The Big Bill Is Bullshit—But Its Legacy Is Terror

A brutal, honest reckoning with the GOP’s latest assault on humanity—and the country that keeps letting them get away with it.

Opinion by: Aisha K. Staggers, Editor-At-Large

In 2003, I was teaching fifth grade in South Carolina when one of my students raised her hand during a lesson on slavery and said, “My mama had slaves growing up.” Again, it was 2003; her mother was 39. It never happened, but that’s not the point. That 10-year-old had already internalized the message of white supremacy: while the people who worked for their family weren’t enslaved, they weren’t entirely free either. The people they worked for still viewed them as property, and let their children, friends, and neighbors believe that even if you pay for someone’s labor, you still own them.

That time of a pre–Civil War, pre–Emancipation Proclamation America has been so romanticized by white people, they’re desperate to return to it. And this big bill of bullshit is their vehicle. They feel no guilt about it, because the truth is—they’re tired. Tired of having to behave with the humanity they’ve spent centuries robbing from everyone else. Tired of sharing anything. Tired of pretending the rest of us are fully human.

From the moment their battered old boats landed, carrying hungry, diseased ancestors begging for help and a hot meal from the very Indigenous people they later slaughtered, white people in this country have taken everything. They claimed they didn’t want a king, said they were fleeing persecution—only to build a system of government designed to persecute everyone but themselves. They kidnapped an entire race of people from a continent, then called it liberty. And now, that government wants to go even further—with this big bill of bullshit.

These men (and women) whose nostalgic longing to be gentlemen sipping bourbon on porches or ladies drinking mint juleps overwhelmed by “the vapors” are, in fact, descendants of violent slave-owning rapists who built their power on white supremacy. And this band of antebellum idiots intends to carry forth that horrific legacy by any means necessary and with precision. They don’t miss the past—they want to remake the present in its image.

And now, with the Big Bullshitter back in the White House, these obedient little foot soldiers are lining up to prove their devotion.

This bill isn’t about budgets or border policy or defending “American values.” It’s about codifying cruelty. It is a declaration of war on women, on immigrants, on the poor, on anyone who refuses to kneel before Trumpism’s golden idol of white grievance and patriarchal power.

In Florida, that cruelty has a name: “Alligator Alcatraz.” That’s what they’re calling the new ICE detainment compound, built deep in the Everglades on land soaked in blood and Black history. But don’t let the branding fool you—this isn’t just a prison. It’s a provocation.

“Alligator bait” isn’t folklore—it’s fact. In the Jim Crow South, especially Florida, enslaved Black babies and toddlers were used as bait to lure alligators. That horror was real, documented, and even marketed in newspapers and postcards. Today, that legacy is being revived under the guise of immigration enforcement, caging brown and Black people in the same swamps where their ancestors were fed to beasts.

And while they’re feeding ICE, they’re starving healthcare. This bill guts funding for any hospital that provides abortion care, gender-affirming treatment, or even basic reproductive services. The result? Entire regions—especially in the South and Midwest—will lose access to OB-GYNs, prenatal care, and safe childbirth support in a country where forced birth is law in some states.

When hospitals close, women die. And the GOP knows it. The incels running the party just don't care.

They’re slashing food assistance, cutting housing support, and supercharging police departments under the lie of “community safety.” This is plantation logic in a modern wrapper—starve the poor, over-police the Black, and punish the defiant.

Donald Trump doesn’t need to write the bill. He doesn’t even need to read it. He just needs to grunt, and they snap to attention. Every act of cruelty, every lie, every death that results from this legislation is part of their collective sacrifice at the altar of his ego. They aren’t lawmakers. They’re enforcers.

This is what the Republican Party is now. Not conservative. Not constitutional. Just committed to the politics of domination—by any means necessary.

So no, there’s nothing good about the good ol’ boys. And nothing noble about the women who ride shotgun with them. This isn’t nostalgia. It’s terrorism. This isn’t just cruelty—it’s population control. And if we don’t call it what it is, we’re part of it. Stephen Miller said he wants America to be a country of 100 million. You don’t get there without camps, bans, forced births, and mass death. And the only people he wants here are white.

That’s the plan. And by voting for this big bill of bullshit, it seems Congress supports that plan.

They used to need us—for labor, for the illusion of democracy. So they made us 3/5ths human to feel better about getting rich off our backs. It took a constitutional amendment to admit we were people. That’s how disgusting the foundation of this country is. The only thing more disgusting is how many people still think like the men who wrote it.

We let them control the narrative, the policy, the courts, the maps, the money. And then we pretend to be shocked when they control the future. This country is not run by good people. It is run by the descendants of those who made profit off stolen bodies and broken families. They still don’t see us as fully human. And they write laws to make sure they don’t have to.

That’s what this bill, soon to be law, is.

A country with no shame cannot be saved. And a country this proud of having none doesn’t deserve to be.