Trump administration faces bipartisan fury over Epstein files release missteps
The Department of Justice’s efforts to release all of its files related to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking cases by the legal deadline fell short of expectations on Friday, resulting in complaints ranging from technological glitches to excessive redactions and missing documents.
Just after 3 p.m., the highly anticipated website containing the documents went live with a message informing visitors they were “in line.” The page never advanced and would occasionally crash. Once the files became visible, some people were reporting that they still could not access the website.
“Got me waiting in line for these Epstein files like it’s a 2019 Yeezy drop,” one user wrote on X.
SCHUMER ACCUSES TRUMP ADMIN OF EPSTEIN FILES ‘COVER-UP’ AMID DOCUMENT DISPUTE
The law required that the files be searchable, but New York University law professor Ryan Goodman was among those who observed that the search bar feature on the website was also not reliably capturing content.
Some on the left pointed out that President Donald Trump’s name was initially not showing up in any of the documents. Trump was one of many of Epstein’s affluent friends before Epstein faced charges. The search bar appeared to be working as of Friday night.
The most common criticism, however, focused on what critics described as an incomplete release and extensive redactions. The DOJ has said it was required to redact information that could identify victims or minors.
In a letter to Congress, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche touted the DOJ’s effort to fulfill its obligations under the Epstein Files Transparency Act as “historic.”
Blanche said the documents underwent a rigorous review and redaction process involving more than 200 lawyers and that certain DOJ components produced tranches of files this week that required more time to review. He said he expected the rest of the files to be uploaded to the website within two weeks.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., highlighted the statutory language of the Epstein Files Transparency Act on X.
“Unfortunately, today’s document release by @AGPamBondi and @DAGToddBlanche grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law that @realDonaldTrump signed just 30 days ago,” Massie wrote.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., a co-sponsor of the legislation, said he and Massie were “exploring all options,” including potential contempt proceedings or other actions against DOJ officials.
“It is an incomplete release with too many redactions,” Khanna said.
DOJ PUBLISHES TROVE OF EPSTEIN FILES, SAYS MORE TO COME AFTER FRIDAY DEADLINE
Tim Young, a media fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation, panned the redactions in a post on X and took a jab at Attorney General Pam Bondi over the DOJ’s botched rollout of already public files earlier this year.
Bondi had given right-wing social media influencers binders of files in February, but the records were a dud and enraged a faction of Trump’s base.
Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., appeared on MS NOW Friday evening and accused the administration of “breaking the law.”
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Still, the DOJ has stood by its work as exemplary, saying in a statement online that “President Trump’s DOJ is delivering historic transparency while protecting victims.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the DOJ for comment.
British boxing star leaves Jake Paul battered in one-sided championship bout
Anthony Joshua knocked out Jake Paul in the sixth round of their fight on Friday night.
Joshua smelled blood in the water in the fifth round, knocking Paul down twice. Somehow, Paul survived the round. He didn’t last long in the sixth round as the British heavyweight delivered the final blows.
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It wasn’t as easy for Joshua as he would have liked. He landed 62% of his power shots but the expectation was that he wasn’t going to take the bout further than the round.
“It wasn’t the best performance,” Joshua admitted, adding that Paul held his own in the fight.
Paul came out bouncing around the ring and trying to take his shots wherever he could get them. He delivered a few quick jabs to Joshua and likely won the first round. However, Paul’s strategy started to frustrate the referee and the crowd.
The Cleveland native would strike Joshua and try to wrap him up. He hit the mat a few times, sparking boos from the crowd at the Kaseya Center in Miami. The referee even had to weigh in.
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“Fans did not pay to see this crap,” the referee said in the middle of the fourth round.
They sure didn’t.
But the two brought it after the referee’s warning, but Paul’s stamina began to wane. It allowed Joshua to step forward and hit the necessary shots to knock him down.
Paul came into the fight with only one blemish on his record – a loss to Tommy Fury. He was coming off wins against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Mike Tyson – the latter bout being one of the biggest spectacles the sport had seen in years.
He told Netflix’s Ariel Helwani that he believed his jaw was broken. He said he would take some time off after the fight and come back stronger.
Joshua hadn’t fought since last September. He was knocked out by Daniel Dubois in a bout for the IBF heavyweight title. Before that, he was on a four-fight winning streak with victories over Francis Ngannou, Otto Wallin, Robert Helenius and Jermaine Franklin.
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The British star called out Tyson Fury for a mega fight that boxing fans have been waiting for.
Autopsy reveals how Brown University shooting suspect died during manhunt
The suspect behind the deadly Brown University shooting and the killing of an MIT professor died by suicide days before he was found dead in a New Hampshire storage unit, authorities confirmed Friday, as investigators continue searching for a motive behind the attacks.
New Hampshire Attorney General John M. Formella said Friday the New Hampshire Department of Justice Office of the Chief Medical Examiner performed an autopsy on the body of Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, who was identified as the suspect in the Brown University mass shooting and the subsequent killing of an MIT professor.
The examination confirmed Neves Valente died from a gunshot wound to the head, and the manner of death was ruled a suicide.
Based on forensic findings and investigative information available to date, authorities estimate he died Tuesday, Dec. 16. Neves Valente was found dead in a storage facility in New Hampshire two days later on Thursday evening.
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Neves Valente was publicly identified by Providence police as the suspect in the Dec. 13 shooting at Brown University, which occurred during a finals week study session and left two students dead. Nine others were wounded at the Barus & Holley Engineering Building.
Authorities later confirmed he was also the suspect in the Dec. 15 fatal shooting of MIT nuclear science professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro, who was found shot at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Federal investigators also recovered two 9 mm pistols in New Hampshire near Neves Valente’s body, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’s Boston office.
The ATF and FBI, working through the Connecticut State Police forensic laboratory, positively matched one of the guns to the weapon used in the Brown shooting. The second gun was matched to Loureiro’s killing, authorities said.
According to Brown University President Christina Paxson, Neves Valente was a Portuguese national and former Brown student who studied physics from the fall of 2000 through the spring of 2001 before withdrawing from the program in 2003. He had no recent affiliation with the university at the time of the shooting on campus.
“I think it’s safe to assume that this man, when he was a student, spent a great deal of time in that building for classes and other activities as a Ph.D. student in physics,” Paxson said. “He has no current active affiliation with the university or campus presence.”
EX-FBI OFFICIALS BLAST ‘CIRCUS-LIKE’ BROWN UNIVERSITY SHOOTING BRIEFINGS
Neves Valente was found dead Thursday evening after law enforcement officers breached a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire, where he was believed to be hiding. Authorities said he acted alone in both attacks.
During the investigation, law enforcement canvassed neighborhood surveillance video, released images of a person of interest and initially questioned, but later ruled out, another individual before identifying Neves Valente as the suspect.
The two Brown students killed were Ella Cook of Alabama and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov of Virginia. Several surviving victims remained hospitalized in stable condition.
Sources tell Fox News that investigators are continuing to examine Neves Valente’s recent movements, including tracing credit card transactions in the days leading up to the attacks. FBI agents are also in Florida, where he reportedly last lived, according to sources.
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Authorities have not found any writings or documents indicating a clear motive for the shootings.
Mystery deepens as three licensed pilots were aboard NC flight that killed NASCAR star
The pilot of the deadly plane crash in North Carolina that killed former NASCAR driver Greg Biffle and his family has not been identified more than 24 hours later, officials with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said Friday.
NTSB board member Michael Graham spoke to the media about the preliminary findings of its investigation into Thursday’s crash that killed all seven people aboard a flight headed to the Bahamas.
According to Graham, three people aboard the Cessna C550 were licensed pilots but officials were not able verify as of Friday who was piloting the flight.
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“This is the beginning of very long process and we will not jump to any conclusions while on scene here in North Carolina nor will we jump to any conclusions,” Graham said of the entirety of the investigation.
The plane was owned by GB Aviation Leasing LLC, according to federal aviation records. The company is owned by Biffle, who was rated to fly helicopters and single and multi-engine planes.
Biffle, 55, was killed alongside his wife, Cristina, and children Ryder, 5, and Emma, 14. Three other people killed onboard were identified as Dennis Dutton, his son Jack, and Craig Wadsworth.
RACING WORLD REMEMBERS FORMER NASCAR DRIVER GREG BIFFLE AFTER DEADLY PLANE CRASH
The seven-person flight was making its way to the Bahamas via Sarasota, Florida, when it crashed at Statesville Regional Airport, about 45 miles north of Charlotte. NTSB Investigator-In-Charge Dan Baker said the plane took off at approximately 10:05 a.m. ET and began to turn back to the airport five minutes after take off.
The plane crashed roughly 10 minutes after departure.
Officials did not provide a cause and noted that weather conditions were relatively calm despite light rain. Graham said a preliminary report would be released in 30 days and full investigation could take anywhere between 12–18 months before a final report is released.
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According to officials, the plane’s black box was recovered from the crash scene and is en route to Washington, D.C., where it will be analyzed.
“I can also confirm that our team was able to locate and recover the cockpit voice recorder. The CVR, one of the black boxes from the aircraft,” Graham said, noting that the plane did not have a flight data recorder but was not required to have one either.
Greg Biffle, 55, won more than 50 races across NASCAR’s three circuits, including 19 at the Cup Series level. He also won the Trucks Series championship in 2000 and the Xfinity Series title in 2002.
NASCAR called Biffle “a beloved member of the NASCAR community, a fierce competitor, and a friend to so many.”
Federal court sides with professor who mocked UW land acknowledgment
A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the University of Washington violated a professor’s free speech rights by investigating and retaliating against him after he mocked the school’s land acknowledgment.
Stuart Reges, a non-tenured computer science and engineering teaching professor at the University of Washington, says in his complaint against the university that, in September 2020, university officials encouraged professors to include the university’s land acknowledgment statement on their class syllabus. Land acknowledgments are statements commonly used by universities and public institutions to recognize Native American tribes as the original inhabitants of the land on which campuses now sit.
Reges parodied the university’s land acknowledgment in his Computer Programming II class syllabus in January 2022. Instead of using the university’s land acknowledgment, he wrote, “I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.”
His comment was a reference to philosopher John Locke’s labor theory of property, under which ownership derives from improving the land.
UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY PROFESSOR SUES AFTER BEING BARRED FROM LAW SCHOOL AFTER CALLING FOR AN ‘END’ TO ISRAEL
Reges sued the university in July 2022, alleging that UW officials ordered him to remove the statement, condemned it as offensive and encouraged students to file complaints. Administrators also created a competing “shadow” course section so students could avoid his class and launched a disciplinary investigation that raised the possibility of further discipline or termination.
In a ruling Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit reversed the district court’s ruling and sent the case back to determine appropriate relief.
The court ruled that the lower court had erred in granting summary judgment to UW on Reges’s retaliation claim, saying his syllabus statement was protected academic speech on a matter of public concern and that the university unlawfully retaliated against him by investigating, reprimanding and threatening discipline because of the views he expressed.
“Student discomfort with a professor’s views can prompt discussion and disapproval,” Judge Daniel Bress wrote for the majority. “But this discomfort is not grounds for the university retaliating against the professor.”
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Reges was represented by attorneys from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, who celebrated the ruling.
“Today’s opinion is a resounding victory for Professor Stuart Reges and the First Amendment rights of public university faculty,” said FIRE attorney Gabe Walters. “The Ninth Circuit agreed with what FIRE has said from the beginning: Universities can’t force professors to parrot an institution’s preferred political views under pain of punishment.”
A lower court had previously ruled in favor of the university, granting the officials’ motion to dismiss Reges’ vagueness and overbreadth challenges to its nondiscrimination policy and granted a motion for summary judgment for Reges’ retaliation and viewpoint discrimination claims, according to FIRE.
Reges responded to the legal win in comments to Fox News Digital.
“Land acknowledgments are performative acts of conformity. The 9th Circuit has affirmed that my parody was a reasonable way to participate in the discussion of this important topic,” he said.
“In my 39 years of teaching, I have always fought for free speech even though it nearly cost me my dream job. I hope my victory will help inspire others to push back against those who have been attempting to limit free expression on college campuses.”
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Fox News Digital reached out to the University of Washington for comment.
“We are evaluating the appeals court’s 2-1 decision and considering our next steps,” a spokesperson said. “We maintain that we have a responsibility to protect our students and that the UW acted appropriately. Professor Reges has retained his faculty position and has continued teaching throughout this process.”
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‘Massive refund checks’ may hit American wallets as tax law changes take effect
A leading contender to become President Trump’s next Federal Reserve chair said the administration expects larger tax refunds and higher take-home pay next year, as many Americans continue to express concerns about affordability.
“We are going to see the biggest refund cycle ever in the history of America, and people are going to get massive refund checks,” National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said in an interview on FOX Business’ “Varney & Co.” on Thursday.
“We’re expecting just that part of it alone to be worth a couple-thousand-dollar refund … the numbers are striking.”
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During his Wednesday evening address, President Trump said the administration expects “the largest tax refund season of all time” next spring and claimed many families would save between $11,000 and $20,000 annually.
Hassett backed up this claim and pushed back against sentiment from a recent Fox News Poll, which found that 44% of those surveyed say they are falling behind financially, and 74% view the economy as “not so good” or “bad.”
“You saw in the jobs report that … wages for the typical worker were up 3.7%. So if you’re running 3.7% wage increases at 1.6% core inflation, then real wages are growing at a rate of about 2 [to] 2.5%. By our estimates right now, blue-collar workers have already seen an almost $2,000 raise this year after inflation, because wages are growing so much faster than prices,” Hassett explained.
“I think that what happens in the end — and this is what happened in the first [Trump] term — is that people will see it in their wallets,” he continued. “We didn’t pass the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ until the middle of the summer. And so a lot of the tax changes, which affect last year, weren’t in any tax forms that people filled out at the beginning of the year.”
Overall, Hassett struck a bullish tone on the economy and pointed to what he described as a “blockbuster” November inflation report, with figures coming in cooler than economists expected.
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“What’s happened is, as we predicted throughout this term, that if you really put the pedal to the metal on aggregate supply, then that’s gonna put downward pressure on prices,” he said.
“And don’t forget, that’s where we were last time in President Trump’s first term. We were growing in the 3% range, and we had inflation in the 1% range. And it looks like that’s where we are again.”
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Senator Cynthia Lummis will not seek re-election to Senate in 2026 after change of heart
Republican Cynthia Lummis will not be seeking re-election for her U.S. Senate seat in 2026, saying it’s been “an incredible honor to represent Wyoming” in a statement shared on X.
“It’s an incredible honor to represent Wyoming in the U.S. Senate, and throughout my time here, Wyoming has been my one-and-only priority,” Lummis posted to X. “Deciding not to run for reelection does represent a change of heart for me, but in the difficult, exhausting session weeks this fall I’ve come to accept that I do not have six more years left in me.
“I am a devout legislator, but I feel like a sprinter in a marathon,” the senator wrote. “The energy required doesn’t match up.”
SEN CYNTHIA LUMMIS: TRUMP IS ENDING BIDEN’S WAR ON ENERGY AND ONE STATE IS KEY TO THAT STRATEGY
The announcement comes as many legislators have announced resignations ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, which many political commentators have noted may be a referendum on President Donald Trump‘s second administration.
Lummis has been a champion for cryptocurrency legislation in the Senate, penning the GENIUS Act. The Wyoming Republican has also been an advocate for American energy during her tenure, including coal, oil and gas.
Sworn in Jan. 3, 2021, Lummis is the first woman to serve as a senator for the Equality State.
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“I am honored to have earned the support of President Trump and to have the opportunity to work side by side with him to fight for the people of Wyoming,” Lummis concluded. “Thank you, Wyoming!”
Lummis’ office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Elise Stefanik stepping away from politics month after launching campaign for NY governor
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., on Friday announced that she is ending her bid for New York State governor and will not seek reelection, just over a month after formally launching her campaign.
In a message posted to X, Stefanik cited her family as her reason for stepping out of the 2026 race to unseat Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul.
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“While spending precious time with my family this Christmas season, I have made the decision to suspend my campaign for Governor and will not seek reelection to Congress. I did not come to this decision lightly for our family,” she wrote on X.
“And while many know me as Congresswoman, my most important title is Mom,” she added. “I believe that being a parent is life’s greatest gift and greatest responsibility. I have thought deeply about this and I know that as a mother, I will feel profound regret if I don’t further focus on my young son’s safety, growth, and happiness – particularly at his tender age.”
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Stefanik, a top congressional supporter of President Donald Trump, was praised by the president.
“Elise Stefanik, a fantastic person and Congresswoman from New York State, has just announced she won’t be running for Governor,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Elise is a tremendous talent, regardless of what she does. She will have GREAT success, and I am with her all the way!”
After ramping up for months, Stefanik officially declared her candidacy for governor in November with a platform centered on crime, taxes and affordability across the Empire State.
And Stefanik, who represents a conservative-leaning district in upstate New York, was a vocal critic of Hochul, who is seeking a second four-year term after being sworn in August 2021 as New York’s first female governor, after Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned in disgrace amid multiple scandals.
The now-41-year-old Stefanik, a Harvard graduate who worked as a staffer in then-President George W. Bush’s administration and later as an aide on the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan 2012 GOP presidential ticket, made history in 2014 as the youngest woman ever elected to the U.S. House.
A one-time moderate Republican, Stefanik transformed herself into a MAGA champion during Trump’s first term in the White House, rising through the ranks of GOP leadership in the chamber. Her loyalty to Trump, including defending him during the first of his two impeachments, appeared to pay off after he won back the presidency in the 2024 election. Trump nominated Stefanik to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a high-profile cabinet-level position.
But Trump, concerned about the GOP’s razor-thin majority in the chamber, in March rescinded the nomination, worrying that Republicans could lose Stefanik’s seat to the Democrats in a special election.
While Stefanik remained in the House, and GOP leaders created a new leadership position for her, she soon eyed running for New York governor in 2026, with Trump’s encouragement.
Another potential GOP Republican gubernatorial contender, Rep. Mike Lawler, announced during the summer that he would seek reelection in the House rather than bid for governor.
But Nassau County executive Bruce Blakeman, another Trump ally, last week jumped into the GOP race after mulling a bid for months.
Trump stayed neutral, telling reporters at the White House after Blakeman announced his candidacy that “Elise is fantastic and Bruce is.”
“Two fantastic people, and I always hate it when two very good friends of mine are running, and I hope there’s not a lot of damage done,” the president added.
Even though Stefanik was the clear polling and fundraising frontrunner for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, those in her political orbit told Fox News Digital Stefanik was concerned that a primary battle would make her uphill climb against Hochul in blue-leaning New York ever steeper.
In her message, Stefanik thanked her supporters for their donations but said it wouldn’t be an “effective use of our time or your generous resources to spend the first half of next year in an unnecessary and protracted Republican primary, especially in a challenging state like New York.”
Blakeman, in a statement, applauded Stefanik “for her outstanding service to the people of New York and to all Americans” and called her “a strong voice for common-sense values, national security, and economic opportunity.”
As she eyed a run for governor, Stefanik argued in a Fox News Digital interview in June that Hochul was “the worst governor in America.” It’s a line she would repeatedly use in the ensuing months.
And Stefanik, aiming to paint the governor as an extremist, regularly tied Hochul to now-Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani of New York City, a socialist and the first Muslim mayor of the nation’s most populous city.
But Trump seemingly undercut Stefanik’s messaging that Mamdani was a “jihadist” after a cordial embrace of the mayor-elect during an Oval Office meeting after his New York City victory.
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Democratic Governors Association spokesperson Kevin Donohoe, reacting to the news, claimed that Stefanik “saw the writing on the wall and knew she would lose — big — to Governor Hochul.”
The governor’s campaign, in a statement, argued that “Stefanik has finally acknowledged reality: If you run against Governor Kathy Hochul, you are going to lose.”
And Hochul campaign spokesperson Ryan Radulovacki called Blakeman “100% MAGA.”
It’s not just Minnesota, Democrats have created welfare fraud everywhere
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.
MAGNITUDE ‘CANNOT BE OVERSTATED’: FEDS SAY MINNESOTA FRAUD MAY BE MORE THAN $9B
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.
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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.
‘EPICENTER OF FRAUD’: MINNESOTA’S EMPTY STOMACHS, FAKE AUTISM THERAPY AND A SCANDAL THAT COULD TOP $2 BILLION
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.
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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.
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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.
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