Week of Oct. 9, 2025

From the publisher’s desk

The federal government shutdown continues—and it could go on for a while.

If you’ve been listening to the Trump administration and the Republican congressional leadership, the shutdown is all the Democrats’ fault (even though the GOP controls all three branches of the federal government), because the Dems insist on funding health care for, in their words, “illegal aliens.”

This claim is, as NBC News puts it, “highly misleading.” As I would put it, the claim is a lie. NBC News explains:

The Democratic bill would not change existing law barring people who are in the U.S. illegally from getting federal health care coverage.

The dispute centers around immigrants whom the federal government has decreed as “lawfully present,” but who haven’t formally been given legal status that is enforceable in court.

There are an estimated 1.4 million people considered “lawfully present” in the United States—including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program beneficiaries, who came to the U.S. illegally as children; people who have Temporary Protected Status; and refugees and people seeking asylum who are still going through the legal process. Republicans are seeking to prohibit Medicaid or ACA eligibility for those groups.

They are not “undocumented” or “illegal” immigrants. The government knows who they are, and many are going through the process of seeking official legal status or green cards. Among other things, they are not unlawful border-crossers who have been flagged for deportation.

The GOP law prohibited those “lawfully present” immigrants from accessing federal health care programs. The Democratic bill would restore that access—but not for undocumented people who lack protected status—while also restoring the $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts, a core goal for Democrats.

In other words: The Dems are fighting to restore health care to a whole lot of U.S. citizens, and migrants in the country who are “lawfully present”—not people sneaking across the border for reasons nefarious or otherwise.

The Trump administration issued a “fact sheet” titled “FACT: Democrats Shut Down Government Over Free Healthcare for Illegals,” which is beyond ridiculous. It starts with typical Trumpian speak (and the emphasis below is theirs, not mine):

“Democrats and their Fake News allies want you to believe it’s all a lie that Democrats shut down the government over free healthcare for illegal aliens.

Except that’s exactly what happened. As Vice President JD Vance said, “It’s not something that we made up. It’s not a talking point. It is in the text of the bill that they initially gave to us to reopen the government.”

Among the spurious facts is: “Democrats’ proposal would once again allow those improperly granted asylum and parole under Biden’s open borders scheme to receive Medicaid.”

Here’s what NBC News has to say about that: “The White House also says the Biden administration abused the immigration parole program to grant temporary entry to the U.S. for people who shouldn’t have received it. But if the Trump administration revoked that parole status, those individuals would lose their eligibility for any health care coverage under the Democratic proposal.”

So .. yeah, a lie.

This dispute is making for some interesting political bedfellows. The Hill reports:

“Hours after Trump’s comments Monday (in which Trump expressed an openness to working out an agreement on health care that could end the shutdown, before backtracking), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) released a long post on the social platform X that ripped her party over the subsidies issue.

“I’m absolutely disgusted that health insurance premiums will DOUBLE if the tax credits expire this year,” Greene wrote, a message that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) read aloud on the Senate floor Tuesday morning.

“Rep. Greene is absolutely right,” he said. 

Greene’s criticism was dismissed by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who said she was ill-informed.

Which side will blink first—and how many people will be hurt as the shutdown drags on? Stay tuned.

—Jimmy Boegle, publisher/executive editor