‘These cuts are death sentences’: Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ passes Senate

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Senate Republicans voted Tuesday to advance Donald Trump’s massive spending and tax Bill three Republican Senators, Susan Collins of Maine, Tom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky joined all Democrats in voting against the bill. But with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote, the bill will now go back to the House of Representatives for final approval and Trump has publicly pushed his party to get the bill on his desk to sign by July 4th. Now, dozens of peaceful protesters, including disabled people in wheelchairs were arrested last Wednesday in Washington DC while protesting President Trump’s so-called one big beautiful bill, which will slash taxes and includes devastating cuts to vital, popular and lifesaving programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or snap.

Dr. Richelle Brooks:

These cuts are death sentences. Trump is proposing 1.4 trillion in cuts, 793 billion from Medicaid alone and 293 billion from a CA. This would result in 10.9 million people immediately losing their health insurance. If this bill is passed and its rules are codified, this will cause mass loss of insurance for many people in need for years to come. It’s not just going to affect us now. It’s going to affect us later. This bill doesn’t just remove care from those in need and who need access to it most. It adds barriers to access for everyone. They’re intentionally attacking Medicaid and benefits like Snap Pell grants and programs like public service loan forgiveness because they are the last remaining examples of what access to Repairative public goods can look like in this country. They don’t want us to think that we have a right to healthcare. They don’t want us to believe that we have a right to public goods. They want us to believe that we need to earn the access for our basic needs to be met with our labor, with our compliance, and with our silence.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Speaking to Republican colleagues who were worried about the public blowback to these deeply unpopular cuts, former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell reportedly said, I know a lot of us are hearing from people back home about Medicaid, but they’ll get over it now. These massive cuts to public programs like Medicaid and food stamps are part of a systematic overhaul that would place the biggest financial burden on poor and working people to pay for Trump’s staggering increases to war and immigration enforcement spending and to make permanent his tax cuts from 2017, which overwhelmingly benefit corporations and the rich as part of Trump’s plan to remove undocumented immigrants from the country. The Guardian reports Immigration and customs Enforcement will receive 45 billion for detention facilities, $14 billion for deportation operations and billions of dollars more to hire an additional 10,000 new agents by 2029. And more than $50 billion is allocated for the construction of new border fortifications, which will probably include a wall along the border with Mexico.

Now, the Senate version of the bill also includes over 150 billion in new military spending and decade after decade, Republican tax cuts have eroded the US tax base and enriched the wealthiest households all while funding for war policing and surveillance has continued to rise. Trump’s one big beautiful bill would reportedly increase the national debt by $3.3 trillion and someone has to pay for that. And Trump and the GOP think that that someone should be working people like you among other things. The so-called big beautiful Bill also includes a provision to bar states from imposing any new regulations on artificial intelligence or AI over the next 10 years. A move that critics say is both a massive violation of states’ rights and a dangerous relinquishing of government oversight on big tech and AI when oversight is most needed. The bill would also restructure the student loan and debt system imposing stricter limits on new borrowers who hope to attend college and much harsher repayment plans for current debtors.

The fact that so many millions of Americans will be directly impacted by this bill is exactly what brought so many different groups out to Washington DC last week to protest it, including popular Democracy in Action, the Service Employees, international Union, planned Parenthood, Federation of America, the Debt Collective Standup, Alaska Action, North Carolina, Arkansas Community Organizations and American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, or Adapt. Now, I spoke with Lorraine Chavez, an educator, researcher, and community leader based in Chicago, as well as Christine Rodriguez, a legal assistant from Pasadena, California, both of whom were arrested in DC last week for participating in the Peaceful Act of Civil Disobedience and both of whom are student debtors themselves and traveled to DC with the Debt Collective. A union of debtors

Lorraine Chavez:

I came to DC having followed the Debt Collective for a number of years, and I came because I personally have student loan debt that I have no capacity to pay. I’m a single mother. I put my two kids who are twins both 33 through college, and they did not receive any financial assistance at all from their college professor, father, so it was all on me. So I have no capacity to pay back my own debt, and I know others have all kinds of medical debt. I know there are all kinds of cutbacks coming to the disabled community of which I had been a part of and an advocate for in Chicago. So I didn’t mind getting arrested. I was really thrilled to be with all these other advocates from all over the country.

Christine Rodriguez:

So all these things that are just interconnected. And then on top of this, all these tax cuts are going to basically allocate for funding for increased military defense, which I live near Los Angeles. I’ve definitely seen a lot heavier military presence along with our police, but specifically federal military, the Marines coming into Los Angeles, all these tax cuts, that’s just where our money is going to go to armed people who want to just lock us up and silence us. I came in for student loan forgiveness, but just in that introduction round, I had now become a part of other folks who were fighting for Medicaid, fighting for to reduce, to not cut the spending for the SNAP program or for the food stamp program.

Lorraine Chavez:

It just speaks to the crisis that we have around all debt on all levels and these really horrific policies that are about to or will be passed. And some of the banners that people had, which I fully support, said that people are going to die if these policies are put in place. How are Medicaid recipients going to get medical care? We are in a deep, profound crisis of health in the country, and these cutbacks will drastically increase the death rate for sure of millions of Americans who will be denied access to healthcare.

Christine Rodriguez:

And when we get to the Rotunda area, there’s already a lot of police presence there. I guess they got word because there’s so many of us at the hearing, they even tried to tell us like, you guys cannot, woo. You guys can’t chant. You can’t be too loud. You could only clap. So kind of in that moment at the press hearing, we could already see they’re trying to keep us quiet in a sense. The Capitol police were really almost waiting for us at the rotunda, definitely at the second floor where we wanted to do our banner drop at the rotunda at the time, we could already hear that the demonstration was going on. As we’re trying to drop our banner, we could already kind of hear that the plan of people are going to have a die-in at the bottom. They’re going to have a banner shush over us. And I think from the videos that I’ve seen already, when people were lying on the floor, banners were being taken away and people were already getting arrested just from, they could see their association with the Diane. So people were just getting arrested. We say arrest is really, it’s a dramatic citation. It is what happened because they let us go for $50. But again, it’s why does this need to be so dramatic of us advocating our First Amendment rights to express how much we don’t want the government to go through with this big disastrous plan?

Lorraine Chavez:

We were a peaceful group of demonstrators, totally peaceful, exercising our first amendment rights, and even within the holding center where we were, no air conditioning, it looked like a gigantic empty garage. There were fans, but it was excruciatingly hot the whole time. And I counted how many police men and women. There were about 30 of us there, and there were about 25 policemen and women. I mean, it was it absurd. And to see dozens and dozens and dozens of police, men and women swarming the Senate building as well. There must have been a police man or woman for every single one of us that was there. It was ridiculous, quite frankly, and also terrifying because we were just there exercising our First Amendment rights about issues that impact all of us. And there was an enormous crowd, enormous group of protestors in wheelchairs and amongst the disabled, their hands were tied in front or in back of them. It was a really dangerous situation. I actually had bruises on my wrist until the next day because of the plastic ties were just gripped around my wrists, and I wasn’t even allowed really to drink water. I mean, it was a dangerous situation given the heat and given the fact there was no air conditioning virtually in the police fans, there was no air conditioning at all in the holding center.

And here we were simply exercising our first amendment rights for free speech and to protest, which we are allowed to do under the Constitution. So it was really terrifying, honestly, to observe all of that going on around us

Christine Rodriguez:

And let the record show that I do not want my student loan forgiveness money to be funding ice my community in Pasadena. Just last week, two weeks ago, we experienced two raids within a week, and these raids were within walking distance of my apartment That’s happening right in my backyard. And as we saw with our action that we did earlier this week, there’s a lot of people who are going to suffer if these funding cuts happen. Unfortunately, it’s the opposite. That’s what should be happening. We should be giving more money to Medicaid. We should be giving more money to food stamps. People are barely getting by and this is their one lifeline that could be cut.

Lorraine Chavez:

I personally feel in such kind of a desperate state about all of this that I said, I don’t care if I get arrested. I mean, what else are we going to do? But unfortunately, put our bodies on the line. I don’t know. Of course, I’ve written 500 emails to my representatives. I’ve been an advocate myself for the fight for 15 in 2013, marching on the streets of Chicago for blocks and blocks. So I’ve done this before, but I just feel this incredible feeling of desperation right now.

Christine Rodriguez:

Are you tired of seeing the system fall in front of you? Are you tired of seeing injustice? Step number one, talk to your neighbors, right? We have to be our own kind of networks, and a lot of that takes just talking to strangers, but neighbors, but also strangers. Lorraine was a stranger a week ago, and now we’re buddies for life because we had this amazing experience. Say, definitely visit your local city council, city, town hall, any local thing, try to get tapped in because there’s a lot of information and drama there that’s not advertised, and it could cause a little change in your community and it could really push you to be more involved.