Right-wing media spent months advocating for President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which paired historic cuts to the social safety net with equally unprecedented tax giveaways for the wealthy, all while funneling more money to immigrant detention than the entire federal prison system receives. Once the bill became law, many conservative pundits downplayed the harm it would inflict or simply stopped discussing it all together.

Support for Trump’s bill was essentially ubiquitous among conservatives. From the administration’s earliest days, right-wing media pushed false narratives to support the legislation, arguing that harsh paperwork requirements would only affect so-called “able-bodied men,” blaming immigrants instead of funding cuts for bankrupting hospitals, and even denying the bill cut Medicaid at all.

In other cases, right-wing media outlets and figures simply ignored analysis of the bill’s projected harms, such as Fox News's decision not to cover findings from the Congressional Budget Office that the bill, as it was written at the time, would leave nearly 11 million people without insurance. (Under the final version Trump signed into law, that number is closer to 17 million.)

Now, as Trump’s law upends the lives of working people, right-wing media have continued to minimize the pain it will cause for working people. The top 0.1% of households, on the other hand, will average a handout of about $100,000 annually in tax benefits.

Right-wing media downplay the harms of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”

Although some of the bill’s harshest austerity measures don’t take hold until 2027, its effects are already being felt by the working class throughout the country.

Conservative pundits, however, began downplaying its cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program almost immediately.

• In the hours before the bill passed, Fox News correspondent Mark Meredith derided the bill’s Democratic critics for “screaming that this is going to have a negative impact on food stamp recipients, as well as Americans relying on Medicaid.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 7/3/25]
• On Fox News, Wall Street Journal editorial board member Kate Bachelder Odell called the Medicaid work requirements “pretty sensible reforms.” It’s “the same on food stamps,” she continued. “It tries to keep states from ducking out of work requirements that they have been trying to avoid and make sure that these benefits are going to people who are eligible for them.” She concluded that the bill “actually will make some progress in getting those programs under control.” [Fox News, The Journal Editorial Report, 7/5/25]
• On his Triggered podcast, Donald Trump Jr. said that “as far as Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP, there seems to be a lot of false information going on around that one as well from the left about the so-called cuts.” He added: “People can't just get on it, claim disability, not actually do anything, not actually have any disabilities, have you pay for them and their families and everything like that forever.” [Rumble, Triggered, 7/7/25]
• Fox News correspondent Aishah Hasnie said the bill makes “massive reforms to Medicaid” but repeated The Wall Street Journal editorial board’s claim that “nobody is gutting the safety net.” Fox News and The Wall Street Journal are both properties in Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 7/7/25; The Wall Street Journal, 7/4/25]
• Fox News contributor and Wall Street Journal editor at large Gerard Baker said the law “only cuts the growth of Medicaid, it doesn’t even actually represent an overall cut in Medicaid over the next 10 years.” Baker also endorsed “cutting welfare spending” and said calling it “some sort of horrendous crime against the American people is just so out of line.” [Fox News, The Story With Martha MacCallum, 7/7/25]
• The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro said warnings about the bill’s looming harms were overblown and mockingly added, “If there are cuts to, for example, Medicaid for people who refuse to work, then apparently that is super duper sad.” He also downplayed the difficulties of complying with the new work requirements, arguing they didn’t even amount to getting “a part-time job.” [The Daily Wire, The Ben Shapiro Show, 7/7/25]
• On former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, correspondent Ben Bergquam said critics of the president were fearmongering by saying “the bill is going to kill people.” He continued: “It didn’t work with Medicaid because everyone realized it was a bunch of illegals that are getting kicked off.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 7/7/25]
• Fox News contributor and former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer claimed “Medicaid spending is going up under the Big Beautiful Bill.” Fleischer had previously called for cuts to Medicaid in February and April, as Republicans were negotiating Trump’s bill. [Fox News, America Reports, 7/8/25; Media Matters, 3/4/25, 5/7/25]
• Fox News host Jesse Watters said the new law meant “no more handouts — instead of handing out free health care and food stamps, Trump says: Go find a big, beautiful job.” Watters later said, “All Trump is saying is let’s stop handing out free candy to people who won’t work,” adding, “Trump’s telling them, take a deep breath — everything will be OK.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 7/9/25, 7/9/25]

But for the millions who will be hurt by Trump’s bill, the story is already very different.

Trump’s law is already hurting hospitals’ ability to serve patients

Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which he signed into law July 4, will have devastating and cascading impacts for working class communities throughout the country. The legislation cuts more than $1 trillion in Medicaid spending and, when combined with other Republican policies, is projected to leave an estimated 17 million people without health insurance by 2034.

The bill would create burdensome work requirements for low-income parents of children over 14 and adults without children who don’t have a disability. It also forces many states to lower provider taxes, a mechanism to access federal funding, which would further starve hospitals of needed resources.

While the work requirements don’t go into effect until the beginning of 2027, and the provider tax rollbacks the following year, the looming austerity measures are already forcing health care systems to ration care — or make plans to in the near future.

One day before Trump signed the bill, Nebraska Public Media reported that a health clinic in Curtis would be closing in the coming months as a result of the law’s Medicaid spending cuts. The president of Community Hospital, which runs the clinic, said the “anticipated federal budget cuts to Medicaid” have “made it impossible for us to continue operating all of our services.”

In a statement to The Washington Post, Community Hospital explained its decision by saying “to ensure long-term sustainability, we must prioritize what lies ahead.” The head of the Nebraska Rural Health Association suggested that the Community Hospital was closing the clinic because continuing to operate it might mean “jeopardizing” one of their hospitals’ finances in the near future.

Other providers have been forced to turn patients away, including Planned Parenthood facilities in Colorado and D.C., due to a lesser known provision in the bill that prevents facilities that perform abortions from accepting Medicaid for other services for one year. The Center for American Progress found losing Medicaid funding would put one in three Planned Parenthood clinics at risk of closing.

Similar stories are already emerging across the country as providers are forced to put new projects on pause, hold off on making new hires, and consider which services can be eliminated to keep the lights on.

NBC News reported that a hospital in south central Kansas has been forced to maintain a hiring freeze as a result of the bill, and that the CEO of a “25-bed rural hospital in Hugo, Colorado, said he may soon have to start cutting services for patients, including long-term care.”

New Mexico Hospital Association CEO Troy Clark told local news outlet Source NM the “uncertainty about the depth of the cuts is preventing hospitals from hiring additional staff for new programs and may result” in “hospitals cutting staff in intensive care units and labor and delivery services.”

In neighboring Arizona, Gary Kartchner — CEO of Benson Hospital, outside of Tuscon — asked local news KGUN9: “What services am I potentially going to have to cut?" Those cuts will have cascading effects, as the hospital is the second-largest employer in town and large reductions in spending will mean less economic activity in the community as a whole.

On the other side of the country, Vermont’s Brattleboro Memorial Hospital was forced to find a new contractor for its emergency room services mere days before Trump signed his bill into law. Hospital CEO Christopher Dougherty characterized the Big Beautiful Bill as “vicious,” adding that hospitals are “struggling already” and Trump’s law “doesn't help us get out of this."

In nearby Maine, a hospital system “warned it will need to reduce its workforce and cut back on some services partially because of cuts to Medicaid,” according to local news WGME.

Hospitals in metropolitan areas are also bracing for cuts. In Minneapolis, the city’s largest safety net hospital is expected to lose $145 million in funding a year from the Medicaid cuts. Staff are predicting the lost revenue will lead to “long lines in the ER and cuts to major specialty programs.”

As The America Prospect notes, health care providers have laid off staff at facilities and systems in Rhode Island, California, and New York state. Providers in Maine and Indiana have warned of imminent firings as a result of lower federal spending.

It isn't just Medicaid patients who are facing imminent hardship. A new analysis from health policy think tank KFF found that for people who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act, premiums in over 100 marketplace insurers are rising by a median of 15%. Vox characterized it as a “record-setting pace.”

The law has thrown food banks across the U.S. into a state of panic

Like hospitals and clinics, food banks will be forced to do more with less as food insecurity is expected to soar under the new law.

The Senate’s bill cut funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, by $186 billion over the next decade — about 20% — the largest cut to the program since at least the 1990s. The bill also makes existing SNAP work requirements more onerous by extending them to parents of children 14 and up, who had previously been exempt, and raises the age of those who must meet the requirements from 49 to 64.

These changes will cause an estimated 22.3 million American families to lose some or all of their SNAP benefits, according to research from the Urban Institute. Those cuts in turn will put further pressure on food banks to step in and make up the difference. Program administrators are already sounding the alarm.

On June 30, as the bill’s passage appeared all but guaranteed, the Easthampton Community Center and Food Pantry in western Massachusetts had to extend its hours to pass out groceries “for 10 hours straight,” as reported by Tracy Kidder in The New York Times.

“More than 450 families came through that day,” Kidder wrote. “It was as if they were stocking up on food for a hurricane.”

A food bank in Denver warned local news that they would soon see longer lines and less food to go around. The director of a food bank in Tampa Bay made similar predictions to a local Fox station.

“We do not have the capacity to make up for these cuts,” said Thomas Mantz. “For every one meal Feeding Tampa Bay can provide, SNAP provides nine.”

That figure was echoed by a spokesperson from the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank in Virginia, who added that the area was already facing historic levels of demand.

School lunch programs are also at risk. In Brevard County, Florida, school officials didn’t know if students who’d previously been automatically enrolled in free lunch programs because their families were on SNAP or Medicaid would still be eligible. New Hampshire students face the same uncertainty.

The cuts have also already eliminated crucial health education programs. On July 7, with Trump’s signature barely dry, the University of Minnesota Extension announced it was laying off all 60 nutrition and health educators who staffed its SNAP-Ed program. For 35 years, the program provided education for SNAP recipients including cooking lessons and gardening instruction. Before Trump’s bill killed the program, it served 57,000 Minnesotans across 42 counties.

The harms of this law have only just begun

Right-wing media may want to bury their collective head in the sand, but Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is already negatively impacting public health and exacerbating food insecurity. Their audiences may deny it as well — recent polling from CBS News/YouGov found that 81% of Republicans either think the bill will lower their health care costs or not impact their costs at all — but the bill’s harms have only just begun. As the law’s staggered immiseration measures come into effect, hospitals will close, children will go hungry, and immigrant families will be ripped apart. MAGA media supported it every step of the way.