Trump's Budget: Supercharged ICE, Vouchers and a Warming Planet
A few months ago, it seemed obvious that the biggest story of Donald Trump's second term as president was Elon Musk becoming his co-pilot, steering what was often called the DOGE blitzkrieg. Last week — yes, it was just last week — it was tempting to see the biggest story as the end of that partnership, with Musk's initiative yielding trivial budget savings and significant legal challenges and then ultimately a messily personal (if perhaps temporary) political divorce.
That it was all such good theater meant that it was possible to miss — below claims about 'the Epstein files' and innuendo about drug-fueled psychosis and arguments over who was most responsible for the 2024 victory — some actual, substantive beef. That is, Trump's big policy bill — the only major piece of legislation the Republican Congress has even tried to advance, in its first six months, probably its best chance at a major policy achievement before next year's midterms and a road map for the near American future that deserves considerably more public scrutiny than it's gotten to this point.
At a topline glance, the bill is an outrage: large tax cuts for the rich and millions kicked off health insurance, almost a parody of what an apparently fragile coalition of contemporary conservatives might abide (if also a bill that raised the eyebrows of a few debt scolds, including Musk). But because it is also a one-stop legislative omnibus, rushed so quickly through the House that Republican representatives are now protesting they didn't even know what was in it, there is also an awful lot buried beneath those top-lines worth scrutinizing. Today, I want to highlight three particular priorities, each distinct in its destructive cruelty but together pointing toward something a bit more systematic — a hostility toward collective investment in the common good and our shared future.
The 'green dream' was fun while it lasted
The first is on clean energy, where the bill looks like not just a repeal of the landmark Inflation Reduction Act but an indictment of the theory of politics that gave rise to it. As Tim Sahay of the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab recently put it, the political project of that climate act was built on two principles. First, 'deliverism' — that in the Obama years policy wonks had erred in not highlighting the value of legislation to voters, and that making a green-industrial boom very visible would also make it very popular. Second, and related, was the principle of political 'lock-in,' that showering green money on purple and even red districts would mean that Republicans would, by and large, abandon their opposition and embrace clean-energy pork.
Perhaps faster rollout, and more immediate permitting reform, might have helped vindicate those principles and protect hundreds of billions in clean-energy tax credits. But the apparent demise of the I.R.A. looks like a case study in post-material politics, the thermostatic law of public opinion and the principle that whenever the G.O.P. has to choose between anything at all and tax cuts — in this case, tax credits for the green transition and tax cuts that could be partly paid for through their repeal — it's never really a choice at all. Republican support for more solar power has fallen to 61 percent today from 84 percent in 2020, according to Pew. Back then, nearly two-thirds of Republicans wanted to prioritize renewable buildout. Today, it's fallen to one-third.
A new immigration police state
The second is on immigration, where the policy bill promises to allocate $155 billion in funding for border control — five times the amount allocated to the border overall in 2025, even though cross-border flows have recently fallen by more than 90 percent since surging in 2023. Since Inauguration Day, Trump's border policy has been horrifying and brutal, and over the weekend in Los Angeles, the raids looked like provocations designed to produce a pretext for further crackdowns — by the National Guard and potentially U.S. Marines. But although the images are appalling, the numbers have not been especially large — particularly compared to promises from Trump on the campaign trail to deport tens of millions if elected. Boosting border security spending by more than a hundred billion as illegal border crossings collapse is one big logistical step toward actually pursuing that goal at scale, rather than just performing I.C.E. cruelty as a kind of political consolation prize.Force-feeding school choice
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