Will ‘The Big Beautiful Bill’ crack Donald Trump’s white Christian nationalist monolith?
Charlie Mahtesian writes that the bill fails to advance Trump's political realignment. It's actually more significant even than that.
The consensus now seems to be that, one way or another, Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” a monstrosity that angers some Republicans by adding $3.3 trillion to the federal debt and other Republicans by cutting Medicaid—which it turns out a lot of Republican voters rely on—will somehow pass.[1] As Jack Blanchard noted this morning (July 2, 2025), “Given the way this Congress has behaved since Jan. 20, it seems far-fetched to imagine the Republican Party actually going ahead and blocking [emphasis in original] Trump’s flagship piece of legislation — especially when the president seems relatively uninterested in the actual detailed content of the bill.”[2]
Charlie Mahtesian this evening seems to agree but highlights the discord, writing, “Over the past decade, Trump has unleashed the tectonic forces of political realignment. He has torn his party down to the studs and then remade it in his image. He has splintered the Obama coalition and accelerated a class-based political reordering that stands to upend nearly a century of convention. His most recent win was marked by a more racially and ethnically diverse voter coalition than in his two prior campaigns.”[3]
This parallels my own observation that Trump had united the seven disparate tendencies of conservatism I had identified in my dissertation[4] into white Christian nationalism. As Leigh Ann Caldwell put it, “the takeaway from this legislative saga is that Trump has remade the Republican Party into a monolith.”[5] Trump did this by offering each of those tendencies something.
When Kamala Harris held the lead over Trump in the 2024 campaign, it briefly seemed as if that unity might be fraying. But Trump’s victory restored it.
Now, with “The Big Beautiful Bill,” Trump seems to be antagonizing a lot of Republicans, giving them all something to complain about: “One astute conservative student of the realignment,” Mahtesian writes, “likened the legislation ‘to a death march through a series of choices that nobody really wanted to be making.’”[6] Ouch.
It raises the stakes considerably. Mahtesian concludes that “Trump and his allies in GOP leadership are still working to nail down the final votes, but passage seems likely sooner or later. In the unlikely event that the whole thing collapses and Republicans have to start from scratch, it would obviously be a humiliation for the party. But it would also be an opportunity — a rare second chance for Trump to design legislation in a way that actually moves the realignment forward.”[7]
Perhaps. But monoliths have a way of cracking, especially when they actually are monoliths. We almost saw it when Trump’s 2024 campaign was faltering. We might be seeing it now as Republicans terrified of being ‘primaried’ by Trump-supporting challengers desperately seek to pass a hugely unpopular bill that offers something for everyone to hate.[8]
Even if, indeed, the bill passes—count me as a skeptic—and perhaps especially if the bill passes, watch for the cracks in that monolith to reappear or new fissures to break open.
[1] Jack Blanchard, “Riders on the storm,” Politico, July 2, 2025, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2025/07/02/riders-on-the-storm-00436906; Leigh Ann Caldwell, “BBB’s Path of Least Resistance,” Puck, July 2, 2025, https://puck.news/how-the-big-beautiful-bill-made-it-out-of-the-senate/; Charlie Mahtesian, “Trump’s political realignment is missing in the megabill,” Politico, July 2, 2025, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly/2025/07/02/trumps-political-realignment-is-missing-in-the-megabill-00434342
[2] Jack Blanchard, “Riders on the storm,” Politico, July 2, 2025, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2025/07/02/riders-on-the-storm-00436906
[3] Charlie Mahtesian, “Trump’s political realignment is missing in the megabill,” Politico, July 2, 2025, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly/2025/07/02/trumps-political-realignment-is-missing-in-the-megabill-00434342
[4] David Benfell, “Conservative Views on Undocumented Migration” (doctoral dissertation, Saybrook, 2016). ProQuest (1765416126).
[5] Leigh Ann Caldwell, “BBB’s Path of Least Resistance,” Puck, July 2, 2025, https://puck.news/how-the-big-beautiful-bill-made-it-out-of-the-senate/
[6] Charlie Mahtesian, “Trump’s political realignment is missing in the megabill,” Politico, July 2, 2025, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly/2025/07/02/trumps-political-realignment-is-missing-in-the-megabill-00434342
[7] Charlie Mahtesian, “Trump’s political realignment is missing in the megabill,” Politico, July 2, 2025, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly/2025/07/02/trumps-political-realignment-is-missing-in-the-megabill-00434342
[8] Charlie Mahtesian, “Trump’s political realignment is missing in the megabill,” Politico, July 2, 2025, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly/2025/07/02/trumps-political-realignment-is-missing-in-the-megabill-00434342