Just over a year ago, Congress passed the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which massively expanded immigration enforcement in American communities by redirecting hundreds of billions of dollars to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). These taxpayer dollars were originally allocated to help families afford health care and groceries. At a time when Americans face an increasing affordability crisis and struggle to pay for basic necessities like food, housing, and health care, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress appropriated $191 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, most of it going to immigration enforcement, on a party-line vote, while cutting $911 billion from health care funding and $186 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Combined with the loss of expanded subsidies to millions of people enrolled in Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace health insurance plans and cuts to community safety programs, these cuts will devastate American families and communities. Over the last year, we have already begun to see the effects: millions of people losing health care, hospitals closing across the country, and billions poured into new immigration jails and ICE assaults on American cities.

What They Cut

To fund the Trump administration’s extreme anti-immigrant agenda, the administration and Republicans in Congress focused on health care with devastating effects. Nationwide, nearly 600 hospitals and medical facilities have closed or are closing because of the loss of funding, particularly due to Medicaid cuts. More than 600 additional facilities are facing further cuts or at risk of closure. These closures and reductions are projected to result in nearly half a million health care jobs lost by 2029. Many of these facilities were located in rural areas, leaving people stranded without access to quality care. Meanwhile, premiums for those enrolled in ACA marketplace plans went up over 20% on average in 2026, and in some states hundreds of thousands of marketplace enrollees have already had to drop insurance coverage.

OBBBA Cuts

The OBBBA was projected to cut over $900 billion dollars from Medicaid over the next 10 years. The bill implemented new work requirements for Medicaid eligibility that will lead to millions of people losing eligibility. Projections suggest up to 10 million people will ultimately lose health insurance because of these cuts and changes; as of April 2026, approximately five million fewer people were enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) than a year prior. Although the Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) was added to the bill to try to protect rural hospitals, it in no way offsets the costs from Medicaid cuts.

The OBBBA also instituted new work requirements for SNAP and ended guaranteed full federal funding for the program, shifting a sizable portion of the financial burden for the program from the federal government to the states starting in late 2027. In all, the cuts to SNAP total $186.7 billion over 10 years. As of April 2026, more than five million fewer people were receiving help to buy groceries than in September 2025, even as food prices continue to go up.

ACA Subsidy Cuts

At the end of 2025, Congress allowed expanded health insurance subsidies for people purchasing coverage through ACA marketplaces to expire. The loss of these federal dollars is projected to result in major declines in insurance coverage because people will no longer be able to afford their previous plans. This will create a vicious cycle where premium costs will increase as the pool of participating customers shrinks, raising costs further and pushing more people out of the marketplace. Overall, these changes are projected to increase marketplace premiums by an average of 114% for people receiving subsidies and lead 4.8 million people to become uninsured in 2026.

Cuts to Community Safety Programs

While the OBBBA infused massive amounts of funding into enforcement, ostensibly in the name of “safety,” three months before the bill’s passage the administration eliminated hundreds of millions of community safety investments. In April 2025, without warning, the Trump administration terminated 373 grants from the Office of Justice Programs (OJP). These grants, totalling $820 million with an estimated $500 million yet to be disbursed, supported violence reduction, mental health and substance use treatment, and other highly popular and well-studied programs for improving community safety. Without federal funding, some programs were forced to close as others turned to local governments for funding.

What They Funded

While slashing funding for health care and community safety programs, the Trump administration surged taxpayer dollars for its deeply unpopular and brutal campaign to increase arrests and jailings of immigrants living inside the United States. Last July, Congress committed a historic $191 billion to DHS for increased enforcement, which was recently supplemented with an additional $70 billion from the June 2026 reconciliation bill, for a total of $261 billion. 

This money is being spent in American states and cities — paying over $1 billion for warehouses to jail immigrants (in some cases at 800% over market value), hiring thousands of new ICE officers to terrorize communities and arrest thousands, paying local police to track down children at school through the 287(g) program, and locking people up in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The effects ripple through American communities long after an arrest or deportation, continuing to harm employers whose employees are afraid to come to work, elders and people with disabilities whose caretakers have lost their work authorization, pregnant immigrants who are no longer able to access safe health care, or citizen children losing income and security after their parents are detained or deported.

What Congress Can Do

Polling is clear — American voters want their federal dollars spent helping people with health care and grocery costs, not harming families and communities. In a July national survey of likely voters commissioned by FWD.us and conducted by Global Strategies Group, 61% of voters wanted federal government spending to go toward reducing the cost of living, while only 9% wanted it to go to increasing the budget for ICE, immigration enforcement, and deportations. Three in five voters said spending hundreds of billions on immigration enforcement while cutting funding for health care is unacceptable — more than double the number that said enforcement should be funded even if it means cuts elsewhere.

Given voter priorities, voters want to see the government spend its dollars on reducing costs, not on ICE

Although many of these policies have begun to take effect, some of the most harmful Medicaid and SNAP cuts have yet to be implemented. In June 2026, DHS testified that it has roughly $195 billion remaining in unspent funds from the OBBBA and the 2026 reconciliation. Congress still has the ability to change course, pulling back excessive funds from ICE and redirecting them to the programs that Americans really need.