How Nonprofits and Activists Can Oppose Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”

President Donald Trump has centered much of his legislative agenda on a single bill. The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act will, if the version passed in May by House Republicans becomes law, make an already inequitable economy even less equitable.

How inequitable is the current US economy? At the end of 2024, the top 10 percent had over two-thirds of US wealth and the bottom 50 percent had only 2.5 percent, according to the latest Federal Reserve data. A Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis released June 12 indicated that the Trump bill, if passed, will add fuel to the economic inequality fire.

As the CBO report detailed, “Resources for households in the lowest decile of the income distribution would decrease by about $1,600 per year (in 2025 dollars).” By contrast, “Resources would increase, on average…by about $12,000 for households in the highest decile, amounting to 2.3 percent of their projected income.”

Richard Wolff, cofounder of the nonprofit media organization Democracy at Work and professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, elaborated on the CBO data.

The Trump bill…will add fuel to the economic inequality fire.

“Millions will lose Medicaid coverage and thereby skip costly healthcare appointments with doctors, postpone care, [and] stop taking costly medications,” Wolff told NPQ, risking “worsening healthcare conditions spreading across the economy and society to everyone’s detriment.”

Wolff also noted the indirect impact the bill will have on low-income Americans.

“The bill produces trillions in added deficits that add to the national debt,” he said. “As interest costs of carrying that rising debt increase, politicians will increasingly sacrifice government spending on social programs in order to pay off interest to corporations and the rich.”

A Nonprofit Response

Greg Harrell-Edge, the founder and CEO at the nonprofit-network platform ProImpact Project, is fully aware of these facts. Yet he also believes nonprofits have the means to fight back.

“Nonprofits and activists need to evolve beyond traditional protests,” Harrell-Edge told NPQ. “We’re still in the streets while the opposition dominates digital spaces. If we want to influence legislation, we have to get better at organizing digitally, with targeted campaigns, smart messaging, and mobilizing younger audiences online.”

Among other things, nonprofits need to avail themselves of the abundant media spaces that exist to amplify their messages.

“The progressive political sphere and the nonprofit universe need to quickly get way more savvy about digital media and content creation,” Harrell-Edge added. “The biggest existing example(s) of what a version of that looks like and the benefits of it currently come from the right. They have a content-creator playbook and a self-sustaining digital media ecosystem with a consistent throughline that performs well in digital: generating engagement by creating rage.”

Harrell-Edge noted that progressive outlets like Crooked Media, MeidasTouch, and the podcast, This is Gavin Newsome, are starting to even the scales.

“Relationship-based organizing, coalition building across issue areas, and mobilizing culturally responsive messaging are key.”

Elika Dadsetan, executive director at VISIONS, a nonprofit that focuses on increasing diversity in organizations, added that the nonprofit sector must incorporate a wide spectrum of perspectives.

“We must mobilize not just to oppose cuts, but to center the human cost of such legislation,” Dadsetan told NPQ. “Nonprofits can amplify stories from those most impacted—particularly Black, Brown, disabled, and low-income communities who rely on Medicaid not as a safety net, but as a lifeline. Relationship-based organizing, coalition building across issue areas, and mobilizing culturally responsive messaging are key.”

Dadsetan adds that “advocacy must also happen within institutions. Nonprofits should help educate health systems, local officials, and businesses on the long-term costs of cutting Medicaid—social, economic, and moral.”

A Reality Check

None of these words of empowerment should be misconstrued as signs of the bill’s likely defeat. Quite the contrary.

Economist Robert Shapiro, who served as a top adviser to President Bill Clinton and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, told NPQ he believes it is extremely likely that “the bill in some form is going to pass.”

“This happens regularly,” Shapiro said. “A new president comes in and he has a big legislative push….The opposition raises public anxiety about it, and [passage] looks doubtful.” But Shapiro says that is inconceivable that a Congress controlled by the same party as the White House, with a compliant Supreme Court, will humiliate its own recently reelected leader by failing to pass his highest legislative priority, especially when he remains popular with their shared base of voters.

Shapiro noted that the Republican-backed legislation currently includes cuts not only to healthcare but “cuts in funds for education” and the administration of the Social Security program.

Some provisions may get sheared off or watered down. “It may be that the resistance in the Senate will force significant changes in the bill,” Shapiro said. “The cuts to Medicaid [may] be less. My guess is some of the ancillary tax cuts will be pushed back.” But regardless of such possible changes, the bill will impose widespread economic hardship.

In addition, there are also those economic challenges caused by Trump’s other key economic initiative—tariffs.

Ed Gresser, the Progressive Policy Institute’s vice president and director for trade and global markets, notes that despite the on-and-off nature of some tariffs, the overall increase in tariff rates has been significant. “There is this 10 percent worldwide tariff, there are 25 percent tariffs on cars and auto parts, and 50 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum….The tariffs that have remained in place since April 2nd are quite significant and give the US a higher national tariff rate than really any country except for a few very small islands and tax shelter or tax havens and less-developed countries.”

Arguably, tariffs could in the long run encourage some firms to move production facilities to the United States, although this usually works better when tariffs are complemented by other industry-supporting policies. But when it comes to who pays the cost for tariffs, there is no ambiguity. A recent Economic Policy Institute brief detailed that “tariffs are a regressive tax, meaning people with lower incomes will pay a larger share of their earnings in taxes than high-income people. Tariffs are essentially a consumption tax, and consumption as a share of income tends to fall as incomes rise.”

According to Gresser, “Overall, the effect of the bill, especially in combination with the tariffs, is to shift taxation from wealthy people to hourly wage families, and likewise from businesses that use a lot of goods—[such as] manufacturers, retailers, construction companies, and farmers—to businesses that don’t use a lot of goods, such as financial services and telecommunications and law firms.”

Where Movement Wins Might Be Possible

Despite the long odds, people in civil society do have some means to effect change. “If they’re members of nonprofits and activist organizations, they can contribute to policy development and talk to the people who lead them in their states or people who represent them,” Gresser said.

Gresser noted that it is also important to “talk directly to members of Congress through their offices, through telephone calls, emails, and so forth.”

“One key lesson is this: Never underestimate the power of persistent, diverse coalitions,” Dadsetan of VISIONS said, pointing to how liberals saved the Affordable Care Act when it looked like the landmark healthcare measure would be overturned. “The ACA repeal failed not just because of political maneuvering, but because people—especially those from historically marginalized groups—made the consequences real for lawmakers. Activists didn’t frame the issue as partisan, but personal. They leveraged local organizing, public testimony, and constant pressure. The same must happen now: Power is built through relationships, not only resistance.”

Nonprofits must also recognize, and accept, their own power.

“We need to stop treating the nonprofit sector as a side player,” Harrell-Edge says. “Imagine if even a fraction of the money poured into political campaigns was redirected toward high-impact nonprofits. That’s a real return, not just in the business sense of ROI [return on investment], but ‘return on impact,’ which could reduce our reliance on political whiplash from one administration to the next.”

For his part, Wolff urged all people to “make your voice heard that this bill (1) cuts vital services to millions of needy Americans—Medicaid, SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] and other programs—while providing large tax cuts to the corporations and the rich; and (2) continues what Trump promised to end, namely giving tax cuts to the rich so the government has to borrow to replace the reduced tax revenues.”

“If people fail to speak up,” Wolff added, “then the mass of Americans [will be] fleeced…yet again.”