By Connor Vasile

Despite promising DOGE cuts and draining the Swamp, Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ looks to increase spending in a maneuver that makes you think: “Are there any real Conservatives left?”

Like tens of millions of Americans, I voted for the presidential candidate who promised to drain the Swamp, put money back in our pockets, bring peace, and honor our Constitution.

Trump 2.0 has delivered on promises; from addressing Biden’s migrant crisis, to combating wokeness, to spearheading DOGE investigations, there is no doubt this administration is taking a hands-on approach. However, I notice that a lot of what we’ve seen in the past 130-plus days has been noise, with very little change.

After Trump’s March 4th speech to Congress, I was hopeful for Republicans’ plan to cut wasteful spending, protect Americans, and prioritize our country. After four years of a Biden administration persecuting citizens, fumbling foreign policy, and gaslighting us on a failing economy, this was a breath of fresh air.

But between the ad nauseum TV appearances and Cabinet meetings heaping praise on Trump like no tomorrow, change is taking a backseat to optics. I was hoping for that new era of liberty countless people once prayed for after fleeing dictatorships—my family included.

Unfortunately for us, the Republicans’ ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ won’t make that dream a reality.

Politicians are more concerned with optics than with creating change.

Since January, Trump has signed 157 (and counting) Executive Orders on issues like the economy, border security, tariffs, and women’s sports. Meanwhile, less than twenty bills have been signed into law—a drop in the ocean compared to how many EOs are left exposed to revocation.

In the same breath, the Republicans’ new ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ does little to actually promote conservative values; it does however add to our crippling national debt and expand federal powers Republicans once strongly criticized as tyrannical.

Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) called out the Bill as a “ticking time bomb,” that represents “Biden-level spending and increased deficits,” that utterly fails to repeal the ‘Green New Deal’ forced through by the last administration. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) says the Bill would increase the deficit by around $22 trillion over the next ten years.

While House Speaker Mike Johnson touts the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ for cutting $500 billion in funding for ‘Green New Deal’ schemes and transgender surgeries, the Bill does little to roll back Biden’s unconstitutional policies. While conservative estimates calculate that the Bill would increase the cost of the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) energy tax subsidies by $582 billion between 2026 and 2035, the CATO Institute predicted that costs could amount to $4.7 trillion over the next 25 years. That’s billions of our taxpayer dollars going to fund more ‘Green New Deal’ and Obamacare initiatives every single year.

What happened to taking a sledgehammer to the corrupt establishment? What about the Swamp?

There has been much talk on Capitol Hill to codify Elon Musk’s DOGE spending cuts, potentially saving Americans hundreds of billions in bloat discretionary spending. Trump himself has called for “radical transparency” regarding wasteful government spending. Yet despite only needing a simple majority to rescind discretionary spending, Republicans are incapable of living up to their promises; 26 GOP Senatorshave voted against a reconciliation bill codifying DOGE cuts to programs like USAID and foreign spending. It doesn’t seem we are going to drain the Swamp anytime soon, even with Republican control.

Republicans are failing fiscally, and socially.

Instead of bringing bills to Congress that actually conserve our rights or repeal federal agency overreach, politicians are too busy entertaining laws that would imprison Americans for their speech. A bipartisan-sponsored bill, the IGO Anti-Boycott Act, was set to be voted on in early May, and would have expanded existing, unconstitutional anti-boycott law by making it a federal crime for Americans to participate in internationally-led boycotts against Israeli goods. The punishment? Up to $1 million in fines and up to twenty years imprisonment. Thankfully, the bill was pulled after national outrage from private citizens and politicians alike.

Besides this little bump in the congressional road, there hasn’t really been much action on Capitol Hill to strengthen our constitutional rights and to bring power back to the people.

Since the Republican-led Congress is uninterested in acting on its promise to expand rights like the freedom of speech and the right to bear arms, it’s probable that a Democrat-held Congress could soon sweep in to undo what little progress was made. Deep Blue California and Colorado are already moving to criminalize free speech; when will that be introduced nationally?

While I definitely don’t want a 2024 election do-over, I’m disappointed. From backtracking on a speedy Ukraine ceasefire, to increasing military spending by hundreds of billions, to giving up on draining the Swamp, the Republican establishment has proven itself to be just another big government party.

Neither Republicans nor Democrats have the answer. Libertarianism does.

With Republicans eagerly moving to expand federal powers for their own means, imagine what would happen when a Democrat inevitably retakes the White House. Who will stand up for “the little guy” then?

Everyone is happy to hold onto power—if they can get their hands on it. But when it comes to doing the proper work, of shrinking federal bloat and trimming fiscal fat, our politicians get squeamish, and are quick to forget what made America great in the first place. Gone are the days of leaders who honor the Founding Fathers’ vision of a country where man could determine his own destiny and live his life as he saw fit.

Nowadays, our politicians are trapped in a political rat race where our major parties vie for absolute control while the American taxpayer is forced to foot the bill, no matter the cost. Not sure whether your tax dollars should go to fund forever wars or bloated federal spending? With our Democracy™, you can pick both! If the last eight years have taught us anything, it is that Democrats and Republicans are merely different sides to the same exact coin.

It’s about time Americans realized that no politician is going to save them, no matter the slogan, the catchphrase, or the empty promise. The federal government exists for itself, and the only way out of this mess is with less government intervention, not more.

As Ronald Reagan said: “the heart of my philosophy is much more Libertarianism… the conservative, so-called, is the one that says less government, get off my back, get out of my pocket, and let me have more control of my own destiny.”

What I’d give to have a little less government, and a little more freedom… Since neither Republicans nor Democrats seem interested in making that a reality, Libertarianism is starting to look like our last hope to make America great again.

Free the People publishes opinion-based articles from contributing writers. The opinions and ideas expressed do not always reflect the opinions and ideas that Free the People endorses. We believe in free speech, and in providing a platform for open dialogue. Feel free to leave a comment.

By Walter E. Block

Strange things are happening. Comedian Red Buttons sung about this in 1953. No truer words were ever said about present occurrences. We live in a world of inverted politics. The left are now singing the praises of peak load pricing, a free marketplace phenomenon, and the right are attacking this very program.

I of course refer to the New York City policy of charging a fee for entering certain crowded parts of Manhattan during rush hours. (You can still drive there for free at 3am for instance.)

The Big Apple is a blue city if ever there was one (shouldn’t we call them reds, or at least pinks, instead?). This jurisdiction has implemented that free market oriented policy which is the exact opposite of their usual socialist endeavors such as rent control, welfarism, egalitarianism, DEI (Didn’t Earn It). As a result the ordinary bumper to bumper traffic moves smoothly, saving hours and hours of productivity, and reducing motorist frustration and road rage.

Ordinarily, this would be considered price gouging by our friends on the left, and bitterly opposed by them. After all prices rose by an infinite proportion, from zero to something slightly less than $10. Of course this is disgusting, greedy, capitalist, profiteering! If this isn’t price gouging, then nothing is price gouging. And yet, during a storm or other such crisis when merchants raise their prices, nothing but howls of outrage emanate from this quarter. How now brown cow?

On the other hand, the Trump Administration is in so many important ways an advocate and embodiment of free enterprise and economic freedom. They are reducing government expenditure, firing entrenched socialist bureaucrats all over the place, decreasing government regulations.

Yet they are taking a hack saw at this New York City congestion-reducing initiative. Our mostly free enterprise president now cavils against perhaps the one good thing NYC has ever done from an economic point of view. He does so on the ground that this small fee will mitigate against the poor. C’mon, give us a break. Before this new policy, the rich and the poor alike, just sat there in hard to believe how bad it was congestion. Surely, the real poverty stricken people cannot afford a car in the first place. So, lighten up.

If Trump wants to attack the Big Apple, and they richly deserve a good spanking, let him threaten them over rent control, rent stabilization, public housing, and all other aspects of housing socialism. Let him demand that they privatize that disgusting subway system of theirs. He can excoriate them for their unemployment producing minimum wage law.

Most people do not realize that the IRT and the BMT (not the IND) were originally built by capitalists and managed by entrepreneurs for years). They were thus initially private railroads. Then these companies were contemplating raising their fares from a nickel to a dime (how’s that for price gouging? A 100% increase!) The then mayor was appalled. So he nationalized, municipalized, this capital good. And guess what he then did? He raised the fare from five cents to ten cents.

Someone ought to give a message to these people: hey, stick to what you do best. Democrats, it is your job to support socialism, dirigisme and regulationism. Republicans, you’re supposed to favor free enterprise. If you invert roles as in this case, it gets more difficult to tell who is who. So, please, cut it out.

Free the People publishes opinion-based articles from contributing writers. The opinions and ideas expressed do not always reflect the opinions and ideas that Free the People endorses. We believe in free speech, and in providing a platform for open dialogue. Feel free to leave a comment.

By Taylor Lewis 

Between you and me, perceptive reader, I don’t think this Joe Biden fella has the mettle to be president. Sure, he has the CV for the job. Plenty of White House time, a long Senate record, party stalwart, Obama-adjacency, vague labor union appreciation, and donor schmoozer. But consider the camera factor: his age. His stilted mannerisms, awkward phrasings, obvious memory gaps bleeding into cringeworthy gaffes—what voter will go for a pudding-cup president? And a chief executive in his 80s? With the ascendant authoritarianism of Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Ayatolla Khamenei, and whatever tinpot baddie the Wall Street Journaleditorial board feels like tossing in its Axis-of-Evil pottage? Sure, Ronald Reagan disarmed the Soviet Empire well past his Medicare-eligible date. That was qualitatively different: the Gipper packed those secret American weapons of a sun-shiny demeanor, a Hollywood smile, Kodachromes wearing a Stetson and spurs, and a generous credit line.

What I’m saying is that I don’t think a silver-sprouted dodderer like Joe Biden is up for the stresses of the presidency. He’s hardly a spring chicken. Nor is he a summer pullet, an autumnal cockerel, or even a winter bantam. His withered features, ungainly stride, and vacuous pupils more resemble a crisped bird yanked from Colonel Sanders’s fryer. Should he run, and somehow win, his shaking, skeletal hand grasping loosely onto a solid victory, the White House will become a Shady Acres, and his aides will be less policy gurus than Visiting Angels. It would be the gerontocracy’s ultimate triumph—a far greater feat than refusing to leave price-inflated multi-bedroom homes in good neighborhoods while cashing Social Security checks paid for by millennials living in bedsits too cramped for a queen-size mattress.

The above description has multiple timestamps, and could just as easily apply to 2024 as five years earlier, when the former vice president unexpectedly reached for his baseball cap, convinced he was wearing one, only to toss some dust motes and peeled skin flakes into the ring. His startled look at his own empty hand mirrored the horrified expression of pundocrats. “Really?” the commentariat wondered when Biden tripped over his tongue, all but announcing his intention to campaign for the White House in March of 2019. The solecism-prone, enfeebled Veep is going to take on Trump?

The resulting campaign, then administration, was one gigantic visual dissemblance. Joe Biden’s obvious—“obvious” as an adjective doesn’t do justice to how clear of a scatty cooter Joe Biden really wass—impairment was sheened as much as possible by staffers who themselves were fooled into thinking they’d been yanking the government’s levers only to find out their roles were reduced to that of a glorified stage crew. Biden wasn’t a president as much as he was a daily reality show in an age of digital voyeurism.

The production is now finally addressed by its main players in the form of a mega-selling book: Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, authored by Axios reporter Alex Thompson and CNN anchor-scold Jake Tapper. The work is being marketed as a scandalous tell-all about how a close-knit West Wing troupe played at the appearance of a functional presidency. But because our politics is all meta-gotcha-ism and catchpenny public relations, the tract serves a dual purpose: that of a let-off-the-hook apologia issued by the very people who perpetuated a half-decade hoax.

You see, to take Tapper’s and Thompson’s contention at its face, you have to evenly swallow the preposterous notion that the Washington press corps was undisturbed by Biden’s long list of dementia-doings, including incoherent mumbling, calling on dead colleagues, wandering aimlessly at public events, frequent onset catatonia, failing to recognize George Clooney’s dashing mug, being arm-leashed by the Easter Bunny, and divulging his cancer diagnosis due to oil slicks on windshields.

(The latter is a particularly grim admission, with news “breaking” that Biden indeed suffers from advanced prostate cancer—a diagnosis only the most credulous, Politico-reading, Le Dip-frequenting, condo-renting, Sunday-show watching Beltway creature has a hard time believing was just chanced upon.)

Of course, nobody beyond the I-495 loop is ingenuous enough to buy the line that our intrepid media minders, so perspicacious in unshoveling decades-old perjorative-laden Facebook posts from Republican grandpas, missed the eerily translucent President meeting every camera and spectator with the same vacant stare behind a sagging, celluloid masque. They knew. And lent their various mastheads and chyrons to the narrative of whippersnapper Joe burning the midnight oil long after his blue-plate special.

But say our nature vaulted the animal urge to ridicule. And let’s go further than the saints, and extend magnanimity to the same cable-news hosts so eager to browbeat skeptics who didn’t accept Joe Biden was any less sharp than Ben Shapiro’s voice playing at 1.5x speed. Must we, for the sake of remediating our pestiferous press, swear off any indictment, offering amnesty to those who deliberately cast wool over our eyes?

“If you punish people for admitting they were mistaken, they will not admit they were mistaken. These dunks are counterproductive,” tweeted Washington Postcolumnist Megan McArdle. What may sound like a kindhearted plea for kid-glove treatment is actually an appeal to what Christopher Lasch called “therapeutic morality.” To McArdle, the journalists who indulged in covering the President’s clear infirmity shouldn’t be regarded too harshly, otherwise they’ll dig further into the practice of treating progressive canon as a neutral perspective from which to gauge events.

To wit, I say, with all the learned articulation of an Oxford dean, screw ‘em. St. Aquinas defended the bitter feeling of being hacked off on the basis that anger serves as a motivator to exacting “reasonable retribution.” Far be it from me to argue with such a pious heavyweight!

We were lied to. Millions of voters were defrauded as to the President’s well-being. And while Joe Biden did the country a great service by showing that America requires no prepotent president, his handlers proved how easily those with power propagandize to keep their clutch on the wheel, all with the abetting of lickspittles cosplaying as Walter Cronkite.

The verbal beatings must continue until the media elite improves. Or newspapers are shuttered and reporters laid off en masse. Whichever comes first.

Free the People publishes opinion-based articles from contributing writers. The opinions and ideas expressed do not always reflect the opinions and ideas that Free the People endorses. We believe in free speech, and in providing a platform for open dialogue. Feel free to leave a comment.