Some More News - Some More News: How Donald Trump's Big Beautiful Bill Will Keep Screwing Everybody

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

Hi. It's been a few months since the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed by Donald Trump, and you may have already forgotten what a turd it is. Get the world's news at https://ground.news/SMN to compare coverage and see through biased coverage. Subscribe for 40% off unlimited access through our link.Hosted by Cody JohnstonExecutive Producer - Katy StollDirected by Will GordhWritten by Erik BarnesProduced by Jonathan HarrisEdited by Gregg MellerPost-Production Supervisor / Motion Graphics & VFX - John ConwayResearcher - Marco Siler-GonzalesGraphics by Clint DeNiscoHead Writer - David Christopher BellPATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenewsMERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Ugh, gross, look at all this news. We got the Epstein files that Trump wants us to forget. Trump trying to invade American cities. The Epstein files, Trump wants us to forget, ostensibly live streamed assassinations.

Trump and Putin met. New Tim Robinson show. The Epstein files, Trump wants us to forget. Gerrymandering. The Epstein files, Trump wants us to... When did I get a tattoo? B, B, B, B, B, what's I even stand for? Big Burberry belt?

Boob's, boobs, boobstine, Biles. Bore bludgeoning brigade! You know what? I'm gonna figure it out. I just need to, I just need to think really, really hard. Donald Trump's big beautiful bullshit. I remember it all now. Okay, here's some news. Remember the Big Beautiful Bill,

or as it's officially called, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Abba! A little odd we all kind of forgot about it, but of course, that's kind of what happens when every day lasts thousands of years. Even so, one could say it was actually designed to be forgotten. Many of the items voted in through the Big Beautiful Bill

don't go into effect until after the midterms in 2026, which creates an eons long news chasm between the cause and the effect of it. It's like that Eternals movie between MCU phases, in that it has big consequences for the universe, despite existing like a Lovecraftian level psychic drain on our memories. Remember Eternals?

Kit Harrington was there? Sort of? He met Blade at the end? Sort of? I think Harry Stiles was in the end credits, or maybe I dreamt that. I dream of him often, but he usually has Patent Oswald Wall's voice, like that little guy at the end of Eternals, which I promise this episode is not about.

But it would be unfair and unbalanced of me to not mention Druig and Co and Festos and Thina and Kingo and also the rest of the Eternals, which this episode is not about. My point is that the Big B&B was this very devastating bill that passed and then we all forgot. But please don't. It's going to matter in that it's a very very. bad and weird bill that's going to do a lot of bad things. And I do mean weird, as in the Republican party is weird. As in, remember when calling out things and people that were weird as weird was kind of working? Well, there's some weird stuff in this bill, a bill that even politicians who voted for and championed it didn't actually read. That seems weird and bad and

common. Lawmaking seems like a pretty sweet gig, actually. So, for example, along with Doge already defunding the National Endowment for the Humanities and firing tons of people there, this bill reroutes what measly grant money they would have gotten. For reference, the NEH has led a bunch of really cool and bipartisan projects like collecting and preserving about 150,000 documents belonging to George Washington, excavating a shipwreck from 1,300 BCE, the oldest shipwreck excavation ever. and collecting and publishing the Lewis and Clark journals and almanacs.

Do you like the Ken Burns, the Civil War documentary? Or rather, does your uncle like Ken Burns' The Civil War documentary? Well, about a third of that was paid for by the NEH. And that's pretty much all gone now. For no good reason, it seems. I guess it's too woke or something. Is George Washington woke now? I don't know.

And that little grant money that was left is being moved toward only two projects so far. One is to make statues for something called a National Garden of American Heroes, which is basically a Madame Tussauds of 250 generic and seemingly random historical figures that are being commissioned for a total of $600,000 to be completed in less than a year from now. Now, for reference, Arkansas paid $750,000 for just two bronze statues that took five years to make. It's a shoddy and weird project, seemingly created by ChatGPT. It's a very Trump construction job is the point, and clearly just comes from the same Trump, tacky-ass casino realtor brain that made the Rose Garden not a garden anymore.

It's the Floridafication of the White House. It's theme park art. Some figures in this Garden of American Heroes include, but aren't limited to, William F. Buckley, Jr., Christopher Columbus, of course. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which is super woke, but also she wasn't like the first woman's Supreme Court Justice or something. So why aren't they going with Sandra Day O'Connor? It's just Kobe is on the list, but not Michael Jordan.

So it's going to be like Kobe Bryant next to Albert Einstein doing, they'll probably be made of aluminum and painted gold also. The other thing this money is going toward is something called the Tikva Fund, which is a conservative Jewish nonprofit that fights. anti-Semitism, builds schools in Israel, and influences Israeli right-wing politics. Sounds super on the level. According to Trump's chairman of the NEH, this grant, which is actually the largest grant they have ever given, will help combat the sinister and hate-filled attacks on Jewish people

that we have been witnessing on American campuses and streets. I think we can all probably guess what that actually means. So, yeah, that's what we're getting instead of all that other cool stuff the NEH did. But at least, and this is weird to say, but at least we know why this was crammed into the big, beautiful bill. Because there are things, weirdly unnecessarily destructive things, where we don't know why they are in there. Such is the case with the changes to taxes on gambling losses. Soon, gamblers can only deduct 90% of their losses for a tax year, whereas they previously could deduct all of their losses. Now, that might not affect you, and there are a lot of problems.

with gambling and smartphones and all of that. But I'm mentioning it because no one seems to know who actually put it in there. Or perhaps no one wants to take credit for it. And hey, that's weird, huh? Seems like a bad bill if that's the case. Seems like none of the people who voted for it actually read the damn thing.

One theory is that some Republicans somewhere snuck this provision amongst all the other stuff to help generate tax revenue to assist the bill to align with the Senate's budget. its budget rules. Oh, I get it now. They did a bad job. They needed the numbers to be different, so somebody hastily went through and changed a percentage to make the overall numbers work. They chose a group of people they personally didn't care about, even though they should because the president's a freaking casino guy, but they gotta shave a bit off the top, see, at the expense of

others to make a bad bill work. Like realizing that you could save money by feeding your pets every other day, not thinking about how they could decide to eat you instead. And eat they will, because besides the fact that no one seems to know who put this in there, this also means that even if you win, you could lose. Like, let's say you won $100,000 in bets, but lost $100,000, essentially breaking even. Well, now you would still owe the IRS taxes on 10 grand of those losses. This comes at a time when for better or worse, sports gambling has been exponentially expanded in popularity. Notably, during a dip in tourism to Vegas,

probably because the economy sucks and no one wants to visit our country anymore. More on that later. In fact, casinos are warning that this provision could push many professional gamblers and huge cash prize tournaments overseas for their business, along with pushing others to illegal unregulated and dangerous forms of gambling

that they wouldn't report to the IRS. And even if, you don't care about gambling, which I understand. Gambling is a vice that can become addictive and ruin people's lives, but this will impact other jobs like the bartenders, bellhops, and waitstaff at the casinos, and of course all the other businesses around casinos. Think of the buffets. Won't someone think of the buffets? I do. I think of nothing but buffets. So yeah, it's silly, which is why lawmakers are now trying to backtrack on it. Of course, it would have been better if someone pointed this out before they did it, which, oh, someone did. A Democratic

lawmaker from Nevada pointed out how bad this was and tried to remove it before a vote, probably because she actually read the damn thing and they ignored her, you know, to own the libs by, I guess, hurting the economy. That's going to be a running theme, of course, not owning the libs, but rather that the big beautiful bill seems oddly determined to make the economy and country worse in various ways at the expense of getting rid of good things that help people and can make the economy better. Like, in a way that feels like sabotage at times, but it's probably just greed and stupidity. And this obviously reflects on the big stuff in this bill, the poop entree to these hors d'oeuvres, and we will be feeding you that delicious turd right

after these ads which aren't turds. Open wide! Hey folks, there's no ad for you. Thank you to our wonderful, sweet, beautiful patrons for your support on patreon.com slash some more news. Just like there's no ad for you, there's no BBB tattoo for me anymore because we filmed the episode.

We did it already and I wash it off. It's gone. This is after the fact. So, time to go back to the I hope I didn't pay much for this. Penmanship is awful. Couldn't they use like the cool S font or something? Give them eye patches, make them boobs or butts? Come on!

Anyway, hey, we're back and we are more Cody than ever. Too Cody, some might say. And we were talking about how there's a lot of weird and bad nonsense in The Big Beautiful Bill. That was to butter you up, you see. Slippery your mind. Loeb. Because it's now time for the part where we talk about all the stuff that isn't so much weird as it is devastating. Stuff that you probably heard about a few months ago that we would like to remind you of and how it's going to happen. Because we need to remember. At some point,

life in America is going to become even worse because of this bill. And it's important to remember why before that happens. And it's fitting to start with the thing that was the easiest for them to sell to the American people. You know the thing. It's this thing. Pretty amazing. More tax cuts. Less, everything else we need.

Of course, that second part, they always whisper. But, yeah, this is the one card the Republicans love to play. No one likes paying money, so much so that they'll support a wee bit of fascism. I mean, I don't like paying taxes either. That's why I list all my DVDs as dependents. But let's actually keep that between us. Anyway, who can argue with getting rid of taxes on tips, overtime, car loan interest, and adding an additional deduction for seniors on Social Security?

None of that's inherently bad, but when the government says that they're cutting a bunch of taxes or spending, the question we always have to ask is, how are they doing that? What are we losing? It's our money after all. We earned it by selling our dependents. on eBay. And the Big Beautiful Bill's proposal includes nearly $5 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years. That's a lot. So where's the money coming from? Well, the bill eliminates energy tax credits through the Inflation Reduction Act, thereby making a half a trillion dollars of cuts

to clean energy investment over the next decade. Triple B is also butchering spending on student loans and loan forgiveness programs, reeling back $44 billion in. in loan opportunities for grads, professionals, and parents. And if you're the kind of person or you're talking to the kind of person who's scared of big number money because they think any government spending is bad for some cute reason, let's rephrase. The bill increases your student loan payments. Do you want higher student loan payments? The bill also makes around $200 billion in cuts to food assistance programs and SNAP benefits,

cutting off food supplies that feed more than 500,000 children now, and a projected one in five American children over time. Remember when Vice Podcasts J.D. Vance spread the Nazi lie that immigrants were eating people's cats and dogs in Ohio? And there was that propaganda about how those immigrants are also using up Americans' food stamps, the food stamps that they want and need and deserve. I'm currently in the process of reapplying four food stamps, But again, even that for us is a fight because of these Haitians.

We can't get these simple things because they're coming and they're taking it. Well, now it's not immigrants taking it away, which it never was. It's Republicans, who incidentally spread the Nazi lie that immigrants are eating pets. Is taking food stamps good now? Do we like the food stamps taken away when rich white people are the ones doing the taking? Probably not. This is all to say that they're cutting our taxes at our expense. It's like if an airline reduced ticket prices by getting rid of all their seats and pilots.

It's the fundamental thing that a lot of people don't seem to understand in this country. Taxes pay for things we want. And when a politician says, great news, we're cutting taxes. They're probably getting rid of that stuff. They certainly aren't getting rid of stuff wealthy people want or use. In fact, the bill extends and, modifies Trump's 2017 tax cuts by further cutting the taxes levied against the top 20% of income earners, while the lowest income earners barely see a difference in their tax bill. So if you do the

money math factoring in the SNAP, Medicaid, and other service cuts, the poorest among us Americans actually lose around $700 they don't have annually, while the richest get an extra $30,000 to just, I don't know, buy tax-exempt spaceport bonds with? That's also in the bill. Meanwhile, the top point one percent of wealthy Americans could see up to $286,000 in additional income to save up for a realistic bronze statue of themselves or to buy a media company or something like that. Oh, also, $1 trillion is being cut from Medicaid spending over the next decade. Hmm, that's odd because I seem to remember this happening. Can you guarantee that Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security

will not be touched? Yeah, I mean, I have said it so many times. You shouldn't be asking me that question, okay? This will not be read my lips. It won't be read my lips anymore. Uh, we're not gonna touch it. He's not gonna touch it. I mean, why would he touch it?

It's not a beauty pageant contestant. Trump said this a lot. And yet, oops, all lies. It's like he's some kind of a frequent liar and rapist. Sue me dickhead, your rapist dickhead. And Medicaid wasn't just the only health care service cut. There are also cuts to the Affordable Care Act, essentially reversing the health coverage gains from it over the next 10 years.

All of these health policy changes combined could force up to 17 million Americans off their health care coverage. This not only hurts low-income patients, but also hurts the hospitals, nursing homes, community health centers that are financed through government programs, especially ones in rural areas which will likely have to close down entirely. Now, the way they can pretend they aren't devastating health care is by tightening work requirements while creating more eligibility hoops to qualify for ACA health care coverage. See, here's the second part to what

Trump was saying there. Now, we are going to look for fraud. I'm sure you're okay with that, like people that shouldn't be on, people that are illegal aliens and others, criminals in many cases. Wait, do criminals not deserve health care? So this is how they are going to justify it, the way they justify everything they are doing. It's okay if it happens to the bad people you see.

And by bad people, they mainly mean imaginary lazy people. What we've talked about is returning work requirements. So for example, you don't have able-bodied young men on a program that's designed for single mothers and the elderly and disabled. They're draining resources from people who are actually do that. So if you clean that up, insure it up, you save a lot of money and you return the dignity of work to young men

who need to be out working instead of playing video games all day. Okay, so here's the thing. I don't really care if a small portion of people on Medicaid are living like Brody from Mallrats. I'm probably not alone here. 57% of all Americans believe healthcare is a human right. I'm more concerned about making sure these programs work properly than making sure some people aren't abusing them.

Or rather, I'm not willing to make them worse to ensure that. But the GOP are obsessed with this. Or rather, again, they want us to be obsessed with this. Even though work requirements might seem like a reasonable ask, they aren't. Firstly, the majority of people on Medicaid are elderly, disabled, or children, or disabled children or elderly children. And in fact, only 5% of those people can be classified as able-bodied adults without dependents who haven't worked 80 hours in a month. However, they might have worked some hours. Some of them are going to school or looking for work or are disabled but not officially

getting disability benefits. They aren't all sitting in a basement playing borderlands. And these work requirements would not only boot them off, but would do so while not raising employment rates. We know this. Experts know work requirements aren't effective and actually cause more problems than they solve. We're going to hurt people who need Medicaid in order to spite this imagined group of lazy people. And not just any people, but people who likely voted for Trump. To cut Medicaid is disproportionately going to hurt rural hospitals.

Our rural hospitals receive around, I'd say on average, about 13% of their revenue is from Medicaid. A recent National Rural Health Association report estimates rural hospitals would lose 21% of their Medicaid funding, nearly $70 billion over 10 years. Hospitals are going to close because of this, because that's what fucking happens when you cut a bunch of spending. Great news, everyone. Lower taxes. All at cost was hospitals. In a lot of cases, people don't even seem to realize this is what they are voting for. Medicaid is called different things in different states. So most of the time, they don't even realize they're voting to cut their health care, to close their hospitals.

I don't know if it's worse that they simply think they're hurting someone else or that they don't realize they're hurting themselves. But either way, they're hurting everyone. It's both. Both sides. This is why the GOP wants people to be anxious. at these abstract mootures, because it gives them a way to trick voters into cutting off their own noses. The hunt for people who don't, big quotes, deserve affordable health care, comes directly

at the cost of the people who do. For example, the Trips B also disqualifies hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants from ACA's marketplace, which in turn cut subsidies that made the ACA premiums affordable. In other words, by shoving off a bunch of young and statistically healthier people, that's going to raise premium prices for everyone else. Just keep the freaking immigrants on, guys! But because of all these weird new rules directed at imaginary villains, these changes to Medicaid and the ACA are predicted to lead to a 60% increase in uninsured

people and up to 51,000 preventable deaths every year. But, I guess we pay less in taxes now. Sort of, some of us, because again, we'll pay more for all the other stuff and get a shoddier, shittier country. And speaking of blindly making the country worse, did you hear that coal's back? Sweet! Oh, I can punish shit kids again on Christmas by throwing coal at them. So that should take us to the forefront, right? Absolutely. Coal! Make America gray again.

Gray up them skies, boy! and gals. America is getting on the hottest new energy trend. Coal. And by hottest, I mean literally. The big old beauty of a bill includes land provisions that expand 4 million acres of federal public land for coal lease, while also applying up to $300 million in tax credits for metallurgical coal, aka the type of coal used to produce steel. Like in the movie, steel. It's all very retro, you see. Also bad. Like the movie, steel, and specifically bad in a way that seems designed to make America worse. Like, you might think that this will, at least, benefit any upcoming steel manufacturing jobs

that Republicans touted to advance and protect, except three quarters of that metallurgical coal is exported to China and India to then get tariffed back to us. So we're reaping our land for a fossil fuel that hurts the planet and not even getting the evil benefit from it. Like if the captain planet villains just polluted Earth but still couldn't come. They were doing it to come, right? That's why he was called sly sludge. Also, there's a guy named Verminous scum. So that's pretty close too.

Anyway, much like with the gambling provision, it's unclear which lawmaker inserted this coal provision, which is incredible, I think? Like, does that happen a lot? What are they doing in that big boobiful building? Of course, it could be anyone. Trump and his allies absolutely love coal and Secretary of the Interior, Doug Bergam previously toured Warrior Met coal

earlier in 2025. Fun corporation fact, the majority of metallurgical coal that Warrior Met produces is shipped, over, seize, and doesn't power or benefit any American homes or businesses, except Warrior Met Coal, I guess. It's weird, right?

It's almost like they're just getting paid by lobbyists to support an obsolete industry at the cost of the economy and health of the American people. And while no fossil fuel is good, I really cannot stress how much coal is just the worst. It's the dirtiest fossil fuel, a symbol of less advanced times. Dickensian trash.

Nobody in their right mind would ever associate it with progress, right? And yet, it's being embraced by the GOP, to the point that black lung disease is making a comeback that hasn't been seen since the 1970s. Again, Dickensian trash, little coughing orphan shit. Mordor was literally based on steel mills from the 1800s. It should be noted that Trump is also going after the National Institute for Health and Occupational Safety, where scientists and researchers have been studying and treating

black lung. He's also delayed a rule that would reduce miners' exposure to silica dust, which is the main cause of black lung. Is he getting paid by death? Was he marked by Davy Jones? Is that what's on his hand? Can't stress enough that this has no large. benefits to average Americans that aren't running a coal company. And of course, the Big Beautiful

Bill benefits not just the coal industry, but other fossil fuel industries like oil and gas with other similar land leases and tax credits while pulling back on federal incentives for renewable energy like solar and wind. The directive really seems to be based on a stubborn wish to drag us back while the rest of the world advances around us. If you want it to add more jobs and boost the economy, green energy is that way. Not to mention that removing these green energy tax credits will lead to higher electricity prices while creating more rolling blackouts and brownouts. It's sabotage! It's making the country worse for no clear benefit beyond personal greed. And amazingly, this was the less terrible outcome. Originally, the three Bs had an even

larger public land sale of hundreds of thousands of acres in the West used for fishing, hunting, camping, and other stuff a Nick Offerman type likes, until it was ultimately pulled due to heavy unpopularity from the right and the left alike. Utah Senator based Mike Lee proposed this sale to address the housing crisis, but kiboshed it due to the fact that he, quote, was unable to secure clear and forcible safeguards to guarantee that these lands would be sold only to American families, not to China, not to Black Rock, and not to any foreign interests. Or rather, that's what he said was the reason.

But more likely, he absolutely wanted to sell the land off to private companies and then backtracked because everyone got mad at him. Because, again, it's not about helping people. It's about a small number of rich people making new ways to get even more rich at the cost of the country. But anywho, fossil fuel companies are, of course, not the only group the big, beautiful bill is helping. All those spending cuts, you're probably wondering where that money is going. Are you? Yeah. Yeah, you know where it's going. So, if you look at that. Ice gets rich. Ah yes, the vanillaist ice of them all. Oh, yes, the vanillaist ice of them all.

To quickly recap, this bill is cutting essential health care needs for the most vulnerable, as well as green energy, and redirecting efforts toward masked police officers patrolling the streets. The Big Beautiful Bill is handing our border and immigration operations $170 billion of our dollars, a portion of which will make ICE the most well-funded federal law enforcement agency, in spite of its incredibly low popularity, even amongst some of Trump's supporters. Not sure how many times I can say that this appears to be a direct effort to sabotage the country. Even if you are concerned about immigration, this is too much money for any department. You'd think the Doge crowd would agree.

This is like if we suddenly gave everyone in our National Park Service mech suits to fight littering, which would actually be awesome. Out of that $170 billion, $45 billion, is going towards building and operating new immigrant detention facility. a 265% increase of its current detention budget. As you can imagine, private prison corporations such as CoreC Civic and Geo Group are happier than boars in blood to accept new lucrative contracts, especially now that their stocks have gone up by 50% since Trump won the election. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool as ice, baby, cool as ice, ice baby.

Definitely a good sign for a successful. society when prison stock soars and also exists in the first place. Another $46 billion is being used to finish up Trump's border wall construction more than three times as much as was spent during his first presidential term. Do you remember the wall? Wow, he's still doing the wall. Here's his favorite cosplayer talking about their newest high-tech update. And today, we are also going to be painting it black.

That is specifically at the request of the president who understands that in the hot temperatures down here, when something is painted black, it gets even warmer. And it will make it even harder for people to climb. Indeed, Trump, a very serious man, understands that black surfaces are hot in the sun. Hot bad, you see. Ouchies! And so he wants to paint the wall black to make it too hot for people to climb. After all, there's no way a person can cover their hands.

hands before touching something. Why do you think I'm covered in all these snake bites? Doubly brilliant is our precedent, in fact, because when it's not hot during the day, it'll be invisible at night. You can't touch something you can't see. But hey, you know, they should use the legal pathways, right? Well, of course, they're making that harder too. The big, beautiful bill is adding $100 application fees and an additional $100 per year while anyone's case is pending. Since the waiting time for an asylum case can take up to six years, this is already a unnecessary financial burden for people looking for refuge. Of course, that wait time will also go up because the BBB is capping the number of immigration judges

at 800, which will create a significant backlog and likely mean that families could be detained throughout the entire time pending their removal. Oh, hey, good thing they're going to have those new detention facilities, or camp stuff, whatever you want to call them. It's almost like that was planned. And once again, unless you own a prison company, this all appears designed to hurt the country, including our economy. Instead of investing in progress, we're detaining people at a fucking Hyundai plant and no doubt scaring off any more investment in this country and possibly causing an international incident, a nation becoming so obsessed with xenophobia that it's pumping all resources and efforts into rounding up and torturing a specific portion of the population

that statistically helps us at the cost of everything else, even businesses. I keep saying it. There's no logical explanation besides greed, racism, stupidity, or all three, I guess. It's going to hurt us. Like, besides the pesky human life stuff, it's bad for the country. This massive deportation push could lead to six million job losses for immigrants and U.S.-born workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute. It's also going to reduce our tax revenue because immigrants, both documented and undocumented, pay taxes. The Cato Institute pointed out that the current Congressional Budget Office deficit projection doesn't include the tax revenue from the immigrants that will be detained, deported, or scared off by the cash

fattened ice regime. Kato believes this move could add over $1 trillion to the deficit and also add $2.4 trillion in debt over the next 10 years. Despite Republicans claiming this won't add to the deficit, it super-duper, obviously, shmobviously will. The big beautiful bill is going to cost you, me, and all other U.S. taxpayers of Louis-Button of money, especially younger Americans. This bill marks the largest transfer of wealth to the richest among us in U.S. history, with the majority of Americans paying for the $1.5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, mostly negatively impacting areas that heavily voted for Trump, since a great number of true red states have the highest enrollments

in Medicaid and SNAP benefits. If this all sounds complicated, It's just this graph. All you need to look at is this graph showing that all of America's money is going toward paying for tax cuts, primarily for the wealthy, while the only savings we're getting is at the cost of programs designed to help the poor. We really didn't have to say anything, except show that graph, actually. I'm so sorry for wasting your time, I guess. It's a bad bill. Not in this sexy, naughty spanking way. It's weird you'd even think that. Why are you thinking that?

thinking that. It's just a big old fart. Not in the sexy, naughty way. Why do you keep thinking stuff like that? So why is it like this? Is it really just designed by stupid people to make the country worse? Are they all this stupid and greedy? Let's talk about that after the break. But yes. But after the break, we'll talk about how this bill got past and what the GOP hopes will happen next. And yes, these ads are bad in the sexy way. Oh, hello, sweet patrons. It's just your gal, Katie, popping in to say thank you for your support. And we appreciate you.

We're grateful for you. You know how this goes. You know that I try to come up with jokes or something fun to say. And I can't think of one right now. But there's no joke here. I appreciate you. And back to the show. Hey, we're back.

Did you like the ads? I can guarantee that whatever they were offering was better than the big, beautiful bill. Unless we did, like, a CoreCivic ad. For some reason, we haven't gotten them yet, but we keep asking. Come on, CoreCivic, I'll chug. The prison?

I don't know. Point is, it's a fart bill. It's a fart bill that no one likes. As I keep saying, it appears to be fundamentally designed to make the country weaker and shittier. And they knew it should be stressed that the bill was so,

big and beautiful, that it passed by the slimmest of slim margins. The Republicans didn't have any votes to spare during Senate reconciliation as Republican Senators Susan Collins, Tom Tillis, and Rand Paul were hard no votes because they, presumably, say it with me, actually read the damn thing. Yes, we have a live audience. You don't usually hear them because they don't really like me, but sometimes they pull through. Three cheers for Cody!

Fuck all of you. So because members of their own party were starting to side with Democrats, the reconciliation version of the 3B came with lots of last minute changes, compromises, and side deals. Some of them we've sort of discussed, like that Mike Lee stuff. But there were others, too. For starters, there's a provision to the big, beautiful bill that eliminates a $200 tax on gun silencers, short-barreled rifles, and shotguns. It was introduced by Andrew Clyde, a U.S. representative from Georgia, who, coincidentally, is also a millionaire gun shop owner.

Interesting note, this tax was originally set in place in 1930 goddamn four as a means to keep high-powered firearms off the streets. And while $200 is nothing to sneeze at, it remained that price and was never raised once, if it were adjusted for information. inflation, like most other taxes, it would be closer to $5,000 today. So basically, it's a half-ass tax that was abolished to pass a half-assed bill. And even this was a compromise, because the provision originally proposed to dismantle some established gun regulation required by the National Firearms Act. But it was struck down as being extraneous. So ultimately, repealing this $200 tax is a symbolic win by gun owners and the weapons industry, as silencers have disturbingly

surged in popularity since last year. For you gunfolk, I'm aware that silencers aren't very silent, but they do make it harder to locate and identify shooters when the worst happens. And the worst happens a lot in this country. Gun laws are a whole other thing that this episode is not about, But having or not having this $200 tax probably wasn't going to change much, which is why at its core, not its core civic, but at its core, this really came down to a gun shop owner saying he'd vote for the bill if it slightly helped his sales. That's ultimately the biggest thing this does. It helps Andrew Clyde personally.

That said, this is in conjunction with the current Department of Justice proposing budget and staffing cuts to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, or the four food groups, as I like to call them. This will have an impact by eliminating two-thirds of ATF inspectors, leaving only 320 inspectors to oversee 130,000 gun shops and gun manufacturers throughout the United States. And since the current ATF inspects only 10% of gun dealers in a given year, these cuts would significantly lower that rate to an even more pointless percentage. Again, it's not an episode on guns.

But if gun control were a horse, it would be dead. And these additional cuts would be like beating that hypothetical dead horse who surprisingly didn't die from guns. No, plain accident. Talk about full damage. We didn't have to do that. We didn't need that joke.

Anyway, another shitty provision was the one allowing AI to just go unregulated by state laws for 10 years. Not sure why that was in there, but I guess they were throwing everything in like a child's potion. Luckily, that was removed after a lot of bipartisan blowback for obvious reasons, such as online privacy, protecting children, copyright issues, and so on. Still, the BBB has tax incentives to encourage chipmakers and semiconductor companies to build more AI tech, granting chipmaking companies up to 35% in tax breaks, leading to AI stock rising in price.

We're just going to keep pretending that all aspects of AI are the future for a little while more. Just a little while more. Hey, AI, I hear there's a horse plane in need of a passenger. Finally, but most notably, one of the most highlighted negotiations for a vote came from the compromises made to secure a yes from Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski. It is absolutely the most telling compromise around the big, beautiful bill, which I'm starting to suspect isn't beautiful at all. What happened? Well, Murkowski negotiated that some of those provisions that would fuck over SNAP, Medicaid, and workers wouldn't apply to her state specifically.

They just roughly inserted, except Alaska, in the margins. Some of these changes Murkowski negotiated included tax exemption for, Fisher's, a request to exempt work requirements for snap benefits for those living in Alaska and Hawaii, a mint chocolate chip ice cream cake on Murkowski's birthday, a 25% increase in share of Medicaid costs paid by the federal government, Roblox, Robux, gift cards, and you get it, all the stuff we've been saying hurts people, just not in fucking Alaska. But in spite of those concessions, her yes vote still harmed Alaskan residents as they still have bureaucratic stopgaps like work requirements that will toss them off of their Medicaid plans. One in three Alaskans depend on

Medicaid, along with half of the state's children. And even though those fissures will have some tax exemptions, they might not meet the work requirements for Medicaid since most of them work seasonally. And ultimately, this will kick an estimated 27,000 Alaskans off of Medicaid. That's like 4% of the entire state. Along with that, the cutting of renewable energy tax credits will slam Alaskans with higher energy prices than most of the country. So I guess she didn't really win anything for her state? Wait, that's not true. She won more fraud. See, one way Snap was cut was by forcing states to take on more of the cost, which many struggle to do, which is why maybe it's good for the federal government to pay for it. But Murkowski got a two-year exemption for cost sharing of the 10 states with the

highest payment error rate. The top of that list is, maybe you guessed, Alaska. So basically, she protected her state from the effects of the bill she supported by incentivizing fraud, the thing we like now? So, hooray. Murkowski weirdly stated that it was agonized. to vote for the bill and hoped the House would send it back to the Senate for further tweaking. So why didn't she just not vote for it? That was an option, right? Pretty big red flag when the compromise it took to get someone to vote for it was that much of the bill shouldn't have to apply specifically to their state.

If someone cooked you a meal and then refused to eat it themselves, you might have questions for them. So most likely and depressingly, she probably voted for this because she didn't want to get harassed by the president, who has paralyzed his entire party and the Democrats into complete surrender. Big beautiful boy! I mean, that's really why this passed, right? Or rather, barely passed. Trump, a stupid and cruel person, has turned the Republican Party into a cult where everything he wants and says goes totally unquestioned. Every ramble from his mouth gets justified and enforced. Meanwhile, a lot of these congresspeople are just trying to survive it.

Murkowski was ultimately just trying to do right by her state in exchange for throwing every other state under the bus. Not defending her or any of these cowards, but that's the reason. This bill is a messy attempt to please Trump. It's called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act after all. They had to pass it. not for any logical reason aside from a need for survival. It is so frustrating.

I keep thinking about how if we somehow get out of all of this, like if Trump actually goes away and someone sensible is the next president, that person's legacy will just be them having to undo all the really stupid and shoddy stuff that Trump did. All of it. The stupid Rose Garden stuff. All the firings, all the broken trust from our allies, all the ways that Trump and the GOP have dragged us, backwards in progress, we'll have to catch up.

While other countries are moving forward, we're just sitting here in the muck while our leaders punch puddles and stream about wokeness, absolutely exhausting. And now their hope is that we'll all forget about this dildo of a bill. And we might. That's the worst part, because the majority of this garbage hasn't launched yet, or won't be felt until months or even years from now. It's meant to function that way. This terrible bill that seems designed to make the country worse won't really be felt until after the midterms. After when we, the people paying for this, get to decide if these cowards keep their jobs. It's like so many other

things the GOP does, all the way back to Bush and Reagan. One day, we'll be wondering why everything in America got so bad and we'll be able to trace it right back to this, assuming that America, you know, is. So we have to remember this for midterms if we have them. Remind others about this for midterms if we have them. Make a daily reminder on your phone. Put it in your calendar. I don't know.

Tattoo something on your body to remind you. That's why I got the tattoo. It worked. It worked. I read the bees and it worked. Still, why is it so bad looking? Marker. Just marker.

That's the stuff. Oh, that's definitely marker. Oh, that hits the spot. Do you want to say something? Do I say stuff when the thing's done? Where'd they go, by the way? They scroll up and I don't know they went. All right, audience, line up for a sniff of my hand!

I'm not high, you're high, and I'm high. On saying thank you so much for watching and like and subscribe. And comment, I guess. And you know what? I'm not. Hi. Check out our podcast, even more news. It's on the podcast Places

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I'm not high. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not.