Vice President JD Vance announced Wednesday that the Trump administration is temporarily halting Medicaid funding to the state of Minnesota, giving Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz 60 days to clean up how the state doles out funding. 

‘We have decided to temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding that are going to the state of Minnesota in order to ensure that the state of Minnesota takes its obligations seriously to be good stewards of the American people’s tax money,’ Vance said Wednesday in a press event attended by Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Mehmet Oz. 

The announcement comes after President Donald Trump railed against fraud in the Gopher State Tuesday evening in his State of the Union address. 

The administration and Congress have zeroed in on rampant abuse of federal taxpayers’ funds since December 2025, when details of Minnesota’s fraud surrounding social programs and welfare programs stretching back to the COVID-19 pandemic first came under the national spotlight. Investigators have since estimated the Minnesota scheme could top $9 billion. 

Trump pointed to his vice president as leading the administration’s ‘war on fraud’ amid his State of the Union remarks. 

Vance explained Wednesday that ‘we are stopping the federal payments that will go to the state government until the state government takes its obligations seriously to stop the fraud that’s being perpetrated against the American taxpayer.’

The vice president continued that officials have verified that a program in Minnesota intended to provide after-school care to autistic children actually benefited fraudsters. 

‘A lot of people are getting rich off the generosity of American taxpayers,’ Vance said. ‘But more fundamentally, and more importantly than that, it means that there are kids in Minnesota who deserve these services, who need these services, and they’re not going to those kids. They’re going to fraudsters in Minneapolis. That is unacceptable. And that’s the sort of thing that we’re cutting off with this action today.’ 

Oz added that it is that the pause marks ‘the largest action against fraud that we’ve ever taken’ at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, before launching into how the administration is deferring funds to the state.

‘It’s going to be $259 million of deferred payments for Medicaid to Minnesota, which we’re announcing as I speak, to Governor Walz and his team,’ Oz said. ‘That’s based on an audit of the last three months of 2025. Restated: a quarter billion dollars is not going to be paid this month to Minnesota for its Medicaid claims.’ 

‘We have notified the state and said that we will give them the money, but we’re going to hold it and only release it after they propose and act on a comprehensive corrective action plan to solve the problem,’ Oz said. ‘If Minnesota fails to clean up the systems, the state will rack up $1 billion of deferred payments this year.’

Walz has 60 days to respond to a letter Oz and the administration sent to Walz on the matter, Oz said. 

Fox News Digital reached out to Walz’s office Wednesday afternoon for comment and has yet to receive a reply. 

Oz continued that he believes Walz will take the matter seriously, and noted fraud is not exclusive to Minnesota, but also other states. 

‘These schemes disproportionately involve immigrant communities,’ Oz continued. ‘They’re insulated, they’re able to … organize efforts, and sometimes they don’t understand what’s going on.’ 

Vance added that the administration does not want to make this move, but it is needed due to Minnesota being ‘careless with federal tax dollars.’

‘All we need the governor and the administration of Minnesota to do is something quite simple, which is to show that before you give Medicaid funds to somebody, you’re taking seriously whether they provided the services that they say that they’re providing,’ the vice president said, calling the fraud a ‘disgrace.’

Trump spotlighted the fraud in his State of the Union address Tuesday, underscoring that while Minnesota has taken the spotlight, schemes run deep in other states as well. 

‘When it comes to the corruption that is plundering — it really, it’s plundering America — there’s been no more stunning example than Minnesota, where members of the Somali community have pillaged an estimated $19 billion from the American taxpayer,’ Trump said. ‘Oh, we have all the information.’ 

‘And in actuality, the number is much higher than that, and California, Massachusetts, Maine and many other states are even worse. This is the kind of corruption that shreds the fabric of a nation, and we are working on it like you wouldn’t believe,’ he continued, before naming Vance as the administration leader taking on fraud. 

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The FBI subpoenaed Kash Patel and Susie Wiles’ phone records in 2022 and 2023, when both were private citizens, as part of a federal probe into Donald Trump, Fox News has confirmed.

Patel is the current FBI director, and Wiles is White House chief of staff.

At least a handful of FBI employees were fired Wednesday, Fox News has been told. Names were not given due to privacy reasons.

Reuters first disclosed the subpoenas, which were issued during the Biden administration, while special counsel Jack Smith was investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Smith ended up charging Trump in 2023 with multiple felony offenses related to alleged efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election and Trump’s handling of the documents after he left office.

A federal judge later dismissed the election interference case after Smith moved to drop it following Trump’s re-election, citing a Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president. 

Smith also dropped the Justice Department’s appeal of a separate ruling that dismissed the classified documents case. Trump has denied any wrongdoing in both matters.

In a statement to Fox News Wednesday, Patel called the move to seize the phone records ‘outrageous and deeply alarming.’ 

‘It is outrageous and deeply alarming that the previous FBI leadership secretly subpoenaed my own phone records — along with those of now White House chief of staff Susie Wiles — using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade all oversight,’ he said.

The FBI had found the phone records in files labeled as ‘Prohibited,’ Reuters reported.

Patel also said he recently ended the FBI’s ability to categorize files as ‘Prohibited.’

Smith testified last year that records of members’ calls helped investigators verify the timeline of events surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

He said prosecutors ‘followed all legal requirements in getting those records’ and told a House panel the records obtained from lawmakers did not include the content of conversations, Reuters reported.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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Democratic events protesting President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address prompted sharp pushback from conservatives on social media and from Arkansas’ Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who said the events painted a sharp contrast between the two parties.

Democrats held several counterprogramming events to Trump’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday, including an event called ‘State of the Swamp,’ where far-left activists, including the Portland Frog Brigade, took to the stage dressed in animal costumes.

‘The difference today isn’t between right vs left,’ Sanders posted on X in response to a video of activists dressed up in frog costumes alongside Democratic Rep. Maxine Dexter. ‘It’s normal vs crazy.’

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Sanders added, ‘Last night, President Trump laid out a vision of a stronger, safer, more prosperous America — and the best counterargument the Democrats could provide were unhinged heckles, refusing to stand to celebrate the accomplishments of patriotic Americans, and a bizarre dress-up show.’

At another point in the event, an activist dressed in a giraffe costume took the stage criticizing ICE and calling Trump ‘pumpkin spice Satan.’ 

‘They always want to dress in animal costumes… WTF,’ Red State’s Jennifer Van Laar posted on X.

‘This is what Democrats are doing instead of attending President Trump’s State of the Union speech,’ a Republican National Committee account posted on X. ‘Democrats are literally hanging out with deranged Leftists dressed in giraffe costumes bragging about getting arrested by ICE.’

‘Who is advising the Democrats and how do we make sure they never quit?’ conservative commentator Riley Gaines posted on X.

‘These people are weird,’ Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, posted on X.

‘They don’t just hate America… they’re mentally ill,’ comedian Tim Young posted on X.

Dozens of Democrats boycotted Trump’s speech, with many attending events like State of the Swamp or the People’s State of the Union, which was held in the frigid temperatures outside the Capitol.

‘Not one more dime to the Department of Homeland Security until they start following the law in this country,’ Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told a crowd of protesters gathered outside.

The event, organized by MoveOn and co-hosted by the Midas Touch Network, featured a number of House and Senate Democratic lawmakers who opted to skip Trump’s address, which they said would be filled with ‘lie after lie’ and ignore what they described as a country ‘in crisis.’

Fox News Digital’s Breanne Deppisch contributed to this report.

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Hillary Clinton is claiming that Republican voter legislation will make it harder for married women to vote — an assertion GOP lawmakers and officials already say they’ve debunked.

‘You didn’t have to listen to Trump’s rambling speech last night to know that Republicans are trying to make it harder for millions of Americans to vote—especially married women,’ Clinton posted on X Wednesday. ‘They’ve already made it clear. Time to fight back.’ 

Clinton was referring to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night. 

The president called on Congress to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which would tighten election rules and require voters to present a photo ID at the polls and proof of U.S. citizenship.

The president said the legislation is critical in order to stop ‘illegal aliens and other unpermitted persons from voting.’

Congressional Democrats have panned the SAVE Act as a tool of voter suppression — saying it’s a bill that allows the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to monitor Americans’ voter information and create barriers for married women to vote, among several other claims.

The bill would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, mandate states to actively verify and remove noncitizens from voter rolls, expand information sharing with federal agencies, including DHS, to verify citizenship, and create new criminal penalties for registering noncitizens to vote.

But Clinton isn’t alone — other House Democrats earlier in February also similarly claimed that the legislation would leave married women unable to vote unless they changed their birth certificates to match other government-issued ID.

ButRepublicans say they’ve already addressed the claim and debunked it. 

‘This is absolute nonsense, and we specifically allow for a provision to make sure that no one can possibly be left behind,’ Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who led both the SAVE Act and SAVE America Act in the House, said, while arguing Democrats were ‘really reaching’ for criticism.

‘If a woman tried to register to vote with different names on her birth certificate and driver’s license,’ Roy said, ‘we literally put in the statute that all you have to do is sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury that, ‘I am that person. This is my birth certificate… and this is my driver’s license that is reflecting my married name.’’

The bill does list a birth certificate as one way voters can confirm their identity. It does not specify a last-name match requirement.

Voters can use ‘a certified birth certificate issued by a state in which the applicant was born… (that) includes the full name, date of birth and place of birth of the applicant’ to supplement other forms of identification.

Among other forms of valid paperwork, voters can also display a passport, a REAL ID or a military identification card to prove their citizenship.

Conservative legal group The Federalist Society presented a breakdown of the bill, which explicitly says that Americans who have changed their names — because of marriage or otherwise — are ‘not prevented from voting.’ 

‘The bipartisan federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) is commanded by the SAVE Act to establish guidelines for states to accept supplementary documents — for instance, a marriage license — to prove citizenship when a voter’s birth certificate and current name do not match,’ the group’s page reads. ‘Those on the Left who claim that the SAVE Act will disenfranchise millions of married women are simply wrong; they ought to read the bill’s text and see that it provides mechanisms to ensure that this does not happen.’

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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he can win the Republican Senate primary even without President Donald Trump’s endorsement.

‘He makes his own decisions,’ Paxton told Fox News Digital. ‘I’m perfectly fine right now. We’re going to win this election either way. And I’m happy with where we’re at, and you’re going to see next Tuesday that we’re going to come out in front.’

Paxton, who was invited by Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, to attend Trump’s State of the Union address, is one of seven challengers vying to unseat longtime Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who is running for a fifth term in the upper chamber.

Early voting has already begun in the Lone Star State, and primary election day is March 3.

Even without a coveted nod from the president, Paxton acknowledged that cutting through the densely packed field would be difficult without the race going to a runoff, but not impossible.

‘It’s hard to win outright, but you know anything’s possible,’ Paxton said. ‘If anybody’s going to do it, it is going to be me.’

Much of the attention has been paid to the three-way fight between Paxton, Cornyn and Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas — a brawl that Trump has chosen to keep at arm’s length. He told reporters last week that he supports all three.

Cornyn is Paxton’s primary target in the crowded field. The two have engaged in a mudslinging back-and-forth on the road and in ads, dumping millions into toppling one another.

When asked about Cornyn’s attacks against him, Paxton said, ‘He’s not a polite man.’

Paxton accused the lawmaker of being ineffective during his 24-year run in the Senate and dubbed him ‘Fake John Cornyn,’ accusing him of selling voters one thing on the trail and doing another in office.

‘He’s been in office since I was in college, and I’m 63,’ Paxton said. ‘And he’s been up here for 24 years. And I don’t care what he says. He’s a deceptive guy, a misleading guy. You know why? Because he doesn’t have a single thing to run on.’

Cornyn wondered if Paxton had ‘been sleeping under a rock somewhere’ when asked about his opponent’s challenges to his record.

‘My Senate office is generally recognized as the most effective office in the Senate, and that’s because we produced important legislation to the state, for the state and for the nation,’ Cornyn told Fox News Digital. ‘And the fact he’s unaware of it just does not speak well to his intelligence or his knowledge.’

Despite Paxton’s confidence that the race would be decided next week, Cornyn believed there would be a runoff between the two.

‘We’ll be rid of him after May 26,’ Cornyn said.

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