How the “Big Beautiful Bill” Is Harming People — and How They’re Responding

Over the past 15 months, I’ve traveled to 22 states and participated in more than 100 events with people living with the consequences of what Congress called the “One Big Beautiful Bill” — and many of the people we meet call the “One Big Ugly Law.”

That law deeply slashed programs like SNAP and Medicaid to fund tax cuts for the wealthy, along with record high budgets for ICE and the Pentagon.

We started in April 2025 with town halls in Warren, Michigan and Racine, Wisconsin, before the bill passed. In Warren, I met Steph, who runs a local food pantry. She was already struggling to keep up with demand and worried about what would happen if families lost more support.

When we returned to Warren this summer, Steph was helping organize a community resource fair distributing food, diapers, clothing, and other necessities to families trying to stay afloat as the law’s cuts take effect.

I think about Janice in Iowa, too (Some names in this story have been changed to protect individuals’ privacy). She joined one of our rallies in Washington in 2025 and, with a shaking voice, told hundreds of people about her son’s medical needs and what Medicaid meant to their family.

Later that year, her son died. When we returned to Iowa this year, Janice came back too. She was still fighting for Medicaid — not for her own son anymore, but for other people’s children.

In Colorado, we met Genesis, whose children rely on Medicaid, including her three-year-old battling a brain tumor. Her family also relies on SNAP. She’s struggling to afford food and gas and must stretch her very meager budget in impossible ways.

You can measure the damage in spreadsheets. But numbers can’t tell you what it feels like to sit across from a parent trying to figure out how to care for a sick child.

As I traveled, I saw people trying to patch holes that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

Schools are opening food pantries for their students. Neighbors are bringing groceries to families when they don’t have much to spare themselves. Health care providers are stretching resources as far as they can. Signal chats connect scared immigrant families with people who can bring food or give someone a ride.

But strangely enough, this has made me more hopeful. It’s also convinced me that Washington is misreading the politics of this moment.

We still sort Americans into familiar categories: Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, urban or rural. But that’s now how most of the people I meet talk about what’s happening. They talk about working harder and still falling behind. Hospitals closing. Groceries getting more expensive.

I increasingly believe the divide shaping our politics isn’t simply left versus right. It’s the very rich versus everyone else.

People aren’t asking politicians to make their decline a little more manageable. They want to take their kid to the doctor and put food on the table. They want good schools and housing they can afford. They want billionaires and corporations to play by the same rules they do. And they want their government to fight for them, too.

None of this is radical. What’s radical is telling people in the richest country in the world that we can’t afford these things — while handing more tax breaks to people who already have more than they could spend in a lifetime.

I don’t know exactly where this leads. But I know it’s bigger than one election.

Over the last 15 months, I’ve watched people without enough food share what they have. I’ve watched parents carrying unimaginable grief fight for other people’s children. I’ve watched people with every reason to give up keep showing up for one another.

Politicians may have overestimated how much pain people could absorb. They may also be underestimating what happens when people who’ve been taking care of one another decide to fight for one another, too.

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Previously Published on otherwords.org with Creative Commons License

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