That ‘tax loophole’ might be the reason America still builds things



As President Donald Trump delivers Tuesday’s State of the Union, lawmakers will applaud calls for economic strength, innovation, and American competitiveness. Many of those same politicians, however, attack the very policies that make those goals possible. Their favorite target: so-called “tax loopholes,” routinely described as corruption or favoritism.

That label distorts how tax policy works.

What critics dismiss as ‘loopholes’ often serve as the incentives that help ordinary Americans — not just the rich — build, grow, and prosper.

Politicians denounce “loopholes” as if businesses are exploiting accidental gaps in laws Congress never meant to create. The implication follows: close the loopholes, collect more revenue, spend more money, and the country improves.

That framing misses the point. Most so-called loopholes are not accidents. Congress created them on purpose to encourage behavior that strengthens the economy.

Tax credits and deductions are not tricks. They are policy tools. In many cases, they work better than direct spending programs because they rely on private-sector decision-making instead of bureaucratic discretion.

That distinction matters during a period of rapid technological change. Consider artificial intelligence.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last year built on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act by making full and immediate capital expensing — commonly called bonus depreciation — a permanent feature of the tax code. That provision allows businesses to deduct the full cost of qualifying capital investments in the year they make them, rather than stretching deductions over many years.

Critics call that a “giveaway.” It is better understood as a growth policy.

In practical terms, full expensing matters whenever a company makes a large upfront investment — servers, advanced manufacturing equipment, or specialized hardware needed to build AI systems. Under traditional depreciation rules, a business recovers those costs slowly. That delays the tax benefit and discourages large productive investments.

Full expensing removes that penalty. It aligns the tax code with economic reality by letting businesses recover costs when they take the risk. It also works automatically, without bureaucrats deciding which firms or industries deserve support.

That design is intentional. If Congress wants more of a productive activity, it can tax it less.

The AI boom illustrates the point. The United States is competing to lead the world in private AI investment. Data centers are going up at record speed. Venture capital is funding startups that did not exist a few years ago. Large firms are racing to expand computing infrastructure for next-generation models. That kind of investment grows where policy rewards risk-taking.

By making bonus depreciation permanent, lawmakers reduced uncertainty and signaled that America intends to remain the best place to invest capital.

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Shutthiphong Chandaeng via iStock/Getty Images

This provision does not benefit only trillion-dollar corporations with armies of accountants. Any business making qualifying investments can use it: a mid-sized manufacturer installing robotics, a regional logistics company upgrading its fleet, or a startup buying high-performance computing equipment. The tax treatment is the same.

In fact, the largest long-term effect may land far from Silicon Valley. Small and medium-sized businesses make up roughly half the U.S. economy. For those firms, cash flow often determines whether they can hire, expand, or modernize. Immediate expensing can make the difference.

This is not a “loophole.” It is deliberate economic policy.

Critics often argue that provisions like full expensing “cost” the government money. That view ignores the broader effect. When businesses invest more, they produce more. More production supports hiring, wages, and taxable income across the economy.

I work directly with small and medium-sized businesses navigating a tax code that is often caricatured in political debate. I have seen how these so-called loopholes function in real life. They are not exclusive perks for the wealthy or giant corporations. Their benefits extend to workers, customers, and communities through jobs, innovation, and competition.

What critics dismiss as “loopholes” often serve as the incentives that help ordinary Americans — not just the rich — build, grow, and prosper.

Uncle Sam does not always get tax policy right. But when Congress uses the tax code to encourage productive behavior instead of punishing it, the results can be transformative.

The next time a politician thunders about “tax loopholes,” ask a simple question: Is it really a mistake — or a policy designed to make the American economy stronger?

If parental rights can be bypassed in Alabama, no state is safe



Millions of Americans fled deep-blue states like California and New York because they believed the rules were different elsewhere. They moved to places like Alabama to escape lockdowns, mandates, and ideological capture of public institutions. They believed red states meant red lines.

That belief is proving dangerously naïve.

If red states cannot enforce their own parental rights laws, then the red-state refuge is a myth.

Alabama is one of the most conservative states in the country. It has a Republican supermajority and some of the strongest parental rights laws on the books: bans on gender-transition procedures for minors, curriculum transparency requirements, legal definitions of male and female, protections for girls’ sports, and a rare requirement that parents must opt in before schools provide any mental health services, including discussions of suicide or bullying.

And yet those protections are now being quietly hollowed out — not by legislators, but by bureaucratic subversion.

The footnote loophole

The Alabama State Department of Education is undermining parental consent by inserting exceptions into the fine print of a required opt-in form distributed after a new parental consent law took effect Oct. 1.

The law itself is unambiguous. Parents must provide prior written consent before schools offer mental health services, including discussions related to suicide or bullying. But the department claims in the footnotes that mental health-related conversations may still occur “as appropriate” in other school settings — and that these interactions do not require parental permission.

The ALSDE has stated that “instruction, advisement, and occasional interventions are not subject to opt-in requirements, as these are regular duties of school counselors and other educators.”

That language does more than stretch the statute. It appears designed to bypass it entirely. When schools engage minors in discussions with clear psychological or therapeutic implications — trauma, gender identity, suicidal ideation — without parental consent, they move into legally and constitutionally questionable territory.

Same playbook, new label

Parents have seen this before. During COVID, mandates were imposed first and justified later. Dissent was sidelined. Authority flowed downward, not outward.

Now the same model is being applied to school-based mental health. Whether embedded in social-emotional learning, “student wellness,” or character education, the result is the same: psychological interventions delivered by school employees, not licensed physicians, without parental oversight.

This is not a gray area. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed parents’ fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children. When school systems create end runs around opt-in requirements — especially on matters involving suicide or gender ideology — they invite serious legal and civil rights challenges.

No state is immune

This is not an Alabama anomaly.

Illinois now mandates mental health screenings for public school students, with no opt-in. Mississippi is rolling out a statewide “youth wellness platform.” Tennessee is placing mental health clinicians in every public school through a $250 million trust fund. Ohio is expanding school-based health centers that embed mental health treatment directly on campus.

These programs erase the line between education and health care. They normalize a system in which children’s emotions are monitored, recorded, and interpreted by the state without parental consent. That is state-sponsored emotional profiling.

Who decides what helps?

This debate is not about whether children need support. It is about who decides what support looks like — and who has the authority to provide it.

Parents possess a fundamental right to make decisions about their children’s mental and physical health. The Supreme Court’s decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor reaffirmed that when schools impose ideologically loaded services or content without notice or opt-out, they burden parental rights and religious liberty.

RELATED: ‘Incredible victory’: Federal judge prohibits trans-related grooming efforts in California schools

Photo by Luis Soto/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Alabama’s counseling framework includes DEI-driven language encouraging students to “identify individual differences” and “describe and respect differences among individuals.” In practice, that language provides a vehicle for embedding gender ideology and values-based content into guidance lessons.

When that content is paired with school-based interventions, the issue is no longer education. It is ideological formation funded by taxpayers and imposed without consent.

Alabama’s warning

If this can happen in Alabama — arguably the most pro-parental-rights state in the country — then no state is safe.

Agencies should not be allowed to bury statutes in footnotes, reinterpret laws by memo, or use therapeutic language to bypass parental authority. These are not technical disagreements. They are unconstitutional and demand legal pushback.

If red states cannot enforce their own parental rights laws, then the red-state refuge is a myth.

Strong laws matter, but enforcement matters more. Parents must demand both.

Second chances kill innocents



Republicans might finally take me seriously after years of warning: America suffers not from mass incarceration, but from mass under-incarceration. The system needs tougher sentences, not softer ones.

The brutal murder of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, allegedly at the hands of career criminal Decarlos Brown Jr. on a Charlotte commuter train, didn’t reveal anything new. It shocked the nation precisely because it put on camera what has become routine in our cities since the bipartisan “criminal justice reform” wave dismantled Reagan-era tough-on-crime policies.

Legislators will have a choice when they reconvene: Pass strong reforms like these or watch more innocent people die.

For every man like Brown who slipped through the cracks, at least 10 more walk free when they should be locked up for life.

Brown had been arrested 14 times since 2007. His record included assault, felony firearms possession, robbery, and larceny. He didn’t see the inside of a prison until 2014, when an armed robbery conviction earned him a mere four years. He racked up more arrests after his release in 2020, but neither prison nor psychiatric commitment followed. The justice system looked the other way.

The result was predictable. Brown’s obvious mental instability made him even more dangerous than an ordinary criminal. Yet over the last 15 years, Republicans and Democrats alike embraced “reform” that made second chances for the violent and insane a top priority. They weakened sentencing, gutted mandatory minimums, downgraded juvenile crimes, eased up on drugs and vagrancy, and abandoned broken-windows policing. Hard-won gains against crime and homelessness evaporated.

The final insult: Brown was last released on cashless bail by North Carolina Magistrate Judge Teresa Stokes, allegedly affiliated with a pro-criminal “second chances” group. But violent offenders don’t just get second chances. They get third, fourth, and 15th chances. Most criminals never even face charges. Prosecutors downgrade cases. Convicts skate on early release. The cycle spins on.

Look at the numbers. In 2024, the FBI’s incident-based reporting system logged over 12.2 million crimes. Strip away drug and gun cases, and the picture remains grim: 2.4 million violent crimes with no arrest. Another 1.25 million serious property crimes — arson, burglary, motor vehicle theft — with no arrest. Every year, more than a million offenders escape justice. Meanwhile, the nation’s prison and jail population sits at roughly 1.9 million.

Even when police make arrests, punishment rarely follows. In 2021, only 15,604 people went to prison for robbery despite 121,000 reported incidents. Just 4,894 went away for car theft out of 550,000 cases. Even homicide convictions lag far behind — just 6,081 murderers entered prison against more than 15,000 killings.

This isn’t a statistical fluke. It’s a system that fails to punish violent crime year after year.

RELATED: Iryna Zarutska’s name should shame the woke

Screenshot/Charlotte Transit Authority

So what needs to change? Here’s a checklist every state legislature should adopt in the next session:

  1. Ban public encampments on streets, sidewalks, and public property; allow lawsuits against localities that fail to enforce.
  2. Elevate porch piracy penalties, following Florida’s lead.
  3. Impose stiff punishments for organized retail theft and flash mobs.
  4. Tighten “truth-in-sentencing” laws to ensure violent offenders serve their full terms.
  5. Pass anti-gang statutes that cross county lines, fund prosecutions, and mandate enhanced sentences for gang-related crimes.
  6. Let prosecutors, not judges, decide whether to try violent juveniles as adults.
  7. Set mandatory minimums for carjackings, especially for repeat offenders.
  8. Impose harsh sentences on felons caught with firearms, and harsher still when they use them.
  9. Require parole violators to finish their sentences.
  10. Hold repeat offenders without bond; revoke pretrial release when new crimes are committed.
  11. Fund prosecutors’ offices to clear the backlog of violent felony cases.
  12. Strengthen “three strikes” laws to eliminate loopholes.
  13. Apply the death penalty to fentanyl traffickers.
  14. Mandate quarterly public reporting of judges’ sentencing records in a searchable database.
  15. Criminalize squatting and streamline removal.

Legislators will have a choice when they reconvene: Pass strong reforms like these or watch more innocent people die.

Social media outrage won’t fix this crisis. Neither will empty calls for “accountability.” As Iryna’s grieving family warned, “This could have been anyone riding the light rail that night.”

That’s the truth — and unless lawmakers act, it will be the truth again tomorrow.

Six years to removal? Inside America’s broken immigration courts



In drab, windowless rooms strung along a tight corridor, migrants who have flooded into the United States in recent years trickle before immigration judges each weekday morning.

These makeshift courtrooms are a far cry from the scorched border with Mexico and busy ports and airports through which these millions of immigrants have entered the United States, almost all illegally. But despite the differences in miles, atmosphere, and often language, the people appearing in U.S. immigration court (“alien respondents,” in legal terms) know what is afoot.

Migrants displayed a savvy understanding of immigration law that allows the adjudication of the proceedings to stretch for years.

In many cases, they are making their first appearance after being in the U.S. for years, and with careful pleadings and use of appeals, many know they can stay here for years to come. While Trump administration immigration tactics — such as arrests and deportations — dominate the headlines, the situation in court, where most of the final decisions will be made, is another thing the administration is trying to change.

“A surprising number of the aliens know how to work the system in an attempt to run out the clock on the Trump administration, by requesting serial continuances and filing frivolous or otherwise questionable appeals and by motions to reopen,” said Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge now with the Center for Immigration Studies, which opposes wide-open immigration. “Some will be successful, but as the recent immigration court arrests indicate, the administration is attempting to limit those efforts.”

Recently, RealClearInvestigations observed days of immigration court proceedings to gain insight into the current state of a system with a backlog of more than 3.6 million people, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks immigration court figures through monthly Freedom of Information Act requests. New Orleans is but one thread in a sprawling web of often obscure courts, stretching from Massachusetts to Washington and from Saipan to Puerto Rico.

From a first appearance to an asylum hearing, the New Orleans courts seemed busy. This reflects the fact that historically, most immigrants to the U.S. follow their legal schedule, which begins with a “Notice to Appear” being issued to them either when they are apprehended at the border or subsequently after they have been paroled into the 48 contiguous states.

RELATED: Mass deportation or bust: Trump’s one shot to get it right

Photo by VERONICA G. CARDENAS/AFP via Getty Images

“It’s never been the case that people aren’t showing up en masse,” said Kevin A. Gregg, an immigration attorney in California who hosts the weekly “Immigration Review” podcast. “The number of those who show up has always been very high, especially among people who have been in the U.S. a very long time.”

Paradoxically, however, the Trump administration’s recent vow to push arrests of illegal immigrants to 3,000 a day, along with some changes it has made to how it handles court cases, could serve to make attendance less regular, according to Gregg and others critical of Trump’s push. As attorneys and court officials told RealClearInvestigations, “Never underestimate the community,” meaning arrivals know the system from those who have gone through it before them. Now, if conventional wisdom says court appearances could lead to an earlier expulsion from the U.S., those here illegally will shy away.

“With immigration court specifically, ICE has been dismissing court proceedings in order to then immediately detain noncitizens and place them in expedited removal proceedings where they have far less rights and no eligibility for bond,” Gregg said. “Whether correct or not, many noncitizens will likely begin to view this as a trap and may not show up to immigration court out of fear. I don’t condone not showing up, of course, but I believe it’s a possible foreseeable consequence of what ICE is doing right now.”

Already, the Trump administration’s aggressive approach has sparked litigation and civil disturbances, from a Milwaukee judge allegedly helping “alien respondents” escape criminal proceedings to the recent riots in Los Angeles.

A long process

One late May morning, there were four New Orleans immigration courts operating, with a total of nearly 140 people on the docket, most of them first appearances. On this day, no-shows composed a very small percentage of those on the “master calendars,” as the morning dockets are known. In Judge Joseph La Rocca’s courtroom, for instance, only five of the more than 30 respondents listed on the master calendar did not appear; they were quickly handled “in absentia” and deemed removable.

That same day, in Judge Alberto A. De Puy’s courtroom, as many as six languages were used. The court has a Spanish translator present at all times, but for other languages, interpreters on the East Coast join by phone. In the hearings RealClearInvestigations witnessed, these involved Arabic, Hindi, Hassaniya, Turkish, and Konkani, reflecting a large percentage of Middle Eastern or Asian immigrants. Paperwork in the court’s small waiting room is available in seven languages, including Creole and Wolof, an African tongue.

De Puy’s master calendar hearing was a Zoom session with migrants at the federal detention center in Jena, Louisiana. There, men in dull gray scrubs sat in rows, while De Puy scrambled to find translators. This proceeding was further complicated by a protest outside the Jena facility, which has gained notoriety by holding the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil and other foreign nationals arrested by federal authorities since President Trump took office.

No one knows exactly how many people appear in U.S. immigration court each day. “That would be a great statistic, wouldn’t it?” said Susan Long, director of Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. But there are more than 700 U.S. immigration judges, whom the attorney general appoints to the administrative posts under the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. If somehow the New Orleans morning sessions RealClearInvestigations followed could be extended daily to each judge’s courtroom, perhaps a dent could be made in the backlog, which includes more than 2 million pending asylum cases, according to TRAC.

That’s a fanciful assumption, of course, and at first glance, the looming numbers seem daunting to the Trump administration’s goal of sharply reducing or clearing the dockets. Still, some experts see promising signs as the figures for illegal crossings plummet.

If conventional wisdom says court appearances could lead to an earlier expulsion from the US, those here illegally will shy away.

“The situation is improving,” Arthur said. “It’s as if Trump patched a hole in the side of a boat, and now he’s bailing out the water the boat took in.”

For all the hue and cry about due process protections that have captivated activists and the federal bench over the past four months, the migrants appearing in New Orleans displayed a savvy understanding of immigration law that allows the adjudication of the proceedings to stretch for years.

The respondents sat quietly on wooden benches, in some cases accompanied by children. Most were neatly dressed and with their hair carefully braided or combed. The children appeared to be something of a prop, as each time they appeared, the judge asked that they attend school instead of court. Even on a first appearance, many of the respondents seemed to have a good idea of what would happen.

Most master calendar cases involved a “notice to appear,” and few of those were recent. For example, most of the people RCI observed in court the morning of May 22 had received their notice to appear a year and a half ago, in 2023, although a handful had received them as recently as last December.

Few of the immigrants had lawyers, which court observers called a wise move. If it was a first appearance, the judge asked if they wanted representation, noting that while the Sixth Amendment does not entitle them to an attorney, the court maintains a list of immigration attorneys who may offer their services at affordable rates or pro bono. Invariably, the person requested time to find a lawyer and thus received another court date — on these May days, that was set for seven months later in December.

For the others not requesting more time to find a lawyer, the judge rapidly read boilerplate language and determined that the person had entered the U.S. illegally and was subject to removal. At that point, the judge asked the respondents if they wanted to “designate a country for removal should removal become necessary.” Here, the respondents or their attorneys invariably declined.

This is a well-understood delay tactic that often fails. Despite the lack of response, the judge quickly set a country for removal and moved to do the same for a removal hearing. The judges perused their computer screens, presumably for scheduling purposes, and in some cases then scheduled that hearing for 2029.

In other words, almost all the “alien respondents” were given a lot more time. It was not unusual to see people having six years or more in the U.S. between the day of their arrival and a removal proceeding.

‘A lot more detention’

The legal process is different for those in detention, and attorneys and court officials told RCI that “there is a lot more detention” now under the Trump administration. Judge De Puy’s master calendar involved the detained men in Jena on one screen, with the occasional immigration lawyer cutting in from a separate office and a government lawyer from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of the Principal Legal Advisor appearing on yet another video screen.

De Puy gave those making a first appearance months to try to obtain counsel, but he was less forgiving of those who were making a second appearance and asked for more time after failing to obtain representation. Several men — all those appearing were men — requested more time, but De Puy did not grant it in the cases RCI observed.

Some men requested “voluntary departure.” Arthur said this is a ploy that, in the past, allowed immigrants to melt into the interior, thereby delaying their cases, and the government lawyer seemed to have that in mind as he agreed to “voluntary departure” only “with safeguards,” which meant the men would remain in detention until their travel arrangements were made. Just how that might happen and when, given that the migrant is responsible for them, was unclear.

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Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

There were other oddities. For example, De Puy twice asked a man from India, who entered the U.S. in December 2023, if he would like to “designate a country of removal.” After not answering the first time, the man then replied, “I can’t go back to India.”

“The court is going to designate India as the country of removal,” De Puy said immediately, at which point the man said he would “like to go back to India” and requested “voluntary departure.”

Of those migrants held at Jena who appeared that morning, only those seeking voluntary departure seemed destined to leave the U.S. soon.

The emphasis on detention is not the only major change the proceedings appeared to have under Trump, compared to when RealClearInvestigations first visited immigration court in 2022. Then, the government attorney would often offer what was dubbed “prosecutorial discretion.”

This amounted to a “get out of court free” pass. The judge told the person receiving prosecutorial discretion, “You are free to go and live your life, and the government has no interest in removing you from the country.”

Biden-era prosecutorial discretion

It’s not clear how many illegal immigrants benefited from the Biden-era prosecutorial discretion, as the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about it in 2022 or now. Those who received it were in addition to the more than 2.8 million the Biden administration simply paroled into the country immediately, a novel twist to immigration law subsequently ruled illegal by federal judges.

Under Trump, a similar step is taken with a different tone. In some instances, the Department of Homeland Security’s lawyer announced the government was “dropping charges” as the person is “no longer an enforcement priority.” Doing so does not change the fact that these people have previously been ruled “removable,” and by dropping the charges, the Department of Homeland Security can arrest and deport the illegal immigrant.

Of those migrants who appeared in court that morning, only those seeking voluntary departure seemed destined to leave the US soon.

That has led to arrests right outside immigration courts from Boston to New Orleans and elsewhere. While Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can’t be outside every courtroom every day, this emphatic new move is precisely the one that could lead immigrants to eschew court as word spreads in the community about what is happening.

Judge La Rocca seemed concerned about this development, which, like some of the novel twists to immigration law under the Biden administration, has sparked federal litigation. At one point, when the government suddenly moved to drop the charges, La Rocca asked the immigrant if he wanted to accept that arrangement, which would leave him “without status” and still eligible for removal, or if he wished to continue to a removal proceeding. The overarching message was that the U.S. may move to deport the person.

La Rocca warned the government to be up front about what this might mean for the respondent, saying he “had heard of cases where he walked out the door and was arrested.”

Although the administration has endured criticism over the lack of due process for migrants deported on planes to El Salvador, judges in New Orleans unfailingly made clear to those in court the options available to them. In nearly every case, when the judge asked a person if he wanted to request asylum, the answer was “yes.”

Seeking asylum

That requires another future court date, usually years down the road. Asylum proceedings are not open to the public absent approval from the judge and the seeker, but RCI obtained such permission to witness two hearings.

In the first, a couple from Honduras who came to the United States in April 2022 had requested asylum on the grounds that they were afraid to return. The woman testified that her brother had been murdered and that when they tried to bring information about the case to Honduran police, in a town hours away from their hometown, a masked man brandished a gun at them. Suspicious cars then began to lurk around their home.

The government attorney asked why they could not move somewhere else in Honduras, or if they had tried to go anywhere other than the U.S. They had not, they testified. The husband said his sister is associated with drug gangs, and consequently, the couple did not feel safe anywhere in Honduras. The woman testified she never planned to immigrate, but for their family’s welfare, they fled here.

La Rocca considered the case privately for some 90 minutes, then denied the asylum application. He told the couple he believed their testimony, but that their case did not meet the asylum requirements, which specify credible evidence that the applicant fears discrimination at home because of race, sex, religion, membership in social groups, or fear of torture.

RELATED: Majority of Americans support deportation of all illegal immigrants

Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images

But that does not end the couple’s immigration court odyssey. La Rocca asked if they wished to appeal his decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals. When they said they did, La Rocca told them they must file that appeal in the next 30 days, which would lead to yet another court appearance.

The second hearing RCI witnessed was before Judge Eric Marsteller. That case involved a 2022 application from an El Salvador woman and her two sons, who have each also filed separate asylum claims.

For unclear reasons, the woman’s attorneys withdrew in February, and she told Marsteller that she had been unable to find a replacement since then. Although she has family in the U.S. — a sister who has been granted asylum, a brother, and her mother — all of the supporting evidence for her claim of horrific abuse from her father came from a letter sent by a former partner in El Salvador.

Marsteller accepted the letter but told her it couldn’t be entered into the record because it was in Spanish. A man in court, identified as her stepfather, stated that the woman and her sons live with him in Louisiana, and he informed the judge that he would be responsible for them.

After more than an hour of the hearing, during which the sons departed the courtroom when the woman described her allegations of abuse, Marsteller asked the government for its position. The government attorney informed the court that the notice the woman had received was for a master calendar appearance, not an asylum hearing. Startled, Marsteller was forced to schedule another hearing. It will be in December 2026.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

California’s budget trick is leaving poor patients to die



California politicians love to brag. GDP near $4 trillion. “Fourth-largest economy in the world.” Progressive pundits cite those numbers as proof that big government works.

But behind the glossy stats sits a system bloated with grift, distortion, and federal abuse. Nowhere does that dysfunction show more clearly than in California’s shell game with Medicaid reimbursements — a sleight of hand known as intergovernmental transfers, or IGTs.

Any private-sector CEO who ran a company like this would face prosecution. In Sacramento, these people get re-elected.

At first glance, IGTs look benign. Counties, fire districts, and public ambulance providers send money to California’s Medicaid program, Medi-Cal. The state then uses those funds to draw matching federal dollars.

In theory, it’s a cost-sharing mechanism to support care for low-income patients.

In practice, California weaponizes IGTs as a legalized money-laundering scheme. The state punishes private providers, guts rural health care, props up political patrons, and hides it all behind the banner of equity.

Here’s how the racket works: Private ambulance companies get stuck with the standard Medicaid reimbursement rate — $118 per ground transport. Public agencies, including fire departments and county EMS units, receive up to $1,400 per run. Same patient. Same service. Ten times the payout.

This isn’t health care policy. It’s a rigged system.

Private ambulance companies can’t compete. Most operate at a loss in low-income and rural regions. Once they go under, they don’t get replaced. The 911 calls still come — but the ambulances come slower. Or not at all.

And in emergencies, minutes cost lives.

California’s IGT scheme isn’t just a technical policy failure. It’s a public safety crisis disguised as social justice.

The people paying the highest price are the working poor — the same communities Sacramento claims to champion. These residents live in neighborhoods left uncovered. They suffer delayed response times. They watch public-sector unions cash in while their own emergency care collapses.

Meanwhile, the state expands Medicaid to undocumented immigrants — ignoring federal guidelines — while using IGTs to balance the budget. These patients can’t legally receive full Medicaid benefits, but California finds the loopholes. State officials cook the books to collect federal money anyway.

It’s a violation of the law. No one stops it.

Sacramento calls this fiscal ingenuity. Washington looks the other way. In truth, it’s federal fraud.

The cash goes to public agencies, which funnel it into inflated salaries, no-show contracts, and political favors. Rural ambulance crews shut down. Small hospitals cut staff. And working-class Californians wait longer to get help they used to take for granted.

RELATED: Every taxpayer ‘should be raising holy hell’

Blaze Media illustration

Any private-sector CEO who ran a company like this would face prosecution. In Sacramento, these people get re-elected.

This isn’t bureaucratic inertia. It’s engineered corruption. California’s 2024 and 2025 State Plan Amendments codify this scheme in black and white. They grant preferential reimbursement to government providers while sidelining the private sector completely.

That’s not policy. It’s pay-to-play.

And it’s working exactly as intended: Drive out private actors, centralize control, and soak the federal treasury while calling it compassion.

The fix is simple. Enforce federal Medicaid law. End special treatment for public agencies. Level the field so private ambulance companies — especially in rural areas — can survive.

Without reform, the collapse continues. The IGT scam rewards states for padding GDP with fake Medicaid spending. It rewards failure. It punishes success. And it leaves real people — sick people, poor people — waiting for ambulances that never come.

California can keep calling itself the world’s fourth-largest economy. But those numbers mean nothing when the foundation is rotten.

The ambulance isn’t coming. The budget is built on lies. And Gavin Newsom is on television doing Baghdad Bob impressions while the system falls apart.

In 7 States, Officials Claim To Request Voter ID But Allow Paperwork Loopholes

If someone lacks ID while voting in person... they must simply sign forms claiming to be the voter, and officials will let them cast a ballot.

Oregon’s Voting Portal Appears To Let Anyone Cast An Overseas Voter’s Ballot With Just His Name And Birthday

Fraudsters may be able to cast ballots of Oregon voters who are overseas (and potentially those who are domestic) using an online loophole.

Find out where illegal immigrants are allowed to vote



According to the mainstream media and its loyal leftist followers, the great replacement theory is just another extremist, right-wing, MAGA, conspiracy theory.

But with everything happening because of our open border, Sara Gonzales is fairly confident that they’re wrong.

“It’s just that places like New York are already doing this in local elections. They are allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections,” Gonzales says.

Now, experts are warning that a loophole in Arizona’s election procedures may allow non-citizens to cast federal election ballots in the 2024 presidential election.

Arizona’s secretary of state, Adrien Fontes, crafted the election procedures manual to permit individuals with unverifiable citizenship to register as “federal only voters” in order to participate in federal elections.

Fontes, of course, happens to be a Democrat.

“This is happening,” Gonzales says angrily. “As much as they want to claim this is not happening, this absolutely is happening.”

“They are literally trying to create loopholes so that illegal immigrants can vote in federal elections,” she continues. “We’re talking about the Presidential Election. If you don’t think that this is what the whole master plan has been, I don’t know what to tell you at this point.”


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Here's Where Illegal Immigrants Can Vote
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Here's Where Illegal Immigrants Can Vote

The ATF’s new ‘loophole fix’ is going to BOIL YOUR BLOOD



A new rule has been proposed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in order to fix a so-called “gun show loophole.” The rule will crack down on gun owners who sell their guns at gun shows by increasing what is already required to obtain a federal firearms license for gun sellers across the country.

According to ATF Director Steven Dettelbach, “an increasing number of individuals engaged in the business of selling firearms for profit have chosen not to register as a federal firearms licensee, as required by law. Instead, they’ve sought to make money through the off-book, illicit sale of firearms.”

Glenn Beck knows what they’re doing, and he doesn’t like it.

“They are clearly going after and saying ‘These people are trying to make money,’” Glenn says.

"They’re really working hard to keep us safe.”

The ATF has also issued rules that would apply to more security checks on gun owners and sellers who use unregulated stabilizing braces to effectively transform pistols into more deadly rifles.

Glenn believes that in order to enforce a rule of this kind, the ATF would have to implement a federal gun registry — which Congress has opposed since the founding of our nation.

“To be able to enforce this, they have to have a gun registry. And the ATF has started a federal gun registry,” he says. “Congress has been against that since 1791.”

Despite the history, Glenn doesn’t have much faith in Congress any more.

“Congress has stopped doing their job, and I’ll tell you why they did it: because they just want to be re-elected. That’s it. They don’t want to do anything unpopular, they just want to be the ones that you call up and say ‘Hey, good job,’ or ‘You gotta stop these guys,’ so they can be the police,” he explains.

However, even if Congress was doing its job, Glenn believes these new rules are purely “inflammatory.”

“They know what this causes. This causes all kinds of agitation, this causes all kinds of distrust, and they’re never going to come for guns,” he says, before asking co-host Stu Burguiere if he thinks they’ll actually go door to door to take Americans’ guns.

“God, I hope not,” Stu responds.


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