The Big Ugly

Betrayal, Bureaucracy, and the Reckoning Still to Come

“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.”
— Thomas Jefferson

Good morning, dear rebels,

Welcome back to the tea table. I hope your weekend—whether spent in celebration, quiet reflection, or joyous, defiant laughter—gave you, above all else, rest. I hope you found peace and restoration, wherever your spirit sought it. In these times, it is vital to remember: self-care is not selfish, and self-love is not luxury.

Here at the tea table, know this—you are precious. And while we speak truths that may shake the heart, we also brew courage to help bear them, seeing clearly by the radiant light of the firebirds above.

While the month of June bloomed with feathers and fire, while we poured stories into the streets and honored the voices who built our freedom brick by brick, the machinery of injustice ground on—as it always does—quiet, calculating, and hungry.

And while our firebirds flew—celebrating stories of hope and the lives of those who came before—our dear orange menace signed into law the budget bill.

This so-called “budget” is not a fiscal document. It is a manifesto of malice, lacquered in patriotism and smuggled past public scrutiny while the nation danced. This is no accident. It’s the oldest trick in the American con: wrap greed in the flag, sing a hymn, and hope no one notices the theft.

But we noticed.

And so today, we ride. Not to mourn. Not to beg. But to bear witness—and to call it what it is: a calculated, performative, mean-spirited piece of legislation designed to punish the poor, privatize the public, and poison the well of democracy.

Let’s take a closer look at the Big Ugly.

💩 What’s Hiding in the Big Ugly

This bill is not simply heartless. It is calculated, weaponized governance designed to break the spirit slowly and disguise cruelty as order. Let’s walk through the rot, provision by provision—so no one can say they didn’t see it coming. While this is not a complete view of all that is in the bill, as it is over 900 pages, these are the most insidious provisions and ones we must work to counteract as we continue to fight against this regime.

🩺 Medicaid’s New Maze

One of the largest and most immediate blows falls on Medicaid recipients—tens of millions of citizens, many elderly, disabled, or working-class, who rely on this lifeline to survive.

The new law mandates eligibility verification every six months, no matter how stable the person’s situation may be. Not yearly. Not when life changes. Every six months. The process? Rigorous. Paper-heavy. Punitive.

This isn’t about efficiency—it’s about attrition.

The states that can implement these checks quickly will see drop-offs immediately. Others will follow. It’s denial in waves—a soft purge disguised as paperwork. And it’s not because they think people are lying—it’s because they know how hard it is to keep up with a system built to confuse.

They’ve built a bureaucratic labyrinth and dared the poor to survive it.

🏥 Planned Parenthood Targeted Again

The bill includes provisions that make it harder for patients to choose their own healthcare providers—specifically targeting Planned Parenthood. This isn’t about cost. It’s about control.

It means, in effect, that the government picks your doctor, if you happen to be poor. Not based on skill. Not based on trust. Based on ideology. The result is clear: fewer providers, longer wait times, and critical care denied—especially to women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and rural patients for whom Planned Parenthood is the only facility for basic care.

Some defend this by saying, “Well, I don’t want my tax dollars funding things I disagree with.” To which I say: Where was my request form when we funded ICE’s child cages? Or the president’s 19th golf trip? Or those lapel pins that cost more than a week's worth of groceries?

In a democracy, you don’t get to fund only what flatters your worldview. That’s not liberty. That’s monarchy. And this budget reads like the wish list of a dark, despotic king.

🏚️ Rural Healthcare: Gut and Run

States have long relied on provider taxes, among other means to fund struggling rural hospitals—facilities that often serve as the only emergency care option for miles. This bill slashes those taxes in half, undermining a core funding source.

And then—here comes the con—they created a replacement fund… with a delay. That’s right: they kicked the consequences down the road. Just one of the sweeteners added to entice Republicans like Murkowski who knew it was wrong, but still voted yes because it would be someone elses problem.

A classic hit-and-run:

• Slash funding now.

• Delay the fallout.

• Blame the next person in office.

Small towns won’t see the impact overnight, but make no mistake—the burn has already begun.

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🥫 Starving the Future

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) wasn’t spared either. The budget includes cuts that don’t fully kick in until 2028.

Again: delayed cruelty. This isn’t reform. It was intentional.

It was the second sweetener to help the bill win Murkowski’s vote. The delay specifically impacted Alaska as it would have to foot part of the bill for SNAP as it has a 25% error rate one of the highest in the nation.

They want to blame the fallout on whoever is next in charge—Democrat or Republican. Because unless they’re kissing the ring of the current emperor, they’re not worthy of the protection his party provides.

🚨 ICE, Funded Like an Army

While social programs were gutted, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) walked away flush with cash. More than the public health budgets of some entire states. More than some nations spend defending themselves.

And the person overseeing it all? The same official who reportedly blew through $8 billion in a matter of months, with little transparency and no measurable improvements.

Why? Because they’ve turned detention into an industry.

Look no further than the concentration camp built in the Florida Everglade protected wetlands with money and infrastructure of the FEMA response team. This isn’t about security. It’s about contracts, profit margins, and cruelty made routine.

As in Goodfellas:
First you buy it. Then you squeeze it. Then you burn it for the insurance.

Allow me to point out another fact, the Everglades are a wetland area designed by mother nature to withstand hurricanes (which they are prone to), by flooding. How long before the headlines are not detainees in cages, but detainees die in flooded cages, guards and unable to evacuate eaten by alligators. I wonder will they issue more thoughts and prayers?

This is not governance. This is grift with a flag pinned to its lapel. This is piss—piss with ink!—not a miracle elixer, and we are not buying.

🎓 Student Loan Servicing Sabotage

Meanwhile, the Department of Education’s loan servicing operations are being starved.

Instead of helping the millions navigating forgiveness programs, this budget slashes funding to the very teams that process relief, answer questions, and ensure legal protections.

That means longer delays for:

• Public Service Loan Forgiveness

• Income-driven repayment adjustments

• Outreach to struggling borrowers

It’s bureaucratic cruelty disguised as cost-cutting. You don’t need to cancel a loan if you can bury the paperwork, break the helpline, and starve the support staff.

The result? Graduates punished for dreaming. Teachers penalized for serving. A generation weighed down not just by debt, but by deliberate neglect.

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🌍 Climate Cuts, Job Loss, and the Price of Denial

For all the red-white-and-blue wrapped around this bill, it betrays the most American promise of all: to build toward a better tomorrow.

The climate provisions targeted in this budget are not “woke waste” or “unnecessary subsidies.” They are the literal engines of our next economy:

• Clean energy tax credits

• EV infrastructure support

• Grid modernization and rural resilience

What this bill does is cut them at the knees.

And what does that mean in practice? Thousands of lost jobs.
Startups stalled. Projects abandoned. Towns depending on clean energy investments left in the dust.

It’s not just bad environmental policy—it’s a war on American workers. On the entrepreneurs, engineers, and electricians who are building the future with their hands.

They don’t want to transition us off fossil fuels—they want to trap us in an economy that only works for their donors, while our towns drown, burn, and blackout.

And make no mistake: when the wind turns and the waters rise, they will not be the ones paying the price.

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🛠 Where Do We Go From Here?

So, what now?

We do what the people have always done when the emperors plunder and the bureaucrats barricade. We organize. We care for each other. We build the net they hope we never notice we need.

The first priority is harm reduction. Not metaphor. Not theory. Triage.

Because here’s the truth: some of these cuts are designed to function only if we let them. They rely on confusion. They bank on our exhaustion. They depend on people falling through the cracks without ever knowing how close they were to safety.

Take the Medicaid recertification maze: a six-month renewal cycle designed to confuse and cull. Many will lose coverage not because they’re ineligible, but because they don’t file the right forms in time. Or don’t know they need to. Or face barriers that make mailing a document or logging in online nearly impossible.

We cannot let them win by attrition.

We need local, on-the-ground infrastructure—now. Not next year. Not post-election. Mutual aid organizations, legal clinics, churches, student groups, and neighborhood alliances must rise to meet this moment, just as they did during the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic. Then, they walked dogs and delivered casseroles. Today, we need laptops, hotlines, rides to the DMV, and patient, persistent help with forms.

We need “Re-Cert Angels,” the way we once needed “Buddy Programs.” People trained and trusted to guide their neighbors through the paperwork jungle. Not just once, but every six months. Every time. Until we win.

Call it resistance. Call it survival. I call it love in action.

📣 Change the Message, Change the Fight

Let us speak plainly about our narrative. Messaging, as we’ve said before, is not decoration. It’s defense.

The trap they’ve laid is slow-acting. Its pain is meant to unfold in quiet corners and late-night rejections, far from headlines. If we cry fire too early—if we shout “Everyone’s getting kicked off!” and that doesn’t immediately come true—they win. They call us alarmists. They muddy the waters. And by the time the cuts take hold, we’ve lost the trust needed to raise the alarm again.

So we must be sharper. More precise.

This is not about a cliff. It’s about a simmer. A frog in boiling water. The pot is on. The bubbles are rising. The goal is to make us stop noticing the heat.

So we call it what it is:

• A millionaire tax break funded by hunger.

• A bureaucracy designed to bleed the poor slowly.

• A healthcare sabotage wrapped in family values.

• A climate betrayal sold as fiscal prudence.

• A student debt snare rigged with broken helplines.

Everywhere you look, the pattern repeats: delay the pain, deny the blame, and demand loyalty while the harm unfolds in silence.

We must not throw up our hands and cry doom—that helps no one. Feel your feelings. Warn others. But hold despair for something more useful. We do not meet silence with silence, nor do we meet it with hysteria. We meet it with clarity.

🧾 Call It What It Is: Accountability

There are those already calling this bill “a compromise.” A “win.” Some said, “We’ll get over it.” Others reminded us, “We all die eventually,” as if willful negligence were not a crime and could not hasten an end long before the golden trumpets were meant to be playing our tune.

Some even voted yes while urging others to vote no, so they could dodge the blame—cowardice in a business suit.

Let us be clear: these were not missteps. This was dereliction of duty. This was failing to do the job they were elected for, their votes bought by lobbyists and coerced by an orange mad man.

Our nation has no monarchs. We have elected officials, entrusted with stewardship, not coronation. But this vote revealed many in office think otherwise.

And just as the names Corwin and Hathorne live in shame for condemning innocents to fire and gallows, so too will names like McConnell, Ernst, Graham, and Mace be remembered—not with reverence, but with the cold clarity of history. Future citizens, unmoved by the passions of the moment, will read their votes and see evil unmasked.

Let that reckoning begin now.

📍 The Revolution Starts with Us

This is the moment for action in every form it can take. From porchlight conversations to city council meetings. From church basements to Discord servers. From mutual aid to mutual storytelling.

They have the money. We have the meaning.

They have the machines. We have each other.

And that, dear rebels, is the beginning of every great revolution.

“The arc of the moral universe may bend toward justice, but only if we pull with all our strength.” —Adapted from Theodore Parker, echoed by Dr. King

Until our next bold move,
~ Lady LiberTea ✨🫖

📣 Take Action

This is not the time to look away. It’s the time to link arms.

🔁 Share this article.
Truth spreads when we speak it aloud. Share it with your neighbors, your networks, your council members. Let them see what’s been signed in their name.

🤝 Help someone stay covered.
Across the country, Medicaid recipients will begin losing coverage—not for being ineligible, but for missing paperwork. Plug into your local mutual aid network, or start one. Need a place to begin? Find or start a mutual aid group near you → We need networks of people popping up to fill out forms and help participants stay in the program. It shouldn’t be our job, but if we don’t they win.

🧾 Hold them accountable.
Your representatives voted on this bill. Do you know how they voted? Do your neighbors? Use this tool to track their roll call, then write, call, and name names. They work for us.

For anyone who lives in the state of South Carolina I will save you time, every single Republican from the Senate and House voted for this budget bill. Make sure they know what you think about that. I know they’ve heard from me.
Check your representative’s vote →

Over the next three years there were will be local, state and federal elections. We told them how we felt about this and they voted with emperor naked greed anyway. Make certain that no matter how they try to wriggle out of it you hold them accountable for the lives they endangered. Its time to fire these charlatans—for cause.

Until Wednesday, darlings!

~L.L.✨🫖