White House Open to Kicking 300,000 People Off Health Care to Fund War

Killing people abroad is apparently more important to Republicans than keeping Americans healthy.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt refused Monday to say whether or not Donald Trump was considering cutting health care access in order to continue funding the Iran war, suggesting that the administration was unaware of the GOP caucus’s plan to do so.

“I don’t want to weigh in definitively because I just haven’t heard that being discussed in the West Wing,” Leavitt said during a White House press briefing.

Top Republicans have already floated the idea and are reportedly eyeing federal health care cuts in order to offset the Pentagon’s massive price tag on its latest military offensive.

House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington has suggested that Congress should revive cost-sharing reductions, which could save the federal government as much as $30 billion. Doing so, however, would drastically increase out-of-pocket premium costs, a possibility that the Congressional Budget Office estimated could cause some 300,000 people to lose their health insurance by 2034. Arrington is selling the scheme as a method of “fraud prevention.”

Cuts presented in Arrington’s budget reconciliation bill include programs aimed at assisting low-income families, such as the earned income tax credit, which helps low-income, working parents recoup their tax dollars by claiming their child as a dependent. Arrington claimed the popular program “loses 30 cents on the dollar.”

“You’ve got low-income housing tax credits, for example, another sort of welfare program within the tax code that doesn’t prohibit illegals from siphoning money off that and jeopardizing the sustainability of that program,” he said.

The cuts are still in discussion, and are likely to face pushback from moderate Republicans, who are already fretting over their reelection odds—and the party’s trilateral grip on Washington—come November.

Meanwhile, the cost of the war is ramping up, hurting Americans at home. The White House has sent more troops to the Middle East, ramping up fears of a ground invasion in Iran, and the Pentagon is readying for “weeks of U.S. ground operations” in the region. Oil prices have soared as a result of the monthlong conflict, which Congress still has yet to authorize.

So far, more than 1,937 people have been killed in Iran, including dozens of political leaders, according to Al Jazeera. At least 13 U.S. soldiers have also lost their lives in the war, and more than 300 have been wounded. Leavitt insisted Monday that the conflict would be resolved in the coming weeks, though military officials have indicated that the war could rage for months.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that President Trump is “not afraid” to commit war crimes against innocent Iranian civilians.

“The president posted this morning … he [threatened] ‘blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells and Kharg Island, and possibly all desalinization plants.’ Under international law, striking civilian infrastructure like that is generally prohibited,” NBC’s Garret Haake asked Leavitt at her Monday briefing. “Why is the president threatening what would amount to potentially a war crime with the U.S. military, and how do you square that with the administration repeatedly saying that the U.S. does not target civilians?”

“The president has made it quite clear to the Iranian regime at this moment in time—as evidenced by the statement that you just read—that their best move is to make a deal. Or else the United States Armed Forces has capabilities beyond their wildest imagination,” Leavitt replied. “And the president is not afraid to use them.”

“Including potential war crimes?” Haake responded.

“That’s not what I said, Garrett. And you’re saying the word ‘potential’ for a reason. I’m sure some experts are telling you that in your ear to try to ask me that question. Of course this administration … will always act within the confines of the law,” Leavitt said.

That has not been the case. Aside from waging an illegal war in the first place, the Trump administration—along with Israel—has already killed more than 1,500 civilians in Iran. Haake’s question was valid, as Trump very much threatened to bomb access to clean water and electricity on Monday morning. That is illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

University of Manchester international law professor Yusra Suedi told Al Jazeera that Trump’s post “reinforces the climate of impunity around collective punishment in warfare.”

“This is clearly an act of collective punishment, which is prohibited under international humanitarian law. You can’t deliberately harm an entire civilian population to pressure its government,” she said.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s outrageous order to immigration officials may have sparked the confrontation that killed an American citizen. 

During one of his many furious morning calls with immigration enforcement officials, Miller demanded that federal agents be dispatched to certain areas of Minneapolis in order to “force confrontations” with anti-ICE protesters, two senior DHS sources told the Daily Mail. 

Miller repeatedly urged federal agents to engage with protesters in order to win a “PR battle,” one official told the outlet. 

He told officials that anti-ICE could not be viewed as successful, and repeatedly said that demonstrators “need to be vanquished by any force necessary,” another DHS source told the Mail.  

Federal immigration agents would later shoot and kill Alex Pretti, a 36-year-old ICU nurse, sparking nationwide outrage and unrest. Miller claimed that Pretti was an “assassin” when he was simply filming agents while exercising his Second Amendment right.  

Miller’s hard-line mass deportation agenda is reportedly falling out of fashion with the fascists, as mounting leaks have detailed his erratic behavior in backing his soft ethnic cleansing. 

The U.S. Army is investigating why two AH-64 Apache attack helicopters flew over a No Kings protest in Nashville, Tennessee, on Saturday, and then performed low-altitude maneuvers near the home of musician Kid Rock.

In a statement, Major Jonathon Bless, public affairs officer for the 101st Airborne Division, said, “Fort Campbell leadership is aware of a video circulating on social media depicting AH-64 Apache helicopters operating in the vicinity of a private residence associated with Mr. Robert Ritchie (also known as ‘Kid Rock’). The command has initiated an investigation to review the circumstances surrounding this activity.

“The 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and Fort Campbell maintain strict standards for aviation safety, professionalism, and adherence to established flight regulations. We take all concerns regarding aircraft operations and their impact on the surrounding community seriously,” the statement continued.

Bless later told local TV station NewsChannel 5 that the reason the helicopters flew over the protest was not known.

“Our pilots do regularly fly routes outside the Fort Campbell area,” the spokesperson said. “We just don’t know if it was incidental or if it was deliberate.”

Ritchie gloated over the flyover at his home, posting video taken from his rooftop to X while taking shots at California Governor Gavin Newsom for some reason.

“This is a level of respect that shit for brains Governor of California will never know. God Bless America and all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to defend her 🇺🇸 🙏,” the performer wrote.

It’s normal for police helicopters to fly over large crowds or protests, but very unusual for the military, which is prohibited from engaging in domestic law enforcement by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. And flying over the home of a minor, pro-Trump celebrity in the Nashville suburb of Whites Creek is a waste of military and taxpayer resources at best. As of 2022, an Apache helicopter costs $5,171 to operate per hour.

The Trump administration is citing a racist confederate lawyer who argued for “separate but equal” segregation and Jim Crow law in its attempt to end birthright citizenship.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear the Justice Department’s attempt to argue that being born in the United States doesn’t make you a citizen, contrary to what the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment states. A friend-of-the-court brief from the Chinese American Legal Defense Alliance, or CALDA, highlighted that the DOJ is, in its own briefs, “recycling the losing arguments” of Alexander Porter Morse, who unsuccessfully argued before the Supreme Court in the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark that U.S. children born to Chinese immigrant parents had no right to citizenship.

According to The Washington Post, Justice Department lawyers specifically referenced Morse’s argument that the Constitution “exclude[s] the children of foreigners transiently within the United States” from qualifying for citizenship.

Morse believed that Chinese people were “uncivilized,” didn’t want Black people to have the right to vote, and opposed Reconstruction. It’s deeply troubling yet unsurprising that the Trump administration is using his views to support its case.

“In Wong Kim Ark, Wharton, Morse, and Collins lost. And that loss was deserved. Their arguments were built on a racist foundation, attempting to use anti-Chinese sentiment to relitigate, rather than interpret, the Citizenship Clause,” CALDA wrote. “A Supreme Court made up of people who themselves harbored anti-Chinese racist beliefs nevertheless stood up to that moment and defended the Constitution.”

CALDA compared the historic ruling to one far more shameful decades later, upholding Japanese internment. “In Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court allowed fear and bigotry to subjugate the Constitution, a mistake that this Court would later say was ‘wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and—to be clear—has no place in law under the Constitution.’

“This is another moment for the Court,” CALDA continued in its brief. “Will it follow the path this Court blazed in Wong Kim Ark? Or will it issue another Korematsu?”