Donald Trump ruined everyone’s Fourth of July holiday by signing what he so fatuously called the “One Big Beautiful Bill”. It may be the single most damaging piece of legislation signed into law since: who knows?
The end of the Trump-Musk “bromance” was as predictable as the sun rising in the east. But the speed of the collapse and the vitriol unleashed were something to behold.
If satirists tried to produce a caricature of legislation designed to steal from the poor to give to the rich, they couldn’t have done much better than the “big, beautiful bill” that the US House of Representatives passed by one vote on 22 May.
World politics is entering a much more dangerous and unstable time in which wars, conflict and repression will be more on the order of the day than they have been for decades.
What we have come to call the “neoliberal” era began under US President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s, rather than his Republican successor Ronald Reagan.
As more votes are sorted, it becomes much clearer that Trump’s victory, far from being a landslide, was quite narrow. When the count is finalised nationwide, more voters will have chosen someone other than the bigoted billionaire.
With a week until election day, the polls show the closest race in a long time. To understand how we find ourselves here, we need to take a step back and look at the national, international and historical backdrop to the 2024 election.
