollar attempt to remake federal tax, welfare, and immigration policy in one coordinated sweep. Now it goes back to the House.
Framed as a response to runaway debt and a dysfunctional border, Republican lawmakers marketed the bill as a kind of national repair. They promised fiscal sanity, public order, and patriotic responsibility. The White House promised it would be passed by July 4, draping every contested provision in red, white, and blue. You would be forgiven for assuming this package reflects the country’s priorities. That is, after all, what the word “mandate” is meant to imply.
But the American people did not ask for this. Not in 2024. Not in 2016. What passed on July 1 was not the expression of majority will. It was a collision of institutional power, donor influence, and a governing party that has become highly efficient at using structural advantage to advance policies the public never demanded and often explicitly rejects.
Start with the basics. In preelection polling conducted by Pew, 81 percent of voters said the economy was “very important” to their vote. Health care and Supreme Court appointments followed close behind. While immigration was often cited as an important issue — 61 percent said it was important to them in Pew’s August 2024 survey — after the election, only 12 percent of respondents ultimately identified it in CNN’s exit poll as the most important factor guiding their vote. By contrast, 34 percent said the state of democracy was their most important issue (80 percent of those people voted for Kamala Harris), and 32 percent said the economy was their most important issue (81 percent of those people voted for Donald Trump). Despite the intensity of immigration coverage in conservative media, most Americans were far more focused on economic uncertainty.
Polling throughout the 2024 cycle reinforced this dynamic. A September 2024 survey conducted by Gallup and West Health found that 63 percent of voters considered a candidate’s stance on Medicare and Social Security to be among the most important issues. Fifty-seven percent cited health care costs, and 47 percent pointed to prescription drug prices. Rent, food, and child care were also major concerns, particularly for swing voters and younger households. A Bloomberg analysis from May 2024 showed that 33 percent of voters named “economy, jobs and inflation” as their biggest concern, well ahead of immigration (8 percent of voters cited that as a top concern).
At the same time, Americans’ views on immigration were more moderate and pragmatic than political rhetoric suggested. A Quinnipiac University poll from June 2025 found that 64 percent of voters preferred offering most undocumented immigrants a pathway to legal status, while only 31 percent favored mass deportation. This marked a notable shift from December 2024, when 55 percent favored legalization and 36 percent preferred deportation. The movement suggests growing fatigue with punitive narratives and broader support for solutions rooted in stability and integration.
The 2024 electorate did not demand new border walls, sweeping asylum bans, or ideological tax reform. They wanted relief. Across party lines, voters expressed a desire for practical support with the costs of housing, groceries, health care, and retirement. The real mandate of 2024 was economic and civic renewal. The Big Beautiful Bill was not grounded in those priorities, but in a maximalist agenda that misread the public’s most pressing needs.
Pew’s January 2025 poll showed that 63 percent of Americans support increasing taxes on corporations. Fifty-eight percent support raising taxes on households making over $400,000. Meanwhile, according to a February 2025 KFF tracking poll, only 17 percent support reducing Medicaid spending; 82 percent want to see it increased or maintained, including 63 percent of Republicans. Yet the Big Beautiful Bill makes the 2017 tax cuts permanent, expands corporate deductions, and pays for those giveaways by gutting the country’s largest health insurance program for low-income people.
The bill imposes burdensome new work requirements. It narrows eligibility and heightens bureaucracy, even though past experiments in Arkansas showed that work rules strip coverage from eligible people who simply cannot keep up with paperwork. When Arkansas introduced these measures in 2018, over 18,000 people lost coverage in just a few months, most of them working or exempt.
The Congressional Budget Office now estimates that at least 11.8 million people across the country will lose coverage by 2034 under the Big Beautiful Bill’s Medicaid provisions. These are not just numbers on a spreadsheet. These are diabetic patients losing insulin access. Parents skipping medication to pay for their children’s school supplies. Seniors in nursing homes suddenly cut off from the services that allow them to survive.
And yet none of this is unprecedented. The 2017 tax overhaul passed despite being one of the most unpopular major tax bills in modern U.S. history. The attempted repeal of the Affordable Care Act triggered mass protests and town hall showdowns. And once again, reconciliation — the budget tool once designed to streamline deficit reduction — was used to pass legislation that is deeply unpopular with no bipartisan support and no serious public debate.
Seen clearly, the Big Beautiful Bill is not an anomaly. It is a case study in how minority rule functions. Its tax provisions reflect the demands of those who write checks, not those who cast ballots. The bill was championed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and Americans for Prosperity. The Koch network spent tens of millions lobbying for permanent tax relief and provided the intellectual justification for slashing Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. These organizations did not hide their intentions. They were rewarded for them.
The same pattern governs the immigration provisions. Private prison operators like GEO Group, which manages Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers, increased their lobbying activity in 2024 and early 2025. GEO was among the first corporate donors to max out political contributions to the Trump campaign. The Republican budget bill now channels billions into expanded detention capacity, new ICE infrastructure, and increased contracts for electronic monitoring. Immigration enforcement contractors, defense firms, and biometric surveillance companies stand to gain massively.
The public, by contrast, will pay for it. A mother in West Virginia may lose Medicaid coverage because she cannot meet paperwork demands while caring for two children and a disabled parent. In Houston, a young adult without legal status who was brought to the U.S. as a child may remain in limbo while the federal government pours billions into enforcement with no pathway to permanent residency.
A health clinic in El Paso will shutter its maternal care program because the funds no longer exist to keep it open. Rural hospitals across Missouri and Georgia, already under strain, will lose funding meant to keep them afloat. These are not unintended consequences — they are direct outcomes of political choices made by people who have no fear of accountability because they no longer govern at the mercy of the majority.
The Big Beautiful Bill is not a response to popular demand. It is the product of donor discipline, narrative control, and procedural manipulation. It is legislation that passed because the people it harms are deemed politically expendable and the people it helps are politically organized. This is not policymaking. This is power management. The patriotism is performative, and the cruelty is strategic.
The Big Beautiful Bill hasn’t yet become law, but the country is already anticipating the consequences. State Medicaid agencies are preparing for mass disenrollments. Community health systems are bracing for cuts. The top 1 percent, meanwhile, will see their annual tax savings extended through 2035. The cost of this law will not be measured in GDP points. It will be measured in lives destabilized, care denied, futures deferred.
The public did not authorize this. The electorate did not endorse it. And its passage is not proof of legitimacy. It is proof that systems designed to represent us can be hollowed out by those with the resources to bend them. When elections no longer shape policy, and when public opinion no longer restrains lawmakers, what remains is government by proximity to power. What remains is governance without consent.
There is a story being told right now about what the country wants. It is not our story. But if we fail to contest it — forcefully, repeatedly, and publicly — it will become our reality. And by the time we understand what has been taken from us, the system that enabled it may already be too compromised to repair.
