Category: Minnesota
The Fred Phelps Left Invades the Churches
A Pew poll released about a year ago noted that just 37 percent of American liberals identify as Christians, versus…
Judge rejects bid to bring federal charges against Don Lemon: Report
A magistrate judge on Thursday rejected federal charges against journalist Don Lemon in connection with a protest at a Minnesota church. Lemon, who was fired from CNN in 2023, said he was there as a journalist, not as part of the demonstrations. “Once the protest started in the church, we did an act of journalism…
Taxpayers are funding California’s Medicaid shell game
Federal prosecutors in Minnesota have launched one of the largest Medicaid fraud crackdowns in American history. Raids. Indictments. Billions of dollars. A system designed to help the poor became a loot bag for criminals and grifters.
California saw those headlines and said, “They should have consulted us!”
Taxpayers don’t care whether fraud happens the Minnesota way — through day-care centers and nonprofits — or the California way — through health care accounting games.
Sacramento’s progressive class has spent years perfecting a cleaner version of the same scam — one that stays inside the lines, collects federal dollars on paper, and sends the bill to taxpayers everywhere else. Call it “legal.” Call it “approved.” Call it “routine.” None of those words makes it legitimate.
In 2004, the Government Accountability Office warned Congress that states were gaming Medicaid through intergovernmental transfers. States would shuffle public money through a circular process to make spending look real, inflate federal matching payments, then cycle the funds back to themselves. The GAO described “round-trip” arrangements that generated federal dollars without exposing states to true financial risk and that undermined the balance Congress intended.
Washington shrugged. Some states backed off. Others refined the trick.
California scaled it.
Medi-Cal, the state’s massive Medicaid program, now serves as the vehicle for this legal laundering operation. State officials insist that the system complies with federal rules. Fine. A loophole still remains a loophole, and taxpayers still pay the tab.
Paragon Health Institute, a conservative health policy organization, has laid out the mechanism clearly. Counties and public hospital systems transfer funds to the state through IGTs. The state counts that money as the “non-federal share” of Medicaid spending, then claims a larger federal match. Sacramento sends the combined state and federal funds back to government-owned providers through supplemental payments and formula-driven reimbursements.
The math almost always works in the contributors’ favor. The entities that send money in get reimbursed in full — and often receive more than they put up.
Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images
California’s ambulance program shows how ugly this gets. Under the state’s Ground Emergency Medical Transport program, California bars payments from the state’s general fund. Public ambulance agencies instead receive “supplemental payments” that California largely restricts to public providers, limiting private companies’ access.
The result: California pays public ambulance providers about $1,065 per transport, while it offers private ambulance companies roughly $339 for the same job.
Then the federal government matches the inflated payments.
This isn’t just favoritism. It warps the market. It pushes private providers out and leaves patients with fewer options.
California has also expanded Medi-Cal eligibility regardless of immigration status. The state claims it funds routine coverage for “undocumented” adults with state dollars, but emergency Medicaid remains federally reimbursable. Sacramento still taps federal funds through the back door, even as it sells the program as a self-funded moral gesture.
This system stinks — even when regulators bless it.
And the political contrast tells you everything. Minnesota’s fraud scandal has created enough public anger to drive its Democrat governor out of the next election. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), whose administration runs a program built on the same kind of federal exploitation — just with better paperwork — remains a top Democrat presidential prospect in 2028.
The federal government could stop this tomorrow. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services could clamp down on the abuse of IGTs and demand a genuine state contribution, not an accounting illusion. Instead, under the Biden administration, CMS approved major expansions and encouraged the same incentives that fuel the problem.
Audits don’t fix it, either. Regulators review what states claim on paper, not what taxpayers actually fund. If a state can justify the scheme in bureaucratic language, CMS signs off. Fraud analysis often misses the point for the same reason. A state can structure IGTs so the “state share” exists largely as a bookkeeping device. Federal taxpayers remain the only party exposed to real financial loss.
Congress never designed Medicaid to serve as a revenue stream for local governments. It created Medicaid to help the poor. California’s 12-to-1 payment disparities punish the poor by reducing competition, shrinking access, and driving private providers out of business.
RELATED: The insane little story that failed to warn America about the depth of Somali fraud
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images
Congress already has the solution. The GAO outlined it two decades ago, and the George W. Bush administration backed the basic idea: Close the loophole by prohibiting Medicaid payments that exceed actual costs for government-owned facilities.
In plain English: Stop rewarding government-owned providers with inflated reimbursements that private providers can’t touch. Set equal rules. Require real state contributions. Cut the circular funding schemes that turn Medicaid into a federal ATM.
Taxpayers don’t care whether fraud happens the Minnesota way — through day cares and nonprofits — or the California way — through health care accounting games. We care that Washington keeps subsidizing systems designed to break the rules everyone else has to follow.
California built this machine. Congress can shut it down.
CHIPS ARE DOWN: Degenerate Protesters Dump Food on Bovino During Gas Station Stop [WATCH]
![CHIPS ARE DOWN: Degenerate Protesters Dump Food on Bovino During Gas Station Stop [WATCH]](https://hannity.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Bovino-300x168.png "Bovino")
Minnesota protesters dumped a bag of chips on Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino at a gas station on Wednesday, as tensions continue to rise in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
CHIPS ARE DOWN: Degenerate Protesters Dump Food on Bovino During Gas Station Stop [WATCH]
Minnesota protesters dumped a bag of chips on Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino at a gas station on Wednesday, as tensions continue to rise in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
Trump blasts mass migration from ‘failed’ foreign countries in fiery rebuke: ‘Minnesota reminds us’
President Donald Trump delivered a scathing rebuke of mass migration, pointing to Minnesota as a cautionary tale.
During his Wednesday speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump warned of the dangers and destabilization caused by mass migration. As in many European countries, whose leaders were in attendance, migrants have flooded the United States by the millions, many of them taking advantage of social programs, committing crimes, and failing to assimilate.
‘We have to defend that culture.’
Trump pointed to Minnesota as a prime example of the failures of mass migration, noting the immense fraud and cultural disruption brought about by Somalian immigrants.
“The situation in Minnesota reminds us that the West cannot mass-import foreign cultures which have failed to ever build a successful society of their own,” Trump said.
RELATED: Trump administration halts visas for 75 nations whose people gobble up American welfare
Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
“We’re taking people from Somalia, and Somalia … it’s not a nation,” Trump said. “Got no government. Got no police. Got no military. Got no nothing.”
Trump went on to criticize Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a Somalian immigrant.
“She comes from a country that’s not a country,” Trump said. “And she’s telling us how to run America. Not going to get away with it much longer.”
Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images
“The explosion of prosperity, in conclusion, and progress that built the West did not come from our tax codes. It ultimately came from our very special culture,” Trump said. “This is the precious inheritance that America and Europe have in common. We share it. We share it, but we have to keep it strong.”
“We have to defend that culture and rediscover the spirit that lifted the West from the depths of the Dark Ages to the pinnacle of human achievement,” Trump said.
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‘This is First Amendment activity’: Democrats give church-storming mobs their stamp of approval
Radicals participating in a so-called “ICE Out Action” stormed a Christian church on Sunday in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
The interlopers — ex-CNN talking head Don Lemon and a motley crew of leftists hailing largely from Nekima Levy Armstrong’s Racial Justice Network, Black Lives Matter Minnesota, and BLM Twin Cities — not only lashed out at a pastor over his apparent role at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement but intimidated parishioners, drowned out sound of worship with their propaganda, and pressured the prayerful to condemn ICE.
The Justice Department has indicated that criminal charges for possible Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances Act and KKK Act violations are imminent. Despite the clear language of the relevant statutes, some Democrats have defended the mob action, indicating that churches are viable targets for further desecration.
‘When they find out that someone that’s supposed to be speaking for the community in church is found out to be in ICE … they have the right to go in there.’
When asked whether the DOJ has a case against the anti-ICE radicals who disrupted Minnesota Christians’ lawful exercise of religious freedom in a place of worship, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday, “Under this DOJ, wrongdoing has nothing to do with whether they’re going to focus or investigate you. So I wish in a normal time I would say no; I’d say this is First Amendment activity.”
After she suggested that “the optics of going into a place of worship are not necessarily great,” Burnett asked the Muslim Minnesota AG whether he was frustrated “that it happened this way.”
Nekima Levy Armstrong, the radical who led the intrusion into the church. Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images.
Ellison avoided answering the question, suggesting he was instead frustrated by the number of ICE agents operating in his crime-ridden jurisdiction and the possibility that troops might be deployed to Minnesota.
Rep. Adelita Grijalva (Ariz.), a co-sponsor of a resolution to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and a recent participant in an anti-ICE operation, is another Democrat who evidently figures churches are fair game for intimidation campaigns.
On a CNN appearance Monday, Grijalva justified the mob action, suggesting that the supposedly ICE-affiliated pastor “now knows what it’s like to have his daily life and privacy interrupted. This is a daily occurrence in our immigrant communities — being followed, being kidnapped, us out of our schools, churches, and hospitals.”
The Democrat congresswoman underscored that she did not think it was a step too far for “protesters” to go into churches, noting, “I think that when they find out that someone that’s supposed to be speaking for the community in church is found out to be in ICE, like a federal agent that is running ICE in their communities, they have the right to go in there.”
“Churches have always been an open door,” continued Grijalva. “And from my understanding in the videos that I saw, those protesters were not violent in any way.”
‘No cause — political or otherwise — justifies the desecration of a sacred space.’
Numerous Christian leaders and organizations evidently see things differently and have advocated for legal consequences in response to the intrusion.
Pastor Paul Chappell, president of the West Coast Baptist College, stated, “We condemn the actions of Don Lemon and the group of activists who stormed Cities Church today in St. Paul, Minnesota, in clear violation of the FACE Act. Christians everywhere should demand that the Department of Justice arrest those who participated. We must protect religious liberty in this country.”
“This group trespassed on private property and willfully obstructed Christian worship,” said Kevin Ezell, president of the North American Mission Board. “No cause — political or otherwise — justifies the desecration of a sacred space or the intimidation and trauma inflicted on families gathered peacefully in the house of God.”
Ezell added, “What occurred was not protest; it was lawless harassment.”
Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, called the mob action not only a “desecration” but an “unspeakably evil intrusion.”
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon stressed on Sunday that houses of worship are not public forums for the protests of radicals but spaces “protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws.”
“We don’t want to prejudge, but I think it is fair to say that I saw multiple federal criminal incidents yesterday, and there will be charges,” Dhillon told Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck. “It’s only a question of when we can get a judge to sign off on arrest warrants and exactly what the charges would be.”
“We will not let this happen to another church in the United States. It is un-American, unacceptable, and there is a zero-tolerance policy for it at this DOJ,” added Dhillon.
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LAND OF 10,000 FAKES: Noem Announces 10K Arrests of Illegal Criminal Migrants in Minnesota
Minneapolis is getting the full federal treatment.
‘Racial Equity’ Group Funded by Minnesota Taxpayers Asks for Donations To Bail Fund Freeing Anti-ICE Agitators
A “racial equity” and “restorative justice” nonprofit funded by Minnesota taxpayers is calling for donations to a new bail fund that’s helping free anti-ICE agitators and illegal immigrants detained in Minneapolis.
The post ‘Racial Equity’ Group Funded by Minnesota Taxpayers Asks for Donations To Bail Fund Freeing Anti-ICE Agitators appeared first on .
