As a lifelong marketer and Consumer Behavior professor, it’s interesting to observe how people’s opinions change as details of an issue become more apparent. Behavioral change – once information and knowledge increase – is common among people who are open-minded, educated, and critical thinkers.
For example, a YouGov/Economist poll noted that when President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” was announced, only 43 percent of Americans opposed the 2025 budget package. Less than two weeks after the House passed the 1,116-page bill and citizens learned more about its contents, the disapproval rating increased to 55 percent.
Even Elon Musk, Trump’s top presidential campaign financier and MAGA loyalist, slammed Trump’s tax and domestic policy bill in a June 3 post on his social media platform X by stating, “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.” You might like to know that 84 percent of conservative Republicans hold a favorable view of Elon Musk (Pew Research Center) and 219.9 million Americans follow Musk’s X/Twitter account.
Besides the megabill projecting to increase America’s budget deficit by $2.4 trillion, citizens’ top 10 concerns are noted below. The most disconcerting aspect of the omnibus bill is listed last, as it undermines the checks and balances system that ensures separation of powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches Americans have revered for the past 250 years.
1) Medicaid: At least $600 billion will be cut from Medicaid, which will strip health care coverage from an estimated 10-15 million low-income Americans and close down over 300 rural hospitals (CHOPR).
2) Taxes: The measure has a reverse-Robin Hood scenario that extends and expands tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, while lower-income earners would see reduced benefits or a net income loss; the estimated cost is around $3.8-$4.3 trillion during the 2025-2034 time period.
3) SNAP: Spending on SNAP, America’s food assistance program for low-income earners and the disabled, will be slashed by $267 billion, affecting the food security of 7.4 million people (Center on Budget and Policy).
4) Estate Taxes: The estate tax exemption would be raised and indexed for inflation, allowing wealthy families to pass on up to $30 million tax-free to their heirs, resulting in $200 billion in lost revenue to the U.S. Treasury.
5) Clean Energy: The elimination of tax incentives for solar, wind, and electric vehicles (~$561 billion) will affect approximately 250,000 Americans working in these sectors (CNBC).
6) Private Education: A new tax credit for donations to private school voucher programs expands federal support for private education. FYI: The majority of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, support increasing funding for public schools over private school vouchers (Center for American Progress).
7) State and Local Tax (SALT): The tax deduction cap would be raised to $40,000, benefiting wealthier households in high-taxed states for $916 billion (Reuters).
8) Post-Secondary Education: Federal subsidized loans for college students will be eliminated and Pell Grant eligibility tightened, making post-secondary education less accessible for many, especially for students from low- and middle-income families (Atlanta Journal-Constitution).
9) Environment: The proposal expands leasing of public lands for drilling, mining, and logging and authorizes the sale of public lands, reversing environmental protections supported by the majority of Americans.
10) Judicial Oversight (Section 70302): This provision, described in a single paragraph buried about halfway through the act, restricts judges’ ability to enforce court orders and weakens judicial authority over the executive branch.
The impact on democracy of the 10th identified component of Trump’s legislation justifies further explanation. This provision restricts the ability of federal courts to enforce their rulings against the government and impose contempt of court citations. This is significant because this clause means Judges would have a much more difficult time holding Trump and his appointees, as well as future presidencies, in contempt for defying preliminary injunctions or temporary restraining orders, thereby severely impacting the rule of law.
Legal experts warn that this provision significantly undermines judicial authority and renders many existing and future court orders unenforceable. This stipulation undermines America’s checks and balances between the three branches of government, a cornerstone of the U.S. Constitution.
Congress’s parliamentarian may decide Section 70302 is not permitted in the bill since it does not have a financial component (referred to as the “Byrd rule”). However, the GOP-controlled Senate could overrule the parliamentarian’s decision.
Despite 55 percent of citizens being opposed to Trump’s megabill that carries a $2.4 trillion price tag and even though the House has passed the measure in its current form, it is imperative to contact your two Senators and Representative at the Capitol (202-224-3121) and at the very least request Section 70302, which refers to judicial oversight, be stricken.
Section 70302 alone in the measure says that democracy is in jeopardy for you, your children, and your grandchildren. If the bill passes with section 70302 intact, an authoritarian, totalitarian, and fascist-oriented America is almost assured in perpetuity.
Steve Corbin is a Professor Emeritus of Marketing, University of Northern Iowa, and a non-paid freelance opinion editor and guest columnist contributor to 246 news agencies and 48 social media platforms in 45 states.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.