We may look back on these days and ask ourselves: How did we let it get this far?

With the passage of the so-called “big, beautiful bill,” Congress has delivered another blow not only to working families, but to the very principles we claim to live by. In a nation where homelessness and food insecurity are daily realities, where rural communities struggle to keep hospitals open, this bill does not offer solutions — it compounds the crisis.

I’m a sophomore at Rollins College, but I will always be a Mainer. I’ve seen both ends of the state combat challenge after challenge: short-staffed clinics, overstretched housing shelters, empty shelves at food pantries and job markets that no longer offer the same promises they once did. And what we’ve just seen out of Washington sends a clear message to families like mine: you’re not a priority.

Let’s be specific. This bill cuts funding for essential medical services in the name of budget “efficiency,” but efficiency for whom?

It’s certainly not for the people of Aroostook County, where residents already drive hours for health care and where only four hospitals cover over 6,000 square miles. With these cuts, more people will be forced to put off care, skip screenings, or go without treatment entirely. That’s not efficiency, it’s abandonment.

It’s not just health care. The bill takes aim at programs that help keep families aflot: SNAP, housing support and renewable energy investments that could have lowered costs and created jobs in places like rural Maine. And all this while handing out tax breaks to the wealthiest few. This is not fiscal responsibility. It’s moral negligence.

And as someone who studies law, policy and the Constitution, what concerns me most is how quickly our country is forgetting its foundational promises.

In Scarborough and Portland, neighbors have reported increased ICE presence. Families — some of whom have lived in Maine for years — are facing raids without warrants or proper notice. The Fourth Amendment guarantees protection from unreasonable searches and seizures. That promise doesn’t disappear because someone wasn’t born here. Constitutional rights are not — and should never be — conditional.

And while Sen. Susan Collins did vote against the bill, we cannot let that vote erase the role she has played in normalizing this kind of politics. We’re past the point where the occasional “no” vote is enough. We need leaders who not only vote against cruelty but work every day to stop it from reaching the floor. This moment demands more than quiet disapproval. It demands conviction.

I love Maine. I believe in our communities. And I believe we deserve better than this. We deserve leadership that doesn’t just show up when the cameras are rolling, but that listens to the people who show up to food banks, who sit on long hospital waitlists, who worry about whether they’ll still have a job next month.

We deserve a future where no one in Aroostook has to drive three hours for a checkup. Where no child in Biddeford or Sanford has to skip dinner. Where our government doesn’t fund raids over resources. That future is possible, but only if we stop rewarding the politics of cruelty with reelection.

Sen. Susan Collins is not the villain of this moment. But our senator’s record is a symptom of a political system that has lost sight of the people it’s meant to serve. It’s time to stop asking for decency and start demanding it. We need representatives who understand that dignity, health, housing and safety are not partisan issues, they’re human ones.

So, who are we now? And where are we going? That’s still up to us.