Mike Johnson Hugely Fumbles Key Question on Medicaid

House Speaker Mike Johnson refused Tuesday to promise not to cut Medicaid. 

At a press conference, Johnson was asked by a reporter if “unequivocally … further down the line, there won’t be any cuts to Medicaid programs.” 

Johnson’s response wasn’t encouraging. 

“Medicaid is hugely problematic because it has a lot of fraud, waste, and abuse. Everybody knows that, we all know it intuitively. No one in here would disagree,” Johnson said, claiming that experts say that the Medicaid program has $50 billion in fraud. 

“Everybody is committed to preserving Medicare benefits for those who desperately need it and deserve it and qualify for it. What we’re talking about is rooting out the fraud, waste, and abuse,” Johnson added. 

Johnson was echoed by Republican Representative Nick LaLota, who told CNN Tuesday morning that Social Security and Medicare were off the table in the House’s budget talks but that Medicaid “was a subject for discussion,” claiming that undocumented immigrants—whom he called “illegals”—needed to be taken off the rolls. LaLota added that work requirements for Medicaid were also needed and that waste, fraud, and abuse within the program needed to be curbed.   

Johnson’s and LaLota’s comments seem to indicate that cuts are coming to a program popular on both sides of the aisle. While House Republicans seem to be trying to downplay any such cuts, claiming that Medicare and Social Security will be largely left intact, the fact that they can’t say the same for Medicaid doesn’t bode well, especially since Donald Trump has already endorsed sweeping cuts to the program. There may soon be a backlash to the GOP’s budget when it gets released. 

Montana women could soon be unable to receive abortion care anywhere.

A new bill sponsored by state Representative Kerri Seekins-Crowe would ban “abortion trafficking” across state lines, effectively criminalizing anyone who receives or helps someone receive the medical procedure, even if they access it outside of Montana.

“A person commits the offense of abortion trafficking if the person purposely or knowingly transports or aids or assists another person in transporting an unborn child that is currently located in this state either to a location within this state or to a location outside of this state with the intent to obtain an abortion that is illegal in this state,” reads the text of Montana House Bill 609. Conviction could come with a sentence of up to five years in prison.

The bill seeks to restrict a woman’s ability to travel—similar to how Republicans have pushed to restrict minors’ ability to leave their state for gender-affirming care. It’s also unclear how local authorities would be able to identify people who had received abortions outside of the state, raising questions of whether state lawmakers would also push for a registry of pregnant Montanans.

“Had a bill like this been law at the time, I wouldn’t just be a grieving mother, I’d be a felon,” Anne Angus, a 35-year-old Montanan who received an abortion at 24 weeks in 2022, after her fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition, told Jessica Valenti. Under H.B. 609, she would be in prison. “All for fleeing the state to give my son the compassion and dignity he deserved,” Angus said.

Democrats are currently mobilizing against the bill. “Beyond attacking Montana voters who voted decisively to protect abortion rights, state Republicans are once again abusing state legislatures as a testing ground for their most extreme policies,” Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee communications director Lauren Chou told The New Republic. “Voters across the country are watching as Republicans take an ax to their rights, and they won’t forget this when it’s time to head to the ballot box.”

In November, Montanans voted to enshrine abortion protections in their state constitution, but that hasn’t prevented conservative state lawmakers from continuing to chip away at the protection. Earlier this month, Republicans in the state legislature advanced House Bill 316, a fetal personhood bill that would confer constitutional rights to a fetus from the moment of its conception. The bill would also effectively nix in vitro fertilization access in the state and undermine abortion access, according to the Daily Montanan, though it will require the approval of two-thirds of the state legislature before being advanced to the ballot for Montanans to vote on.

But Montana’s recent anti-abortion legislation is just more moves in a multipronged attack on reproductive rights happening nationwide, despite the fact that the vast majority of Americans do not support such restrictions.

In Missouri, a similar effort to track women is underway. Missouri House Bill 807, called the “Save MO Babies Act,” is intended to target people “at risk for seeking abortion services” and to “reduce the number of preventable abortions.” If passed, the registry would start on July 1, 2026, and would be managed by the Maternal and Child Services division of the state’s Department of Social Services, according to the bill text. But the bill does not specify the scope and scale of such a registry, or exactly how “at risk” individuals would be identified.

Lacking access to abortion care has actually made pregnancies drastically less safe. In Texas, where abortion hasn’t been permitted despite the legislature’s medical emergency clause, sepsis rates have skyrocketed by as much as 50 percent for women who lost their pregnancies during the second trimester, according to an investigative analysis published last week by ProPublica.

That’s left women in the state, like Kate Cox, with few other options than to flee Texas for emergency care—a reality that could be stripped from the table for women in Montana.

A group of civil servants caught up in Elon Musk’s chain-saw massacre of the federal government resigned on Monday, choosing to leave their jobs rather than help the tech billionaire gut essential programs.

In a letter obtained by the Associated Press, 21 technologists at the U.S. Digital Service, lamely rebranded by Donald Trump as the U.S. DOGE Service, quit, issuing a warning about the inexperienced ideologues that Musk had brought in to spearhead his efforts to slash government spending.

According to the letter, at the beginning of the Trump administration staffers were subjected to intense questioning by Musk’s guest-badge-wearing minions, who probed them on their political beliefs and technical skills. “Several of these interviewers refused to identify themselves, asked questions about political loyalty, attempted to pit colleagues against each other, and demonstrated limited technical ability,” the letter states. “This process created significant security risks.”

Ironically, the U.S. Digital Service was launched a decade ago to make government programs more efficient. Now, however, Musk’s interlopers are only intent on doing their overlord’s bidding, which means firing staffers and gutting programs.

The departing staffers wrote that they objected to the dismissal of 40 of their colleagues earlier this month. “These highly skilled civil servants were working to modernize Social Security, veterans’ services, tax filing, health care, disaster relief, student aid, and other critical services,” the staffers wrote in the letter. “Their removal endangers millions of Americans who rely on these services every day. The sudden loss of their technology expertise makes critical systems and Americans’ data less safe.”

Of the 65 staffers who were absorbed into the Deparment of Government Efficiency’s efforts after the purge earlier this month, one-third have now left the organization.

“We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services,” the staffers wrote in the letter. “We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE’s actions.

“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” they wrote. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”

DOGE now claims to have slashed government spending by an estimated $65 billion by targeting waste and fraud, but the group has still provided no evidence of actual fraud, just a wonky list of government contracts they’ve decided to end, which doesn’t always add up. Meanwhile, the government-wide layoffs directed by DOGE continued Tuesday, with the Office of Personnel Management eliminating its 40-person team that oversees sensitive employee data. Massive layoffs plus buyouts have amounted to the elimination of about 95,000 jobs, according to Reuters.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt decided to only tell her side of the story while claiming a win over the White House press corps on Monday.

Earlier in the day, federal Judge Trevor McFadden stopped short of immediately forcing the White House to restore the Associated Press’s access to the White House—because in his view, the AP had not provided sufficient evidence of harm to elicit an immediate order. 

The Trump administration immediately began to spin it as a win. 

“The winning continues here at the White House.… Today a federal judge right here in Washington, D.C., denied the Associated Press’s emergency request for a temporary restraining order to restore their privilege of returning to the White House press pool,” Leavitt said Monday on Fox News after McFadden’s decision. “The judge’s denial of the Associated Press’s request reinforces what I said from the podium last week and what President Trump has been saying: Covering the American presidency in the most intimate and limited spaces in this White House … is a privilege, it is not a legal right.” 

Leavitt went on to shout out the right-wing podcasters and influencers who have been invited into the White House press corps. 

But McFadden also warned that if and when this conflict (which stems from the AP refusing to abide by Donald Trump’s executive order to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America”) did go to court, the law would not be in the president’s favor. The right to a free and uninhibited press is one of the most basic tenets of the First Amendment.  

“It seems pretty clearly viewpoint discrimination,” McFadden told government lawyer Brian Hudak.

While Trump doesn’t seem to care much for the gravity of the Constitution, the First Amendment does state that there shall be “no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” The winning Leavitt bragged about may not last for long.

Mike Johnson is trying and failing to maintain the appearance of budget unity within the GOP—and Elon Musk is only making it harder.

The looming Republican budget resolution is an attempt to pack Donald Trump’s beefy agenda into one “big, beautiful bill.” But Republican holdouts, potentially influenced by Musk, have put that beauty in jeopardy.

While Johnson told Politico Tuesday he had “no concerns” and felt “very positive” about the reconciliation bill’s prospects, other Republicans had different ideas.

“If the Republican budget passes, the deficit gets worse, not better,” MAGA cheerleader Representative Thomas Massie wrote Monday on X.

“That sounds bad,” Elon Musk replied, reinforcing the MAGA wing’s opposition to Johnson’s version of the budget, which notably does not include the deep cuts to crucial programs that have huge standard-of-living effects, such as Medicaid—and leaving the budget in a precarious, vote-lacking position.

The weight of a three-word X reply from the country’s most influential unelected civilian seriously irked some members of the Republican Party.

“I hope we’re not going to have this come to whatever is said on X to change months and months of substantive work to actually do this in a deficit-neutral way,” Representative Blake Moore told Politico. “I wish we were eliminating as much of the deficit is possible. What’s missing from that X exchange is what happens if it doesn’t pass, and we have the largest tax increase on lower and middle income Americans ever. We can’t be so singularly focused on one aspect of this.”

At least two other representatives have said they intend to vote against the bill. They include Ohio Republican Warren Davidson and Indiana lawmaker Victoria Spartz, a die-hard Department of Government Efficiency loyalist.

This mess certainly won’t be resolved tonight, as Speaker Johnson told Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman: “There may be a vote tonight. There may not be.”

A MAGA-led group of private military contractors are pitching Donald Trump on a plan to use a civilian army to carry out his promise of mass deportations, Politico reported Tuesday.

The contractors, led by Blackwater CEO Erik Prince and its former Chief Operating Officer Bill Matthews, calling themselves 2USV, sent a proposal to Trump’s advisers before his inauguration, pitching a comprehensive, if not legally dubious, plan to expedite massive deportations to displace 12 million people in two years.

Their pitch included plans for a bounty program, mass deportation hearings, temporary encampments on Army bases, and civilians deputized to apprehend undocumented immigrants.

To reach its goal of 12 million deportations, 2USV projected that it would need to “eject nearly 500,000” undocumented immigrants per month.

“To keep pace with the Trump deportations, it would require a 600% increase in activity,” the proposal said, adding that “the government should enlist outside assistance” to address this rise in demand by deputizing 10,000 private citizens to assist law enforcement.

These private citizens would be former law enforcement agents, military veterans, and former ICE and Border Patrol officials with the same federal law enforcement powers as bona fide immigration officials. They would work under the direction of Tom Homan, Trump’s so-called border czar.

Former ICE Director John Sandweg told Politico that 2USV’s plan to deputize private citizens was legally dubious.

“I don’t see how you could do private sector, deputized law enforcement officers,” Sandweg said. “That’s subject to an immediate injunction by a court.”

Prince, one of the central forces behind 2USV, has several ties to Trump. In 2018, Prince reportedly helped raise money for different MAGA causes, including one to infiltrate organizations that opposed Trump, and another to fund the construction of a wall on the American southern border. Betsy DeVos, Prince’s sister, served as Trump’s secretary of education during his first term. In 2020, Trump pardoned a group of Blackwater military contractors who had been found guilty of manslaughter after massacring 17 Iraqi civilians.

American lawmakers, particularly Republicans, still aren’t willing to face the fact that their constituents hate the reality of Donald Trump’s agenda.

After a fiery town hall in Belton, Missouri, Representative Mark Alford turned to CNN to blame the backlash on outside agitators—even while admitting that members of the angry crowd were actually his constituents.

“This was brought about [by] outside agitators, and some people from outside our district, not our constituents, who came there to make their voices heard,” Alford told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Monday night. “And I respect that. They have every right to be there. We did not prohibit them, even though they did not live in our district.

“Some of them were there who had worked for the IRS and were getting laid off in Kansas City,” Alford continued. “And I really wanted to hear their concerns, and let’s work together about how can we find you the next job? There are thousands of jobs, 150,000 to 175,000 jobs, right now, available in Missouri.”

“You say ‘outside agitators,’” Collins interjected. “Are you saying that none of them were your constituents that were there?”

But Alford clearly didn’t view Democrats in his district as the constituents that he’s beholden to.

“No, no, no, no, I—some were,” Alford responded. “I went—and let me make that very clear. Some were our constituents. They clearly were not on—aligned with my way of thinking, and they did not vote for Trump.”

Alford was practically shut down at his own town hall Monday after he expressed support for Elon Musk’s massive layoff plan. At one point, while suggesting to the crowd that they could vote for someone else in the next election if they didn’t approve of Musk’s appointment, one person shouted back, “We didn’t elect Elon!”

Tensions were high enough that Alford seemingly took the protesters’ presence as a threat.

“This is serious business we’re talking about, and that’s why I went and faced the people who don’t want me in office and some I think who wanted to do me harm,” Alford told CNN. “That’s why we had a SWAT team and many police there.

“And I can take that, but I take this serious because this is the survival of our nation, and I don’t think people understand what a severe point we are,” he added.

Donald Trump is making sure Vivek Ramaswamy doesn’t come anywhere near the White House.

The president endorsed Ramaswamy for governor of Ohio on Monday night, a position the biotech entrepreneur pivoted to after being abruptly ousted as DOGE co-lead, likely in part due to his feuding with Elon Musk and calling white Americans lazy, stupid jocks. 

“VIVEK RAMASWAMY is running for Governor of the Great State of Ohio. I know him well, competed against him, and he is something SPECIAL. He’s Young, Strong, and Smart!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Vivek is also a very good person, who truly loves our Country. He will be a GREAT Governor of Ohio, will never let you down, and has my COMPLETE AND TOTAL ENDORSEMENT!”

This entire gubernatorial bid seems to have stemmed from a series of iconically disastrous X posts, in which Ramaswamy opined that “our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.… A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers. A culture that venerates Cory from ‘Boy Meets World,’ or Zach & Slater over Screech in ‘Saved by the Bell,’ or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in ‘Family Matters,’ will not produce the best engineers.”

This, along with what The Washington Post called a “deep philosophical rift” with Elon Musk, eventually got Ramaswamy sent to the toil in the Midwest. 

Ramaswamy is likely to face various other Republican primary challengers in Ohio, a state Trump carried by 11 points in 2024. Former state health director Amy Acton is the likely Democratic nominee. 

Former national security adviser John Bolton thinks that Donald Trump’s mind is deteriorating, based on some of his recent comments.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Bolton in an interview Monday night whether Trump actually thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t a dictator, or is refraining from saying so because it’s a negotiating strategy. Bolton didn’t mince words.

“I think it’s an indication his mind is full of mush, and he says whatever comes into it. He believes Vladimir Putin is his friend, and you know, you don’t call your friends a dictator,” Bolton said, noting that Trump has disliked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy since the “perfect phone call” from his first term.

“So, it’s no sweat off his back to go ahead and call Zelenskiy a dictator. This is somebody who is not fit to be president. He can’t tell America’s friends from its enemies,” Bolton added.

Collins also asked Bolton about Trump’s relationship with Lieutenant General Dan Caine, whom Trump has appointed as chair of the joint chiefs of staff. Trump unceremoniously fired the previous chair, General C.Q. Brown, over the weekend. Trump met Caine in Iraq during his first presidential term and said Caine told him that the U.S. could have the campaign against ISIS “totally finished in one week.”

“I said, ‘Why didn’t my other generals tell me that? Why didn’t they tell me that?’” Trump said in 2019. Trump has also said that Caine told him he “loved” the president and would “kill for you,” while wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat.

Collins asked Bolton if Trump is remembering his relationship with Caine correctly, as Bolton was with Trump on the trip to Iraq where the president and Caine met.

“Absolutely not. Trump has made up events that didn’t happen. We were on the ground in Iraq, I don’t know, maybe three hours total, and I was with Trump every minute of that time on the ground,” Bolton said. “There was no chance that Trump had a conversation with General Caine that bore any resemblance to what he’s described. I never saw Caine wear a MAGA hat.

“I think it’s standard Trump. He makes the world as he wants it to be, and then his followers unfortunately believe him,” Bolton added.

If Bolton is right, Trump has altered the military chain of command because of an inaccurate memory of an incident from nearly seven years ago. That is a worrying thought for American national security and for the country as a whole. Trump seems to be replacing anyone who could check his power, and if his mind is going, what does the future hold?

The American checks and balances system is waking up.

On Monday, two different decisions—one from a federal judge and the other from an independent government watchdog agency—came down to limit the power of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency.

U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman issued a temporary restraining order that blocks DOGE from accessing and sharing sensitive records from the Office of Personnel Management and the Education Department.

“Specifically, the plaintiffs have shown that Education and OPM likely violated the Privacy Act by disclosing their personal information to DOGE affiliates without their consent,” Boardman wrote in the restraining order. 

Multiple labor unions have sued DOGE on the grounds that it was trying to get into databases that held people’s Social Security numbers, banking information, and other “extraordinarily sensitive records of millions of Americans.” 

Boardman noted that the unions had “met their burden for the extraordinary relief they seek,” and would suffer “irreparable harm” if DOGE wasn’t stopped. “There is no reason to believe their access to this information will end anytime soon because the government believes their access is appropriate,” she wrote.

The second loss for DOGE and Musk was handed down by the Office of Special Counsel, which helps protect government employees from illegal treatment. On Friday (although it wasn’t released until Monday), the office ruled that DOGE violated protocol in its firing of six employees—and the decision could have implications for the hundreds of thousands of other federal employees who were also fired by Musk and DOGE for “poor performance.”  

OSC head Hampton Dellinger ruled that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that agencies engaged in prohibited personnel practices (PPPs) … by terminating the employees in violation of federal laws and regulations governing probationary terminations and reductions in force.”

“Firing probationary employees without individualized cause appears contrary to a reasonable reading of the law, particularly the provisions establishing rules for reductions in force,” Dellinger said in a statement on Monday. “Because Congress has directed that OSC ‘shall’ protect government employees from PPPs, I believe I have a responsibility to request a stay of these actions while my agency continues to investigate further the apparent violation of federal personnel laws.”

Dellinger stated that the employees were obviously not fired for “poor performance.” And if it was for a lack of resources (rather than purely political reasons), then Dellinger noted that Musk and DOGE must go through the normal justification process for the firings. 

“There are reasonable grounds to believe that the Agencies improperly circumvented [reduction in force] regulations by terminating Complainants and other probationary employees en masse without regard to each employee’s individual performance for the purpose of restructuring government agencies and reducing costs,” Dellinger wrote. 

These are the first of many lawsuits against DOGE and the broader Trump administration. Whether they set a firm anti-purge precedent or simply serve as minor roadblocks remains to be seen.