Transcription
They are now apparently confessing to crimes on live television. The latest one is that the Trump administration is stopping certain Medicaid funding to the state of Minnesota on the basis of supposed Medicare and Medicaid fraud, which has been, I would argue, unfairly blamed on the Somali population.
Now, is there Medicare and Medicaid fraud in the United States? Yes, there is. Is some of it presumably committed by people of a variety of ethnic backgrounds, including just American-born white people? Yes. But what's happening here is being done for political reasons because they're now obsessed with Somalia and Minnesota. Let's take a listen to what JD Vance had to say.
So, we're announcing today that we have decided to temporarily temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding that are going to the state of Minnesota in order to ensure that the state of Minnesota takes its obligations seriously to be good stewards of the American people's tax money.
Now, what is this going to mean? What this means is that first of all, the providers on the ground in Minnesota have actually already been paid. the state has paid those providers the money. What we're doing is we are stopping the federal payments that will go to the state government until the state government takes its obligations seriously to stop the fraud that's being perpetrated against.
>> You know, there's a key thing that JD mentions there. The money's already been appropriated. We're just not going to send it. Remember that Congress controls federal spending. That's in the Constitution. When Congress appropriates money for Medicaid, the executive branch is required to spend it according to the law. It's not the president or the vice president or Dr. Oz's discretion to pause the funding because they don't like the behavior of a certain state. If Minnesota's violating Medicaid rules, there is a formal legal process to investigate that, to address it, and to have consequences. You don't get to invent a pause on live TV. and withholding congressionally approved funds for political reasons is exactly what the empoundment control act was designed to prevent when Nixon tried this in the 1970s. So they seem to be breaking the law. But what's another lawbreaking action from an administration that does it all the time?
Then we heard from Dr. Oz with JD Van standing behind him saying that uh basically the same thing. They're going to be deferring funds >> naming the swamp of the crooks that have inhabited it and are defrauding us. There are three bold actions. The first and for many of you maybe the most important is we're going to for the first time take a massive action to defer funds to a state. Let's start with this Medicaid program in Minnesota which serves pregnant women. Medicaid takes care of our children. 53% of kids are born in the in the poverty. They they're supported through Medicaid. Disadvantaged seniors, individual disabilities. It is unponderable that you would take advantage of these precious programs. yet they're putting it at risk, all of it, by stealing the money. So, it's our duty to preserve Medicaid and what we're going to do is identify the scammers, which we have done in in Minnesota. We've identified that they've hijacked in particular a certain part of the Minnesota Medicaid system. Said differently, and I'll just put the numbers out there, it's going to be $259 million of deferred payments for Medicaid to Minnesota, which we're announcing as I speak uh to Governor Walls and his team. That's based on an audit of the last three months of 2025. Restated a quarter billion dollars is not going to be paid this month to Minnesota for its Medicaid claims. Now that's a million rather a quarter billion dollars of money. That's your money. It's your taxpayer money. And these home and community based services, which again are services that are typically things you would do for your family, but for whatever reason your family's not there to provide them are very hard to audit. And for that reason, there's been a lot of slippage. The guardrails have not been wellmaintained and if you're not serious about the integrity of the program, you'll see these problems.
>> All right. So, similar stuff from Dr. Oz pausing the money. These funds are for actual health care services guaranteed by federal law. And if an administration is withholding these funds outside of a formal enforcement process, which there isn't here, they haven't done investigations, adjudicated them, and then said we're holding certain funds. This is very legally dubious. Medicaid is governed by federal statute. If a state qualifies under federal under the law, the federal government has to provide these matching funds. There's no well, we kind of think you might be mismanaging things clause that lets the executive branch just go, we're not going to give you the money.
Now, JD Vance was actually asked, what is the legal authority here? Which is a phenomenal question from a reporter. How can you do this given that the funds have been appropriated? You're you're you're legally mandated. And here is what JD Vance says.
>> Yeah. So on the second thing, um actually uh Marco briefed me about 15 minutes ago on it, but we don't know a whole lot of details. And >> so and he's first answering a different >> I'll I'll defer to uh uh to the White House to provide more updates as we get them. Certainly, you know, a situation that we're monitoring. Hopefully uh it's not as bad as we fear it could be, but can't say more because I just don't know more. On the question of the legal authorities, I mean, inherent in Cong Congress's uh assigning of the administration actually, you know, we're the ones who spend this money. Congress appropriates it. We're the ones who actually make sure this goes to the people it ought to go to. And inherent in that is is making sure that it only goes to the people that Congress says that it should go to.
This is total legal Like I said to you before, the process is Congress appropriates the money and the executive branch disperses it. It is not subject to the White House deciding who has earned the money if you suspect fraud or any specific uh malfeasants. There's an investigation process. They haven't done it. Otherwise, presidents could punish states they don't like, which is of course exactly what Donald Trump is doing.