August, 25 2011, 11:39am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
NY Attorney General's Dismissal Has "Big Banks' Dirty Fingerprints All Over It"
The Washington Post reports: "Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who is leading foreclosure settlement negotiationswith the nation's largest banks on behalf of all 50 states, abruptly removed New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman from the coalition's executive committee Tuesday, saying he had "actively worked to undermine" the group's efforts in recent months.
WASHINGTON
The Washington Post reports: "Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who is leading foreclosure settlement negotiationswith the nation's largest banks on behalf of all 50 states, abruptly removed New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman from the coalition's executive committee Tuesday, saying he had "actively worked to undermine" the group's efforts in recent months.
"Schneiderman, who has undertaken investigations into the way banks bundled and sold pools of mortgages, known as securitization, has said any settlement should not release banks from liability for all their mortgage-related sinscommitted before the financial crisis. Attorneys general from several other states, including Delaware, Nevada and Massachusetts, have expressed similar concerns."
MARGOT FRIEDMAN, mfriedman at dupontcirclecommunications.com
Friedman is with The New Bottom Line, which released a statement on Schneiderman's dismissal. It said: "The news that Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller has summarily dismissed New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman from the executive committee of the 50-state attorneys general robo-signing and servicing settlement talks is just the latest example of the Obama administration and their allied attorneys general's full court press for a settlement -- any settlement -- at the expense of real accountability for banks and real relief from homeowners.
"The big banks' dirty fingerprints are all over these latest actions. The Obama administration and the attorneys general cannot cave in to the desire of Wall Street bankers to paper over their massive wrongdoing and throw homeowners under the bus. Homeowners and former homeowners from Iowa, Illinois, Florida, New York and all 50 states must be put first. For years homeowners have been the victims of systemic fraud and they have been waiting years for the banks to be held responsible. As much as there is a need for relief, speed at the expense of quality cannot and will not be accepted."
A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.
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'Despicable': Vance, Oz Announce Freeze on Some Medicaid Funding for Minnesota
"The Constitution clearly gives Congress the power to spend taxpayer funds, and no law allows the president to halt if he feels some US states aren’t being 'good stewards' of the money," said one critic.
Feb 25, 2026
US Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday that the Trump administration will pause some Medicaid funding for Minnesota over fraud concerns—without offering any guarantees that the suspension will not adversely impact the more than 1 million Minnesotans who depend upon the key healthcare program.
"We're announcing today that we have decided to temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding that is 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 at a White House press conference with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Mehmet Oz.
"Now what is this gonna mean?" Vance continued. "What this means is that, first of all, the providers on the ground in Minnesota have actually already been paid... What we're doing is we are stopping the federal payments that will go to the state government until the state government takes it obligations seriously to stop the fraud that's being perpetrated."
They already targeted SNAP in Minnesota. They’ve killed two Minnesotans and injured or kidnapped hundreds more. Now they’re stealing their Medicaid. They’re going to deny people healthcare because of a YouTube video about a Somali daycare scam that wasn’t even true.
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— Kelly (@broadwaybabyto.bsky.social) February 25, 2026 at 3:05 PM
Oz demanded that Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz determine "who these providers are; make sure they're not already in trouble for doing bad stuff, and then reevaluate all the current providers to make sure they're supposed to be able to provide these services."
Responding to Oz's remarks, Gaia Leadership Project founder Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin said on Bluesky, "So Minnesota is supposed to review every appointment by a Medicaid recipient with every doctor to get funds already lawfully allocated to the state?"
Asked by a reporter how he intends to ensure that the funding pause "doesn't impact the people who are enrolled in Medicaid," Vance said he is "worried about the justice of it all."
"I think it's offensive that American taxpayers pay into these programs and they're defrauded... and it's really sad that American children who need these services are unable to get them, because they're going to fraudsters," Vance replied.
"Look, we're certainly gonna make sure that our anti-fraud efforts go after the fraudsters and not after anybody who actually benefits from these services," he continued. "But I actually think the question is a little off, in a way, because the problem is not going after the fraud, the problem is that these programs are being defrauded to begin with."
"Our social safety net will disappear unless we take fraud more seriously," added the vice president, whose boss, President Donald Trump, last year signed into law the biggest cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in the nation's history as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Medicaid is the primary healthcare safety net for lower-income Americans, with nearly 70 million people enrolled nationwide at the end of last year.
While federal prosecutors are investigating Minnesota’s Medicaid system—specifically, 14 high-risk service programs such as housing support and personal-care services—on suspicion of billions of dollars in fraudulent billings since 2018, and dozens of people have been convicted of stealing public money through the state’s social services system, critics noted that Congress, not the president, has the power of the purse.
Some observers noted that Trump has already targeted Minnesota—which voted against him all three times he ran for president—with his deadly crackdown on undocumented immigrants and their defenders and racist attacks on Somali immigrants, including Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).
The Medicaid freeze follows the Trump administration's $10 billion cut in federal childcare funding to five Democrat-led states, including Minnesota, last month—a move that opponents argue punishes working families who committed no fraud.
University of Illinois professor Nicholas Grossman called the Medicaid pause "taxation without representation."
"The Constitution clearly gives Congress the power to spend taxpayer funds, and no law allows the president to halt if he feels some US states aren’t being 'good stewards' of the money," he said on Bluesky. "In case there’s any confusion on this, the Impoundment Control Act forbids it."
"The people of Minnesota vote for representatives to Congress," Grossman added. "Minnesota representatives and senators were in DC, representing their constituents, when Congress passed laws using proper procedure that allocated Medicaid funding. The president breaking those laws violates the fundamental compact of the republic."
Oz on Wednesday also announced "a six-month national moratorium blocking all new enrollments for durable medical equipment—prosthesis, orthotics—supplies across the board" in the name of fighting fraud. The move targets suppliers, not individual Medicaid beneficiaries.
This from Oz, a promoter of privatized Medicare Advantage programs, which are notorious for overcharging taxpayers and denying patients necessary care. The CMS under Oz increased federal funding for Medicare Advantage plans by more than $25 billion for 2026.
As Common Dreams recently reported, United Health Group (UHG), one of the country's largest for-profit health insurance companies, has been the leading beneficiary of a long-running Medicare Advantage fraud scheme that the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission—an independent, nonpartisan legislative branch agency—warned could cost US taxpayers $1.2 trillion over the next decade.
Some critics said that if Trump really cared about fraud, he'd go after companies like UHG—and stop pardoning so many convicted criminals who committed billions of dollars worth of fraud.
"These guys are despicable," Michigan State University professor Brendan Cantwell said Wednesday in response to Vance and Oz's announcement.
Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a statement Wednesday that “Medicaid fraud is a serious problem that requires cracking down on fraudsters—not patients."
Weissman continued:
This administration’s anti-fraud rhetoric is itself a fraud. In fact, the administration has gutted anti-fraud government agencies and programs and let fraudsters off the hook. It has issued record-breaking pardons to fraudsters; sought to eliminate the most important anti-consumer fraud agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; eviscerated the corps of inspectors general whose job is to root out waste, fraud, and abuses; and dropped dozens of fraud and fraud-related investigations against large corporations.
“The Trump administration suspension of Medicaid funding in Minnesota is a bad-faith, punitive, and shameful measure that will punish people in Minnesota as part of the same deceptive story that the Trump administration has told to justify the outrageous [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] invasion of the state," Weissman added.
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Former Brazilian Political Officials Found Guilty of Plotting Murder of Marielle Franco
"What the killers did not expect is that her legacy would become greater than all of this," said Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Carmen Lúcia.
Feb 25, 2026
A five-judge panel on Brazil's Supreme Court on Wednesday voted unanimously to convict former Congressman Chiquinho Brazão and his brother, politician Domingos Brazão, of ordering the 2018 murder of Rio de Janeiro City Councilwoman Marielle Franco and her driver, Anderson Gomes.
As reported by Reuters, the court sentenced the Brazão brothers to each serve 76 years in prison for plotting to assassinate the 38-year-old Franco because they feared she and her allies in the Socialism and Liberty Party would be an impediment to their illegal scheme that involved taking public lands to develop private real estate projects.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who oversaw the trial of the brothers, said that the two men did not think they would be held accountable for killing Franco because she was a Black woman who represented a poor neighborhood in Rio.
"Inside the misogynistic, prejudiced minds of those who ordered and carried out the crime, who would care about that?" Moraes said. “They did not expect such wide repercussions."
Justice Carmen Lúcia also said that the Brazão brothers seemed to believe that they would be allowed to get away with murder.
"What the killers did not expect," said Lúcia, "is that her legacy would become greater than all of this."
The court also sentenced former Rio de Janeiro Police Chief Rivaldo Barbosa to an 18-year prison sentence for obstructing the investigation into Franco's murder.
Franco's widow, current Rio City Councilwoman Mônica Benício, told Payday Report that the court's conviction of the plotters was a landmark decision for Brazilian democracy.
"For the country, this is an opportunity to demonstrate its capacity to break with the selective penal system that protects criminal structures and their political ties," Benício said. "We must learn a lesson from what the assassination of Marielle and Anderson reveals about Brazil: the obscure connections between crime, politics, and the police."
Anielle Franco, a sister of Marielle Franco who currently serves as Brazil's Minister of Racial Equality, hailed the verdict as "justice" in a social media post, vowing that "our fight continues for all victims of violence."
Agnes Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, said that justice for Franco and Gomes was "a long time coming," and added that "their killings are emblematic of the broader and highly alarming trend of lethal violence and structural racism against human rights defenders in Brazil."
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Trump's Surgeon General Nominee Dodges Senators' Questions on Vaccines, Conflicts of Interest
"Means is another example of President Trump nominating someone with financial conflicts instead of qualifications," said one consumer advocate.
Feb 25, 2026
The US Senate's confirmation hearing for Casey Means, President Donald Trump's nominee to be the next US surgeon general, showcased "just how profoundly unqualified" the wellness influencer is to serve as the nation's top doctor, said one consumer advocate after Means dodged questions about her potential conflicts of interest, refused to affirm that anti-vaccine conspiracy theories have been debunked, and spread misinformation about contraception.
Means was nominated to the role on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s recommendation, and her lack of a current medical license would make her an outlier among past surgeons general. Her license lapsed in 2024, and she did not finish her medical residency at Oregon Health and Science University, leaving in 2018 just months before she was set to complete it because, as PBS NewsHour reported last year, "she came to view the healthcare system as exploitative."
Means then became a self-described "metabolic health evangelist" and a social media wellness influencer, sharing a newsletter with her hundreds of thousands of followers to whom she marketed health products and supplements and earning tens of thousands of dollars in income doing so.
She is also the co-founder of a company called Levels, which offers a subscription for wearable glucose monitors—and which could benefit from Kennedy's endorsement of wearable medical devices.
Means signed a government ethics agreement last September stating she would resign from her advisory position at Levels and stop promoting wellness products for income, but Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, including Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), had questions about Means' recent potential conflicts of interest.
Murphy noted that Means failed to disclose her financial interests numerous times when promoting her lab testing platform, Function Health; Genova Diagnostics, another testing company that she sponsored; and Zenbasil seeds, a supplement that she recommended in her newsletter and whose maker she had a financial partnership with.
"This seems systemic," said Murphy. "It seems that in a majority of instances in which you were, as a medical professional, recommending a product, you were hiding the fact that you had a financial partnership."
Means responded by accusing Murphy's staff of "intentionally" mischaracterizing the data about her disclosures.
damn, Trump's surgeon general nominee Casey Means is a transparent bullshitter even by the standards of the regime. Watch how she's tries to blame Chris Murphy's staffers for the fact he has her dead to rights on being dishonest and corrupt.
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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) February 25, 2026 at 11:28 AM
"Means is another example of President Trump nominating someone with financial conflicts instead of qualifications—elevated precisely because of her opposition to the best science and fundamental public health principles," said Robert Weissman, co-president of government watchdog Public Citizen. "We need a surgeon general who understands that public health is, fundamentally, about taking care of each other, not leaving each of us to go it alone."
Considering Means' background, he added, "it is clear that Means will not push back on Trump and RFK Jr. as they put profits ahead of patients and anti-science views ahead of sound public health information. The already broken US healthcare system has been made much worse by Trump and his allies, who have gutted important health agencies and made dangerous cuts to health programs to fund tax cuts for billionaires."
“Casey Means has no place as US surgeon general, and every senator should reject her absurd nomination," said Weissman.
As in Kennedy's confirmation hearing last year, a number of questions from senators were related to Means' views on vaccination. Like the HHS secretary, during her career Means has expressed skepticism about immunization despite scientific studies and decades of evidence that have shown vaccines against diseases like polio and measles have prevented millions of deaths and amounted to some of the most successful public health interventions in history.
On Joe Rogan's podcast in 2024, Means allowed that "one vaccine probably isn’t causing autism" but asked, "What about the 20 that they’re getting before 18 months?”
There is no evidence that the childhood vaccine schedule in the US leads to autism. The increased number of vaccinations children receive today compared to the 1980s and '90s is frequently cited as a concern among vaccine skeptics, but the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's Vaccine Education Center notes that the "immunological components in vaccines has dramatically decreased" due to "scientific advances in protein chemistry and protein purification that have allowed for purer, safer vaccines."
Means said Wednesday that "anti-vaccine rhetoric has never been a part of my message," but refused to answer several direct questions about immunization.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician, asked Means whether she would encourage Americans to be vaccinated against the flu.
Means replied that patients should "have informed consent with their doctor before getting any medication" and said that "vaccines save lives," but did not confirm whether she would endorse the flu vaccine.
CASSIDY: Would you encourage Americans to take the flu vaccine?
CASEY MEANS: I do think it's important as a physician and to rebuild trust in public health to make sure patients are encouraged to have informed consent with their doctors before getting any medication pic.twitter.com/b5JhGUMs5R
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 25, 2026
She also would not say whether she would recommend the measles vaccine as surgeon general. Nearly 1,000 children have been sickened with the highly contagious, preventable illness in South Carolina, and two children died of measles in West Texas last year, with the outbreaks spreading among the unvaccinated population in the affected areas.
"Would you encourage mothers to vaccinate their children with the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, seeing how we've had children die?" asked Cassidy.
Means again said only that she is "supportive" of the vaccine but continued to focus her reply on the idea that parents should have "a conversation" with their doctor about immunization against deadly diseases.
Dr. Casey Means, Trump's nominee for surgeon general, won't unambiguously say that mothers should have their kids vaccinated against measles: "I do believe that each mother needs to have a conversation with their pediatrician about any medication they're putting in their… pic.twitter.com/tiqYv7eeAD
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 25, 2026
Angela Rasmussen, a virologist and Defend Public Health member, said Means' "only apparent qualification for the job of surgeon general is her willingness to promote RFK Jr.’s disinformation and quackery.”
Epidemiologist Elizabeth Jacobs, a member of the group's coordinating committee, added that "the leading US government voice on public health issues... must be someone Americans can trust to give credible advice based on solid science and real data, not a charlatan who specializes in selling expensive, unproven tests and treatments."
"It's time for the Senate to grow a backbone and say, 'Enough!'" said Jacobs, "starting with Casey Means."
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