--- title: Crushing Dissent is as American as Protest Itself description: American history is full of protests. But it is also full of officials fighting to shut them down. canonical: https://time.com/7297248/crushing-dissent-is-american/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-07-02T21:58:46.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-19T08:08:31.395Z article:section: History og:title: Crushing Dissent is as American as Protest Itself og:description: American history is full of protests. But it is also full of officials fighting to shut them down. og:url: https://time.com/7297248/crushing-dissent-is-american/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1f6ab0cc8196ef82/6998c7f81f670980d5f5688e/protester-wearing-American-flag.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Anti-Trump "No Kings" Protests Pop Up Across The Country og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Crushing Dissent is as American as Protest Itself twitter:description: American history is full of protests. But it is also full of officials fighting to shut them down. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1f6ab0cc8196ef82/6998c7f81f670980d5f5688e/protester-wearing-American-flag.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 video:duration: 02:11 video:published: 2025-07-03 section: politics topics: One Big Beautiful Bill, public opinion polling, Republican Party, Democratic strategy, 2026 midterms, Elon Musk, third party threat, federal spending cuts, Obamacare, legislative unpopularity genre: political analysis, news explainer tones: critical, skeptical, analytical, wry emotions: disapproval (high), concern (medium), amusement (low) sentiment: negative audience: political news followers, voters, policy watchers, campaign strategists people: Elon Musk, Chris Warshaw, Trump, Bill Clinton organizations: Republican Party, Democratic Party, House Democrats' campaign arm, Congress, George Washington University, Senate, Doge products: One Big Beautiful Bill, Obamacare, auto bailout content_suitability: politics [00:00-02:11] transcript_source: publisher captions transcript_reviewed: not applicable ---  # Crushing Dissent is as American as Protest Itself > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=adf3f15b-7ce0-4f4a-8b45-09335e679550&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=adf3f15b-7ce0-4f4a-8b45-09335e679550&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The "Big, Beautiful Bill" Is Massively Unpopular and Democrats Plan to Keep It That Way [Watch (HLS stream): The "Big, Beautiful Bill" Is Massively Unpopular and Democrats Plan to Keep It That Way](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/RdG0PHWf.m3u8) (2:11)  _Published 2025-07-03. In the end, Democrats were unable to stop Republicans from getting their tax-cuts-and-spending plan across the finish line on Tuesday. But, in conversations with strategists close to the Democratic leaders, they had a pretty clever consolation spin: this bill is the most hated piece of major legislation since at least 1990, and Republicans have no plan to fix that. GOP strategists seemed to understand the buzzkilling buzzsaw they were marching toward with a grim sense of inevitability. Even then, there was still no guarantee the House would accept the Senate’s rewrite of their work._ Description, summary, key points, chapters, key quotes, questions and transcript, where present, were produced automatically from the video or its captions and were not reviewed. ## Summary The video examines public and political opposition to the legislation called the One Big Beautiful Bill. It lists groups that dislike the bill, including fiscal conservatives, centrist Republicans, Democrats and a major GOP donor. It uses polling and a political science professor's comparisons to past unpopular bills to show the scale of public opposition. It then describes House Democrats' strategy memo for the 2026 midterms and the lack of a clear Republican response. ## Key points - Fiscal conservatives object to the bill's massive spending, while centrist Republicans and all Democrats object to deep cuts to programs that help the poor and the elderly. (00:14) - Elon Musk, described as the GOP's biggest donor, has threatened everyone who voted for the bill with a primary challenge. (00:28) - Musk is also threatening to throw money toward a new third party. (00:35) - Polling shows most people don't want anything to do with the bill, and the level of opposition is described as historic. (00:43) - Professor Chris Warshaw of GW found that Obamacare and the auto bailout were only slightly more unpopular than popular when they passed. (00:56) - Trump's bill is more unpopular than popular by 24 points. (01:24) - The House Democratic campaign arm is circulating a 2026 midterms memo to keep the bill's consequences in headlines for 16 months. (01:40) - Republican strategists have no clear answer on how to make the bill popular or explain the vote; one strategist said he was 'all ears' for an idea. (01:56) ## Chapters - [00:00 to 00:14] A bill with no plan to fix. The video introduces the bill as the most hated major legislation in decades, with Republicans lacking a plan to fix that. - [00:14 to 00:43] The long list of critics. Fiscal conservatives, centrist Republicans, Democrats and Elon Musk each have objections to the bill. - [00:43 to 01:24] Historic public opposition in polling. Polling and Chris Warshaw's comparisons to past unpopular bills show how unpopular the bill is. - [01:24 to 01:56] Democrats' 2026 midterm strategy. A 24-point unpopularity gap and a House Democratic memo shape the plan to keep the bill in the headlines. - [01:56 to 02:11] Republicans lack a response. Republican strategists offer no clear way to make the bill popular or defend the vote. ## Key quotes - [00:46] narrator: "Polling shows most folks don't want anything to" - [00:53] narrator: "The level of opposition is truly historic." - [01:24] narrator: "But Trump's one big," - [02:04] narrator: "how do you get through this?" - [02:06] Republican strategist: "And his answer was, I'm all ears." ## Questions this video answers - Who opposes the One Big Beautiful Bill and why? [00:14] - What has Elon Musk threatened over the bill? [00:28] - How unpopular is the bill compared with Obamacare and the auto bailout? [00:56] - By how many points is the bill more unpopular than popular? [01:24] - What are House Democrats planning for the 2026 midterms? [01:40] - Do Republican strategists have a plan to make the bill popular? [01:56] ## Content suitability - politics [00:00-02:11]: Partisan political analysis of contested legislation, polling, and 2026 midterm campaign strategy. by [Shira Lurie / Made by History](https://time.com/author/made-by-history/) ## Shira Lurie / Made by History Jul 2, 2025 9:58 PM UTC In the end, Democrats were unable to stop Republicans from getting their tax-cuts-and-spending plan across the finish line on Tuesday. But, in conversations with strategists close to the Democratic leaders, they had a pretty clever consolation spin: this bill is the most hated piece of major legislation since at least 1990, and Republicans have no plan to fix that. GOP strategists seemed to understand the buzzkilling buzzsaw they were marching toward with a grim sense of inevitability. Even then, there was still no guarantee the House would accept the Senate’s rewrite of their work. by [Shira Lurie / Made by History](https://time.com/author/made-by-history/) ## Shira Lurie / Made by History Jul 2, 2025 9:58 PM UTC The 2020s have so far been an incredibly hostile era to protest in the United States. The latter stages of the first Trump Administration witnessed [police backlash](https://americanoversight.org/new-records-about-trump-administrations-response-to-summer-2020-racial-justice-protests/) to peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrations and during Joe Biden’s presidency, [thousands](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/5/dozens-arrested-in-us-campuses-in-another-weekend-of-pro-palestine-protests) of pro-Palestine student activists across the country suffered police violence and arrest. Trump’s second term has unleashed a torrent of assaults on protest and dissent, from [revoking visas](https://www.npr.org/2025/03/28/g-s1-56780/trump-administration-advances-immigration-crackdown-on-foreign-student-protesters) and [disappearing activists](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/31/trump-administration-student-protesters-immigration), to [withholding](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/politics-elections/2025/04/18/what-know-about-trumps-funding-threats-colleges) federal funds from universities that won’t dismantle diversity initiatives. These attacks on political expression strike at the heart of American democratic principles. Not only does the Constitution protect free speech, the nation’s founding history also seemingly legitimizes the right to protest. The United States is, after all, a country born of dissent. As a result of that history, those rights and freedoms were enshrined into the very first amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Or so the story goes. While American history is full of those claiming the Revolutionary right to resist, it is also full of officials fighting to shut them down. The historical record demonstrates that since the dawn of the republic, the right to protest has been challenged and contested by those in power. Recognizing this legacy is critical as the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaches in 2026. To many early Americans, particularly those within the Washington and Adams administrations, self-government rendered popular protest illegitimate and obsolete. While dissent may have been required to protect colonial liberties under British imperialism, Americans now governed themselves. Samuel Adams, a former Patriot leader, [declared](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2094/pg2094-images.html) that while protest had “served an excellent purpose” during the Revolution, “as we now have constitutional and regular governments and all our men in authority depend on upon the annual, free elections of the people, we are safe without \[it\].” As Adams viewed it, to resist government power was to oppose the will of the majority, which was, in essence, to trample upon the Revolution’s achievements and instead embrace tyranny. Discontented citizens should wait for recourse at the next election. Until then, they should keep quiet. [The Whiskey Rebellion](https://time.com/archive/6793516/government-whiskey-rebellion/), a 1794 tax resistance in western Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland, offered the first opportunity for a strong state crackdown on popular dissent. The “whiskey rebels,” as the activists’ critics referred to them, drew upon the tactics, rhetoric, and ideologies of the American Revolution and earlier protest movements to oppose a new tax on whiskey that disproportionately burdened the western economy. These frontiersmen organized committees of noncompliance, circulated petitions, raised liberty poles, and terrorized local tax officials to pressure for repeal. They claimed to defend the spirit of 1776 by resisting an unjust tax, just as the Patriots had done under the British. But those in power refuted these links and instead emphasized the disloyalty and illegitimacy of disobeying the will of the majority. “They quarrel with a constitution and government purchased at the expense of much blood and treasure, and framed by themselves,” [proclaimed](http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/1pa/paarchivesseries/series2/vol4/s2v4a.html) the Pennsylvania Chief Justice. “They despise the rulers of their own choice, and trample on laws of their own making.” The Washington Administration came down hard on the whiskey rebels. The president led 15,000 federalized militiamen from Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania into the west—though no rebel army materialized to oppose them. Still, federal forces arrested hundreds of activists, some on charges of treason. Although Washington ultimately chose to pardon everyone involved in the Whiskey Rebellion, the government had proved its point; it would not allow such displays of opposition.  President John Adams used the same playbook when another tax resistance in Pennsylvania broke out during his term. In 1799, citizens in the eastern part of the state organized to resist a new property tax that unfairly targeted farmers over land speculators. The tax imposed higher rates for those who improved their holdings, building houses and clearing farmland, and lower rates for those who merely held onto their plots as an investment. Once the Adams Administration threatened to send in troops, protestors quickly backed down and promised to obey the law. Nevertheless, Adams followed through and nearly 3,000 men marched on eastern Pennsylvania, despite the residents having already acquiesced to the law. “Government should not cringe,” declared one official in justification of the mission. Clearly, this show of federal strength was not about enforcing law and order; it was intended to prevent future protests by sending a clear message to those who had dissented. The Adams Administration also used legislation to try to silence its critics. In 1798, Congress passed the Sedition Law, which made it a federal crime to state or print criticism of the government. They used this law primarily to imprison newspaper editors loyal to the opposition party, but also occasionally employed it to punish protestors. For instance, federal authorities used it to arrest and charge two activists in [Dedham, Massachusetts for raising a liberty pole](https://www.jstor.org/stable/362780) criticizing the Adams Administration’s policies. One of them, despite not even being present on the day of the pole-raising, received the harshest sentence issued under the Sedition Law: a $480 fine and eighteen months imprisonment. He ended up serving two years because he could not afford the fine. One can, of course, look beyond the founding period to find other examples of state repression of dissent. Government officials and police have attempted to muzzle activists fighting for every progressive cause in the nation’s history: abolition, Indigenous rights, suffrage, feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, Black civil rights, environmentalism, and so on. Perhaps we should understand the Revolution nearly 250 years ago not as the birth of an American protest tradition, but as the origin of its potential demise. In the early years of the republic, a tradition of repressing dissent arose alongside dissent itself. In that sense, those who appeal to founding principles to counter recent authoritarian tactics are on a fool’s errand. As Americans today courageously rise to protest, they are engaging in a 250-year-old battle pitting the people against a state that may wish to silence them. _Shira Lurie is the author of_ [_The American Liberty Pole: Popular Politics and the Struggle for American Democracy in the Early Republic_](https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5978/) _and the Special Series Editor for the “Road to 250.”_ _The Road to 250 series is a collaboration between Made by History and Historians for 2026, a group of early Americanists devoted to shaping an accurate, inclusive, and just public memory of the American Founding for the upcoming 250th anniversary._ _Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians._ [_Learn more about Made by History at TIME here_](https://time.com/6317798/introducing-made-by-history-for-time/)_. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors._ ## Transcript [00:00] The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill is [00:03] the most hated piece of major legislation in decades. [00:08] And Republicans seemingly have no plan to fix that. [00:12] The list of haters is long. [00:14] Fiscal conservatives hate the massive spending here. [00:18] Centrist Republicans and all Democrats despise [00:21] the deep cuts to programs that help the poor and the elderly. [00:26] And pragmatists are watching and worrying. [00:28] The GOP's biggest donor, Elon Musk, [00:30] has threatened everyone who voted for the bill with a primary challenge. [00:35] And he's threatening to throw money toward a new third party. [00:39] We might have to put Doge on Elon, but still. [00:43] The longest list of haters may be the majority of the American public. [00:46] Polling shows most folks don't want anything to [00:50] do with this so-called one big, beautiful bill. [00:53] The level of opposition is truly historic. [00:56] Polysci Professor Chris Warshaw at GW has studied the clunker bills over decades, [01:03] and his ad shows Obamacare and [01:05] the auto bailout were just slightly more unpopular than popular when they were passed. [01:10] Bill Clinton's failed health care efforts were in similar territory. [01:14] Call Congress and tell him you want what they have. [01:17] Trump's first attempt to repeal Obamacare was a total dud in the polls, [01:21] but also a non-starter in reality. [01:24] But Trump's one big, [01:26] beautiful bill is more unpopular than not, [01:29] to the tune of 24 points. [01:32] Democrats have made sure their colleagues across the aisle feel the Bern, [01:36] and it's going to be how the 2026 campaign plays out. [01:40] House Democrats official campaign arm is circulating [01:43] a strategy memo about the 2026 midterms, [01:46] outlining a plan to keep the consequences of this bill in the headlines for [01:51] the next 16 months among Republican strategists. [01:56] There's no clear answer on how to make any of this [01:58] popular or explain this vote before the Senate vote. [02:02] As one Republican strategist, [02:04] how do you get through this? [02:06] And his answer was, I'm all ears. [02:09] If you have an idea. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7297248/crushing-dissent-is-american/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7297248/crushing-dissent-is-american/"},"headline":"Crushing Dissent is as American as Protest Itself","datePublished":"2025-07-02T21:58:46.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-19T08:08:31.395Z","description":"American history is full of protests. 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