Tag: welfare

DHS Probes Whether California’s Noncitizen Handout Program Is Paying ‘Ineligible Illegal Aliens’

The Trump administration is investigating whether California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI), a program that pays state money to noncitizens who are not eligible for Social Security benefits because of their immigration status, is paying “ineligible illegal aliens.”

Noncitizens who are over 65, blind or disabled, and are ineligible for Social Security benefits — specifically Supplemental Security Income and State Supplementary Payment — due to their immigration status alone, can receive CAPI benefits. Those eligible can typically receive up to $1,206.94 a month, according to California Disability Benefits 101.

U.S. citizens are not eligible to receive CAPI. In July 2024 alone, CAPI paid 16,852 recipients, a state report shows.  

CAPI benefits are purportedly reserved for eligible noncitizens who are legally present in the U.S. or meet refugee criteria. However, ICE Homeland Security Investigations served a subpoena Monday to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, which administers CAPI, to “determine if ineligible illegal aliens received Supplemental Security Income (SSI) from the Social Security Administration” from January 2021 to present.

According to the DHS, the subpoena requests applicant information, including name and date of birth, application copies, immigration status, and proof of ineligibility for benefits from the Social Security Administration.

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House GOP Floats Proposal To Ensure Non-Citizens Do Not Receive Tax-Funded Food Stamps

House Republicans are proposing to bar most non-citizens from receiving taxpayer-funded benefits, including food stamps, in President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill.”

GOP lawmakers are pursuing an extensive overhaul of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to help offset the cost of the president’s tax priorities. The House Agriculture Committee will include a provision in their draft bill to restrict SNAP benefits to those who are citizens or lawful permanent residents following Republican Illinois Rep. Mary Miller’s request to the panel to prohibit certain non-citizens from receiving food stamps. 

“Taxpayer-funded benefits like SNAP are intended for Americans in need, not foreigners who break the law to enter this country,” Miller told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “That’s why I fought to include my proposal in the Agriculture Committee’s reconciliation plan, saving taxpayers up to $8 billion over the next decade and reversing Biden’s unlawful handouts given to millions of illegal aliens. I appreciate my colleagues on the committee for working with me to include this critical reform in President Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill.”

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California Democrat Lawmaker Wants to Decriminalize Welfare Fraud Under $25,000

Welfare fraud under $25,000 in California could be decriminalized due to Senate Bill 560, which was introduced by State Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (D) in February.

The bill would decriminalize welfare fraud under that amount in the state for administrative errors, Fox News reported on Monday.

According the outlet’s Bill Melugin, “Smallwood-Cuevas represents a large chunk of Los Angeles County, including Mar Vista, West LA, Baldwin Hills, Ladera Heights, Century City, Playa Vista, and part of downtown LA.,” he wrote in a social media post on Monday.

Smallwood-Cuevas told Fox the state’s safety net should help residents and not keep them in poverty. She also wrote in a recent social media post, “This bill is about keeping families out of the criminal justice system from making administrative errors on raising the threshold for welfare fraud prosecutions.”

The bill is set for a hearing on May 5. The Legislative Counsel’s Digest regarding the bill reads:

Existing law establishes criminal penalties for welfare fraud, defined as willfully and knowingly, with the intent to deceive, by specified means, including a false statement or representation, obtaining or retaining aid through designated public social services for oneself or for a child who is not in fact entitled thereto, as specified. Existing law makes any person who knowingly uses, transfers, sells, purchases, or possesses CalFresh or federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits in any manner not authorized, as specified, guilty of a misdemeanor or felony depending on the face value of the benefits.

This bill would delete the provision that establishes criminal penalties for an attempt to commit welfare fraud. The bill would delete criminal penalties for welfare fraud when the total amount of aid obtained or retained is above or below $950, and instead make welfare fraud when aid was obtained or retained in the total amount of $25,000 or more punishable by specified imprisonment in a county jail, by a fine, or by imprisonment and fine.

“In Los Angeles County, field investigators handle 15,000 to 20,000 fraud cases or referrals, according to the Department of Public Social Services,” Monday’s Fox article said.

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Biden Era Was the Ultimate Application — and Utterly Predictable Failure — of the Cloward-Piven Strategy

There was a time in the mid-1960s when two left-wing Columbia University professors — Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven — enjoyed a brief run of media celebrity by espousing a strategy for Democrats they believed could force the creation of an American welfare state based on a guaranteed annual income.

In a widely read article in the era’s liberal flagship publication, Nation Magazine, the professors laid out their strategy as applied to the welfare state to illustrate the road to achieving all of the American left’s ultimate economic, political and social goals:

“Widespread campaigns to register the eligible poor for welfare aid, and to help existing recipients obtain their full benefits, would produce bureaucratic disruption in welfare agencies and fiscal disruption in local and state governments. 

“These disruptions would generate severe political strains, and deepen existing divisions among elements in the big-city Democratic coalition: the remaining white middle class, the white working-class ethnic groups and the growing minority poor.

“To avoid a further weakening of that historic coalition, a national Democratic administration would be con-strained to advance a federal solution to poverty that would override local welfare failures, local class and racial conflicts and local revenue dilemmas.

“By the internal disruption of local bureaucratic practices, by the furor over public welfare poverty, and by the collapse of current financing arrangements, powerful forces can be generated for major economic reforms at the national level.” 

Put simply, Cloward-Piven said the way to force radical socialist reform of capitalistic America was to overwhelm the existing system by introducing so many participants that it collapses, thus creating political chaos, which Democrats then promise to end by enacting comprehensive and fundamental systemic changes. 

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USDA Imposes New Verification Rules on Food Stamps to Tackle Exploitation by Illegals

The Trump administration is taking a hardline stance against illegal immigrants exploiting food stamps, issuing strict new guidance to state agencies to ramp up identity and immigration verification.

On Thursday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Acting Deputy Under Secretary John Walk directed states running the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to tighten the screws on fraud.

The Department of Agriculture’s new rules demand states use more reliable documents to confirm identity, crack down on fake Social Security numbers, and fully utilize the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system—provided free by DHS. States are also urged to adopt stricter identification processes and conduct more in-person interviews.

A memo from Acting Deputy Under Secretary Walk noted, “By law, only United States citizens and certain lawfully present aliens may receive SNAP benefits. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (Public Law 104-193) established that “aliens within the Nation’s borders not depend on public resources to meet their needs.” SNAP is not and has never been available to illegal aliens.”

“To ensure that tax dollars do not fund SNAP benefits to illegal aliens or other ineligible aliens, State agencies should carefully examine their identity and immigration status verification practices and make necessary enhancements.”

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California’s Broke Medicaid Program Has Been Spending on … Homeless Housing

Medi-Cal, the State of California’s version of Medicaid, has been spending on extraneous programs such as housing while running up a deficit so extreme that the state has had to borrow over $6 billion to save it.

As Breitbart News reported last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration had to seek $6 billion in loans to keep the program from collapsing, partly due to the cost of covering illegal aliens, which he did last year.

Now, CalMatters.org reveals that the federal government is cracking down on Medi-Cal and other Medicaid providers that have been using money to support “rent assistance” and “medically tailored meals”:

In 2022, California made sweeping changes to its Medi-Cal program that reimagined what health care could look like for some of the state’s poorest and sickest residents by covering services from housing to healthy food. But the future of that program, known as CalAIM, could be at risk under the Trump administration.

…

The moves align with a narrower vision of Medicaid espoused by newly confirmed Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services head Dr. Mehmet Oz, who said during his swearing-in ceremony that Medicaid spending was crowding out spending on education and other services in states with the federal government “paying most of the bill.”

“This one really bothers me. There are states who are using Medicaid — Medicaid dollars for people who are vulnerable — for services that are not medical,” Oz said.

President Joe Biden allowed California and other states to “experiment” with Medicaid funding — and California spent itself into near-insolvency. The Trump administration is cracking down, insisting that Medicaid spending be restricted to medical expenses — not items like housing for indigent patients.

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New York’s Boom In Home Health Aides Is Just Another Medicaid Racket

Not long ago, I wrote in The Federalist about “labor unions’ racket,” as it relates to corruption within one Service Employees International Union (SEIU) local. But the “racket” doesn’t end there. It extends to the people who finance it: federal taxpayers like you and me.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Consider the following quote:

I’m telling you right now, when you look on TikTok and you see ads of young people saying, “Guess what, you can make $37 an hour by sitting home with your Grandma. You know, here’s how you sign up,” it has become a racket.

The speaker is none other than New York’s Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul, describing her own state’s Medicaid program. And the reason why she has suddenly changed her rhetoric and refuses to fix the problem has much to do with the union corruption I wrote about recently.

Union Dues Skimming

As with most things in politics, keen observers should follow the money. The New York Post recently criticized Hochul for reneging on her plan to attack the “racket” she described last year, with the Post alleging that she “switch[ed] sides with an eye on her re-election run” in 2026. 

The outlet explained that “the health care worker unions — above all, 1199[SEIU] — are a ginormous lobbying power.” The push to expand home health workers, including family members giving care, which Hochul previously criticized as a “racket,” has “morphed into a mass unionization drive,” as the Post noted.

Explosion of New Aides

That “mass unionization drive” comes as home health jobs within New York state have soared. The Empire Center, a conservative think tank, reviewed the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. From 2023 to 2024, home health employment grew by 57,000 jobs in New York alone. That’s a 10 percent increase in home health employment within one year, with New York accounting for one-fifth of all the new home health aides nationwide.

On both an absolute and relative basis, the data reveals New York’s absurdly high number of home health aides. The Empire State has more than three times as many home health aides (623,000) as fast food workers (183,810), and more than four times as many aides as waiters and waitresses (140,890). On a relative basis, New York has by far the most home health aides per 1,000 senior citizens, more than twice as many as the national average and 24 percent higher than the next-highest state, California.

As one observer told Newsweek last year, the home health aide program started with good intentions by “allow[ing] family members and friends to get paid for providing home health assistance to loved ones using Medicaid and Medicare dollars. The problem is now you have individuals taking advantage of a pretty liberal, open-ended process for determining who qualifies.” 

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California Governor Signs $2.8 Billion Medi-Cal Bailout to Cover Soaring Costs, Including for Illegal Immigrants

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed emergency legislation that will close a $2.8 billion shortfall in the state’s Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, ensuring continued health care coverage through June for approximately 15 million low-income residents, including hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.

Newsom signed Assembly Bill 100 into law on April 14, according to a statement from his office. The measure is part of a broader response to an estimated $6.2 billion budget gap in Medi-Cal, the state’s sprawling public health care program.

The shortfall followed California’s expansion of full-scope Medi-Cal benefits to all income-eligible adults in 2024, regardless of immigration status—a move hailed by progressives and criticized by conservatives.

The Medi-Cal expansion—implemented in January 2024 under a 2022 law—made California the first state in the nation to offer free, comprehensive health care to all low-income adults regardless of immigration status. The state initially projected that the policy would cost $2.7 billion annually and cover about 764,000 residents without lawful immigration status. Actual program costs have exceeded expectations, contributing to California’s budget crisis, according to state officials.

California state Rep. Carl DeMaio, a Republican, has called for an audit of Medi-Cal spending, saying that California cannot afford to provide free health care to illegal immigrants.

“This puts the health coverage for poor people, children, the neediest among us, at risk,” DiMaio told reporters, according to a video that he shared on social media. “Why? Because we’ve given away the store to noncitizens. We’ve given illegal immigrants free health care at taxpayers’ expense.”

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DOGE says illegal immigrants with criminal or terrorist records received public benefits under Biden

The Department of Government Efficiency revealed on Sunday that illegal immigrants with criminal or terrorist records received public benefits under former President Biden.

“Under the Biden administration, it was routine for Border Patrol to admit aliens into the United States with no legal status and minimal screening. So far, CBP identified a subset of 6.3k individuals paroled into the United States since 2023 on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center watchlist or with criminal records. These paroles have since been terminated with immediate effect,” read a DOGE post on X.

“Despite having no other legal status, paroled aliens are able to file for work authorization and receive social security numbers,” the agency added.

DOGE found that of that group of 6,300 illegal immigrants, “905 collecting Medicaid (including 4 on the terrorist watch list); $276k was paid out – 41 collecting Unemployment Insurance, receiving $42k in benefits; 22 received federal student loans totaling $280k; 409 received {net} tax refunds (2024 only) for $751k; several (final number TBD) received SNAP (food stamp) benefits.”

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RFK Jr. Says He’s Working with DOGE to Tackle Medicaid Fraud: “We’re in a Very Good Position Now to Identify that and to Eliminate It”

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Thursday that he is working with Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut the waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid. 

“We think we’re going to be able to identify it and eliminate it while, incidentally, protecting the Medicaid—while protecting the Medicaid program and improving services to our poorest Americans,” RFK Jr. told Fox’s Martha MacCallum on Thursday following a high-stakes Cabinet meeting.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, during the meeting, Kennedy announced that the federal government will identify the root cause of America’s spiraling autism crisis by September, following an unprecedented research initiative ordered by President Donald Trump.

He later revealed to MaCaullum, “We have DOGE working with us, and they’ve been really extraordinary about finding fraud in all of the agencies.”

This comes as Democrats and Republicans spar over the budget resolution that passed in the House earlier Thursday. Democrats in the House accused Republicans of trying to cut Medicaid benefits, which House Speaker Mike Johnson says is a “lie,” pointing to the roughly $50 billion lost each year to Medicaid fraud.

Last week, it was revealed by a DOGE official that illegal aliens and even violent illegal aliens are accessing government benefits like Medicaid and also voting.

“We found in the benefit programs that every benefit program that was being accessed by these people, DOGE executive and founder of Valor Equity Partners, Antonio Gracias, said. “1.3 million of them are on Medicaid right now, today.”

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