Remembering
James Robison

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The Brew: Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Becomes Law, But His Coalition Faces Fragmentation

By John Zmirak Published on July 7, 2025

After showdowns with budget hawks and other Republican dissenters, plus a nail-biting final vote, President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful” budget reconciliation bill passed and was signed into law just ahead of the July 4 deadline. The president is taking a well-earned victory lap after strong-arming Congress into passing this complex compromise deal. There’s a lot to love about it, including:

  • No Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood — at least for this year. We’ll have to fight this battle again next year, and pro-life leaders are vowing to make this cut to a hugely profitable abortion and transgender business permanent in 2026.
  • $30 billion for ICE. Trump finally has the funds to ramp up enforcement of our just, democratically enacted immigration laws, and remove some of the 20 million illegal aliens the Biden regime invited into our overburdened, insecure country.
  • Reforms to Medicaid. As the White House boasts, the bill “protects and strengthens Medicaid for those who rely on it — pregnant women, children, seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income families — while eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. The One Big Beautiful Bill removes illegal aliens, enforces work requirements, and protects Medicaid for the truly vulnerable.”
  • Homeland Security spending increase, adding $46.5 million to complete Trump’s long overdue border wall.
  • Cuts to the Green New Deal scam, including zeroing out the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.
  • Requires SNAP recipients to show proof that they are holding down jobs in return for food assistance from the government.
  • Increases the per-child tax credit for families at a time when U.S. birth rates are at a record low.
  • Reduces (without eliminating) tax on tips, a partial fulfillment of a popular Trump campaign promise.
  • Adds $150 billion in defense spending, including a Golden Dome to protect U.S. cities from missile attacks by rogue nations.
  • Increases funding for school vouchers, which can also be used at faith-based schools.

The “America Party”: Ross Perot-Style Spoiler or Tantrum in a Teapot?

The bill isn’t perfect, but what bill ever is? However, the blowback on Trump for accomplishing this deal was massive and immediate, in the form of his one-time supporter Elon Musk — who is so outraged by the spending and deficit impact of the bill that the richest man on Earth is firing all his nukes. (Not literally. Take a breath.) How else should we describe it when an obsessed billionaire declares political war on a president, vowing to put all his resources behind an entirely new political party?

The “America Party” is what Musk calls this new entity. Its focus? Cutting spending and public benefits, bringing down the deficit, and little else. It has no positions so far on social issues, immigration, gun rights, or the Deep State — in other words, the causes that drive the MAGA movement Musk is hoping to replace. His seems like a narrow platform for a whole new political movement, and not one that’s necessarily popular outside a few civic-minded elites and the tech bros with whom Musk socializes. Nor are the optics the greatest right out of the gate:

If Musk contents himself with challenging individual Swamp members of Congress, his new party could do some good. But if he turns it into a spoiler organization aimed only at punishing President Trump for some imagined betrayal, then this South African immigrant could leave us all as desperate as those Boer farmers Trump welcomed to our country.

Will Trump Promote Mass Amnesty to Please the Cheap Labor Lobby?

Musk isn’t the only one losing focus on the centrality of the immigration issue. Trump himself keeps waffling about whether he intends to repatriate illegal immigrants even when it inconveniences Big Agriculture or his friends in the hospitality industry. Just two weeks ago, Trump floated a trial balloon of suspending enforcement of immigration laws on our farms and in our hotels. His base erupted with rage and Trump backed down. But now that he’s flush with success in the wake of the budget bill, Trump again seems to be listening to cheap labor advocates.

If it’s “radical right” to want our laws enforced, not simply evaded, and see the free market drive up wages for legal American workers, then let us make the most of it. The cheap food and cheap hotel rooms illegal workers make possible are more than made up for by the expensive medical care we taxpayers have to provide those same workers — plus the benefits and educations their anchor babies receive. Longtime Trump supporters are making this point loudly and persistently, rousing the president’s base:

As I said when Trump seemed to be mulling a regime-change war in Iran: Mr. President, if we’d wanted Jeb Bush to be president, we would have voted for him.

Pray for the Texas Hill Country

Those of us who live in Texas were blindsided this weekend by the catastrophic flooding in the hill country. The epicenter was Camp Mystic, a popular Bible camp that has hosted young Texans for a century. Several little girls from my neighborhood were among the 81 people (at press time) who perished in the sudden upsurge of waters, despite the heroic efforts of teenage camp counselors who rescued dozens of the children entrusted to their care. The Western Journal runs down the devastation:

The death toll continued to rise Sunday due to flooding that devastated a swath of central Texas on Friday, leaving dozens missing.

According to The Washington Post, as of early Sunday afternoon, 67 people were dead, 59 in Kerr County where floodwaters tore through a summer camp. Twenty-one children are among the dead, while there are 11 girls alone missing from the camp. The Guardian put the toll of dead at 69.

The storm was so severe that the Guadalupe River rose 26 feet in 45 minutes early Friday, according to the Associated Press.

Please join us in our prayers for the victims, their families, and the survivors who might still turn up in the ongoing rescue efforts.

Obama’s CIA Chief John Brennan Helped Fake Russia Collusion Charges Against Trump

In case you’ve forgotten: The Deep State hates you and wants to nullify your vote. Gateway Pundit reports on the latest revelations from internal CIA investigations into the crimes of the Obama era:

CIA Director John Ratcliffe announced Wednesday that a new CIA report reveals former FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and DNI James Clapper worked together to purposely corrupt the Trump-Russia investigation in 2016 before Trump entered office.

The three corrupt Obama officials even included the Steele Dossier in their quest to “screw Trump” knowing at the time that the Steele Dossier was complete rubbish.

For the next three years Democrats and deep state operatives used these documents in their attempt to impeach Trump and run a coup on the White House.

Along The Stream…

How can we stay true to God through the toughest times in our lives? Later this morning, singer/songwriter Steven Curtis Chapman tells Life Today cohosts James and Betty Robison how he kept the faith.

At noon, read science educator David Rives’s piece on the toxic legacy of the Scopes “Monkey Trial,” which concluded 100 years ago in a cloud of myths and propaganda that undermined both Christian faith and human dignity.

 

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of 14 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.