“When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.” – Hans Gruber, played by Alan Rickman, in the film “Die Hard”

Last week will not go down in the history books as an important historical marker in American political events.

It was important for us in the present, however, as the Big Beautiful Bill shifted how the federal government can collect, spend and borrow money.

The main parts of the bill renewed the tax cuts passed in 2017, cut the Medicaid and food stamps programs, and increased the country’s debt ceiling – the amount of debt the country is allowed to accumulate – by $5 trillion.

For me, though, this bill’s passage is significant because it crystallized the reality that President Donald Trump is the national Republican Party.

That may seem like an obvious statement. Trump has been the most important part of the party since he took a commanding lead of delegates during the Republican presidential nomination process in the spring of 2016.

What I mean is Trump has fully transformed the Republican Party into a populist party. A quick check with our friends at the Merriam-Webster online dictionary will tell you populism “represents or is claimed to represent the interests of ordinary people against the (e)stablishment.”

The idea of the establishment refers to a collection of powerful people who create most of the official or unofficial rules, norms or institutions that society follows, and these often benefit those same powerful people.

In other words, people do not believe government is on their side and, despite the fact Trump is the leader of that very government, many ordinary people believe he is tearing down those rules and agencies that help the powerful.

What is fascinating with Trump is he does not seem to have any clear vision or ideology about what government should do other than destroy what he does not like. The only possible exception to this seems to be his belief in tariffs and his confidence in using tariffs to negotiate favorable trade arrangements with other countries.

Just look at the few short months he has been in office as evidence.

He campaigned on avoiding military intervention in foreign conflicts and quickly negotiating peaceful resolutions but while in office has authorized the Iran bombings and carries on love-hate relationships with both Russian President Vladmir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as that war continues.

Trump has largely made good on his campaign promise to remove undocumented immigrants but has wavered recently by making statements about possibly allowing those who serve as farm labor or work in the hotel-service industry to be authorized to stay in the country.

Even when it comes to the Big Beautiful Bill, Trump has said repeatedly in the past he would not cut Medicaid, but this bill does exactly that.

Trump has tried to talk around this contradiction by saying the bill cuts fraud and abuse in the Medicaid system instead of cutting the program. The bill might help reduce fraud, but it is a cut, nonetheless.

This is where we circle back to my original point. One of the traditional policy positions of conservative Republicans is reducing government spending. Some may note the national party leaders have not been particularly successful at this in modern times, but it has been a position.

Several members of a group of the most conservative Congress members, known as the Freedom Caucus, loudly threatened to vote against the Big Beautiful Bill due to the provision mentioned earlier that allows the federal government’s debt to continue to grow by up to $5 trillion.

This means the country’s debt can now glide past the $40 trillion mark.

In the end, every single Freedom Caucus member voted for the bill as their resistance proved to be a paper tiger. Only two Republican House members and three Republican senators voted against the bill.

This leaves Republicans with the advantage of being united behind its leader and his populist tendencies but with the problem of being a party without a real platform or system of beliefs. The Republican platform is whatever Trump thinks that day – which, as pointed out earlier, is often shifting.

The ease with which Trump was able to line up Republicans who were uncomfortable with supporting the additional debt added by the Big Beautiful Bill only drives home this reality.

Now the fate of the Republican Party and his own legacy lie squarely in Trump’s hands and his hands alone. There are no more Republicans left to conquer.