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Trump's GOP Is Ripping This Nation Apart. The Question Is: Why?
The morality of today’s Republican Party has been laid bare. But it boggles the mind the depth of this destruction and cruelty.
Jul 14, 2026
Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill — which gave the top 1% fully $118 billion this year in tax cuts — turns a year old this week and Republicans in Congress actually celebrated the largest cuts to food assistance and Medicaid in American history.
They told us it was about fraud, about lazy people gaming the system, about restoring the dignity of work. Exactly a year later we can now see what it was really about in a line of cars outside a food bank in Phoenix.
That’s where ProPublica found Ana Alvarez on a recent morning, a single mother of five who works at a restaurant and lost her family’s SNAP benefits last September. She reapplied in December and the government still hasn’t processed her application.
She calls the agency every week and gets told to keep waiting, so she clips coupons, her kids don’t go to the zoo anymore, and as the summer heat bears down she’s doing grim arithmetic on rent, the car payment, and the electric bill that keeps the air conditioning running. She’s one reason Arizona has lost more than half of its SNAP recipients in a single year.
In Michigan, a widow named Sarah works two food service jobs to raise her 9-year-old daughter on $219 a month in food assistance, help she’s needed since her husband died suddenly six years ago. Last Christmas one of her employers wrote a single number wrong on her renewal paperwork, one missing zero, and the state cut her off.
And in Atlanta, Human Rights Watch documented a 36-year-old supermarket cashier who was working and meeting every requirement until she gave birth in late 2025, at which point Georgia shut off both her Medicaid and her food stamps, claiming she’d failed to report the job she was standing at every day. She’s spent the months since trying to get her coverage back while the medical bills pile up. In the party of family values, apparently, having a baby is now a firing offense.
None of these women are cheats or freeloaders. They’re workers, mothers, widows: exactly the people these cynical Republicans swear they’re protecting. But the numbers tell the story: more than 4 million Americans have been pushed off SNAP since the bill passed, the steepest drop since Clinton’s 1996 welfare cuts, and in just the 13 states that publish the data, roughly 808,000 children have lost food assistance.
The Congressional Budget Office projects millions more will lose Medicaid as the work requirement paperwork machine grinds through the states, even though more than nine in ten of the people targeted are already working, in school, caring for family, or disabled.
The cruelty built into the bill isn’t a side effect: it’s the whole reason for the “enhanced” paperwork requirements. Every mother who gives up in frustration, every widow tripped up by a typo, every application left to rot in a backlog is a line item of savings that can translate into a larger tax cut for Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg while the poorest households actually see their taxes go up.
That’s the morality of today’s GOP laid bare. They looked at Ana Alvarez’s five kids and Sarah’s daughter and that new mother in Atlanta, and they decided the billionaires needed the money more.
Every day, it seems, we see or hear about another way in which Trump and his lickspittles in Congress and the various federal agencies are tearing down our country, weakening our defenses, pitting Americans against each other, looting our government, and making life harder for everybody except the morbidly rich.
The question nobody seems to have an answer to is, “Why?”
— Is it that, as Craig Unger seems to suggest, that Trump’s been a Russian agent for decades and is setting us up to lose to the newly-forming Axis of Russia and China?
— Is it that he spent so many years burning with rage and embarrassment at not being accepted by New York high society that he’s just come to hate America?
— Could it be that American-values-hating foreign powers that have poured literally billions of dollars into the Trump family are paying him to tear us apart so they’ll never again have to endure the humiliation of having their human, civil, and women’s rights records called out by a future administration?
— Is it possible it’s all just to pay for tax cuts for billionaires?
— Or are his, Vance’s, and Musk’s white supremacist, Christian nationalist, libertarian, and/or neo-Nazi ideologies so intense that they’re willing to essentially burn the country down just to expel immigrants, deny benefits to people of color, elevate the rich, crush unions, and re-subordinate women?
These are serious questions for which I can’t find credible answers that explain the entire spectrum of their behavior. Why would Trump and the GOP:
— Condemn 12 million Americans to sickness and early death by gutting Medicaid (and the biggest cuts don’t even kick in until right after this fall’s election)?
— Destroy American soft power by killing USAID, thus condemning millions to death?
— Fire so many workers at the Social Security Administration that just getting through to sign up or get help has turned into a multi-day slog?
— Gut the State Department at a time diplomacy is most needed for world peace?
— End food assistance (SNAP) for millions when one-in-five American children experience hunger?
— Refuse to enforce laws and rules that allow workers to form unions in their workplaces?
— Propose forcing all new Medicare recipients onto Medicare “Advantage” corporate scam plans?
— Refuse military aid to Ukraine for over a year to give Russia time to finish off their genocidal job?
— Stop the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from going after fraudsters and banks when they rip people off?
— Eliminate a major NOAA program designed to warn communities about the dangers of flooding and other extreme weather crises?
— Politicize the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Election Commission?
— End net neutrality so none of us are safe online?
— Shut down anti-cyber-warfare operations in the federal government?
— Defund university research that leads to innovation and saves lives?
— Cut unemployment insurance benefits across Red states?
— Terminate support for people with student loans and gut scholarship programs?
— Slash Affordable Care Act outreach budgets and allow junk insurance plans?
— Reverse over 100 environmental rules, including those on clean air, clean water, and chemical safety?
— Weaken Dodd-Frank, including gutting oversight of “too big to fail” banks and stress tests for mid-size financial institutions?
— Dial back OSHA workplace safety standards and inspections?
— Cut taxes to rich people while raising them via tariffs on working class folks?
— Change the Federal Trade Commission to allow more monopolistic, rip-off corporate behavior?
— Make it harder to vote and harass Blue states by demanding their voter information?
— Work to prosecute women who have miscarriages or abortions?
— Make it harder to qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI)?
— End auto emission standards and increase our reliance on fossil fuels?
— Pack the courts with judges the American Bar Association says are “unqualified”?
— Destroy our faith in our elections and set up election workers for harassment?
— Fire the Inspectors General (who find waste, fraud, and abuse) across multiple federal agencies?
— Weaken whistleblower protections?
— Put the military on the streets of our cities in violation of Posse Comitatus?
— Use state power to punish political opponents and those who’ve investigated Trump’s crimes, alleged Russian collusion, and corruption?
— Create a network of concentration camps across America?
— Allow a shadow cabinet of billionaires and theocrats via Project 2025?
— Attack judges and prosecutors, leading to violence and threats of violence?
— Foment violence (like on January 6th) as a political strategy?
— Destroy our asylum and refugee systems?
— Pardon insurrectionists, rapists, cybercriminals, and other wealthy criminals?
— Defund the IRS so they can no longer audit the morbidly rich, leading to the loss of hundreds of billions in federal revenues?
— Ban books and censor libraries?
— Criminalize trans and queer people?
— Roll back gun safety measures?
— Defund the arts, humanities, and public media?
— Gut vaccine and other programs that keep Americans healthy?
— Nakedly politicize the military?
— Expand federal surveillance powers while kneecapping oversight?
— Criminalize free speech, particularly on college campuses?
— Attempt to revoke birthright citizenship?
— Attack press freedom and bar the Associated Press from the White House?
— Sabotage the US Postal Service?
— Undermine the census?
— Scale back civil and women’s rights enforcement?
— Normalize autocratic language like “vermin,” “scum,” and calling immigrants “animals”?
— Expel millions of brown-skinned immigrants who’ve already gone through the legal process to get work permits and are on a path toward citizenship?
— Create international fiscal chaos with an on-again, off-again TACO tariff policy?
— Cancel the suicide hotline for queer kids?
— Gut our national parks and sell off our federal lands to wealthy friends of the administration?
— Create a vast, secret, unaccountable police force with masked officers whose identity is concealed?
— Allow the president to accept hundreds of millions in obvious bribes from foreign powers in violation of the Constitution?
— Work so hard to conceal the crimes of a notorious sexual predator?
And this, of course, is just a partial list of the ways Trump and the GOP have weakened our nation, reduced our standing and prestige in the world, corrupted our government, and immiserated working class families.
Many of the theories about why Trump and the GOP would enthusiastically do so much damage to our people, our military, and our democracy contradict others.
For example, why would billionaires want tax cuts at the expense of damaging the economy that made them rich? Why would we promote a muscular military policy like bombing Iran while simultaneously destroying morale within the ranks of our military and kneecapping our intelligence agencies?
“Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is,” sang Bob Dylan back in the 1960s.
Today, we’re there.
Why do you think Trump and the GOP are working so hard to ruin our country?
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A Year After Trump Package, Report Shows Rich 'Got a Handout, and Working Families Got the Bill'
"I've never seen a more dangerous and purposeful attempt to make people sick and hungry," said one Pennsylvania state lawmaker.
Jul 10, 2026
Last week marked the first anniversary of President Donald Trump signing H.R. 1, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
But a new report from the progressive advocacy group Defend America Action, obtained exclusively by Common Dreams, demonstrates that while the bill has indeed been beautiful for the richest households, it has been anything but for working-class Americans.
"Republicans sacrificed the American people's financial future, healthcare, and food security to pay for massive tax breaks for big corporations and the ultrawealthy," the report said. "The richest people on the planet got a handout, and working families got the bill."
According to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), the richest 1% of Americans will see $117 billion in net tax cuts in 2026, an average windfall of roughly $66,000 each and more than the entire bottom 60% will receive combined.
At the same time, the law contained the largest cuts to federal healthcare funding in US history, slashing over $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) over the next decade.
The report found that as of March 2026, less than a year after the bill passed, enrollment in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) had already fallen by 3.8 million.
And after Republicans allowed ACA marketplace subsidies to expire, insurance premiums are projected to increase 114% on average, leading one in five enrollees—over 4.2 million people—to drop their coverage entirely.
Additionally, 11 million low-income Americans no longer receive zero-dollar premiums through the marketplace, while deductibles rose an average of 37% for those buying insurance on their own.
In total, more than 8 million people are estimated to have lost insurance coverage due to cuts to these programs, according to Protect Our Care. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has projected that as many as 15 million could lose insurance by 2034 as a result of the law and other policy changes over the next decade.
US Rep. Dina Titus (D) said that the cuts have hit her state of Nevada especially hard, as many people work in the service industry and don't receive employer-sponsored insurance.
"An estimated 100,000 Nevadans are impacted by this, [could be] kicked off Medicaid, including 22,000 just in my one congressional district, and it's children, it's seniors, and it's people with disabilities who are going to be impacted so directly."
"The failure to continue the [ACA] tax credits... has knocked more people off," she said. "Then people who do have it pay higher rates to cover that. So it doesn't just impact the people who are on Obamacare. It impacts everybody."
According to an analysis by Protect Our Care, more than 1,000 hospitals, nursing homes, maternity wards, and other critical care facilities around the country have either shut down, are at risk of closing, or have cut essential services since the law went into place.
"In my more than 25 years as a practicing physician and now a legislator for the last four years, I've never seen a more dangerous and purposeful attempt to make people sick and hungry," said Pennsylvania state Rep. Arvind Venkat (D-30), an emergency physician who represents the suburbs outside Pittsburgh.
"There are a number of hospitals in Pennsylvania that have closed or are under threat to close as a result of the devastation that's being caused by this legislation," he said.
After $187 billion was cut from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), more than 4 million low-income people—10 % of enrollees—no longer receive food assistance, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Millions more are expected to also lose benefits as stringent new work requirements go into effect. This includes 3 million people aged 18-24, according to a report from the Urban Institute, which noted that young adults often have greater difficulty finding stable jobs that allow them to meet the work requirements.
An analysis from ProPublica last month found that across just 12 states that break down data based on age, at least 776,000 children are no longer appearing on SNAP rolls.
"I think when we're talking about SNAP, we should start from the fact that the average benefit per person is [less than] $3 per meal," said Jared Bernstein, who served as the chair of the United States Council of Economic Advisers under former President Joe Biden.
"Nobody's getting rich off of SNAP," he said. "What's happening is people, including a lot of children, are getting fed."
"There's a long line of careful research showing long-term benefits for not just the beneficiaries themselves, but for the broader society," he said, noting that receiving benefits early in life is associated with "better academic performance, long-run health, educational attainment, and economic self-sufficiency."
The report from Defend America Action also said the Trump budget law squashed "an unprecedented American clean energy and manufacturing boom" that began during the Biden years, which created hundreds of thousands of jobs.
The law eliminated clean energy tax credits and led hundreds of projects to be canceled. Citing an analysis by Climate Power, the report said that over 140,000 clean energy jobs have been lost, are at risk, or have been delayed due to H.R. 1, stemming from 382 canceled or delayed projects that represented $69 billion in investment.
This has also contributed to the $92 billion spike in energy bills since Trump took office, the report said. Those canceled projects could have powered more than 17 million homes.
The law also killed the $7,500 electric vehicle (EV) tax credit, which has locked consumers into driving gas-powered cars that cost more to power, especially as Trump's war with Iran has sent gas prices soaring.
Bernstein noted that EV sales "fell off a cliff" after the tax credits were canceled.
"I can't begin to describe how shortsighted this is," he said. "Not just in terms of the environment, but also in terms of the US ever having a chance to capture market share in what I believe already is a do-or-die product development for the auto sector."
He noted that the US abandonment of clean energy, even as its use grows worldwide, has led China to dominate the market.
"This isn't China just eating our lunch," Bernstein said. "This is us serving our lunch to them."
Defend America Action's report notes that at the time of its passage, H.R. 1 was the most unpopular piece of legislation to pass through Congress since at least 1990, with just 31% approving and 55% disapproving, according to an average of four major polls.
Just months before the midterm elections, the bill remains equally unpopular, with only 33% of Americans saying they favor it and 48% opposing it, according to a recent survey by Navigator Research.
Titus told Common Dreams that one year ago, her colleagues in the GOP were very excited to pass H.R. 1.
Now, she said, "They don't really talk about it."
"They always are up for cutting programs," Titus said. "They call it fraud, waste, and abuse, but it's not. It's benefits that people needed."
"I think as you get closer to the election, there will be more concern about it," Titus said. "You know they cleverly made some of these cuts not go into effect until after the election, so they had to have been aware that they weren't very popular."
"I think we need to get the message out as much and as often as we can," she said, "and that's been kind of focused on affordability because all these different programs that we mentioned tie together."
"It's not just one little hit," Titus said. "It's across-the-board hits."
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'A Deliberate Choice' by Trump's GOP: Health Insurance Premiums Set to Rise by Double-Digits Again
"Every day the consequences of GOP healthcare cuts get worse," said one campaigner.
Jul 08, 2026
Health insurance companies that offer plans on the Affordable Care Act marketplace are proposing double-digit premium increases for 2027, signaling the second consecutive year of out-of-pocket cost hikes following President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans' refusal to extend enhanced subsidies that lapsed last December.
The health policy research group KFF and the Peterson Center on Healthcare released an analysis on Wednesday showing that ACA marketplace insurers "are proposing a median premium increase of about 14% in 2027." While that would represent a decrease compared to the median finalized premium increase of 20% for 2026, it marks "the second-highest requested rate change since 2018, as premium growth had been relatively flat in this market for several years," the analysis notes.
"If these early indications of median premium increases for 2027 hold, typical premiums for insurers participating in the ACA marketplaces will have jumped by more than one-third over a two-year period," KFF and the Peterson Center found, pointing to the significance of Trump and the GOP's deciseion to oppose an extension of enhanced ACA premiums that were established in 2021 during the Biden administration.
KFF and the Peterson Center explain:
As anticipated, many healthier enrollees left the ACA Marketplaces in 2026 as their subsidies decreased—leading to an average increase in premium payments after subsidies of 58% this year—leaving behind an enrollee base that is on average somewhat sicker and more expensive to cover. For 2026, this dynamic was estimated to drive rates an average of four percentage points higher than they otherwise would have been, and insurers are now building 2027 rates on top of that adjusted, less-healthy risk pool—compounding the effect into next year’s premiums as well.
Leslie Dach, chair of the advocacy group Protect Our Care, said in a statement Wednesday that the analysis underscores "just the latest hit on hard-working families struggling to get by after Republicans ripped away the tax credits that helped millions of Americans afford coverage."
"Every day the consequences of GOP healthcare cuts get worse," said Dach. "This was a deliberate choice by Republicans who took away affordable coverage from millions of people to help fund tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations. The damage is already being felt at kitchen tables across America, and these new premium hikes show the worst is still ahead. And Republicans will pay the political price. Healthcare is already the driving issue leading up to the elections, and as the consequences mount, it will only mobilize voters further.”
Since the start of President Donald Trump's second White House term, ACA enrollment has declined by more than 5 million people as a growing number of Americans are priced out of coverage by surging premiums.
For 2027, at least 20 insurers across states that have submitted rate filings so far have proposed premium increases exceeding 20%, according to the KFF-Peterson Center analysis.
Kendall Witmer, the Democratic National Committee's rapid response director, said in a statement Wednesday that "healthcare is unaffordable for millions of Americans because Donald Trump and Republicans sold them out to give billionaires even bigger tax cuts."
"Working families are already grappling with sky-high prices for groceries and gas, and growing medical bills are putting them over the edge," said Witmer. "Healthcare for Americans has never been more expensive—and Trump and Republicans are squarely to blame."
Leor Tal, campaign director for the advocacy group Unrig Our Ecnomy, echoed those arguments and called for GOP lawmakers, who still control the House and the Senate, to act.
“Millions have already lost access to health insurance, and these planned premium hikes will only escalate this crisis," said Tal.
"We need Republicans in Congress to restore the health care tax credits they took away from millions. Otherwise, when their premiums rise again, Americans will know who is at fault.”
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