Shortly after signing his so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” into law last week, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that the legislation was popular among the American public.
“It’s the most popular bill ever signed in the history of our country…this is the single most popular bill ever signed,” Trump said on July 4 during a ceremony at the White House.
Despite Trump’s claims, nearly all surveys conducted on the law as it was being fast-tracked through Congress along the reconciliation process show overwhelming opposition from American voters.
Several polls from last month showed double-digit margins against the bill. A Quinnipiac University poll published in mid-June, for example, showed only 27 percent of Americans supporting the legislation, with 53 percent opposed.
A Data for Progress poll conducted a few weeks earlier than the Quinnipiac survey also found that most opposed the legislation, with 52 percent of respondents saying they were opposed and only 41 percent saying they backed the bill.
And a Fox News poll published in June found that nearly 6 in 10 Americans (59 percent) were opposed to the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” with only 38 percent expressing support for the legislation.
Indeed, an analysis of 10 polls conducted between May and July found that, on average, only 31 percent of respondents expressed support for the bill, while 54 percent were opposed. None of those 10 polls featured a single instance of a net-positive approval rating for the legislation.
Several specifics of the law face sharp opposition from American voters. With hundreds of billions of dollars set to be cut from Medicaid, polling from KFF showed that only 17 percent of Americans want the program to face spending cuts, while 42 percent want funding levels increased. Forty percent want funding levels to remain about the same.
Voters may also be opposed to the bill because of its increases in spending on immigration enforcement. A YouGov poll last month found that 47 percent of Americans disapproved of Trump’s decision to send Marines into Los Angeles to suppress anti-ICE protests, with only 34 percent approving. Similarly, 45 percent opposed the use of National Guard troops in the city, with only 38 percent approving.
An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll published this month also found that nearly 6 in 10 Americans believe that the Trump administration’s immigration policies have either made the country less safe or have had no effect on improving safety. Fifty-four percent describe ICE’s actions as having gone too far, the poll found.
Notably, Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” includes massive funding for ICE and other anti-immigrant initiatives.
Indeed, the bill allocates $170 billion toward immigration and border enforcement funding, including $45 billion toward ICE’s detention budget alone, a 265 percent increase from the previous fiscal budget. The new law also grants $30 billion in funding to ICE’s deportation and enforcement operations, close to three times what was allocated last year.
Critics note that the huge funding increases for ICE and other anti-immigration programs come as the administration is blocking oversight of its tactics, all while defunding critical social safety net spending prioritized by most Americans.
“In passing this bill, Congress is stripping lifesaving health care from millions of Americans to pay for an increasingly aggressive, dangerous, and obsessive deportation agenda,” said Sarah Mehta, Deputy Director of Government Affairs at the ACLU, speaking to Newsweek.
Mehta further stated that the new law will make ICE “the largest law enforcement agency in the U.S., with a bigger budget than most of the world’s militaries.”
“Armed with this funding, this administration will be able to multiply its violent raids and detain over 750,000 children, parents, and longtime residents in remote detention camps where, even now, people are dying,” Mehta added.
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