A Big Ugly Nightmare
This "Big Beautiful Bill" is a billionaire blowjob crudely and badly disguised as working-class salvation. The propaganda machine is working overtime to convince Americans that this legislative monstrosity will create jobs, rebuild infrastructure, and unleash American innovation. In fact, this bill is a Trojan horse filled with corporate giveaways and attacks on basic human dignity. And a four trillion-dollar price tag.
Whether or not this “Big, Ugly Bill” ends up becoming law, what just happened in the Senate is a fucking travesty. The so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” passed by the narrowest possible margin—51-50, with the couch-fucking Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie. Only three Republicans found their spines and joined Democrats in opposition. The rest, including Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, fell in line like good little MAGA foot soldiers in Trump’s war against the working class.
Although no one is buying it, if polls are any indication, MAGATs are being sold a steaming pile of bullshit wrapped in patriotic packaging. Bad policy happens, but this is a deliberate assault on everything that makes a functioning society possible. Most who voted for it didn’t even read the bill, let alone the fine print.
This is a billionaire blowjob crudely and badly disguised as working class salvation. The propaganda machine is working overtime to convince Americans that this legislative monstrosity will create jobs, rebuild infrastructure, and unleash American innovation.
In fact, this bill is a Trojan horse filled with corporate giveaways and attacks on basic human dignity. And a four trillion-dollar price tag.
Let’s cut through the noise.
First, let’s talk about the “deregulation” provisions. In any sane world, we’d call this what it is: permission for corporations to poison you without consequences. The environmental protections gutted by this bill are staggering. Companies no longer need to disclose toxins, reduce emissions, or worry about those annoying inspections that keep them from dumping carcinogens into our drinking water. Remember the water debacle in Flint? That’s about to become the national standard.
With absolute certainty, the environmental rollbacks will kill people. Not might. Will. Cancer clusters, respiratory diseases, and birth defects aren’t theoretical concerns. They’re the inevitable result of letting corporations regulate themselves. But hey, at least quarterly profits will look good.
The healthcare provisions are equally sadistic. With estimates as high as seventeen million losing insurance coverage, the landscape for those still on it isn’t exactly rosy either. “Flexible coverage choices” they’re touting are insurance plans that cover jack shit when you actually get sick. Essential health benefits? Gone. Mental health coverage? Optional. Maternity care? Extra, because having a uterus is a pre-existing condition again. They’ve managed to create a system where you’ll pay more for less coverage while pharmaceutical companies can continue to price-gouge with impunity.
We’re going to see people dying from preventable conditions because they can’t afford basic care.” That’s not a healthcare system; it’s a death panel courtesy of the prolife party.
Perhaps most chilling is the surveillance expansion buried deep in Section 803. Because nothing says “land of the free” like giving the government unprecedented access to your private messages, location data, and browser history. All in the name of “cybersecurity modernization,” of course. I’ve spent enough time fighting government overreach to recognize the Orwellian doublespeak. This is surveillance capitalism enforced by masked, badgeless agents with more than just a license to ignore the law. A mandate to abuse it.
Then there’s the systematic dismantling of labor rights. The bill effectively euthanizes collective bargaining while reclassifying gig workers as “independent entrepreneurs,” which sounds empowering until you realize it means no benefits, no job security, and no recourse when you’re exploited. The “right to work” has been perverted to mean the right to be worked to death for starvation wages.
The border provisions are particularly grotesque. Billions for militarization dressed up in humanitarian language, and fronted by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in a MAGA cap to shade her collagen lips and eyes deader than her puppy. It’s not about security; it’s about performative cruelty. Drones, walls, and detention centers, including the much-touted “Alligator Alcatraz,” aren’t “migration solutions.” They’re monuments to xenophobia built with our tax dollars.
Already on the ropes, education, headed by Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who doesn’t even know what AI is, is about to get a whole shitload worse. Public schools get table scraps while charter schools feast on public funds with minimal oversight. The “patriotic education” mandate is just code for whitewashed history and science denial. Couple that with the gutting, if not criminalization of DEI, erasure of LGBT, and reframing of slavery as White Southern Altruism, they don’t want educated citizens; they want compliant workers with misdirected anger, blaming minorities, and who won’t question authority.
The gaslighting is relentless. They’re telling Americans that gutting social safety nets is “empowerment.” That removing consumer protections is “freedom.” That corporate welfare is “job creation.”
In the Authoritarian Playbook for Dummies, lesson one is to create economic anxiety, blame vulnerable groups, promise simple solutions, and then rob the public blind while they’re distracted by manufactured culture wars. With this bill, Congress is poised to codify that strategy into law.
The House still needs to pass this monstrosity, and Trump is demanding it on his desk by July 4th — because nothing says “American independence” like legislation that chains ordinary people to corporate overlords. But passage in the House is not looking certain at this point.
So what do we do? First, we need to call this what it is: class warfare. Not left versus right, but top versus bottom. Second, we need to ensure that everyone understands exactly what is in this bill. Not the propaganda, but the actual provisions that will affect real lives. And finally, we need to hold accountable every single politician who voted for this betrayal.
I’m under no illusions about how difficult this fight will be. The forces behind this bill have unlimited resources and fuck all moral constraints. But resistance isn’t futile. It’s essential. And sometimes, it actually works.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” is vile and ugly to its core. It’s a monument to greed, cruelty, and contempt for ordinary Americans. But bills can be repealed. Damage can be undone. Systems can be rebuilt. Because at the end of the day, this isn’t just about policy. It’s about what kind of society we want to live in. One where we’re all on our own, scrambling for scraps while the wealthy few live in fortified enclaves? Or one where we recognize our shared humanity and build institutions that reflect it?
Select articles, news coverage and books from a plethora of publications covering Clinton Fein’s career as a technologist, activist, artist and speaker.
As an activist, with a Supreme Court victory over the Attorney General of the United States, Fein garnered international attention, including The New York Times, CNN and The Wall Street Journal.
Fein’s thought-provoking and controversial work as an artist caught the attention of prestigious educational institutions, including Harvard University, which recognized its socio-political relevance and ability to provoke crucial conversations about human rights, morality, and the boundaries of artistic expression.