Politics
Trump’s Big Bill Would Be More Regressive Than Any Major Law in Decades
The Republican megabill now before the Senate cuts taxes for high earners and reduces benefits for the poor. If it’s enacted, that combination would make it more regressive than any major tax or entitlement law in decades.
Estimated annual average change in resources between 2026-34
How the Bill Would Affect Households at Different Income Ranks
The bill as passed by the House in May would raise after-tax incomes for the highest-earning 10 percent of American households on average by 2.3 percent a year over the next decade, while lowering incomes for the poorest tenth by 3.9 percent, according to new estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.
The shape of that distribution is rare: Tax cut packages have seldom left the poor significantly worse off. And bills that cut the safety net usually haven’t also included benefits for the rich. By inverting those precedents, congressional Republicans have created a bill unlike anything Washington has produced since deficit fears began to loom large in the 1990s.
“I’ve never seen anything that simultaneously really goes after poor people and then really helps rich people,” said Chuck Marr, the vice president for federal tax policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
To the extent that some prior bills have also been regressive, they still haven’t looked quite like this.
Comparing Major Tax and Entitlement Bills
The G.O.P. plan is among the bills projected to benefit the highest-income group while hurting the lowest.
2025
Current G.O.P. bill
Lose
Gain
2017 Obamacare repeal*
Lose
Gain
1997
Tax and budget acts Unclear
Gain
1996
Welfare act
Lose No change
2022
Inflation Reduction Act
Gain Lose
2021
Build Back Better*
Gain
Lose 2010
Affordable Care Act
Gain
Lose
1993 Clinton budget act
Gain
Lose
1990
H.W. Bush tax act Gain
Lose
2017
First Trump tax cuts Gain
Gain most
2013
Obama tax cuts
Gain Gain most
2001/03
W. Bush tax cuts
Gain
Gain most
The calculations the C.B.O. published are what’s known as a distributional analysis. This type of study estimates how legislation will affect people across the income distribution, taking into account the taxes they pay and the government benefits they receive. Lawmakers often think about legislation in terms of its overall effects: Does it raise or lower the deficit? Does it grow or stifle the economy? But this kind of analysis helps illustrate who benefits and who is hurt by a bill.
“Ultimately, people care about who are the winners and who are the losers,” said Alan Auerbach, a professor of economics and law at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied fiscal policy for decades.
Stephen Miran, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, dismissed the C.B.O.’s analysis as missing who those winners are in the bigger picture.
“The best way to help workers across the income distribution, including all the folks in the bottom, is to create an environment in which firms want to hire them,” he said, pointing to rising wages and low unemployment after the passage of the major tax cut package during the first Trump administration. He disputed that low-wage workers would now be hurt in this bill by changes to Medicaid and food assistance.
To put the current bill in context, we have assembled similar analyses of major tax and social welfare bills from the last four decades.
The analyses below aren’t all exactly the same. Most were originally published around the time each bill was debated in Congress. They were produced by a few different analysts, because no one group has routinely published distributional tables. They don’t always cover every provision in every bill, which means some charts may be missing a few relevant effects. They evaluated slightly different time windows after enactment. In cases where we lacked complete data, we have not shown a complete chart, but instead characterized a bill’s effects on the highest- and lowest-income households.
Compared with other legislation, this bill is notable because it’s so regressive — while neither reducing the deficit nor supercharging growth, according to analysts across the political spectrum.
“This bill definitely compromises too much on growth, and it doesn’t make smart use of tax cuts either,” said Erica York, vice president for federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, a research group that generally favors lower taxes. “If you look at the revenue cost, it’s really large. If you look at the economic impact, it’s not that meaningful.”
Regressive bills
Since 1990, there have been a couple of other major bills that leave the poor worse off, but they differ from the current proposal in key ways.
The current bill cuts health care spending, food assistance and other programs that benefit the poor, in addition to extending tax cuts for individuals that passed in 2017. Those 2017 tax changes, on average, benefited all income groups, but were skewed toward higher earners. New tax policies in the current bill would shift those benefits up the income scale even more. And some new tax provisions that would help lower-income households — like no tax on tips and no tax on overtime — would expire after a few years, while many benefits for high earners would be made lasting.
“That makes this specific episode kind of exceptional,” said Owen Zidar, a Princeton economist. “We just don’t usually have big tax cuts running in different directions from the bottom than at the top.”
Mr. Zidar noted that one tax provision that mostly benefits the rich — an expansion of the tax deduction for certain types of business income — is estimated to cost about as much as the bill’s major reductions in Medicaid spending would save.
Republicans’ attempted repeal of Obamacare (2017, not enacted)
Bottom earners would lose; top earners would gain
The legislation that looks the most like the current bill is the Republican effort to repeal and replace Obamacare in 2017. A bill that passed the House would have reduced spending on Medicaid for the poor and would have redistributed tax credits for health insurance up the income scale. It also would have reduced the federal deficit, whereas the 2025 House-passed bill is projected to add about $3 trillion to it over the next decade, when interest is included. The 2017 repeal bill, which was unpopular with the public, did not become law.
Like the repeal effort, the current bill includes big cuts to Medicaid and changes to Obamacare marketplaces that would disadvantage lower-income workers.
Clinton tax and budget acts (1997)
It’s unclear how bottom earners would be affected. Top earners would gain.
A pair of bipartisan bills enacted together in 1997, the Balanced Budget Act and the Taxpayer Relief Act, were designed to balance the federal budget. The legislation aimed to limit growth in Medicare expenses and created the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Child Tax Credit. The tax package also included other tax cuts that helped higher-income families. Hard-to-measure changes to health programs, such as reduced payments to hospitals that treat Medicaid patients, left its full effect on the poor less clear.
Welfare reform act (1996)
Bottom earners would lose; top earners would see no change
The welfare reform reconciliation bill passed in 1996 did appear at the time to reduce after-tax incomes for poor Americans.
“People are likening this to welfare reform,” said Heather Hahn, an associate vice president at the Urban Institute who studies welfare policy. But she added that they’re quite different, for one major reason: “That ’96 bill was not tied to big tax cuts for anybody else.”
Progressive bills
Budget bills with the opposite shape — larger gains at the bottom and tax increases at the top — have tended to come during Democratic presidencies.
Inflation Reduction Act (2022)
Bottom earners would gain; top earners would lose
The Biden administration oversaw several such bills. The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022, expanded clean energy subsidies and health insurance subsidies for the middle class, and paid for the changes partly with reductions on prescription drug prices. Our chart shows the distributional effects in the first year after passage. By the end of the decade, the bill’s effects were projected to become less progressive, since the insurance subsidies are scheduled to expire at the end of this year.
Build Back Better (2021, not enacted)
Bottom earners would gain; top earners would lose
The Inflation Reduction Act was a scaled-back version of “Build Back Better,” President Biden’s signature domestic policy priority that never became law. It would have expanded social spending, benefiting lower-income Americans, and paid for much of it through higher taxes on corporations and high earners. Many of the proposed benefits for low-income Americans — including for child care, paid family leave and home health care — are not reflected in the chart, suggesting that this group may have gained even more than what’s shown.
Affordable Care Act (2010)
Bottom earners would gain; top earners would lose
The 2010 Affordable Care Act passed under President Barack Obama vastly expanded spending on health care for poor and middle-class Americans, and paid for it through higher payroll taxes on high earners, taxes on expensive employer health insurance and cuts to Medicare spending on hospitals and private insurance. While no one published a formal distributional analysis of the bill around the time it passed, several subsequent studies have measured its effects. Ultimately, several of the taxes that were originally projected to help reduce the deficit were repealed, mostly during the first Trump administration.
Clinton budget act (1993)
Bottom earners would gain; top earners would lose
A 1993 budget bill under Bill Clinton combined spending cuts with additional tax increases, particularly for the wealthy. It also increased the earned-income tax credit.
George H.W. Bush tax act (1990)
Bottom earners would gain; top earners would lose
The bill George H.W. Bush signed into law in 1990 raised taxes across the board, but boosted the earned-income tax credit for low-income workers.
Regressive bills that would benefit all groups
Several presidents have signed major tax cut bills that benefited Americans across the income spectrum while vastly increasing the deficit.
First Trump tax cuts (2017)
Bottom earners would gain; top earners would gain most
“On average, that’s been the pattern: that big tax cut bills help everyone,” said Benjamin Page, a senior fellow with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, which produced many of the analyses shown here.
The bill before Congress today, which breaks that pattern, extends many provisions of major tax legislation passed during President Trump’s first term, which are set to expire at the end of the year. The benefits of that bill also skewed toward the wealthy, although to a lesser degree than the current bill.
Obama tax cut extension (2013)
Bottom earners would gain; top 20 percent would gain most
In 2013, President Obama extended most of the tax cuts that had passed under George W. Bush and were due to expire. But the bipartisan tax bill he oversaw eliminated a tax cut for top earners.
George W. Bush tax cuts (2001 and 2003)
Bottom earners would gain; top earners would gain most
The original major tax cut bills from the George W. Bush administration delivered an even greater share of benefits to the highest earners than the current bill would. But unlike the Trump bill, the Bush tax cut did not cut benefits to the poor. That made the laws regressive, but no group looked worse off.
The cases of emergency stimulus
One other major category of bills has come during times of acute economic stress, when the government temporarily increases spending, often disproportionately aimed at providing assistance to the poor. This happened during the Great Recession in the late 2000s and the Covid pandemic. Those major stimulus bills had no losing group.
Distributional data is limited in showing the full effects of the 2009 Obama stimulus and the 2021 American Rescue Plan, the largest of several pandemic relief bills. Both increased funding for unemployed workers, expanded spending on health care and made investments in infrastructure.
Those bills made an explicit trade-off that it was worth adding to the deficit during a time of crisis. But no such trade-off exists today: The 2025 bill, in addition to its regressivity, adds to the deficit amid a much healthier economy.
About the data
We collected distributional analyses for major tax and social welfare bills dating to the 1990s (most were also reconciliation bills). For consistency, we included only charts for those analyses that looked at the effects of most provisions of a bill on after-tax income, though income is not always measured in exactly the same way.
Sources for each chart are listed. Most came from the Tax Policy Center.
Some analyses looked only at the change in taxes or in pre-tax income resulting from a bill, and we used that information to characterize its distributional patterns in our tables.
Politics
Trump’s Iran gamble divides GOP hawks and ‘America First’ conservatives over what victory looks like
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President Donald Trump may have united Republicans behind military action against Iran, but his push to formalize peace is proving far more divisive.
As details of a memorandum of understanding emerge, GOP hawks are questioning whether the administration gave up too much, while Trump allies argue the president achieved a historic objective that crippled Iran’s military capabilities without dragging the U.S. into another prolonged war.
The disagreement is about more than Iran. It has exposed a growing divide inside the GOP over what Trump’s “America First” foreign policy should look like in practice — and what victory should mean once a military campaign ends.
At its core, the debate centers on competing visions of American power. One camp views military success as leverage to extract maximum concessions from adversaries and secure lasting strategic gains. The other sees it as a tool to neutralize threats and end conflicts before they become another Iraq or Afghanistan. Trump’s Iran agreement has forced those competing philosophies into a rare public collision.
That divide is already playing out among some of the party’s most prominent national security voices.
TOP SENATE REPUBLICAN RIPS INTO TRUMP’S IRAN DEAL, SAYS $300 BILLION MAKES OBAMA DEAL LOOK LIKE ‘A PITTANCE’
The administration’s memorandum of understanding with Tehran has exposed a divide among Republicans over what constitutes victory after the military campaign against Iran. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The deal’s fiercest Republican critics argue Trump is giving away leverage at the very moment Iran is most vulnerable. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., has blasted the agreement on X as the “worst foreign policy blunder in decades,” while Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., has warned it appears “out of step” with the goals of the military campaign.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has questioned the concessions offered to Tehran and former U.N. Ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has criticized proposals that could help rebuild Iran.
Former Vice President Mike Pence has gone even further, calling the agreement a potential “lifeline” for the regime and warning it “smacks of appeasement.”
VANCE SAYS ‘UNITED STATES WINS EITHER WAY’ AS HE DEFENDS TRUMP’S IRAN DEAL AGAINST GOP SKEPTICS
Vice President JD Vance has defended Trump’s Iran agreement as the culmination of a successful military campaign that brought Tehran to the negotiating table from a position of weakness. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Trump’s allies, however, argue critics are overlooking the sweeping military campaign that preceded the agreement.
Vice President JD Vance and other administration officials contend the president achieved his core objective after U.S. and allied forces struck key Iranian military and nuclear sites, eliminated senior commanders and inflicted significant damage on Tehran’s military infrastructure. Supporters say those operations crippled Iran’s ability to project power, restored deterrence and ultimately brought the regime to the negotiating table without requiring a large-scale deployment of American ground troops.
They argue victory is defined by achieving U.S. objectives and ending the conflict on favorable terms — not by risking another prolonged war in the Middle East.
The clash highlights a foreign policy debate that has been simmering inside the Republican Party for years.
NEW SATELLITE IMAGES SHOW FIRES, NAVAL BASE DAMAGE ACROSS IRAN AFTER US-ISRAELI STRIKES
Supporters argue the agreement locks in military gains, while critics contend it gives Tehran too much after suffering major setbacks. (Fatemeh Bahrami/Getty Images)
While Republicans have largely rallied around Trump’s use of military force against Iran, the disagreement over what comes next reflects a deeper tension inside the party.
For traditional hawks, military victories create opportunities to reshape adversaries and secure lasting concessions. For many America First conservatives, the objective is narrower: neutralize threats, avoid nation-building and keep U.S. troops out of prolonged conflicts.
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As lawmakers and conservative leaders continue debating the memorandum of understanding’s merits, the fight may ultimately be less about the details of the Iran deal than about the future direction of Republican foreign policy — and what victory should mean in the Middle East.
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed legislation to require proposed data centers to provide estimates of their water usage last year, saying he was “reluctant to impose rigid reporting requirements” without understanding the impact on businesses and consumers.
Opposition to the mammoth tech hubs and their massive thirst of water, power and land has only escalated throughout the state and nation ever since. In just a matter of months, Newsom again could find himself in the political crosshairs.
Several bills to regulate the facilities and increase public transparency on their impacts are progressing in the California Legislature, which could create a conundrum for a governor who has long aligned with the tech industry but also paints himself as an environmental and social justice advocate.
“I think the governor is in a fragile position,” said Megan Mullin, a public policy professor at UCLA. “Tech has been a long backer of his, but at the same time there is this growing national outcry against data centers.”
Data centers have existed for decades but are rapidly expanding due to the worldwide boom in artificial intelligence. The newer centers built to power AI are far larger than their original counterparts and require immense amounts of water and energy.
The facilities also contribute to fossil fuel emissions, with Cornell University researchers estimating last year that AI growth could add 24 to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere annually by 2030. Fossil fuel emissions are drivers of climate change and linked to a range of health conditions, including asthma, various cancers and birth defects.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced last week that the Trump administration will not set national environmental requirements or recommendations for the data center industry, leaving it to state lawmakers to determine best policies.
Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego, said the nation will likely look to the Golden State for guidance.
“California’s laws will create a national model,” he said. “We’re the home of Silicon Valley and we’re just a massive state — the way we regulate data centers will set the tone.”
The political landscape around data centers has since changed since Newsom’s veto in October, said Dan Schnur, a political science professor who teaches at UC Berkeley and USC.
“No one should assume he will automatically act in the same way,” Schnur said. “Newsom is an incredibly savvy politician so he is clearly aware that voters are a lot more upset or concerned about data centers than they were a year ago.”
A Gallup poll released last month found 7 out of 10 Americans oppose data centers being built in their area.
The facilities can create thousands of jobs for construction workers and generate significant revenue for local governments due to sales and property taxes. The artificial intelligence they power is also — at least temporarily — boosting the stock market, leading to more tax dollars for California.
But residents who live near hyperscale centers have expressed outrage over a range of issues, including health impacts, spiking utility bills, constant noise, dropping water pressure and concerns about potentially losing their land through eminent domain. Meanwhile, community meetings about data centers are growing contentious, with police arresting a farmer in Oklahoma, three women in Wisconsin and a man in California.
Earlier this month, residents of Monterey Park voted overwhelmingly to ban data centers, making the San Gabriel Valley city the first in the nation to do so by public vote.
“Six months ago, politicians of both parties were falling all over each other to bring data centers into their states,” Schnur said. “Now that the public backlash has erupted, they are working just as hard to distance themselves from these projects.”
With Newsom eyeing a presidential bid in 2028, he might be reluctant to brand himself as a defender of an increasingly unpopular industry.
But Schnur said the governor likely also has concerns about angering one of his biggest backers.
“The tech community is a critical part of Newsom’s donor base, so he has to keep fundraising in mind when he makes these decisions,” Schnur said.
A spokesperson for the governor’s office declined to comment on data centers or pending legislation.
Newsom, during an interview at a Center for American Progress conference in May, said the concern that data centers may drive up electricity costs for Californians is a “legit issue,” but not the main one.
“The tech genie is not going to go back in the bottle,” Newsom said. “Just saying that you should not or cannot build a data center is not going to slow this technology down. What can be, will be. Nature of technology. And so we just have to steer it and not make the mistakes we made with social media.”
Among the measures in the Legislature are two bills from Sen. Steve Padilla (D-San Diego). SB 886 would create a corporate tariff to cover the cost of data center-related grid upgrades. SB 887 would ban data centers from receiving ministerial exemptions from the California Environmental Quality Act, known as CEQA.
Neither bill picked up support from Republicans, but both cleared the Senate and were recently referred to the Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee.
Padilla represents Imperial County, a farming community near the border of Mexico where plans for a 950,000–square–foot data center face fierce opposition from residents. The county exempted the proposal from CEQA, which requires projects to undergo an extensive state environmental review before breaking ground.
The city of Imperial sued the county earlier this year, arguing the project should not have received an exemption. The San Diego Chapter of the Sierra Club joined the lawsuit last month. The county board of supervisors last week approved a 45-day moratorium on all new data centers to allow the county to evaluate proposed data center development.
Two other data center-related bills recently passed the Assembly, each picking up support from a few Republicans. They now await action from the Senate.
AB 2619 from Assemblymember Diane Papan (D-San Mateo) would require data center owners to provide an estimate under penalty of perjury about expected water usage and sources before applying for a business license. AB 1577 from Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (D-Orinda) would require data center owners to submit monthly information to a state commission about water and fuel consumption.
Ben Green, an assistant public policy professor at the University of Michigan who is researching how data centers impact communities, said reporting requirements are a “bare minimum” type of regulation, making it especially noteworthy that Newsom vetoed a similar measure last year.
For comparison, several states are weighing more restrictive bills — New York recently sent legislation to the governor’s desk that would enact a one-year moratorium.
“It seems that there was a ton of lobbying pressure that he was getting,” Green said. “The tech industry doesn’t want to have any restrictions.”
Green said data centers could be a hot topic in upcoming elections, as Americans on both sides of the aisle are expressing valid concerns.
“There’s not an easy fix for getting the public on board with data centers because their critiques are grounded in reality,” he said. “This is not just some sort of reactionary NIMBY-ism or pearl clutching.”
Politics
Obama Center visitors say project symbolic of ‘Black excellence,’ claim scandal-free legacy while Trump ripped
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CHICAGO — Opening weekend visitors at the Barack Obama Presidential Center called the 44th president’s legacy an example of unifying, scandal-free “Black excellence,” while they lamented what they view as a dark turn for the U.S. under President Donald Trump.
“The community is great, we’re just kind of glad it’s here,” Lauren Tillman, who lives about 40 minutes outside of Chicago, told Fox News Digital. “We needed something like this. Chicago looks like a certain place to certain people who are not from the area… so I just think this brought everybody together, like, ‘oh there’s something for the community,’ for Black people, and on Juneteenth, so I thought that was great, too.”
The presidential center’s opening weekend began with a star-studded private ceremony and concert on Thursday night, and the 19.3-acre campus opened to the public on Friday during the Juneteenth holiday, which celebrates the day Black slaves were declared free in 1865.
TOM HANKS, OPRAH, STEVEN SPIELBERG TURN OBAMA’S PRESIDENTIAL CENTER OPENING INTO HOLLYWOOD’S HOTTEST TICKET
The Obama Presidential Center building is shown with its glass facade and surrounding trees. (Peter D’Abrosca/Fox News Digital)
“Just knowing that Chicago doesn’t always get the best rep, to know that we’ve had a Black president come from this place, and then to memorialize his legacy is just great,” said Ashley Woods, who joined Tillman at the opening.
“To know that [Obama] was going to try to do at least something for his people, that meant a lot to me and being here means a lot,” added Tillman.
“And I think, to piggyback off that, I think the legacy is Black excellence,” continued Woods. “Again, growing up in a place like Chicago, you don’t really think you can do much besides being a rapper or, you know, going into sports, but so see that somebody actually made it to the top per se, they were able to run the nation, there was very little scandal around him and his family, like it just shows you that we can be more than what America tells us we can be.”
OBAMA’S LEGACY PROJECT OFFERS LITTLE HOPE FOR CHICAGO’S SOUTH SIDE RESIDENTS
Lauren Tillman and Ashley Woods speak with Fox News Digital at the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago on Friday. (Peter D’Abrosca/Fox News Digital)
Sheryl Rogers and Peggy Neely-Harris made the trip from St. Louis for the weekend’s festivities.
“What it means for African Americans [is] a coming together, a reckoning, a remembrance of the excellence that is within each one of us, particularly in African Americans and particularly at this time when our very existence is under attack,” Rogers told Fox News Digital.
Neely-Harris agreed, and said that the brand new presidential center is a symbol of hope and renewal, and that the center is a “light in this present darkness.”
OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL CENTER SLAMMED FOR PROMOTING ‘FAR-LEFT’ AGENDA ON PUBLIC LAND
Sheryl Rogers and Peggy Neely Harris speak with Fox News Digital on the opening weekend of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, Friday. (Peter D’Abrosca/Fox News Digital)
“[Obama] has left an excellent example of how you should live, what type of character you should have and the love of family and community,” Rogers continued. “You can see love just exudes from them, and I love to see love in action.”
“No scandal,” she added.
However, Obama did face some major scandals and controversies during his two terms in the White House.
Obama’s DOJ infamously seized records of Fox News’ phone lines, including a phone number that belonged to the parents of a reporter.
The seizure was approved after a warrant was granted by a judge, and in an affidavit seeking the warrant, an FBI agent called reporter James Rosen a likely criminal “co-conspirator” in a violation of the Espionage Act.
Obama also faced government weaponization claims when his IRS allegedly slow-rolled the tax-exempt nonprofit approval of grassroots conservative organizations that set out to oppose his agenda.
Groups with words such as “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their names were allegedly hindered from forming for months and years.
OBAMA CENTER SUBCONTRACTOR FILES $40M DISCRIMINATION LAWSUIT AGAINST ENGINEERING FIRM FOR OVERRUNS
Barack Obama speaks during the dedication of the Barack Obama Presidential Center, Thursday, in Chicago. (Kent NISHIMURA / AFP via Getty Images)
Operation Fast and Furious was another chart-topping Obama scandal.
ATF agents intentionally allowed illegal straw purchases of weapons near the U.S. southern border with Mexico, in hopes that tracking the firearms would lead them directly to high-level cartel kingpins. But the Obama-era agency failed to monitor at least 2,000 of the weapons, which did in fact make their way into the hands of dangerous characters.
One of the weapons in the ill-fated sting was used to kill Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in 2010.
When, in 2012, then-Attorney General Eric Holder was subpoenaed during a House Oversight Committee investigation into the matter, he refused to comply, disallowing the committee from seeing thousands of pages of records pertaining to the operation. He later became the first U.S. cabinet official to be held in contempt of Congress, but the Obama DOJ failed to prosecute him.
Obama ordered the extrajudicial drone strike killings of four terror-tied Americans in Yemen without due process.
TRUMP OFFERS TO HELP OBAMA WITH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY’S ‘DISASTER’
Valerie Reynolds speaks to Fox News Digital during the opening weekend of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, Friday. (Peter D’Abrosca/Fox News Digital)
Twenty-six-year-old Chicago resident Valerie Reynolds told Fox News Digital she thinks the center will improve the image of the city’s South Side, which often finds itself in news headlines for violence and poverty.
“I think Barack Obama’s legacy is and will continue to be the inspiration of togetherness, of the power of what can be done and what can be created when we all come together,” she said. “It’s absolutely something that we are missing today. I’ve seen divisions in this country in ways that I’ve never seen before, and I was reminded of just how vast those divisions are being out here today, because it’s the first time I’ve felt this closeness since he ran for office in 2008.”
An emotional Kia Ware, a woman from Virginia, said the grand opening of the center was a sad reminder of the direction of the U.S. since Obama left office.
OBAMA REMAINS DEM HEADLINER WHILE PRESIDENT WITH MOST VOTES EVER FADES INTO BACKGROUND: ‘IT WAS ALL A DREAM’
Kia Ware speaks with Fox News Digital during the opening weekend of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago on Friday. (Peter D’Abrosca/Fox News Digital)
“It makes me sad because I was so proud of everything that was accomplished during that legacy in terms of, you know, fighting for vulnerable people and vulnerable lands and protection of so many things that are now being erased forever, and I feel like it’s setting us back,” she said.
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Ware added that Obama is still a “powerhouse” in the Democratic Party, and said that people who believe in his legacy want him to “step back in.”
“I guess it just means, like for me, I just am feeling very thankful that we have those eight years of history for putting women forward, putting minorities forward,” she said. “I felt like that unification, just seeing all people of different backgrounds and ages and generations here, I get that same feeling.”
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