Tag: taxes

Rollins: ‘Next Step’ Is to Make ‘Everyone Reapply’ for SNAP to Ensure Integrity

On Thursday’s broadcast of Newsmax TV’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins discussed data on food stamps and said that data from blue states is “going to give us a platform and a trajectory to fundamentally rebuild this program, have everyone reapply for their benefit, make sure that everyone that’s taking a taxpayer-funded benefit through SNAP or food stamps, that they literally are vulnerable and they can’t survive without it.”

Rollins stated, “29 states, mostly the red states, responded with their data sets, February, March, April. … But here’s the most unbelievable news I have really, just over the last few days: That 5,000 dead people, that was just one month, the number is closer to 186,000 deceased men and women and children in this country are receiving a check. Now, that is what we’re really going to start clamping down on. Half a million are getting two. But here’s the really stunning thing: This is just data from those 29 mostly red states. Can you imagine when we get our hands on the blue state data, what we’re going to find?”

She continued, “It’s going to give us a platform and a trajectory to fundamentally rebuild this program, have everyone reapply for their benefit, make sure that everyone that’s taking a taxpayer-funded benefit through SNAP or food stamps, that they literally are vulnerable and they can’t survive without it. And that’s the next step here.”

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5,000 Dead People Getting SNAP, 500,000 Receiving Benefits Twice: Rollins

The secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said in a recent interview that the department found that 500,000 people are registered twice for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, while more than 5,000 deceased people have also been receiving the benefits.

In an interview on Nov. 12 with Fox News, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said that SNAP is one of the “most corrupt, dysfunctional programs” in U.S. history, adding that 80 percent of people using the program are able to work. After an investigation, the secretary said that 5,000 dead people were getting SNAP, while another 500,000 people were getting SNAP twice under the same name.

“They choose not to work” because taxpayers are footing the bill, she added, saying that “very big announcements” will be coming in the next week.

Her comment was made as SNAP benefits, known as food stamps, saw setbacks and legal wrangling during the government shutdown that was ended on Wednesday evening.

Rollins also suggested that if some SNAP benefits are cut off, more illegal immigrants will self-deport, which she said would change the outcome of the Census.

Earlier in the month, as SNAP benefits were suspended, Rollins described “massive fraud” in the system, noting that the fraud was discovered only in states that had cooperated with a prior investigation. She said that 21 states refused to hand over their SNAP data to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was established by the Trump administration earlier this year.

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Here Are All the States That Have Paid Full SNAP Benefits for November

More than a dozen states have conveyed the full amount of food stamps for November, with some issuing them after President Donald Trump signed a legislative package that ended the government shutdown.

Connecticut, Hawaii, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin residents have received the full amount of food stamps they were due to receive for November, officials said.

The government reopened this week after Trump signed the funding bill on Nov. 12.

The package includes full funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which runs the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) with the help of states. SNAP involves lower-income people receiving money for groceries on electronic cards.

Many of the states paid full November benefits before Trump signed the package, after receiving a memorandum from the USDA that stated it would soon complete the actions necessary to issue full benefits for the month.

The USDA reversed course in another directive, but a federal judge blocked that memo.

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Full SNAP Benefits to Be Restored by Monday, Agriculture Secretary Says

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said that full Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits would be restored by Monday, Nov. 17. This came the day after the Nov. 12 passage of a funding legislation to reopen the federal government.

Rollins made her comments during a Nov. 13 interview with CNN’s Pamela Brown, saying that the end of the government shutdown prompted quick action by her agency. 

“We, immediately last night, began moving out, making sure that the program continues unabated, starting once the government reopened, and hopefully by the end of this week, most will receive it at the very latest on Monday,” Rollins said.

“But keep in mind, the SNAP program is funded by the federal government, but it is the 50 states and 50 different infrastructures that move that money out, which is what made it so complicated, the patchwork.”

Some states have already assured residents that the assistance will again be available to them. 

West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey announced on Nov. 13 that SNAP has been restored, and every cardholder should be “fully funded and able to purchase food with their EBT cards.”

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The Governor, the CEO & the FBI: Scandal Threatens New York Hospital

After taking the helm at New York’s financially troubled Nassau University Medical Center late last year, Megan C. Ryan stumbled upon something baffling in the books: a two-decade-long series of transactions engineered by New York State that may have shortchanged the hospital by a staggering $1 billion in matching funds.

As a hospital primarily serving patients on Medicare, Medicaid, or who are uninsured, the medical center qualified for federal matching grants tied to state contributions. Ryan’s discovery indicated that the state was having the medical center itself post its share of the match – for around 20 years at $50 million per year – essentially cheating it out of the state’s matching dollars. “We just couldn’t wrap our heads around how a hospital that serves the poor would be forced to put up tens of millions of dollars” in place of state funds, Ryan told RealClearInvestigations.

Ryan says she called James Dering, previously general counsel of the New York Department of Health, for a legal opinion about the financial arrangement. That opinion indicated it was improper.

What seems like a local tussle over health care has all the trappings of a bigger partisan political fight in the run-up to one of the more important races for governor next year in New York. 

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Noem Awards TSA Staff $10,000 Bonuses for Working During Shutdown

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem handed out $10,000 bonus checks on Nov. 13 to thousands of frontline Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers who stayed on the job during the federal government shutdown.

About 47,000 agents who worked through the 43-day shutdown despite not getting paychecks will be awarded a bonus along with back pay, according to Noem.

“We are going to not only continue their paychecks like they should have received all along, but also they’re going to get a bonus check for stepping up, taking on extra shifts, for showing up each and every day, for serving the American people,” Noem said at a news conference at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.

The officers were thanked for taking seriously every day the mission of the Department of Homeland Security, “and that’s keeping the American people safe while they go and commute across the country, and while they do their work and business and take care of their families,” Noem added.

A couple of the officers were singled out for their “exemplary” service and for taking on more hours and shifts during the shutdown.

“They were examples to the rest of the individuals that worked with them, and endured those hardships and continued to shine a light on what is special about America,” Noem said.

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‘Bloody hydra’ of Ukrainian corruption stretches worldwide – Moscow

A “many-headed bloody hydra” is draining Western taxpayers’ money through sprawling corruption schemes in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned, arguing that the latest scandal in Kiev exposes a network far larger than a simple case of graft.

In a social media post on Thursday, she described a global structure “wrapped around the planet,” channeling funds from Western taxpayers to the elites who profit from the conflict.

Her remarks followed the launch of a major probe by Ukraine’s Western-backed National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) into alleged embezzlement at the state nuclear operator Energoatom.

According to Zakharova, officials in Kiev serve merely as instruments within a broader machinery involving institutions such as the European Commission and NATO, while the real beneficiaries sit in the inner circles of Western liberal democracies.

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Texas AG: County Provides Legal Aid to Illegal Aliens

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Harris County to block subsidies to illegal aliens who are fighting deportation and a nonprofit to stop its voter registration of illegal aliens.

Harris County, the latest lawsuit alleges, unlawfully uses “taxpayer dollars to fund legal representation for individuals who are unlawfully present in the United States and facing federal deportation proceedings.”

Meanwhile, Jolt Initiative, Inc., a hate-Trump nonprofit, is “systematically subverting the election process and violating Texas election law by recruiting, training, and directing individuals to submit false, or otherwise unlawful, voter registration applications.” The lawsuit seeks the dissolution of the group.

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Trump’s Pentagon name change could cost up to $2 billion

President Donald Trump’s directive to change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War could cost as much as $2 billion, according to six people with knowledge of the potential cost.

The name change, which must be approved by Congress, would require replacing thousands of signs, placards, letterheads and badges, as well as any other items at U.S. military sites around the world that feature the Department of Defense name, according to two senior Republican congressional staffers, two senior Democratic congressional staffers and two other people briefed on the potential cost.

New department letterhead and signage alone could cost about $1 billion, according to the four senior congressional staffers and one of the people briefed on the potential cost.

One of the biggest contributors to the cost of changing the name would be rewriting digital code for all of the department’s internal and external facing websites, as well as other computer software on classified and unclassified systems, the four senior congressional staffers said.

The government could decide not to make every change to the Department of Defense branding, which could bring down the cost.

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House Will Vote on Repealing Funding Provision Allowing Senators to Sue Over Phone Searches

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced on Nov. 12 that the House will soon vote on legislation to repeal a provision of a deal to end the shutdown that allows senators to sue if the government illegally obtains their electronic records.

The provision in question creates a civil right of action to sue the U.S. government if a senator’s digital data, generated in the course of their official duties, is illegally accessed by the Executive Branch. Senators could recover a minimum of $500,000 per violation.

Congress passed the measure on Wednesday as part of a legislative package to reopen the government.

“House Republicans are introducing standalone legislation to repeal this provision that was included by the Senate in the government funding bill. We are putting this legislation on the fast track suspension calendar in the House for next week,” Johnson wrote on social media.

The provision was inserted into the government funding bill at the behest of several Republican senators whose phone data was accessed by the Department of Justice under the Biden administration during Special Counsel Jack Smith’s “Arctic Frost” probe and criminal investigation of President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The senators whose data was accessed include Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.).

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