Trump administration officials announced on Wednesday that the federal government would withhold $259 million in Medicaid funds to Minnesota, the latest effort by the federal government to pull funding from Democratic-led states as President Trump rails against a major welfare fraud scandal there.
Federal judges have blocked most of the Trump administration’s efforts to claw back funds from states like Minnesota, New York, California, Illinois and Colorado. The states have decried the cuts as politically motivated, adding that they would harm hundreds of thousands of people. The Trump administration has pointed to allegations of fraud to justify the cuts.
The latest action targeting Medicaid funds will almost certainly be challenged in court.
Vice President JD Vance, who led a news conference detailing the plans, said that he felt “quite confident that we have the authority to do this,” adding that the Trump administration had to “turn the screws on them a little bit so they take this fraud seriously.” Mr. Trump had tasked Mr. Vance in his recent State of the Union speech with leading a new anti-fraud effort.
Responding on social media, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, a Democrat, said that the move was part of a “campaign of retribution.”
“This has nothing to do with fraud,” Mr. Walz said. “The agents Trump allegedly sent to investigate fraud are shooting protesters and arresting children. His D.O.J. is gutting the U.S. Attorney’s Office and crippling their ability to prosecute fraud. And every week Trump pardons another fraudster.”
Mr. Walz was referencing the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the detention of the 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, the firing of federal prosecutors and Mr. Trump’s pardons of convicted fraudsters like Adriana Camberos, David Gentile and Todd and Julie Chrisley.
In January, the Trump administration moved to withhold funding for food stamps and other hunger relief programs in Minnesota. A federal judge blocked that order. The Department of Health and Human Services also tried to freeze $10 billion in funding for child care subsidies, social services and cash support for low-income families in Minnesota, New York, California, Illinois and Colorado. A federal judge blocked that order, too.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration again moved to withhold a smaller pot of Health Department funds that included grants aimed at curbing H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted infections. A federal judge blocked that move, and his order broadly enjoined the government from terminating public health grants “based on undisclosed agency priorities.”
The cuts to social and health care services came as Mr. Trump has fixated on allegations of fraud in Minnesota, claiming, without evidence, that similar large fraud schemes are playing out elsewhere in Democratic-led states.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly claimed that there is so much fraud in the system that his administration would be able to balance the national budget once he eliminated the waste in Democratic-led states — a mathematically impossible feat, given the amount of funding involved compared with the size of the deficit. In reality, the annual deficit has risen significantly in the first year of Mr. Trump’s second term. The federal government is now expected to run a $23.1 trillion budget shortfall over the next nine years, according to forecasts by the Congressional Budget Office, a $1.4 trillion increase since Mr. Trump returned to the Oval Office.
Chris Cameron is a Times reporter covering Washington, focusing on breaking news and the Trump administration.
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