Federal prosecutors in Minnesota have launched one of the largest Medicaid fraud crackdowns in American history. Raids. Indictments. Billions of dollars. A system designed to help the poor became a loot bag for criminals and grifters.

California saw those headlines and said, “They should have consulted us!”

Taxpayers don’t care whether fraud happens the Minnesota way — through day-care centers and nonprofits — or the California way — through health care accounting games.

Sacramento’s progressive class has spent years perfecting a cleaner version of the same scam — one that stays inside the lines, collects federal dollars on paper, and sends the bill to taxpayers everywhere else. Call it “legal.” Call it “approved.” Call it “routine.” None of those words makes it legitimate.

In 2004, the Government Accountability Office warned Congress that states were gaming Medicaid through intergovernmental transfers. States would shuffle public money through a circular process to make spending look real, inflate federal matching payments, then cycle the funds back to themselves. The GAO described “round-trip” arrangements that generated federal dollars without exposing states to true financial risk and that undermined the balance Congress intended.

Washington shrugged. Some states backed off. Others refined the trick.

California scaled it.

Medi-Cal, the state’s massive Medicaid program, now serves as the vehicle for this legal laundering operation. State officials insist that the system complies with federal rules. Fine. A loophole still remains a loophole, and taxpayers still pay the tab.

Paragon Health Institute, a conservative health policy organization, has laid out the mechanism clearly. Counties and public hospital systems transfer funds to the state through IGTs. The state counts that money as the “non-federal share” of Medicaid spending, then claims a larger federal match. Sacramento sends the combined state and federal funds back to government-owned providers through supplemental payments and formula-driven reimbursements.

The math almost always works in the contributors’ favor. The entities that send money in get reimbursed in full — and often receive more than they put up.

RELATED: $300M frozen: California allegedly forced Americans to fund illegal alien Medicaid — so Dr. Oz drops the hammer

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

California’s ambulance program shows how ugly this gets. Under the state’s Ground Emergency Medical Transport program, California bars payments from the state’s general fund. Public ambulance agencies instead receive “supplemental payments” that California largely restricts to public providers, limiting private companies’ access.

The result: California pays public ambulance providers about $1,065 per transport, while it offers private ambulance companies roughly $339 for the same job.

Then the federal government matches the inflated payments.

This isn’t just favoritism. It warps the market. It pushes private providers out and leaves patients with fewer options.

California has also expanded Medi-Cal eligibility regardless of immigration status. The state claims it funds routine coverage for “undocumented” adults with state dollars, but emergency Medicaid remains federally reimbursable. Sacramento still taps federal funds through the back door, even as it sells the program as a self-funded moral gesture.

This system stinks — even when regulators bless it.

And the political contrast tells you everything. Minnesota’s fraud scandal has created enough public anger to drive its Democrat governor out of the next election. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), whose administration runs a program built on the same kind of federal exploitation — just with better paperwork — remains a top Democrat presidential prospect in 2028.

The federal government could stop this tomorrow. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services could clamp down on the abuse of IGTs and demand a genuine state contribution, not an accounting illusion. Instead, under the Biden administration, CMS approved major expansions and encouraged the same incentives that fuel the problem.

Audits don’t fix it, either. Regulators review what states claim on paper, not what taxpayers actually fund. If a state can justify the scheme in bureaucratic language, CMS signs off. Fraud analysis often misses the point for the same reason. A state can structure IGTs so the “state share” exists largely as a bookkeeping device. Federal taxpayers remain the only party exposed to real financial loss.

Congress never designed Medicaid to serve as a revenue stream for local governments. It created Medicaid to help the poor. California’s 12-to-1 payment disparities punish the poor by reducing competition, shrinking access, and driving private providers out of business.

RELATED: The insane little story that failed to warn America about the depth of Somali fraud

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images

Congress already has the solution. The GAO outlined it two decades ago, and the George W. Bush administration backed the basic idea: Close the loophole by prohibiting Medicaid payments that exceed actual costs for government-owned facilities.

In plain English: Stop rewarding government-owned providers with inflated reimbursements that private providers can’t touch. Set equal rules. Require real state contributions. Cut the circular funding schemes that turn Medicaid into a federal ATM.

Taxpayers don’t care whether fraud happens the Minnesota way — through day cares and nonprofits — or the California way — through health care accounting games. We care that Washington keeps subsidizing systems designed to break the rules everyone else has to follow.

California built this machine. Congress can shut it down.

​California, Fraud, Medicare, Minnesota, Somali fraud, Medi-cal, Gavin newsom, Opinion & analysis 

The intentional implosion of the United States via mass immigration — often called the “Great Replacement” theory — has been “debunked” as a baseless, racist conspiracy theory by left-wing organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

But what Glenn Beck just heard from bestselling author Peter Schweizer is proof that it’s not theory. It’s happening right now — and in places we wouldn’t expect.

Schweizer’s new book, “The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon,” is a deep dive into the weaponization of mass migration as a political tool to influence U.S. elections, undermine national security, and reshape demographics and power structures.

While the book presents documented evidence exposing multiple foreign adversaries, including China, Venezuela, Cuba, and the Muslim Brotherhood, for weaponizing immigration for political gain, its revelations about Mexico are among the most disturbing.

“I always thought of Mexico in the context of, OK, you’ve got kind of this hapless government, and it’s corrupt, and they’re kind of glad for mass migration because now they don’t have to feed their own people,” Schweizer says.

But he’s been giving Mexico too much credit.

“The reality is — in their own words — they view immigration very differently,” he tells Glenn.

According to a December 2024 report written by one of President Claudia Sheinbaum’s top aides, Mexico sees mass migration to the U.S. as a means of reconquest.

“We already know that the Mexican population in the United States reaches 39.9 million. We Mexicans are reclaiming our territory,” Schweizer reads directly from the report.

On top of that, another “powerful senator” in Sheinbaum’s progressive, populist Morena Party, who “sits on the National Defense Committee,” is on record saying: “We Mexicans are in our territory — California, Nevada, Texas, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Wyoming. We’re going to take back the territory that was stolen from us.”

“You hear these quotes, and you think, ‘OK, well maybe this is just bravado,’” Schweizer says. But when you see the “network and infrastructure inside the United States” Mexico has built, it’s clear that it’s far more than bombast.

“This infrastructure — this includes Mexican government officials inside the United States who are organizing violent protests, like those that hit Los Angeles, those that are in Minneapolis, and they are actively participating in our politics,” he explains.

“They are working to elect Democrats … who are sympathetic to them on immigration and working to defeat President Trump through Mexican consulates that are across the United States.”

Glenn is shocked by these revelations and wonders why we’re just now hearing about Mexico’s reconquest plans, especially given the pile of evidence that’s out there.

Schweizer says that Mexico has “masked what they’re doing quite effectively.”

He reads a 2023 quote from the “head of the Mexican News Agency” that captures the intentional covertness of Mexico’s immigration agenda: “We are quietly carrying out the reconquest of our territories in the U.S. taken from us in 1848. The reconquest of the Aztec territory is silent, and the day that the gringos realize this, their diabolical fundamentalism will become macabre.”

“In other words, we need to keep this quiet … because when the ‘gringos,’ as he says, find out, they’re gonna be really, really angry about it,” Schweizer says.

These quotes from powerful Mexican officials, he says, are just a sprinkling of what’s out there. “The Invisible Coup” lays out a wealth of evidence on Mexico’s “Reconquista” and pulls no punches in naming key figures.

To hear more about it, watch the video above.

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​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Blazetv, Blaze media, Beck, Mexico, Peter schweizer, Great replacement theory, Immigration 

A homeless Florida man allegedly attacking a teenager was beaten in the face with a toolbox by a Good Samaritan before police arrived and took him into custody.

Christopher Steven Schwable, 36, of Pierson was restrained by bystanders when he choked and beat a 13-year-old at a school bus stop in DeLand on Tuesday morning.

The man had been in jail for just over three weeks on charges of indecent exposure and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Police said they responded to a call about a possible stabbing at the intersection of Clear Lake Dr. and North Spring Garden Ave. when they saw Schwable being held down by another man.

The man said that he hit Schwable with his toolbox after driving by the bus stop and seeing him attacking the child. He said that the man threatened him with a knife, so he hit him twice.

Schwable had a head injury and was bleeding.

Police bodycam footage showed their interaction with the boy, who said that Schwable had pulled out a knife, grabbed him, and hit him. Two witnesses corroborated the boy’s account, according to police.

In addition to the witnesses’ corroboration, police said they found a green-and-black folding knife in the man’s pocket and confiscated it as evidence.

WOFL-TV reported that Schwable had been released from jail on Jan. 13, just a week before the alleged attack on the teenager. The man had been in jail for just over three weeks on charges of indecent exposure and possession of drug paraphernalia. WOFL said that those charges were dropped by prosecutors, according to court documents.

Police said those charges were not related to the bus stop incident.

Schwable’s booking photo appeared to show a large wound on the right side of his face.

RELATED: Security video captures homeless man with young woman he allegedly tried to rape before assaulting a second woman in Los Angeles

Schwable was charged with aggravated child abuse and aggravated assault.

A spokesperson with Volusia County schools confirmed that the boy was a seventh-grade student at Southwestern Middle School.

Officials also confirmed that Schwable was currently homeless.

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​Homeless crime, Man assaults 13-year-old, Good samaritan toolbox beatdown, Christopher steven schwable, Crime 

Conservatives want to be left alone. They have families, jobs, churches, hobbies. They love their country, but they stay busy and comfortable. Politics feels like something for other people — activists, ideologues, the perpetually aggrieved. The left may dream of tearing the system down in a fiery Marxist revolution, but one solid vote every couple of years or so should keep the crazies in check. Then it’s back to work, back to Little League, back to the barbecue.

That belief sustained many on the right for decades. It has become a liability.

A vote followed by retreat no longer suffices. Saving the country requires engagement, sacrifice, and the willingness to place political reality over personal comfort.

The sunshine conservative lives under the assumption that the American system more or less runs itself, that excesses can be corrected with minimal effort, and that power remains constrained by shared norms. Those assumptions no longer hold. The times that try men’s souls have returned, and the sunshine conservative is about to discover that comfort carries a cost.

For years, a bipartisan consensus reshaped the country through mass immigration. Call it conspiracy if you like, but incentives explain it better.

Democrats saw a reliable path to permanent power. Immigrants arrive without wealth, social capital, or political leverage. They gravitate toward the party that promises redistribution and protection. Every program — health care, housing, loans, benefits — tilts toward newcomers. Open borders grow government, entrench dependency, and expand the progressive patronage machine.

Republican incentives looked different but proved just as corrosive. Conservative voters opposed mass immigration, legal and illegal alike, but party leadership feared one thing above all else: being called racist.

Progressive programming successfully framed the idea of America as a homeland — run for the benefit of its people — as morally suspect. Any attempt to articulate national interest became “nativism.” Chamber of Commerce Republicans exploited that fear, importing millions of workers willing to accept suppressed wages while silencing critics through ritual denunciation.

While the country changed, conservatives largely stood aside. The transformation unsettled them, but lawn care got cheaper and food delivery faster. The sunshine conservative preferred comfort to confrontation. Political activism felt vulgar. Winners, after all, make money and buy boats.

Now the bill has come due.

Human trafficking. Drug flows. Violent crime. Overcrowded hospitals. Stagnant wages. Exploding housing costs. The social fabric frays under the weight of policies designed to benefit elites while disciplining everyone else.

RELATED: Aristotle’s ancient guide to tyranny reads like a modern manual

Blaze Media Illustration

The Trump administration’s effort to remove the worst offenders collides with a system addicted to inflow. Obvious solutions exist — employer enforcement, E-Verify, ending the H-1B visa scam, taxing remittances heavily — but those measures threaten donor interests. Instead, enforcement proceeds piecemeal, state by state, criminal by criminal.

Each attempt to exercise authority triggers panic among mainstream conservatives. They fret about optics. They warn about norms. They clutch abstractions while the left shoots at or runs over federal agents, storms churches, and treats public order as optional. Establishment voices agonize over power even as their opponents wield it without hesitation.

A friend of mine returned from the Global War on Terror with what doctors labeled post-traumatic stress disorder. The diagnosis missed the point. His trauma didn’t come from violence alone. It came from clarity. He had lived in a world where stakes mattered, where power operated openly, where failure carried consequences. Returning to a culture submerged in therapeutic language, pronouns, and safe spaces proved disorienting. Everyone else lived inside a fantasy and demanded that he play along.

Eventually, he learned to stay quiet. He still regards much of what surrounds him as childish and unmoored from reality.

That reaction mirrors what many feel toward sunshine conservatives. They cling to a story about politics that bears no resemblance to how power functions. When confronted with evidence, they demand that reality conform to their narrative. It never does. That narrative existed to pacify them, to make them manageable. They defend it with the same fervor with which the left defends its own delusions.

Each crisis cracks the façade. An assassination. A church invasion. A city surrendered to disorder. Every time, a few more conservatives wake up — only to be swarmed by those demanding a return to small talk about tax rates and process. The problem never lay with those who saw the danger. It lay with those insisting everyone else look away.

RELATED: The left’s ‘fascism’ routine is a permission slip for violence

Blaze Media Illustration

The question no longer concerns policy tweaks. It concerns survival. One side believes the country deserves preservation and repair. The other treats it as illegitimate and disposable. That divide cannot be bridged by nostalgia or proceduralism.

The sunshine conservative era has ended. Saving the country requires engagement, sacrifice, and the willingness to place political reality over personal comfort. It requires choosing the future of one’s children over quarterly returns. It requires the disciplined use of power to defend the nation’s institutions, borders, and communities — even when that makes polite society uncomfortable.

A vote followed by retreat no longer suffices. The fantasy that it does belongs with other comforting lies. The right can either shed it or be ruled by those who never believed it in the first place.

​Opinion & analysis, Tyranny, Marxism, Illegal immigration, Conservatives, War, America, Elections, Sunshine conservatism, Conspiracy, Open borders, Mass deportations, Incentives, Political activism, H-1b visas, Corruption, Politics, First amendment, Political violence 

A judge’s ruling temporarily blocking President Donald Trump’s order to end billions in social services funds could have met its match if Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky has his way.

The president tried to end federal funds being sent to California, New York, Minnesota, Illinois, and Colorado, but U.S. District Judge Arun Submaranian ruled against him on Jan. 9.

‘If you won’t show us a plan, a workable plan, we’re gonna cut it off until you do.’

The group of states had requested a temporary restraining order against the spending freeze and was granted 14 days while the court considers a longer order.

On Wednesday, Massie said he had crafted an amendment to legislation that would allow the president to bypass the ruling.

“After rampant fraud was uncovered at daycare centers in Minnesota and elsewhere, a judge blocked President Trump’s effort to put guardrails on those programs,” the representative wrote on social media.

“I’ve offered this amendment to circumvent the judge’s ruling and empower the President to withhold fraudulent funds,” he added.

He posted the text of the amendment.

“None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to make payments under the Child Care and Development Fund, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, or the Social Services Block Grant program to any State that the Secretary of Health and Human Services has identified, pursuant to existing law, as failing to comply with Federal eligibility or documentation requirements applicable to such program,” the text reads.

HHS Sec. Robert Kennedy Jr. claimed that the states were not punished for being Democrat-controlled, but rather because they did not comply with the federal request to create a plan to stop fraud.

RELATED: Trump says he will cut federal funds to sanctuary cities and states — beginning in 3 weeks

“The best way to help poor families is to end the fraud so that the money that is available for them. And that’s what we’re doing,” Kennedy said. “If you won’t show us a plan, a workable plan, we’re gonna cut it off until you do.”

The five states had argued in court that the order to end funds was unconstitutional because it could not be based on the “mere allegations or suspicion of fraud.”

The temporary restraining order will end on Friday.

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​Rep thomas massie, Trump cut democratic funds, Social service fraud, Minnesota somali fraud, Politics 

In Matt Damon’s new Netflix thriller, “The Rip,” a bunch of cops and crooks fight over a $20 million cash stash.

Making the movie required fighting for an even more precious commodity: the viewer’s ever-dwindling attention span.

‘It wouldn’t be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times.’

Appearing with long-time friend and co-star Ben Affleck on the “Joe Rogan Experience” last week, Damon revealed what his first collaboration with a streamer taught him about the new economics of the movie biz — and how it affects storytelling.

Dumbed down

Damon said that the “different level of attention” audiences are giving at home has started to affect how films are being made.

“Like, for instance, Netflix. The standard way to make an action movie that we learned was, you usually have three set pieces. One in the first act, one in the second, one in the third,” Damon began.

“You spend most of your money on that one in the third act. That’s your kind of finale. And now they’re like, ‘Can we get a big one in the first five minutes? We want people to stay tuned in,'” he continued.

Furthermore, the filmmaker explained that the reason dialogue has become simple and repetitive, in many cases, is that people are splitting their attention.

“‘It wouldn’t be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue because people are on their phones while they’re watching,'” Damon laughed, relaying notes he might receive from the platform.

RELATED: Is real-life ‘Star Wars’ America’s manifest destiny?

‘Casual’ vacancy

These types of notes and guidelines could really “infringe” on how writers are telling their stories, Damon stressed.

This theory of “casual viewing” was popularized and widely discussed in 2025, with outlet CBR calling it a style of filmmaking that is “overly descriptive, breaking basic rules of cinema and contributing to a dumbing down of the art.”

Affleck cited British crime drama “Adolescence” as a show that “didn’t do any of that s**t,” and that’s what made it “f**king great,” he added.

“There’s long shots of the back of their head. They get in the car, nobody says anything. … My feeling is just that it demonstrates that you don’t need to do any of that s**t,” Affleck said.

RELATED: Almost half of Gen Z wants AI to run the government. You should be terrified.

Photo by Arturo Holmes/WireImage

Du cinéma au smartphone

Affleck’s clear position when it comes to filmmaking and technology throughout the episode was that there will always be an audience for quality films.

“It’s like supply and demand,” he said. “People want to look at their phone, they can look at TikTok, they’re going to do that. I think what you can do is make s**t the best you can. Make it really good.”

When it comes to making movies for mobile viewers, Damon joked that he likes to rile up directors that he works with by asking them if they are thinking about how their film will look on a cell phone.

“That’s a joke that I like to make with every director I work with. Like, when they’re really puzzling over a shot or really grinding out something, I go, ‘You know, it’s not going to look as good on the phone.’ … Everyone gets angry.”

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​Movies, Film, Align, Matt damon, Netflix, Retention, Cell phones, Tiktok, Attention span, Entertainment