Top 35 fundamental changes if H.R. 1 passes
If you’re anything like me, the efforts of President Donald Trump and his Republican caucus to dismantle the social safety net are hard to follow. I’d argue the pace and scale of their efforts are deliberately so large as to make it baffling, so they can avoid accountability or dissent.
It’s my job as a journalist to tell my readers fairly and accurately how policy debates could impact them. But there are times when being neutral is neither fair nor accurate. H.R. 1, also known as the “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act,” is the latest example of how reporting neutrally would be a disservice to my readers. How do I remain in the center when a majority of Congress wants to pass a bill that will take health care away from millions of people? What does “fairness” mean in a false debate that would result in increased food insecurity, rapid climate degradation, and further legalized political corruption?
As a woman and a trans person, I am deeply impacted by these policies. I have seen the impact of these attacks rip through communities, tear families apart, and destroy peaceful lives. I’ve previously covered these attacks from the perspective of executive orders, the underlying political movement, state legislation, and SCOTUS decisions– and what Trump and his Republican allies are doing now isn’t new, rather it is a logical escalation of the politics behind Trump’s rise and Republicans’ power.
Republicans are playing dirty and trying to be sneaky to pass their Trump-endorsed 1,118-page bill. Every committee hearing for the bill began after midnight, a sign that Republicans are trying to hide this legislation from the public. Speaker Mike Johnson has argued that adding work requirements to Medicaid, which helps low- and middle-income Americans afford health care, is a “moral component” of the bill. Those morals Johnson refers to are somehow supposed to make up for the large-scale job losses and economic harm the Medicaid cuts could cause states, according to policy experts at the independent research firm The Commonwealth Fund.
Because of this, I read the bill twice. While there are far more changes in H.R. 1 than just those listed here, these seemed to be the most relevant to Auraria. In short, H.R. 1 removes checks on executive power, reduces food availability, rewrites higher education standards to remove funding from part-time students, allows for increased pollution of the air, ends equal healthcare for over half the country, introduces instability into the federal government’s civil service, makes immigration even harder and pay-to-play, makes energy imports pay-to-play, ends jobs and manufacturing development programs, weaponizes the IRS to curtail dissent, and sells off our remaining federal lands, among other changes not covered by this article.
Neutrality does not require me to only discuss the proposed policy changes on the president’s terms, so here are 35 fundamental changes to the fabric of U.S. society that will happen if H.R. 1 passes the Senate (It already passed the House.)
Attacks on students
If H.R. 1 passes, college opportunity becomes further restricted- non-debt financing is curtailed, and college funding for undergraduates would further rely on family wealth rather than an income-assessed mixture of grants, loans, and scholarships. It also severely restricts the funding available to graduate students willing to go into debt for their advanced degrees.
1. Are you a part-time student on Auraria Campus or elsewhere? You won’t be eligible for federal grants anymore if H.R. 1 passes.
2. Are you a college student from any walk of life? The bill also completely restructures higher education financing. H.R. 1 restricts Pell grants, ends subsidized loans starting in 2026, and ends PLUS loans starting in 2027.
3. It also mandates a heavy full-time load on all students who receive federal grant funds. Students would be required to take 15 credit hours a semester, or 30 to 45 credit hours per academic year, to meet the new minimum enrollment standard for being able to go to college with federal aid.
4. H.R. 1 also removes the reporting of gainful employment statistics for non-university training programs to become eligible to receive federal funds for a student, such as Pell grants and student loans.
Health care and nutrition attacks
If H.R. 1 passes, abortions become de facto illegal, surgical birth control is effectively banned for all but the richest, trans people will die from lack of healthcare, and emergency health services will degrade.
5. The bill prohibits any healthcare facilities that provide abortion services from receiving federal funds under any program, regardless of whether those funds would go to abortion-related care.
a. Previously, it was illegal for federal funds to directly pay for abortion-related services. If H.R. 1 passes, any hospital or clinic that continues to provide reproductive healthcare will lose eligibility for any and all federal funds for any purpose.
b. This is effectively a coerced ban on abortion nationwide. It doesn’t explicitly make abortion illegal, but it does point a loaded gun at hospitals and clinics.
6. It also ends funding for gender affirming care for minors and adults on Medicaid, Medicare, and plans covered by the Obama-era Affordable Care Act
7. Worse, it specifically prevents any exchange-based health insurance from covering gender related healthcare as an “Essential Health Benefit” or EHB. This means that gender affirming care just won’t be covered because these plans only have to cover EHBs. Why would they cover anything not mandated when the goal is to make a profit?
8. Among the gender-related health procedure bans, it also bans funding for vasectomies and tubal ligations, removing the option for surgical birth control.
9. Oh, and if you don’t preemptively prove you are a citizen, H.R. 1 removes the mandate for state payments of basic emergency healthcare services to keep you alive. Be sure to submit to your nearest hospitals a copy of your passport or other proof of citizenship at least 90 days before any health emergency!
10. Oh, and if you’re on Medicaid but not working full-time, you won’t be able to keep your health care if H.R. 1 passes.
11. If you can prove you can’t work (an intentionally onerous process), you’ll have to do community service equivalent to at least 20 hours per week instead to be eligible for Medicaid or SNAP.
a. Proving you are too disabled to work often takes up to a year, if you are approved the first try.
b. Current national average disability application determinations take 272 days, according to Social Security Administration data.
c. According to the same data, if an application is initially denied- which advocates say they usually are, redetermination takes an average of 241 additional days.
d. That’s over 1.5 years to have the government determine if you’re disabled enough for meager subsistence payments.
e. If H.R. 1 passes, that time period would also mean no food assistance and no healthcare coverage, on top of the current status-quo of work limitations.
12. H.R. 1 also expands the work requirements to get or stay on SNAP benefits to all adults 18-65 years of age who are not pregnant, a veteran, certified by doctors as mentally disabled, provably homeless, or a parent of an under-seven-year-old child.
13. The bill also redefines nutrition standards in such a way as to reduce the minimum standard of food the country should expect to have available for households to be within acceptable food production and distribution levels.
14. But, hey, at least you’ll get $500 a year to pay for a private gym membership as long as you’re doing it to “prevent chronic illness!” (That’s not how chronic disease works.)
Expansion of Immigration Repression
If H.R. 1 passes, it’s going to cost a burdensome amount of money to apply for asylum, renew a work visa, petition not to be deported, and more. Essentially, most federal touchpoints for immigrants, especially the ones here legally, will become pay-to-play.
15. It also removes Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients from eligibility for health care plans through the exchange/marketplace set up by the Affordable Care Act.
16. The bill also adds $46.5 billion in extra funding to Customs and Border Patrol, including specific carveouts to expand hiring of officers, detainment facilities at northern, southern, and sea borders, and technology and other capability upgrades.
17. Another $46.5 billion will go towards erecting barriers at the land and sea borders, both north and south, to prevent people from entering or leaving the country.
18. H.R. 1 also implements various fees ranging from $250 to $1,000 related to individual immigration filings. If you want to stop your own deportation, you would need $900 or more just to file your motion with the court.
19. The bill adds a $5,000 apprehension fine, charging migrants $5,000 for the pleasure of being detained by ICE agents.
Pay-to-play energy and dirty power
H.R. 1 contains provisions that rescind federal funding and mandates for clean energy and clean air.
20. For instance, it creates a pay-to-play “Presidential permit” for the transport of fuels, such as oil, petroleum, and natural gas across any U.S. external border, land or sea.
21. Worse, it assesses a per-acre, per-capacity fee to new renewables projects. This makes renewable energy projects artificially more expensive, and the fee applies from the point of system proposal to the point of the system operating at full capacity.
22. Further, it removes emissions and MPG standards for new consumer vehicles and rescinds current laws regarding clean air, including clean air around schools and other public buildings.
23. And it ends current programs to research additional sources of clean energy as well as ways to use them, such as the NASA project for a renewable energy jet propulsion system that could make commercial airlines no longer so destructive and polluting.
24. In addition to repealing or rescinding clean energy and clean air rules while also ending funding programs for clean energy research, production, and transmission, HR1 mandates an aggressive sell-off of federal lands for coal, oil, and gas production.
25. It also opens up national forests for timber production, selling off what little is left of the once-great and vast forests in this country.
26. Specifically, it mandates a quarterly auction of oil and gas leases with at least one major acreage per state with such resources sold per quarter, and no less than 4 per state per year.
Curtails the rule of law
Think the courts will save you? H.R. 1 nullifies that possibility.
27. It prevents the judicial branch from exercising any meaningful power to slow down, pause, or overturn executive branch dictates by effectively removing the power of contempt from the judiciary.
28. It prevents all claims related to the environment from being eligible to go through a judicial or court process.
It also introduces instability into the federal civilian service, curtailing the civil backbone and services that make America function.
29. H.R. 1 raises Federal Employees Retirement System contributions, and then creates a provision to lower them significantly if a civilian employee of the federal government converts their employment to at-will employment.
30. To do this, it has to amend other laws to let civil service employees even be classified as at-will employees.
a. In other words, it coerces public servants to trade their protections in the workplace for a better deal on their retirement and more take-home pay now.
Want to sue the federal government?
31. You still can, but a judge can’t stop them from mistreating you while the court process is underway.
32. Also, if you’re affected by federal action but can’t sue directly, you no longer have the potential protection of class-status claims.
a. This means instead of one person, group, or state suing and the result being implemented federally, each person, group, or state would have to sue individually for individual relief.
b. It means effectively zero meaningful recourse to federal government abuses- unless you have a ton of money, the best lawyers, and can survive mistreatment while waiting on the courts.
Messing with the Tax Code
H.R. 1 allows the president and his representatives in the executive branch the power to weaponize the IRS for political goals and destroy community resources to satiate far-right tempers.
33. H.R. 1 has provisions that effectively raise the tax burden on the lowest-income earners, freeze the tax burden on the Republican definition of “middle-class” households, and reduce the tax burden on the richest of the rich.
34. While federal taxes don’t fund federal spending (they’re used for other purposes), H.R. 1 also raises the debt ceiling by $4 trillion.
35. Also, there are provisions that allow the President or the Treasury Secretary to revoke non-profit legal status without due process or recourse, effectively silencing non-governmental advocacy and squelching community resources.
Why this matters to you
Each of these changes, on its own, would be devastating.
Together, H.R. 1 gives President Trump almost his entire agenda and the power to unilaterally implement the rest of Project 2025 while steamrolling any checks on his power as the President. The bill rewrites enough of the functioning of the federal government to offer President Trump more power while also reducing the quality of life for regular, everyday Americans.
People will die because of these new health care provisions. Using funding removals for the purpose and result of effectively banning abortion and gender affirming care will kill a lot of people.
Many trans people need HRT or their bodies stop functioning, their bones weaken, and they have other extreme health impacts, leading to death. Many women need an abortion for life-threatening health reasons, and the rest deserve resources to be able to choose whether or not to carry a fetus to term.
Whenever Medicaid reduces its payments for a specific health condition, overall availability for doctors to treat that health condition reduces. This is because there’s less baseline funding for that specialty. Now, if H.R. 1 passes, gender affirming care availability will likely go from a patchwork to a desert. The already insufficient medical resources for trans people will become effectively nonexistent after some time.
We all need clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. H.R. 1 removes already insufficient pollution standards and essentially makes it a free-for-all for companies and others to pollute the air we all breathe. The climate crisis is only getting worse, and ending pollution and fuel efficiency standards will only compound the climate crisis. The U.S. is already the world’s number one polluter, and without any standards to mitigate some of that pollution, the whole world is going to pay a higher toll for the cumulative effects of our country, including the effects of H.R. 1, on our planet.
