Welker: They say the house is not in session because you don't want to swear in the newly elected democratic congresswoman who would be a critical vote to releasing the Epstein files.
Johnson: It's totally absurd. This has nothing to do with that. It's another red herring.
If the God Johnson claims to worship exists, Pastor Mike is *not* going to enjoy his afterlife.
Fact Check: Mike Johnson's Biggest Lies About Health Care and Undocumented Immigrants
flip.it/IMO_oe— Lee Heffner (@leeheffer.bsky.social) October 5, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Per Rolling Stone, “The Republican speaker continues to push the false narrative that Democrats are responsible for shutting down the government because they want to fund health care for undocumented people”:
House Speaker Mike Johnson continued to blame Democrats for the government shutdown, using misleading Republican talking points that insist that Democratic leadership is pushing to fund health care for undocumented immigrants.
Johnson said Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation that Democrats “want to spend $1.5 trillion, and they want to return hard-working taxpayer dollars to fund health care for illegal aliens. It is in their bill. Go to speaker.gov and see it for yourself. Page 57, Section 2141. They’re using this for political games, and it is shameful, and real people are getting hurt.”
“I have looked at that text,” host Margaret Brennan replied. “It doesn’t explicitly say what you are indicating.”…
We went to the Speaker’s site, which links to the Democratic proposal. The specific section Johnson mentioned — section 2141 on page 57 — repeals the changes to Medicaid made by Trump and the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). Brennan’s pushback got Johnson to admit that he’s not just talking about “illegal aliens” but also non-citizens, as in people here legally. It’s an important distinction.
It’s important to note that undocumented immigrants broadly do not qualify for Medicaid, Affordable Care Act subsidies, or other federally-funded health care coverage…
Further, under the OBBBA, many lawfully present immigrants who are eligible for Medicaid — such as asylum seekers, refugees, and survivors of human trafficking — will be rendered ineligible for the program in 2026 thanks to a section of the law titled “Alien Medicaid eligibility.” If that provision stays in place, then next year, approximately 1.4 million immigrants lawfully in the U.S. will lose health coverage because Republicans severely restricted access to lawful permanent residents, Cuban and Haitian immigrants, and citizens of the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau. Democrats are pressing to reverse that.
Johnson also claimed on NBC’s Meet the Press: “What the Democrats are demanding is that illegal aliens that care for them in an emergency room should be reimbursed at a higher rate.”
Welker: Are you suggesting that ER doctors check people's immigration status before they render emergency care?
Johnson No. Again, it's another red herring. What the Democrats are demanding is that illegal aliens that care for them in an emergency room should be reimbursed at a… pic.twitter.com/TxX4Zeb7ga
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 5, 2025
Hospitals may be reimbursed for emergency room care given to undocumented immigrants due to a Reagan-era law (the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act) that requires emergency rooms provide screening exams and stabilization care to everyone who comes through their doors seeking care, regardless of immigration status. Under the OBBBA, those reimbursements will decrease. Hospitals would still be obligated to deliver care to everyone, but they will not receive the same amount as they would have before OBBBA, also known as H.R. 1.
“H.R. 1 reduces the federal matching funds for states for some of this emergency care,” explained Leonardo Cuello, research professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center for Children and Families. “This provision does not actually change coverage for immigrants, and indeed the CBO scored it as having no impact on coverage, because hospitals must still provide the health care, and states must still pay them for the health care, it’s just that the federal government will pay a smaller share of the cost. In other words, it’s just a cut to federal funding for states to reimburse providers furnishing emergency services (which is still required).” …
Johnson on NBC accused Democrats of wanting to “to claw back $50 billion that we put in for rural hospitals to prop them up,” but that funding only offsets approximately one-third of the federal Medicaid funding that rural hospitals lost due to the OBBBA. Fully restoring Medicaid funding to rural hospitals would do more for them than the GOP’s five-year temporary rural health fund.
Democrats are also insisting on extending federal subsidies for people who purchase coverage through the ACA marketplace. If Republicans get their way, and those subsidies are lost, then ACA premiums could more than double. An estimated 10 million Americans, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, could lose their health insurance between the GOP’s Medicaid cuts and the loss of subsidies…
TL; DR — if you want something easier to share on social media:
FACT FOCUS: Democrats did not shut down the government to give health care to illegal immigrants.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) October 4, 2025 at 5:00 PM
War for Ukraine Day 1,319: The Cost
Michael Bersin
“….We’ve lost thirty-seven percent of our agricultural markets around the world because of these tariff wars. Thirty-seven percent. China wasn’t prepared the first time around. All their hogs were sick, they didn’t have any supplies of row crops. Well, one thing you can’t say about the Chinese is they just sit around and wait for another disaster. They don’t do that.
They went down to Brazil. They helped cut down about six percent more of the rainforest. The put in railroad tracks and better rail to the coasts and then they built better harbors for those big grain [inaudible] ships that come through there. And they went from buying thirteen percent of their row crops for Brazil to now buying forty-three percent of their row crops from Brazil.
Oh, and by the way, because he’s a Trump mini me we gave Argentina a twenty-billion dollar bailout, which they use to abolish the tax on soybean sales so that China could come in and but billions of dollars of soybeans from them subsidized by the American government.
You can’t make this stuff up….”
Will Westmoreland (The Back Forty) was the keynote speaker today at an annual gathering of Missouri’s 4th District Democrats at Truman State Park.
“…I hear a lot of similarities between their rhetoric and the rhetoric of Fascists that we heard back in the day.
So we’ve got to keep fighting. It feels different now, doesn’t it? For those of you who are a little gray around the ears like I am, it feels different this time. I mean, yeah, we were fighting for important causes in the eighties and the nineties, etcetera. But this time it feels different. It feels like it’s not just a policy that’s at stake. It feels like it’s our country that’s at stake. [voices] The soul of our country…’
…They can have our Democracy when they pry it from our cold, dead hands. And I hate to be melodramatic about it, but that’s how I feel about it. I’m gonna fight to the very end to defend this Democracy and I know you will, too.
The good news is this. The majority of people in this country are on your side…”
4th Congressional District Democrats – Truman State Park – Will Westmoreland – October 5, 2025
piratedan
Pastor Mike really puts paid to the idea that there’s any kind of moral high ground. If there is ever a reckoning, I hope that it will be the kind of emotional motherfucker for him that he so richly deserves.
trollhattan
@piratedan:
He should be begging Donny for troops to put down the crime in his very crimey state. But noooooo.
Rusty
Watching the comments on our local message boards, there are a bunch of people that would be happy to let undocumented immigrants bleed out in emergency rooms.
satby
@Rusty: probably the same kinds of prolife Christians who are ok with women bleeding out with a miscarriage, so long as no abortion saves her life.
Jay
@Rusty:
The same law that doesn’t let immigrant’s bleed out in Emergency Rooms, (brought in by Reagan), is the same law that doesn’t let them bleed out in Emergency Rooms with out proof of Insurance and approval for the op by their “Insurer”.
It does in these day’s, in many States, allow pregnant women to bleed out.
dnfree
@Rusty: The first thing Trump did, before even taking office the first time, was to normalize cruelty to “others”. Let people bleed out on the hospital steps—they don’t deserve care! That’s why EMTALA was passed in the first place, to prevent that.
RaflW
I’ve noticed that “compassionate conservative” GW Bush continues to be silent as a stone during this entire collapse. I don’t really know why I mention it, except to note that the ‘compassion’ part was utter horseshit. (Actually, horse shit has value as a soil amendment. What GWB did was rob us all of value, so he’s much lower than road apples.)
HumboldtBlue
Ongoing Federal court hearings in progress as I type this regarding the blatantly unlawful and unconstitutional National Guard deployments ordered by fuckbag.
glc
@HumboldtBlue:
And motion granted
bsky.app/profile/kyledcheney.bsky.social/post/3m2inehfnnm2q
Lively hearing. The phrase “Officer of the Court” (meaning: don’t lie to me) made some appearances.
prostratedragon
@glc: Appreciate her dispatch.
piratedan
@glc: my understanding is that she essentially ruled that DJT, Hegseth et al have no basis to send NG troops to OR and it doesn’t matter what state he orders to do so, there is no fucking justification for doing so.
the Goverment requested an appeal and she stated in laymans’ term, GOP fuck yourself.
You’re violating the Constitution without cause, justification and it does not matter that your feelings are hurt, Portland is NOT in flames, go fuck yourself.
Jay
@glc:
Good news, but will it mean anything?
Jackie
@trollhattan:
Shreveport, where Johnson lives has a much worse crime rate than Chicago, Portland, Memphis or NYC. That’s where he should be begging for NG support.
Jay
@Rusty:
The stupid, it burns.
Most of the undocumented and non-Green Card holders, pay taxes.
They get few tax benefits, if any.
So they subsidize all the US’s meagre social security programs with no benefits. Social Security, Medicare, etc.
That’s a 3% to 5% subsidy of the US’s meagre social security programs.
Much more than the Billionaire Class pays.
prostratedragon
Ohio Mom
@Jay: It’s no secret that Republicans hate Social Security so weakening it by deporting the immigrants who help shore it up with their taxes is a nice two-fer for them.
And not just deporting immigrants, discouraging future immigrants from considering moving here.
MagdaInBlack
@Jay: None of this is based on any kind of serious thought or policy making. This is pure burn it down and move on. And ya, stupid is a huge part of it
Every single thing that is going on is a manufactured crisis.
Jay
I have serious issues with Canada’s Immigration policies, and the TFW Program.
On Immigration, it’s mostly because one can “jump the queue” for relatively cheap. $75k CDN at one tier, $150K at another tier, $450K at no real tier at all, buy a 1BDR slum apt in Vancouver, for $450K, get a Permanent Residency Card, (Our Green Card) with out ever having been to Canada.
On the TFW program, it exploits at all levels, needed workers in Canada, promises them everything delivers nothing, and is less regulated than snail snot.
And I am not heavily immersed in Canadian Politics, (99% puts me to sleep, allowable live culture bacterial levels in runny French Cheese Imports, really?), but I know our Immigration and TFW laws well enough.
And yet, in a nation of colonists, settlers and immigrants, so many don’t have a clue. (the US, now it’s being imported to Canada).
One good thing, about the ICE Raids, is a bunch of American’s are realizing that they can’t prove they are American’s, and Birthright is going to turn an unease into a nightmare.
trollhattan
Shots fired! Newsom at Abbott, in this instance.
x.com/GovPressOffice/status/1975042323907231981
Jackie
Breaking news:
Leto
@prostratedragon: wonder if they’re going to connect that to Miller’s tweets about judges “aiding leftwing terrorism?” Nah… they can’t put 1+1 together.
Karen Gail
Personally, I believe that people can thank “Pastor” Johnson and the rest of the hypocritical christians for people either leaving or not believing Christianity. While those claiming that this is a christian nation their actions say otherwise; like the pro-life people who care only for life as long as it is a fetus and not a separate living being.
Johnson’s actions are creating “terrorists” by the EO’s definition of anti-christianity people are terrorists.
Jay
@Karen Gail:
Anti their version of “Christianity” with no Christ and none of Christ’s words.
prostratedragon
@Leto: “2” is out there where any old one can stumble up on it if they see both parts. We’ll see if either part escapes smaller-scale media. Took the South Shore apartment raid 4 days.
Jackie
Matt McIrvin
This is what they mean when they say that: Democrats don’t want emergency rooms to let everyone die as a means of murdering the ones among us who might be undocumented immigrants.
Ken_L
Many people are saying the baby Jesus is looking down from Heaven at Moses Johnson and scowling.
dc
Is there a browser extension that replaces the Asshole’s face with a bunny or something?
Karen Gail
Heather Cox Richardson’s letter is out; just finished reading it
October 5, 2025 – by Heather Cox Richardson
WTFGhost
@Karen Gail: Because I’m brain damaged, I don’t always catch parody immediately, but one of my favorite “got me” parodies was about a new SCOTUS judge (I can’t say “Justice” any longer) position opening up, and I dunno, Falwell, Robertson, et al, demanding to know the new candidates views on POVERTY. “Our lord and savior talked about poverty more than any other subject, and we can’t allow anyone to be elevated to the highest court in this nation, if we don’t trust their views on what is clearly the most important topic in the Gospel.”
They really had me going for a moment, puzzled, then saying “well, I don’t care, if they care about poverty, I’m down with… oh, eff, they mean they need to know the views on *abortion* which doesn’t appear in the Gospel at all!!!”
I do believe that political Christianity could severely damage other-Christianity, but, I guess I’d have to have faith that if Christianity has something to offer America, except political-Christianity’s hate for gay folks, transfolk, and abortion, it will rise again.
prostratedragon
@dc: Is Make America Kittens Again for firefox still around?
prostratedragon
I keep coming back to this, going back to the Grand Hyatt New York partnership with the elder Pritzkers in the 1980s. Then you overlay Obama onto that to kick it up to about 15.
Matt McIrvin
@Rusty: It’s more than that, though, isn’t it? They want *everyone* to bleed out in emergency rooms just to make sure the undocumented immigrants die too. Because there’s no way you can check in time.
Matt McIrvin
Starting to see calls for blue-state governors to call out the Guard to push ICE out, which I suppose could lead to different states’ Guard units firing on each other.
Ten Bears
This should be The Big Truth countering their Big Lie, repeated over and over and over again until it hits homeplate: They just lie. Everything they say is a lie. The Republicans just lie. Everything they say is a lie. Cut through the bullshit, wipe away the weasel words, set aside pious legaleze, boil it down to ones and zeros, balls on a brass monkey: they’re liars. They just lie. Everything they say is a lie
The Republicans are Liars. They just lie. Everything they say is a lie
rikyrah
@satby:
Uh huh
Truth😒😒😒
rikyrah
@piratedan:
👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
rikyrah
@prostratedragon:
The pictures of the arson😠😠😠
rikyrah
@trollhattan:
Good
rikyrah
@Ten Bears:
Every phucking thing they say is a lie😠😠😠
rikyrah
@Jackie:
Hoping that JB can make the same argument about the Troops in Illinois
Rusty
@Matt McIrvin: Yes and no. White people will be presumptively citizens and treated, Hispanics, blacks, the homeless, the obviously poor will require proof of citizenship before anyone touches them, and will die even though citizens. It’s just another form of the apartment building attack in Chicago. It was fine for all the poor US citizens in the building to have their civil rights grossly violated (doors kicked in, detained, possessions stolen or tossed). They technically have rights, but they can be violated with impunity since they are powerless and lack the money to sue for violation even after. This is the core of America that never changes. We had a brief moment where it looked like it could, but a reactionary backlash is making sure it won’t.
Baud
@Rusty:
They’ll have an easier time finding a lawyer than they will have finding popular support among white people.
After all. It’s not like the feds invaded a farm in rural America, or a cultish compound like Waco or fought militia like the Bundy’s. Those were worth media attention.
Baud
Somewhere, Liz Truss is smiling.
MagdaInBlack
@Matt McIrvin: Which is what, I’m sure, some folks would like to see happen.
Baud
Baud
Via reddit, I don’t know how this is but apparently he’s in country music.
Baud
Via reddit, someone else not resting on her celebrity.
ETA: Not clear if this is recent.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Jackie: No that’s why he should be saying it’s wrong to deploy the National Guard to control everyday crime.
Deputinize America
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
And how DOES the National Guard gain the power to control everyday crime? Absent a declaration of martial law, they have no local law enforcement power to arrest or process defendants.
Im thinking that it’s just going to be a license to brutalize, with the bloated mediocrity standing behind the brutalizing with a pardon pen, and SCOTUS ready to excuse excesses in a civil fashion by ever wilder expansions of sovereign immunity and Trump’s “it’s not a crime if the President does it” pass.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Deputinize America: As of now they don’t have it. I live in the DC area and commute into the city for work every day. I guess if I were a criminal I probably wouldn’t commit a crime in front of the NG troops because they’re armed and it would be really stupid. But they can only cover small parts of the city at any one time and so that deterrent is pretty limited. What the NG does all day, at least what I see them doing, is wandering around aimlessly talking amongst themselves. That’s pretty much it. So it’s a big fat waste of their time and our money for little if any benefit to anyone.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Deputinize America: As of now they don’t have enough manpower to be really oppressive. DC is a pretty small city geographically and we have troops from like 5 states here and they’re still really thin on the ground and mostly concentrated in high visibility areas like the National mall and the ballpark. Honestly with a little coordination the city’s residents could make them disappear in a matter of minutes because they’d be so vastly outnumbered that taken by surprise they’d be completely helpless. But they’re not really bothering anyone at present. I don’t think they want to be here any more than we want them here.
IMO that’s why they didn’t go in to Chicago – the show of force would have been pathetically inadequate to the size of the city.
Karen Gail
By deploying the Nation Guard time after time will get people accustom to seeing armed military in the streets; it isn’t a matter of what they can or can’t do at this time but rather a precursor of the ability of the federal government to take over cities. Miller is hoping to push Trump into martial law; the spin people are doing their best to portray ICE operations as under attack. The problem right now is that people are live streaming the felonious behavior of those who are supposed to be law enforcement.
It is like the videos that are going out by ICE of illegal behavior that are supposed to show just how powerful ICE and rest of LOE are; instead, it is backfiring and showing just how willing these goons are willing to go to cause harm and be cruel. These videos have been professionally produced and if you read the comments, you find that much of the far-right crowd is thrilled with what is being done since “they” believe that “they” are safe.
lowtechcyclist
@Karen Gail:
One of these TV folks interviewing a Trump regime spokesperson should say, “hey, why don’t you and I go to Portland together, and you can show me where the war-ravaged, burnt-out parts are?”
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Michael Bersin: Westmoreland is an impressive guy.
Betty
It has become clear that Johnson, Miller and Vought have no conscience. Anyone with an iota of one would be overcome by their guilt in light of the harm they are doing. Trump on other hand is so purely delusional that conscience doesn’t even enter the conversation.
Ramalama
I’d love to make a Christian app called “Thou Shalt Not” and con bible thumpers into using it whereupon they are inundated with porno every time they lie on camera.
That’s where the tech industry has failed us.