The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), a conservative legal group, is requesting the Trump administration remove race from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) ‘Social Vulnerability Index,’ which the groups claim is being used by liberal localities to steer funds to communities based on race.

WILL refers to what has been taking place as ‘DEI redlining’ in its letter to Trump administration officials at the CDC and the Health and Human Services Department (HHS). It says the tool helps localities prioritize Black and Hispanic neighborhoods over White neighborhoods due to racial composition, independent of any other factors, like poverty.  

‘In the name of ‘racial equity,’ local officials prioritize certain geographic areas for public safety, parks improvements, public swimming pool closures, broadband access, safe drinking water, and disaster assistance,’ the letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CDC Acting Director Jim O’Neill stated. ‘And these governments point to CDC’s SVI as the reason for their race-based spending.’

Among various examples the group highlights is Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s county parks department, which states on their website that the Milwaukee Parks Foundation ‘works to reduce or eliminate racial disparities through investments and activation of park spaces that rank high on the Milwaukee County Park’s Equity Index.’ 

Meanwhile, an inter-office communication from 2024 obtained by WILL, updating officials on the ‘Parks Equity Index,’ the Milwaukee Parks Foundation points out that ‘the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index’ is part of its ‘weighted composite data analysis’ meant to help streamline decision-making within the department.         

‘In other words, parks in white neighborhoods are de-prioritized, while parks in non-white neighborhoods are prioritized,’ WILL argues in its letter to HHS and the CDC.

To show the real life consequences of this, the conservative law group pointed to a community pool that has been closed for the past few years in a local town that is 90% White.  According to local media reports, the pool needs about $600,000 in repairs, but WILL said those will likely never come to fruition, since the community ranks low on the parks department’s ‘Racial equity Index.’ 

Milwaukee County Parks Department came out with a study indicating it was considering shutting down the pool or transferring it to be run through a public-private partnership similar to other pools in the area, according to local outlet Urban Milwaukee.

‘According to Milwaukee County, Hales Corners ranks 128 out of 153 parks in Milwaukee County, with a 3 out of 10 score and a 0.33 SVI score. So the kids and families in Hales Corners will lose their swimming pool, which has been a community fixture since 1968, because the residents are too white,’ WILL argued in their letter. ‘Race-based SVI encourages the use of race for its own sake, or at best, as a proxy for other elements already accounted for within the SVI.’

Fox News Digital reached out to the Milwaukee Parks Department for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.

WILL pointed to numerous examples of case law determining such activities are unconstitutional, including the recent Students for Fair Admission case that resulted in an overhaul of affirmative action rules in higher education. 

Besides Milwaukee, WILL highlighted examples from California’s Community Development Block Program, run by the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development, which the conservative law group alleges is using the CDC’s SVI index to help prepare for, and respond to, natural disasters. Connecticut’s ‘Drinking Water State Revolving Fund,’ which helps maintain public water systems and assigns a ‘Social Vulnerability Index score’ to each project, was listed as well.

Cook County, in Chicago, was also among those listed. Their ‘Comprehensive Broadband Planning Initiative’ says explicitly on its website that it ‘prioritizes communities with the highest Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) in Illinois.’

On Friday, I debated cannabis legalization at AmericaFest 2025, the annual convention for Turning Point USA, the group led by Charlie Kirk until his assassination in September. Here’s my opening argument:

My opponent this afternoon is Katherine Mangu-Ward, the editor-in-chief of Reason magazine and a staunch libertarian. Katherine’s pinned post on X calls for the legalization of heroin, so at least she is consistent.

I too am consistent. I believe the liberal and libertarian effort to destigmatize, normalize, legalize, and even promote the use of ‘drugs of abuse‘ has been a catastrophe for the United States. 

We are a global outlier on this issue. We have reaped nothing but pain for a generation of ideologically driven decisions to make drugs more accessible to both young people and adults.

By ‘drugs of abuse,’ I mean drugs that produce a subjective high that makes people want to keep using them and to use more over time. The precise biochemical mechanism and whether the high is stimulating, sedating, or intoxicating matters less than the fact of its temporary pleasure. Of course those drugs include cannabis. Yes, alcohol is a drug of abuse too. So are medically prescribed drugs, from Oxycontin to Adderall to Valium.

Unfortunately, Thursday’s decision by President Trump to ‘reschedule’ cannabis and make it more accessible will only worsen this self-imposed crisis and lead to more drug-driven misery and death.

Let’s be clear about cannabis. Cannabis — particularly cannabis today, which is very high in THC, the chemical that intoxicates users — is very much a drug of abuse.

When they have been tested in rigorously controlled trials — and they have been tested over and over — cannabis and THC have shown almost no medical benefits. But they have many side effects, to both brain and body.

Normalizing drug use normalizes drug use. Pretending drugs of abuse are medicine normalizes it even faster.

Cannabis can cause psychotic episodes where users lose touch with reality and become paranoid that friends or family members want to hurt them. It can sometimes cause those users to become violent in response. It can cause episodes of prolonged vomiting that send users to emergency rooms. It is associated with traffic accidents and deaths. It raises the risk of heart attacks in users dramatically. And, yes, it is a gateway drug.

Overall, cannabis is probably at least as dangerous as alcohol. It is less obviously physically harmful, for despite its cardiovascular risks, it does not cause direct overdose. But it is more psychiatrically harmful.

Now we come to the simple, facile libertarian argument: but alcohol is legal! Cannabis should be legal too. In fact, all drugs should be legal — and again, I do appreciate the fact Katherine was honest enough to say that out loud.

My drug, my body, my choice.

Sounds good. Except that to use drugs is inevitably to risk consequences both to yourself and to other people that cannot be foreseen. Drugs follow their own logic.

Some drugs — especially opioids — frequently kill their users from overdose. Many drugs cause users to behave in antisocial ways — to become violent, or simply to stop caring about the possible consequences of their actions. And all drugs of abuse have addictive potential.

The libertarian solution to this problem is to ignore it, to say that users are responsible for their own behavior. If they become addicted, too bad for them.

This theory sounds nice. But it ignores reality.

The children and families around users and addicts inevitably bear the brunt of their antisocial behavior, and the rest of us cannot ignore its public harms. Even when it does not lead to full-bore addiction, drug use that is more than casual almost inevitably worsens the problems users have turned to it to solve. It is the most selfish of acts. It divorces users from the lives of people around them — and their own lives.

A religious person might call that behavior immoral. But one doesn’t have to be religious to recognize it has what economists call externalities. The user feels the subjective pleasure, while everyone else faces the potential consequences.

As a society, we seem to have become desensitized to the potentially horrific consequences of drug use.

We should not be. We must not be.

We — as individuals, and as a nation — must do everything possible to remind people of them. We must discourage it at every turn. That means stigmatizing drugs of abuse, not legitimizing them, not building industries that profit from heavy use and addiction.

It means driving up the price — in dollars and potential legal consequences — of drug use to discourage people who have not used from doing so, rather than making drugs cheap, openly advertised, and easily accessible.

It means understanding that every drug is a gateway drug, not just biochemically but societally. Normalizing drug use normalizes drug use. Pretending drugs of abuse are medicine normalizes it even faster.

Legalization is a red herring. Alcohol is legal, but we arrest people for alcohol consumption all the time — for underage use, for public drinking or intoxication, for drinking and driving. We will continue to arrest people for using cannabis too, even if the drug is fully legalized at the state and federal level.

But whatever the legal status of cannabis, we are not going to put every — or even many — cannabis users in jail. We don’t now, and we didn’t a generation ago. 

The question is whether we want encourage use: of cannabis, of Adderall, of alcohol, of OxyCONTIN, of fentanyl, of cocaine, of every legal and illegal drug. Legalizing cannabis is another step on that path to ruination.

I hope we do not take it.

Editor’s note: This column first appeared on the author’s Substack, ‘Unreported Truths.’

The Department of Justice began releasing final documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein Friday, with a massive trove of documents that predominantly shows photos and heavily redacted materials categorized into four different sections. 

The DOJ on Friday afternoon released four different data sets of thousands of photos, New York grand jury material and evidence related to investigations surrounding Epstein. The documents and photos were released on the DOJ’s official website. 

Epstein was a well-connected financier who rubbed elbows with those at the highest echelons of government and private industry. He was convicted of sex trafficking minors in 2008 and served just more than one year of incarceration, which also included a controversial work-release arrangement under a plea agreement. 

He was arrested again in 2019 on charges of sex trafficking before he was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell from suicide that same year, officials reported. 

DATA SET ONE: 

The first data set shows thousands of photos of the interiors and exteriors of Epstein’s properties, including in New York and on his private island, Little St. James. 

DATA SET TWO: 

The second data set released shows Epstein in personal photos with high-profile individuals, including former President Bill Clinton. The photos in the second data set show Epstein shirtless while sitting on a sofa, standing near a helicopter and many photos of him on boats.  

A photo in the set included Clinton shirtless in a hot tub. 

When asked about the photo, Clinton spokesperson Angel Urena directed Fox Digital to a statement he posted to X in response to the Epstein drop. 

‘The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton,’ he wrote. ‘This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be. Even Susie Wiles said Donald Trump was wrong about Bill Clinton.’

Urena said there are ‘two types of people’ involved in the Epstein scandal: those who did not know of Epstein’s crimes and cut him out of their lives upon his conviction and a second group of people who ‘continued relationships with him after’ his crimes came to light.

‘We’re in the first. No amount of stalling by people in the second group will change that,’ the Clinton spokesman continued. ‘Everyone, especially MAGA, expects answers, not scapegoats.’ 

DATA SET THREE:

The third data set released by the Department of Justice included heavily redacted photos of potential victims, documents from Epstein’s 2019 grand jury records that were also heavily redacted, and potential victim exhibits. 

DATA SET FOUR: 

The fourth data set in the document drop mostly showed evidence and exhibits from the investigations into Epstein, including documents dated 2005 and 2006, when the Palm Beach, Florida, Police and FBI began investigating Epstein over tips of potential sex trafficking. 

President Donald Trump signed a bipartisan law in November that required the Department of Justice to release all ‘unclassified records, documents, communications and investigative materials’ within 30 days of Trump’s signature.  

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Friday morning during an appearance on Fox News that the Department was set to ‘release several hundred thousand documents today,’ while adding that the DOJ anticipates releasing ‘more documents over the next couple of weeks.’

The Epstein Files Transparency Act specifically directs the Justice Department to release all unclassified records and investigative materials related to Epstein and his longtime partner Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as files related to individuals who were referenced in Epstein previous legal cases, details surrounding trafficking allegations, internal DOJ communications as they relate to Epstein and any details surrounding the investigation into his death. 

A photo of former President Bill Clinton topless in a dimly lit hot tub with his arms folded behind his head was included in a massive trove of Jeffrey Epstein files released Friday by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

In another photo, Clinton is seen wading in a pool next to Ghislaine Maxwell and a woman whose face was redacted by authorities.

Subsequent photos showed Clinton posing with American pop stars Michael Jackson and Diana Ross and seated on a plane next to a female wearing an American flag pin whose face was redacted.

He was also seen smiling arm-in-arm with the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Epstein at what appeared to be a dinner party, wearing a festive shirt.

The locations where the photos were taken were not included, and no context was provided.

White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson took to social media Friday afternoon to comment on the never-before-seen photos of the former POTUS.

‘Here is Bill Clinton in a hot tub next to someone whose identity has been redacted. Per the Epstein Files Transparency Act, DOJ was specifically instructed only to redact the faces of victims and/or minors,’ Jackson wrote. ‘Time for the media to start asking real questions.’

Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, Angel Ureña, accused the White House of trying to ‘hide [things] forever,’ in a statement on X, implying President Donald Trump continued a relationship with Epstein after his crimes were revealed.

‘The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton. This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever,’ Ureña wrote in the post. ‘So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be. Even Susie Wiles said Donald Trump was wrong about Bill Clinton.

‘There are two types of people here,’ he continued. ‘The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light. The second group continued relationships with him after. We’re in the first. No amount of stalling by people in the second group will change that. Everyone, especially MAGA, expects answers, not scapegoats.’

The DOJ dumped thousands of documents and hundreds of photos on its website Friday, all supposedly obtained by authorities during investigations into Epstein and Maxwell’s sex trafficking cases. 

Other photos showed interior and exterior views of Epstein’s properties, personal photos of Epstein with various people and heavily redacted potential victim exhibits.

While more than a dozen politically known individuals appeared in the files, Clinton and other notable figures’ inclusion in the files does not necessarily imply wrongdoing.

The document drop was triggered by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required the DOJ to make the files public 30 days from its Nov. 19 signing by President Donald Trump.

Some files may be withheld by the DOJ if disclosure would jeopardize an ongoing investigation or prosecution, to safeguard victims’ privacy or to avoid publishing sensitive child sexual abuse material.

Ross’ communications teams did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Moscow would refrain from launching new attacks on other nations provided his country is treated ‘with respect.’

The Kremlin made the remarks during his annual televised press conference in Moscow as concerns persist among European nations that Russia poses a security threat, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

‘Will there be new special military operations? There will be no operations if you treat us with respect, if you observe our interests, just as we have constantly tried to observe yours,’ Putin said.

Putin uses the phrase ‘special military operation’ to describe Russia’s offensive in Ukraine, according to AFP.

He added there would be no further Russian invasions ‘if you don’t cheat us like you cheated us with NATO’s eastward expansion,’ according to the BBC.

The Russian leader also claimed he was ‘ready and willing’ to end the war in Ukraine ‘peacefully,’ though he offered few details suggesting a willingness to compromise, the BBC reported.

The yearly news conference, which typically runs at least four hours, features questions from reporters and members of the public across Russia. 

More than 2.5 million questions were submitted for this year’s event, which focused heavily on the war in Ukraine, Reuters reported.

Putin also noted during the event that the nation’s ‘troops are advancing’ and expressed confidence that Russia will accomplish its objectives through military means if Ukraine does not assent to Russia’s terms during peace talks, according to The Associated Press.

‘Our troops are advancing all across the line of contact, faster in some areas or slower in some others, but the enemy is retreating in all sectors,’ Putin declared.

As the war drags on, the European Union has just agreed to provide Ukraine with a loan of over $105 billion.

Fox News Digital’s Alex Nitzberg contributed to this report.

It’s not just Minnesota.

The past few weeks have made clear that fraudsters stole billions of dollars from states’ welfare programs, much of it from Medicaid. It also appears that Democratic politicians tolerated the heist for their own political benefit. 

Yet politicians in virtually every state have let waste, fraud and abuse spread like wildfire in Medicaid, putting taxpayers on the hook for an estimated $2 trillion in improper spending over the next decade alone. 

Thankfully, President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have given states a reason to clean up this mess and spare taxpayers that pain.

In a new paper, I show how Democrats have turned Medicaid into one of the most fraud-ridden programs in America — and how Republicans are fixing it. While Medicaid has long been plagued with improper spending, Democrats supercharged this crisis in the Obama years.

ObamaCare added tens of millions of able-bodied adults to the program, yet that population is much more likely to be ineligible.

The Obama administration refused to rigorously check eligibility, and the Biden administration adopted the same policy, deliberately hiding an explosion in waste, fraud and abuse. Meanwhile, states refused to police their Medicaid programs, confident that the federal government would look the other way and cover the tab.

The first Trump administration found that 27.4% of federal Medicaid spending was improper in 2020, or about $120 billion at the time. The administration also found that four out of every five improper payments were the result of eligibility errors. This money flowed to people who shouldn’t have been on Medicaid and therefore diverted money and care away from its intended recipients. Five years later, it’s highly likely that at least one in five Medicaid dollars is still wrongly spent.

Call this what it is — an assault on taxpayers. It’s also a clear violation of federal law. States are legally required to reimburse the federal government for Washington’s share of Medicaid payments if their improper payment rates are above 3%, a far cry from the 27.4% rate in 2020.

The Trump administration is once again conducting eligibility checks, but even without that info, it’s all but certain that every state already exceeds the 3% threshold. The only reason they’ve avoided a budget blowout is by receiving so-called ‘good faith waivers’ from Washington. Essentially, states have promised that they’ll tackle fraud and abuse, even when they have no intention of doing so.

Republicans called time on this rigged game in the law President Trump signed July 4. They effectively eliminated good-faith waivers and told states that, starting in 2030, they will be forced to cover the federal share of any improper payments above 3%. While five years may seem like an eternity, it’s an acknowledgment that states have a mountain to climb to bring their error rates into the low single digits. 

Consider Ohio. In 2019, it had an improper payment rate of nearly 45%, giving the Buckeye State the worst record in the nation for waste, fraud and abuse. Based on its most recent spending levels, Ohio would be on the hook for $9.7 billion, equal to roughly 15% of its current state budget. Illinois, with a 35.4% rate, would pay $6.4 billion, a tough ask given the state’s famous fiscal woes. Even states with lower improper payment rates, like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Missouri, would still be looking at annual costs of more than $1 or $2 billion.

Without reform, I estimate that states will pay a combined $100 billion in penalties beginning in 2030. Their only hope to avoid this fiscal pain is to immediately start rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. In the state legislative sessions that start in January, lawmakers should focus on several key reforms.

First, stop allowing Medicaid recipients to self-attest their income, address and other personal information. Using the honor system invites abuse.

Second, review recipients’ eligibility at least twice a year for able-bodied adults and once a year for everyone else, thereby removing ineligible individuals early and often.

Third, cross-check Medicaid data with easily accessible information such as wage, hiring and tax records; returned mail and changes of address; out-of-state food stamp transactions; and prison and death records. These basic good government measures can quickly identify people wrongly receiving taxpayer money.

Waiting to tackle Medicaid fraud is the most foolish thing states can do. So is hoping that Democrats get their wish and successfully repeal Republicans’ Medicaid reforms. That won’t happen while Trump is president. And if states wait to see the outcome of the 2028 election, they may be disappointed. At that point, they’d face an even steeper hill with barely a year to get their act together.

There’s no avoiding the reality that Democrats broke Medicaid — in Minnesota and everywhere else — or that Republicans have given states an urgent mandate to finally root out the waste, fraud and abuse.

 Michael Greibrok is a Senior Research Fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability.

From a distance, Margarita Island looks like a Caribbean escape. Palm-lined beaches, duty-free shops, and resort towns sell the image of a tropical playground just off Venezuela’s northeastern coast. But U.S. officials say the Venezuelan outpost has become something else entirely: Hezbollah’s most important base of operations in the Western Hemisphere, strengthened by Iran’s growing footprint and the Maduro regime’s protection.

That threat, U.S. officials warn, reflects a broader security challenge emerging from the region. ‘The single most serious threat to the United States from the Western Hemisphere is from transnational terrorist criminal groups primarily focused on narcotrafficking,’ Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at an end-of-year press conference at the State Department on Friday.

‘Margarita Island might be of significance to the U.S. because of its location and the security dynamics around it,’ Melissa Ford Maldonado, director of the Western Hemisphere Initiative at the America First Policy Institute, told Fox News Digital. ‘It is close to Trinidad and Tobago and Grenada, in an oil-rich part of the Caribbean along key maritime routes, and it has long had a reputation for being a major drug-trafficking hub, possibly because it’s off the mainland and there’s not a lot of law enforcement there.’

The island’s isolation, she said, has made it attractive to ‘irregular armed groups, foreign intelligence actors and criminal networks that use it as a departure point for boats carrying illicit shipments out of Venezuela.’

Marshall Billingslea, the former assistant secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes in the U.S. Treasury Department, said Margarita Island now serves as Hezbollah’s key foothold in the Western Hemisphere.

‘From what I have seen and what I have been told, there is a wide range of activities that Hezbollah and to some extent Hamas are engaged in,’ Billingslea told Fox News Digital. ‘Margarita Island is really the center of gravity for their activities.’

In written testimony submitted to the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control for an Oct. 21 hearing, Billingslea traced the island’s transformation back more than two decades. Under Hugo Chávez, he wrote, Venezuela ‘opened its doors to Hezbollah, allowing the group to establish a major footprint, including a paramilitary training site, on Margarita Island.’

‘When Nicolás Maduro seized power,’ Billingslea added, ‘the breadth and depth of Hezbollah’s presence in Venezuela dramatically expanded, as did their ties to the narco-terrorist regime and the Cartel de los Soles.’

‘The relationship is very close with the Cartel de los Soles, and it has been so for many, many years,’ Billingslea said, referring to the network of senior Venezuelan officials accused by the United States of drug trafficking.

Billingslea said Hezbollah has embedded itself into Margarita Island’s economy, exploiting the island’s duty-free status and cross-border access to Colombia to generate revenue through smuggling and drug importation. He said the group operates a wide range of companies on the island and also maintains several training camps there.

His testimony also detailed how Venezuela’s state apparatus helped embed Hezbollah inside the country. He wrote that former senior official Tareck El Aissami, while overseeing Venezuela’s passport and naturalization agency, ‘was instrumental in furnishing passports and citizenship documents to Hezbollah operatives as well as a large number of people from Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.’ Between 2010 and 2019, Venezuelan authorities issued more than 10,400 passports to individuals from those countries, according to the testimony.

A May 27, 2020, Justice Department announcement alleged that Diosdado Cabello directed Venezuelan lawmaker Adel El Zabayar to travel to the Middle East to obtain weapons and recruit members of Hezbollah and Hamas for training at clandestine camps inside Venezuela. The filing also describes a subsequent weapons delivery at a hangar controlled by Maduro at the country’s main international airport.

Recent developments in the Middle East have only increased Margarita Island’s importance, Billingslea said. Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon has damaged the group’s military leadership and financial infrastructure, forcing it to rely more heavily on overseas networks.

‘Israeli successes against Hezbollah in Lebanon in particular, including their strikes on the financial infrastructure Al-Qard al-Hassan that operates in Lebanon, are going to have two effects,’ he said. ‘The first is that it is making the fundraising and the revenue generation that comes out of Latin America even more important to the terrorist group. Secondly, we have seen indications that Hezbollah actually has been relocating fighters from Lebanon, several hundred from Lebanon to Venezuela in particular.’

Asked whether that shift moves the threat closer to the United States, Billingslea said Hezbollah is now operating ‘close to the U.S. and further away from the Israelis.’

He said Iran’s role in Venezuela has deepened alongside Hezbollah’s. ‘There is a substantial Iranian footprint in Venezuela related to the trade of weapons and drones, in particular, for gold,’ he said. After suffering losses in the Middle East, he added, ‘the Iranians find themselves even more dependent on that supply of gold in exchange for drones and weapons.’

He said Washington faces a strategic choice. ‘I think the United States has positioned sufficient forces in the Caribbean at this time to take care of the Hezbollah threat,’ he said. ‘But obviously, when you have a terrorist group that has merged into the local population, highly precise intelligence is needed. I believe the Venezuelan opposition possesses a great deal of that intelligence, though it is not clear to me that the United States government is making the best use of that access.’

For Billingslea, the conclusion is cleaner — eliminating Venezuela’s narco-terrorist regime would significantly strengthen U.S. national security.

More than 200 House Democrats voted against banning Medicaid dollars from funding transgender treatments for minors.

The Do No Harm in Medicaid Act was introduced by Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, and received support from all House Republicans when it was put to a vote Thursday afternoon.

The measure passed 215-201, with all opposition coming from Democrats. All Republicans who voted approved the bill.

Four Democratic representatives voted for the bill — Henry Cuellar, D-Texas; Vicente Gonzalez, D-Texas; Don Davis, D-N.C.; and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash.

Transgender issues, particularly related to minors, have been one of the topics driving a wedge between moderate and progressive Democrats. 

The bill would block federal reimbursement for specific gender surgeries performed on minors and treatments such as hormone therapies, according to the legislative text.

The legislation could also block Medicaid funding to states that do allow federal funds to be used for transgender medical treatments for minors.

But the bill provides exceptions for puberty blockers prescribed during precocious puberty and gender-related surgeries performed to fight injury, illness and the potential death of a child, among others.

House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said the legislation would save $445 million over a decade for the Medicaid program during debate on the bill Thursday.

Guthrie said it did not prevent children from getting medically necessary treatment, adding it ‘simply prohibits the use of Medicaid funding on specified procedures that are medically unnecessary.’

‘I’m not sure my colleagues even believe what they’re saying,’ Crenshaw said during his turn to speak. ‘Today’s great sin in medicine is perhaps one of the worst that we’ve seen in human history — a sick, twisted ideology parroted by social media, fueling social confusion.’

But Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., called it an ‘extreme attack on medically necessary treatment for children.’

‘This is Congress seeking to ban healthcare for the most vulnerable among us,’ Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., said. ‘The healthcare that trans youth receive is a decision that they should be able to make in consultation with their parents, therapists and doctors, not politicians.

‘The hypocrisy of this legislation is staggering,’ he added, arguing the medical procedures it bans ‘allows for the same exact care for non-transgender youth.’

In a Thursday press conference, federal authorities in Minnesota announced new charges in the fraud scandal that has grabbed national headlines and spoke on the scope of the crisis, saying that it goes beyond what has previously been reported.

‘Minnesotans and taxpayers deserve to know the truth of the fraud,’ First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson told reporters at a press conference.  ‘The fraud is not small. It isn’t isolated. The magnitude cannot be overstated. What we see in Minnesota is not a handful of bad actors committing crimes. It’s staggering industrial-scale fraud. It’s swamping Minnesota and calling into question everything we know about our state.’

Thompson explained that 14 programs have been identified as containing fraud and those programs have cost taxpayers $18 billion overall since 2018.

When asked specifically by a reporter how much of that $18 billion is suspected to be fraudulent, which reports have previously suggested could be around $1 billion, Thompson suggested that number will be higher when the investigations are concluded. 

‘I think a significant portion,’ Thompson responded.

Thompson later said, ‘When I say significant, I’m talking in the order of half or more. But we’ll see.’

Six new defendants have been charged in connection with a Minnesota housing services fraud, Thompson revealed on Thursday.

Two defendants pocketed $750,000 instead of helping Medicaid recipients find stable housing, Thompson said. Prosecutors allege they used the proceeds to travel to international destinations, including London, Istanbul and Dubai.

One defendant submitted $1.4 million in fraudulent claims, using some to purchase cryptocurrency, Thompson said. Federal officials say he fled the country after receiving a subpoena.

The six new defendants join eight others charged in September for their alleged roles in the scheme to defraud the Minnesota Housing Stability Services Program.

Two dependents mentioned by Thompson sent significant sums of money overseas to Kenya, in one case over $200,000.

‘There’s been a significant amount of money sent abroad, mostly to East Africa, much of it to Kenya and to Nairobi, that the money that we’ve traced most, most of which has been used to purchase real estate in Nairobi,’ Thompson said, mentioning the ‘large Somali diaspora’ in those areas.

Prosecutors also named a new defendant accused of defrauding another state-run, federally funded program that provides services for children with autism, alleging he submitted millions of dollars worth of claims for Medicaid reimbursement. One woman previously charged with exploiting that program pleaded guilty Thursday morning, officials said.

Thompson said that two of the dependents aren’t from Minnesota but came from Philadelphia because ‘they heard that Minnesota and its housing stabilization services program was easy money.’

‘What we’re seeing is programs that are just entirely fraudulent,’ Thompson said. ‘These aren’t companies that are providing some services, but overbilling Medicare, Medicaid. These are companies that are providing essentially no services. They’re essentially shell companies created to defraud the program created to submit on a wholesale level, fraudulent claims for services that aren’t necessary and are provided.’

In a press release, dependents were identified as Abdinajib Hassan Yussuf, Anthony Waddell Jefferson, Lester Brown, Hassan Ahmed Hussein, Ahmed Abdirashid Mohamed, and Kaamil Omar Sallah.

Minnesota’s fraud crisis has been in the spotlight in recent weeks as the Trump administration and local Republicans have blasted Minnesota’s elected officials over the scandal, which dates back to at least 2020 and involves fraudulent billing for a wide range of government services, mostly involving, but not limited to, the state’s Somali community. 

‘When I was on the Feeding Our Future case, the big thing that jumped out to me was, honestly, how easy this fraud was to do,’ former federal prosecutor Joe Teirab, who worked on the fraud investigation into Feeding our Future, one of the most high-profile examples of organizations that prosecutors say was propped up by fraud, recently told Fox News Digital. 

‘I mean, these fraudsters were just saying that they were spending all this money on feeding kids, and they were just making up these PDFs, putting false names into Excel sheets. I could do that in five minutes on a computer if I had absolutely no conscience.’

The Trump administration has launched a variety of efforts to crack down and investigate the fraud at a federal level and Fox News Digital first reported that Education Secretary Linda McMahon had sent a letter to Walz calling on him to resign over the scandal. 

‘It’s been allowed to go on for far too long, and we need to do whatever we can to stop it in its tracks,’ Thompson said in the press conference. 

Associated Press contributed to this report.

China denounced the United States for approving an $11.1 billion weapons package for Taiwan, warning that the deal risks turning the island into a ‘powder keg’ and driving the region toward ‘military confrontation and war.’

The unprecedented sale includes 82 HIMARS launchers paired with 420 ATACMS long-range missiles, a combination that would give Taiwan new deep-strike capability across the Taiwan Strait, along with 60 self-propelled howitzers, advanced UAV systems, military software packages and anti-armor weapons.

Beijing accused Taiwan’s leadership of ‘seeking independence through force’ and claimed Washington is using the island to ‘contain China,’ rhetoric that signals heightened tensions even as the U.S. frames the package as essential to bolstering Taiwan’s self-defense.

‘The ‘Taiwan independence’ forces on the island seek independence through force and resist reunification through force, squandering the hard-earned money of the people to purchase weapons at the cost of turning Taiwan into a powder keg,’ Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said.

‘This cannot save the doomed fate of ‘Taiwan independence’ but will only accelerate the push of the Taiwan Strait toward a dangerous situation of military confrontation and war. The U.S. support for ‘Taiwan Independence’ through arms will only end up backfiring. Using Taiwan to contain China will not succeed.’

U.S. officials have not yet detailed delivery timelines, but the sale reflects Washington’s push to accelerate Taiwan’s defenses amid growing concern over China’s military pressure campaign. The HIMARS and ATACMS combination is expected to draw particular attention from Beijing because it would allow Taiwan to target PLA staging areas, ships and infrastructure from mobile launchers, a capability China has repeatedly warned against.

In its notification to Congress, the State Department said the proposed sales would advance ‘U.S. national, economic, and security interests by supporting the recipient’s continuing efforts to modernize its armed forces and to maintain a credible defensive capability.’ 

The department added that the weapons would ‘help improve the security of the recipient and assist in maintaining political stability, military balance and economic progress in the region.’

Under longstanding U.S. policy, Washington provides Taiwan with arms it deems necessary for the island’s self-defense while maintaining a ‘One China’ policy and not supporting a declaration of formal independence. China argues that any enhancement of Taiwan’s defenses encourages separatism, while U.S. officials say the purpose of such sales is to preserve stability and deter conflict.

The package now enters a 30-day congressional review period, during which lawmakers could file a resolution attempting to block it, a step Congress has never taken for an arms sale to Taiwan. Once the review period ends, contracting and production begin, a process that typically stretches over several years and contributes to a backlog that once reached $20 billion in undelivered U.S. weapons Taiwan has already purchased.

China has a track record of responding to major Taiwan arms sales with military demonstrations, including large-scale PLA drills, increased air and naval activity near the island and sanctions on U.S. defense firms. Analysts say Beijing’s sharp rhetoric suggests additional military signaling is likely, though China did not immediately announce specific countermeasures.

The latest sale marks a significant boost to Taiwan’s conventional firepower. In recent months, Beijing has stepped up pressure across the strait with near-daily PLA air and naval patrols, record incursions around the island and high-profile exercises meant to signal its ability to encircle Taiwan.

Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung thanked the U.S. Wednesday for its ‘long-term support for regional security and Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities,’ which he said are key to deterring a conflict in the Taiwan Strait.