Trump Admin Saving Billions By Removing Illegals From Taxpayer Benefits
The White House is intensifying efforts to exclude illegal immigrants from a wide range of taxpayer-funded benefits, presenting the initiative as part of a larger campaign to cut government waste.
The Trump administration provided further details on new restrictions that would prohibit illegal immigrants from accessing over 15 federal assistance programs, which together represent $40 billion in public spending. White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told Fox News Digital that illegal immigrants will no longer be able “to steal public benefits at the expense of hardworking American taxpayers.” Rogers added: “That ends now. Under President Trump, it’s America first always.”
The majority of the programs being restricted for illegal immigrants are managed by the Department of Health and Human Services, with additional programs overseen by the Departments of Education, Agriculture, Labor, and Justice, Fox News reported.
The White House announced that several government health services—including Head Start, substance abuse prevention and treatment programs, family planning benefits, and health workforce loans and scholarships—will no longer be available to illegal immigrants.
This action aligns with President Donald twin campaign promises of tougher immigration enforcement and cutting wasteful government spending.
The announcement follows the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Trump’s signature spending and tax legislation. Medicaid, the insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans, emerged as a key point of contention in both the House and Senate. As the bill neared passage, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed claims that the measure would strip vulnerable Americans of their healthcare.
“This bill protects Medicaid… for those who truly deserve this program, the needy, pregnant women, children and sick Americans who physically cannot work. It ensures that able-bodied Americans who can work 20 hours a week are actually doing so, and that will therefore strengthen and protect those benefits for Americans who need it,” Leavitt told reporters last month.
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Nancy Pelosi Facing Primary Challenge From Former AOC Aide
The news for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appears to have gone from bad to worse in recent weeks following a fall in Europe that led to emergency hip replacement surgery.
As Pelosi continues recovering from her accident — she was seen using a walker on the House floor just last week — she now faces a primary challenge from a far-left former aide to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), according to a Thursday report.
Saikat Chakrabarti, former chief of staff for AOC, announced that he would challenge Pelosi in the primary. He cited the former speaker’s efforts to block the progressive New York congressmember from becoming the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee as his reason for running, Politico reported.
“I respect what Nancy Pelosi has accomplished in her career, but we are living in a totally different America than the one she knew when she entered politics 45 years ago,” Chakrabarti, a 39-year-old former tech worker, posted on the X platform. “America is stuck, and Americans want real solutions that are as big as the problems we face.”
Pelosi, who stepped down as speaker in 2022 after nearly 20 years in the role, easily won reelection to her solidly Democratic San Francisco seat last year. Her office declined to comment on Chakrabarti’s announcement.
She has filed paperwork to run for re-election in 2026 but has not publicly confirmed whether she intends to seek another term. State Sen. Scott Wiener has long been expected to run for the seat if Pelosi were to step down. Local political observers have also speculated that Pelosi’s daughter, Christine, might run for the seat if her mother were to retire.
Whoever wins the primary is likely to secure the general election and hold the seat for a long time in a city that remains a Democratic stronghold, Politico added.
Meanwhile, Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, made $38 million worth of stock trades in the weeks leading up to President Donald Trump’s inauguration, which will no doubt lead to further calls for stock trading bans for members of Congress and their immediate families.
The New York Post reported that the tens of millions in trades included “an investment in a once-obscure artificial intelligence firm whose shares have soared nearly 50% in the past week.”
Paul Pelosi sold $24 million worth of Apple stock and $5 million worth of shares in AI chip maker Nvidia.
Both of these significant transactions were completed on New Year’s Eve, according to government filings. Nancy Pelosi is legally obligated to disclose her husband’s stock trades, The Post added.
Paul Pelosi, who survived a brutal hammer attack inside the couple’s San Francisco home roughly two years ago, has also taken a new role with Tempus AI, a Chicago-based health technology company that deploys artificial intelligence to analyze clinical and molecular data.
According to filings, Paul Pelosi purchased $100,000 worth of call options in Tempus AI on January 14. Since the disclosure of his involvement, the company’s stock has surged.
When the market opened on January 14, Tempus AI stock was trading at approximately $32 per share. However, as of Thursday, The Post noted that shares of Tempus AI— which went public last June with an IPO price of $37 per share— were trading at around $50.50 per share, marking a 60% increase.
All the while, Nancy Pelosi continues to recover from her hip surgery.
“Earlier this morning, Speaker Emerita Pelosi underwent a successful hip replacement and is well on the mend,” spokesperson Ian Krager said in a statement sent to HuffPost in mid-December.
The statement added that the former House Speaker was “grateful to U.S. military staff at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center at Landstuhl Army Base and medical staff at Hospital Kirchberg in Luxembourg for their excellent care and kindness.”
Judge Blocks California’s AI Political Ad Restrictions, Citing Free Speech Concerns
A federal judge has struck down two California laws designed to curb the use of artificial intelligence in political advertising, ruling that the measures violated constitutional free speech protections and clashed with federal law.
The decision came Friday from Senior U.S. District Judge John Mendez, who was appointed under President George W. Bush. The ruling blocks the enforcement of Assembly Bill 2839, which banned AI-generated “deepfakes” or disinformation in campaign ads during the four months leading up to an election. The law had been challenged by satirical outlets and online creators, including The Babylon Bee, who argued it amounted to government censorship of political expression.
Judge Mendez acknowledged the dangers posed by AI manipulation, especially as elections grow more vulnerable to digitally altered content, but said California went too far in restricting speech.
“Deepfakes and artificially manipulated media arguably pose significant risks to electoral integrity,” Mendez wrote. “But the challenges launched by digital content on a global scale cannot be quashed through censorship or legislative fiat. Just as the government may not dictate the canon of comedy, California cannot preemptively sterilize political content.”
The ruling also struck down Assembly Bill 2655, which required social media platforms and other online services to take down AI-generated political disinformation. Mendez found the law conflicted with Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which shields platforms from being held liable for content uploaded by third parties. That challenge had been backed by major platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) and Rumble.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed both measures into law in September 2024, saying at the time that AI could become a serious threat to voter trust. “It’s critical that we ensure AI is not deployed to undermine the public’s trust through disinformation — especially in today’s fraught political climate,” Newsom said when announcing the bills.
State officials had framed the laws as a first-in-the-nation attempt to get ahead of the problem before the 2026 election cycle. They argued that with today’s AI tools, it takes only minutes to create fake videos or audio clips that could mislead millions of voters. Examples include false footage of candidates taking bribes, fabricated recordings of election officials questioning voting machine security, or AI-generated robocalls imitating public leaders.
But with Friday’s decision, California’s attempt to regulate political uses of AI is on hold. Free speech advocates hailed the ruling as a victory against government overreach, while critics warned that the absence of guardrails could make the upcoming election season the most digitally manipulated in history.
