So, This is Independence Day? Wait a Sec...
A tax bill that virtually nobody wants becomes the law. Immigrants are caged like animals in a sweltering hot swamp in Florida. This is what our ancestors fought and died for?
Reflections on a Usually Good Day
This is the most depressing July 4th I’ve experienced in decades. America, once a land where determination, imagination, and a bit of luck could transform fortunes, now exalts petty grievances, celebrates hatred as a form of achievement, and entrenches wealth inequality. Our divisions have hardened, and the doors of aid for the poor have slammed shut, leaving the vulnerable to fend for themselves.
Is this the America our ancestors envisioned when they defied a distant monarchy’s erratic, oppressive rule? In 1776, they united—brothers, sisters, neighbors, and strangers—and declared enough was enough. Independence was no sure bet; victory seemed a long shot. Yet, shoulder to shoulder in a ragtag army, they pushed back their oppressors, bolstered by foreign allies who believed in their cause and supplied tools, weapons, and food.
Today, as our president signs a bill into law that defies “the will of the people” and lacks “the consent of the governed,” we’ll gaze at hot dogs and hamburgers sizzling on the grill, grateful for a day off. We’re trapped in illusions, seeing our nation as just our neighborhood, our influence irrelevant. No common cause binds us; strength in numbers feels like a myth. We even hesitate to voice political beliefs in public, fearing radicalized strangers—emboldened by movements like MAGA—might attack us. What began as a dark fungus on the tree of freedom has spread, rotting and hardening its roots.
Trump to Sign Tax Bill
The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passed through Congress Thursday, putting it on track to reach the President’s desk today, July 4th. This bill is a complex, messy, and hard-to-understand package of tax cuts, a debt ceiling increase, and miscellaneous amendments that coincidentally complete the last pieces required for Trump to implement authoritarian powers fully.
Instead of wasting article space on all the details of what this bill will do for low, middle, and high-income earners in the U.S., I’ve posted a video clip of an explainer video from The New York Times. This analysis, by Margot Sanger Katz, provides an overview of the bill’s impact. It’s a bit long at 2 minutes 24 seconds, so please adjust the playback speed under the “gear” icon in the YouTube video settings if you'd like. The link to the full video is on the front page of the New York Times morning edition today.
I want to highlight one of the particularly painful aspects of this abhorrent piece of legislation. The impacts to Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients are severe. The latter, known as SNAP, serves almost 42 million Americans with grocery assistance. The new version of the legislation:
Expanded Work Requirements: If you’re between 18 and 64 (previously 54), or parents of children aged 14 and older, you’ll have to work, volunteer, or participate in training for 80 hours per month to get benefits. There are exemptions for homeless people, pregnant women, veterans, those who aged out of foster care, and those with disabilities. But the new version increases paperwork requirements substantially, essentially giving the government a loophole to deny coverage to you if you don’t fill out the forms correctly.
Cost Sharing With States: For the first time in SNAP’s history, states will share the cost of benefits, which were previously fully funded by the federal government. Starting in fiscal year 2028 (August 30, 2027), states with payment error rates above 6% must contribute 5% to 15% of the benefit costs, with higher error rates requiring larger contributions, up to 25%. Thanks to Lisa Murkowski, if you live in Alaska, you are exempt from this requirement. (Proof that the Senate was doing back-room deals to buy votes, not make decent laws, essentially.)
Elimination of Benefits for Certain Immigrants: The bill terminates SNAP for 120,000 to 250,000 legally present immigrants who are not citizens or lawful permanent residents, including those fleeing persecution, domestic violence survivors, and victims of human trafficking. This includes almost 50,000 children. This is part of the $250 billion in cuts to the program.
Limited Adjustments for Inflation: The bill limits the annual increase in SNAP benefits tied to inflation, presumably because Congress believes rooftop gardens and apartment chicken coops are now a thing, contributing to the $300 billion in total cuts to the program.
Cuts Are Phased In: To minimize backlash during the Trump administration’s tenure, work requirements don’t take effect until December 31, 2026. Immigrant exceptions are scheduled to go into effect on October 1, 2025. Inflationary cap reductions also go into effect on the same date.
To give you a visual map of who will be impacted, this Axios map reported by Avery Lotz shows the least-to-hardest hit states that participate in SNAP benefits currently:
And The Debt Skyrockets, Along with Interest
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), this bill is expected to strip health coverage away from more than 12-15 million Americans, leaving emergency room care the only option. It is a pure “sham and slam-dunk” for giving the wealthiest Americans additional money they don’t need, all while adding $5 trillion to the country’s debt, which currently stands at $34 trillion.
By the time interest is added in, this bill will bring the debt to over $40 trillion. And if the “assumed” economic growth doesn’t appear, the debt could skyrocket even higher, increasing interest rates and the interest payment portion of the debt, which will soon surpass our entire Defense spending budget. Republicans should be doing the “walk of shame” out of the Capitol building this week.
Good Times if you’re an Alligator in Florida
In a ruthless move, Trump and Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida became friends again as DeSantis genuflected and prostrated himself at the feet of the Emperor in service of his immigration deportation campaign. Kristi Noem was there, fake face and barbie hair extensions intact, wearing her $80,000 Rolex as a prop item to remind the rest of us, “She is Special Material.”
As it might have been envisioned in one of my all-time favorite cartoon series that GenXers were alive to read at the time, Bloom County by Berke Breathed (yes, that’s his name):
Alligator Alcatraz Apartheid
You’ve probably heard of the concentration camp that Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida built in record time with FEMA funds to house immigrants who’ve been arrested. MAGA Republicans love to call it “Alligator Alcatraz” because of the dominance of the local alligator population, which in President Trump’s mind, are unpaid guard laborr, which I’ll come back to in a minute in a video clip. In total, there could be upwards of 3,000 beds, all in cages, some in structures that barely have solid floors, in the Florida Everglades at a National Guard air force base. No toilets, and apparently only fixed plumbing for the guards, not the inmates.
This place sits in a hellhole. It was completed in eight days in late June, using DeSantis’s emergency powers, bypassing standard environmental and public review processes. Not to worry, because all of that proved to be a genuine cause for concern when Trump visited July 1st: it rained heavily, causing flooding in the tents and requiring immediate repairs. It’s built on a 30-square-mile former airport now used by the National Guard, which DeSantis also appropriated for Shitler Trump in record time.
The cruelty is the primary point. Listen to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt tell it from the regime’s point of view at a press conference:
Not only that, but Trump paid a visit and offered his enlightening point of view regarding treating human beings (who will not, I suggest, be white male Christian Nationalists in captivity there, but more likely brown people from South America):
The president underscored how placing undocumented immigrants in a swamp surrounded by predators was a security tactic.
Normalizing Domestic Terrorism
“This is not a nice business,” he said. “You know, the snakes are fast, but alligators,” the president added.
“We’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator, OK? If they escape prison, how to run away. Don’t run in a straight line. Run like this,” he said, moving his hand back and forth. “And you know what? Your chances go up about 1%.”
“The only way out is a one-way flight. It is isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife and unforgiving terrain,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday. “When you have illegal murderers and rapists and heinous criminals in a detention facility surrounded by alligators, yes, I do think that’s a deterrent for them to try to escape.”
This is likely a human rights violation. It’s also likely, because of the premise that America is “under attack” by these people, a punishable war crime under International Law.
The Democrats’ position on all of this? All I hear are crickets. I’m so done with them, save the likes of Murphy, AOC, Crockett, JB Pritzker, Sanders, and a few others, I’m sure I’ve forgotten.
You can be sure that now that the OBBBA tax bill will be signed into law, the $150 billion it will make available is going to prompt:
More facilities like this around the country, especially in places where unused federal structures (thank you, DOGE, for freeing up entire buildings that could be converted for this purpose) are available.
The motley crew of what appear in social media posts to be dudes with camo and ICE vests abducting people off the street will spread to your town, or a town very close to yours.
Those people will be indiscriminate about who they catch in their pursuit of “violent criminal immigrants.”
Due process will be provided, but it will be limited in complex cases that require greater scrutiny of the facts. I doubt judges will even consider legal factors of the slightest complexity.
Just as the cherry on top of everything else, Trump and DeSantis plan to deputize National Guard troops as judges to make this place the fast-lane McDonald’s of deportation in the country. It’s outrageous on every level, and comments on X fully support the idea that the fact it makes liberals angry is a great side effect. I can only say, clamping my swearing out, that the people who think that are suffering from mental dysfunction of some kind.
That’s a Wrap
In our coverage of the Tax Bill and the Alligator Alcatraz cases today, I’ve highlighted what I think are now the real start of the authoritarian tone that will settle over the country in the form of deep seated fear, anxiety over using our First Amendment free speech rights for fear of retaliation, and an existential dread of the cuts coming to hospitals, medical care, nursing homes, and complex enrollment requirements for Medicaid and SNAP benefits.
I’m setting the stage for the following article, where I will spend much less time analyzing the current state and much more time examining the options I believe can bring about quick, substantial improvements.
So, change remains possible. Hope is not lost, but it demands we forge a new contract: a determined resistance against a King-like power that would happily see us silenced or ignored. By coming together—not as neighbors divided by fear, but as a people united in purpose—we can reclaim the spirit of 1776.
Our strength lies in our numbers, our resolve, and our refusal to let freedom’s roots wither. Let this July 4th mark not just our grief, but the moment we begin to fight, together, for an America worthy of its name.
With that thought, I wish you a July 4th that you enjoy with family and friends. It’s a good day of the week to fall on this year, so a weekend awaits afterwards.
I encourage you, as always, to unplug from your digital footprint for 30 minutes today. It can be very restorative, from my experience, and help your mental health. I think that’s very important to attend to in these times, because this is going to be a long fight, and we need you in it!
Be Well.
Rick Herbst
July 4, 2025
SOURCES
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/07/03/big-beautiful-bill-impacts-medicaid-taxes/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/07/03/trump-big-beautiful-tax-bill-national-debt/
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/07/03/us/trump-news-policy-bill
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/us/politics/trump-policy-bill.html
https://www.axios.com/2025/07/03/trump-big-beautiful-bill-snap
https://19thnews.org/2025/05/trump-big-beautiful-tax-bill-impact-medicaid-snap/
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/01/politics/alligator-alcatraz-trump-florida
https://secure.winred.com/republican-party-of-florida/storefront/
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/24/us/alligator-alcatraz-florida-everglades-migrant-detention-hnk
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/01/nx-s1-5453078/trump-alligator-alcatraz-visit-migrant-detention-center
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/27/florida-alligator-alcatraz-migrant-jail-outrage
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/sadism-alligator-auschwitz/
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article309675405.html
Excellent article! The OBBB is a billionaire’s dream come true, and a nightmare for the rest of us.
I cannot bring myself to get into the holiday spirit on this July 4, 2025. All I feel is immense sadness for what this country is experiencing. Our 1776 ancestors must be rolling over in their graves.
There are more of us than them! We need to unite and fight!