USA: Deadly politics

USA: Deadly politics

Editorial by Lukas Hermsmeier

[This editorial posted on 7/10/2025 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.woz.ch/2528/usa/toedliche-politik/!V5VC1R64KME7.]


The budget package passed last Friday in the US will lead to many deaths in the coming years. Because people will lose their health insurance and can no longer afford treatment. Because hospitals and nursing homes will close, creating increasing care deserts. Because cuts to weather services and disaster control will affect warning systems and emergency response. Because medical laboratories will lack the money for research and diseases will spread more quickly. Because refugees will be deported to countries where their lives are in danger. Because the militarization of the police is being pushed forward and prisons are to be filled. Because the end of development aid threatens the livelihoods of fourteen million people.

Because the US Army has more money at its disposal. Donald Trump wants us to talk about the “Big Beautiful Bill.” Out of journalistic self-respect alone, we should avoid using this name.

Left-wing author and activist Astra Taylor calls it the “Debt, Deportation and Death Bill,” which more accurately describes the consequences of the legislative package: debt, deportations, and death. Although when it comes to debt, the growing national deficit of several trillion US dollars can easily be ignored. As the world's reserve currency nation, the US has considerable leeway. It is much more about the social emergencies that this package of laws will cause for generations to come. One only has to consider the abandonment of all climate protection measures while simultaneously unleashing fossil fuel production to understand the irreversible devastation that will ensue.

When Donald Trump entered the political arena in 2015, he set himself apart from the other Republican presidential candidates by condemning America's “endless wars” and ruling out cuts to the welfare state. His portrayal as the savior of the “little guy” was riddled with hypocrisy from the start, because he pushed through tax breaks for the rich and simply waged the wars at home: against immigrants, trans people, and anyone who isn't included in “Make America Great Again.” Ten years later, the populist spectacle has been completely emptied of meaning.

Around 11 million Americans could lose their Medicaid health insurance for the poor as a result of the cuts that have now been decided. The tax breaks continue to benefit primarily top earners and large corporations. The US is directly involved in Israel's war crimes in Gaza and is dropping bombs on Iran and Yemen. Trump is continuing US imperialism; his politics are right-wing class warfare from above. A classic Republican, if you will. Only more fascist, even more anti-democratic.



Trump's program unfolds what Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe has called “necropolitics”: rule over life and death. Some can become doctors, others cannot. Some enjoy the rule of law, others do not. In a country where extreme weather is on the rise and aid infrastructure is being dismantled, not many people are spared from necropolitics. According to the New York Times, last week's floods in Texas, which killed over a hundred people, might have turned out differently had it not been for extreme government cuts. While billions upon billions of US dollars are being poured into the deportation regime, important government agencies are understaffed.

“Disaster nationalism” is what Northern Irish author Richard Seymour calls the apocalyptic politics of Trump and other neo-fascists. Disasters are not being counteracted, they are being exploited. More isolation, more surveillance, more repression. Under these circumstances, for many people in the US, one thing will be particularly important between now and the next presidential election in three and a half years: survival.