It wasn’t long ago that congressional Republicans railed against voting for “omnibus” budget legislation, but that was before President Donald Trump demanded support for what he calls the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” As Trump rants about judges upholding the law and interfering with his efforts to rule like a king, the Republicans’ bill would even limit judges’ ability to enforce their orders.
Republican leaders have stuffed the legislation—passed by the House and now before the Senate—with provisions to please Trump and every corner of the right-wing base. Trump’s Christian nationalist allies are portraying support for the package as a way to push their anti-abortion and anti-equality social agenda under cover of the budget process, along with Trump’s priority tax cuts for billionaires and cuts to social safety net programs.
Jim Garlow, a dominionist Christian activist who promoted Trump’s efforts to stay in power after the 2020 election, welcomed the America First Policy Institute’s chief government affairs officer Matthew Henderson onto his regular prayer call Wednesday night to promote the Republican’s budget bill. Garlow thanked God in advance for helping pass legislation he said would bring a “needed biblical, scriptural, moral, ethical correction to our nation in this critical time.”
Henderson bragged that 76 AFPI employees have moved into the Trump 2.0 administration and are filling half of the administration’s top political positions.
The America First Policy Institute was built by former Trump administration officials into an administration in exile during the Biden years. Like the more visible Project 2025 led by the Heritage Foundation, AFPI planned its own “revolutionary” attack on the federal government and prepared hundreds of executive orders for Trump to sign on his return to power. On Wednesday, Garlow gushed about AFPI’s “stunning” preparation for Trump 2.0, saying it was planned like the Normandy invasion.
Before Trump’s 2024 victory, AFPI touted its agenda in Christian nationalist and spiritual warfare terms, portraying its right-wing policy agenda as a roadmap for “restoring a nation under God.”
On Garlow’s call, Henderson praised the budget reconciliation bill for including the largest cuts in “mandatory” spending in U.S. history—in other words, cuts in safety net spending like Medicaid. He defended Medicaid cuts—before catching himself and insisting that they were simply “reforms” like work requirements—by saying that “God gave us bodies and minds to use” and that spending money to “pay people not to work” is one of the “socialist tendencies” the bill would reverse.
Henderson also touted provisions that he said would address the “erosion of culture” and “erosion of morals” such as a ban on Medicaid funding healthcare for transgender adults.
AFPI has been promoting the legislation with email alerts to activists claiming that the “America First Budget” puts an end to schools being “overrun with radical agendas” and “bureaucracies pushing woke agendas.” On Garlow’s call, Henderson promoted the “transformational changes” he said the bill would impose on higher education in the U.S., saying they would force universities to train students for “profitable jobs.” He added that it includes “a lot for homeschooling.”