Despite the medias breathless speculation, there was never any doubt that Republican senators would sign off on the Senate version of the inaptly named One Big Beautiful Bill. When it comes to Donald Trump, Republicans always fall in line, even at the expense of the nation and their own future.Giving the rich tax breaks has been a core GOP principle for decades, so that was easy. The hard part was ripping away the safety net for millions of Americans, many of them in GOP districts, while blowing a giant hole in the nations deficit. Ultimately, that didnt matter. Republicans had to agree to live in Trumps alternate reality, where nothing bad happens as a result of his actions. Related Last weeks Supreme Court rulings show just how fragile marriage equality may be The right-wing of the Court continues to disregard precedent and place the rights of conservative Christians above everyone elses. In a nod to the damage that the law will cause, Republicansfront-loaded the tax breaks and back-loaded the safety net cuts. In particular, Republicans made sure to push the work requirement for Medicaid until after the midterm elections next year. The paperwork is likely to be so onerous having to prove your eligibility every six months that as many as 17 million people are likely to lose health care coverage over the coming years. Dive deeper every day Join our newsletter for thought-provoking commentary that goes beyond the surface of LGBTQ+ issues Subscribe to our Newsletter today Perhaps the most frightening part of the new law is that it creates a new private army out of ICE. The law would allocate $75 billion more to ICE through 2029. Of that, $8 billion (which is what its current baseline budget is) would be to hire additional personnel. Another $45 billion would be for detention centers. By comparison, the entire federal prison budget is $8.3 billion per year.I dont think anyone is prepared for what they just did with ICE,Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said. This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosionmaking ICE bigger than the FBI, U.S. Bureau of Prisons, DEA, & others combined.To put this in perspective: the increase would have paid for the HIV vaccine program that Trump killed for savings nearly 400 times over. Given the penchant of ICE agents to look and act more like kidnappers than law enforcement officers, as well as their willingness to rough up elected officials, the idea of turbocharging the agency is disturbing. Thats especially true since Trump has been talking about deporting American citizens. Ostensibly and still completely illegally Trump is talking about deporting citizens who commit crimes, but he used that same rhetoric about immigrants during the campaign, and his deportation effort is about going after people who are following the laws as well. ICE would be the perfect mechanism for testing how far Trump can go with his authoritarian inclinations. Having failed to capitalize on the widespread public dislike for the new law while it was still a bill in Congress, Democrats are now excited about running against the ruin that it will cause. But Democrats are still engaged in an endless round of navel-gazing about last years election and havent figured out how to run for something and not just against something. The idea that the law will prove so unpopular that it will propel Democrats to victory in the House and Senate next year is a pleasant wish, but with so much at stake in the intervening 16 months, thats a long wait for an uncertain event. As a reminder, Trump is pretty unpopular, too, and hes been elected twice.Meanwhile, things will only get worse as Trump and the GOP continue to tear apart the norms of democracy and its protections. Already, the conservatives on the Supreme Court, the handmaidens of Project 2025, have a major case for next term that will likely build on their anti-trans rulings. The One Big Beautiful Bill will produce shockwaves for the worse throughout the nation for years to come. But those shockwaves have been underway since the day that Trump took office last January.Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.