House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked on CNN last week about the public opinion research that shows just how unpopular his party’s domestic policy megabill has become. The Louisiana Republican, however, rejected the premise.

“I’m not buying that,” the GOP leader said. “Polls can be manipulated.”

Perhaps, but when all of the polling from different independent outlets in surveys conducted over months says the exact same thing about Americans’ attitudes, a responsible congressional leader probably shouldn’t pretend that the data is inauthentic.

Indeed, it’s difficult to know whether Johnson’s stated skepticism was sincere. For one thing, the House speaker is aware of the fierce pushback his members have received from their constituents at public forums after having voted for the right-wing legislative package.

For another, if the inaptly named One Big Beautiful Bill Act actually enjoyed broad public support, why is Johnson’s party so eager to rebrand it? The New York Times reported:

Three top officials from President Trump’s 2024 campaign urged Republican lawmakers on Tuesday morning to move away from the president’s chosen moniker for his signature domestic policy legislation and instead rebrand it as a boost for ordinary Americans. In a closed-door briefing called to discuss midterm congressional campaign strategy, the officials encouraged lawmakers to refer to the measure as the ‘Working Families Tax Cut Bill’ or the ‘Working Families Tax Plan,’ according to members who attended.

This dovetails with two weeks’ worth of reporting about party leaders and insiders, including the president himself, slowly coming to terms with the fact that the public does not approve of the GOP’s radical and regressive achievement.

After the latest behind-closed-doors briefing for congressional Republicans, Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri told reporters, “What I picked up from the conversation was, I think we missed an opportunity to call it the ‘working families’ tax cut bill. We basically missed an opportunity.”

Burlison didn’t make this point explicitly, but it’s worth noting for context that Trump was the one who came up with the juvenile branding in the first place. Trump is the one who insisted the party go along with his preferred name; and the party now confronts the inconvenient conclusion that the president had no idea what he was doing.

This, of course, is the same president who claimed at the signing ceremony that the legislation was “the most popular bill ever signed in the history of our country.” Even by 2025 standards, this was hilariously untrue — the package was actually one of the least popular major legislative proposals in recent history — which helps to explain the need for the rebranding effort.

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But before Republicans get too excited about celebrating the megabill as “working families tax cuts,” they might want to grapple with the facts. It was just a few weeks ago when The Associated Press reported on the real-world effects of the GOP package:

The [Congressional Budget Office] estimates that the 10% of poorest Americans will lose roughly $1,200 a year as they experience restrictions on government programs like Medicaid and food assistance, while the richest 10% of Americans will see their income increase by $13,600 from tax cuts.

While it’s true the CBO found that middle-income households are poised to get a little more from the Republican tax breaks, it’s also true that (a) the increases would amount to less than 1% of their annual income, which isn’t enough to keep up with inflation; and (b) the largest beneficiaries of the Republicans’ law are the top 10% of earners.

There is no modern precedent for such a regressive redistribution of wealth. Traditionally, elected officials have feared a public backlash if they try to take from the poor to give to the rich — but this year, Trump and his party did it anyway.

These are facts a rebrand can’t fix.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.