SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Dan Beeton, 202-239-1460
WASHINGTON - In the wake of Hurricane Maria, urgent Puerto Rico recovery efforts must also extend to solving the island’s imminent Medicaid crisis, “a preexisting condition that plagued Puerto Rico before the hurricane and that has been exacerbated by it,” a new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) states. Without urgent congressional action, Puerto Rico will lack sufficient funds to continue operating Medicaid in 2018.
Significant numbers of Puerto Ricans are expected to leave the devastated island for the mainland United States, at least temporarily, and the report examines the cost burden from Medicaid funding for the federal government and states that results from out-migration from the island to the mainland. If Congress fails to help Puerto Rico fill its serious Medicaid funding shortfall, the federal government and states may bear a higher burden as more Puerto Ricans leave for the mainland US, the report, which was written before Hurricane Maria struck, concludes.
“This is a case where doing nothing may well end up being more costly than if Congress does something and funds Puerto Rico’s Medicaid shortfall,” Lara Merling, CEPR Research Assistant and coauthor of the report, said. “In fact, we estimate that it could cost the federal government more than twice as much to allow the shortfall to go unfunded as it would to fund it and help Puerto Ricans receive health care on the island.”
While the cost of living is higher in Puerto Rico than the US average, health care services are much less costly on the island. Therefore, the federal government and various states incur much higher costs to provide Medicaid for Puerto Ricans who have been pushed to move to states due to the hurricane, the island’s struggling economy, or other factors.
Over 40 percent of Puerto Rico’s population is enrolled in Medicaid, as there is a high poverty rate on the island (46 percent).
As the report notes, rather than receive a federal reimbursement as a percentage of what it spends on Medicare, as states do, Puerto Rico is subject to a hard cap that is currently about $300 million per year. This insufficient and unequal funding has forced the Puerto Rican government to cover a large portion of the costs from its own budget, contributing to the island’s debt crisis.
The report calculates what the federal government and states are likely to pay for providing Medicaid for Puerto Ricans moving to US states from 2018 to 2027 based on two scenarios: continued out-migration to US states at the current (pre-hurricane) rate, and another scenario in which the out-migration rate doubles. Under the more pessimistic scenario, the costs would be $19.4 billion for the federal government, and $12.3 billion among states, as compared to $7.8 billion for services in Puerto Rico.
The pessimistic scenario -- a higher out-migration rate -- may be more likely in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
The report notes that if Congress were to reimburse Puerto Rico’s Medicaid costs the same as for states, this could ensure continuing coverage for Puerto Rico’s most vulnerable citizens, and possibly save the federal and state governments over $20 billion over the next decade.
“It’s essential to include full funding for Puerto Rico’s Medicaid program in any emergency aid supplemental for Puerto Rico,” Merling said. “As the White House pushes for aid funding from Congress for Texas, Florida, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico, it will be important to make sure that Medicaid funding is included.”
The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) was established in 1999 to promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people's lives. In order for citizens to effectively exercise their voices in a democracy, they should be informed about the problems and choices that they face. CEPR is committed to presenting issues in an accurate and understandable manner, so that the public is better prepared to choose among the various policy options.
(202) 293-5380Multiple Western governments over the weekend, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, jointly recognized Palestine as a state for the first time.
However, many advocates for Palestinian freedom and self-determination have said that the official recognition of Palestine is only a symbolic first step and will not do anything to change the situation so long as these governments continue selling weaponry being used by Israel to level Gaza.
In a column written for The Guardian, French journalist Rokhaya Diallo criticized French President Emmanuel Macron, who is expected to officially recognize Palestine on Monday, for not doing more to hinder Israel's power to wage war against the Palestinians.
"Macron's 'solemn announcement' to the UN General Assembly on Palestine is planned for next Monday, 22 September," she explained. "Wouldn’t it be a better first step for France to announce concrete sanctions against Israel? Netanyahu is under an international arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, yet he was allowed to use French airspace when traveling to the US in July."
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant last year.
Writing in +972 Magazine, Palestinian journalist Alaa Salama similarly argued that recognizing Palestine would simply create "the illusion of action" unless Western governments take further steps to sanction Israel.
"Now, more than ever, symbolic gestures are worse than useless," he argued. "They buy time for the regime committing the crimes and drain urgency from the only remedies that matter: ending the genocide, sanctioning the perpetrator, isolating the apartheid system, and insisting without apology on equal rights and the right of return. This is not extremism. It is the bare minimum of justice."
Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, told Al Jazeera on Monday that the actions of Western governments were still "utterly failing to stop the genocide" and that they needed serious sanctions in order to "stop Israel’s atrocities" in Gaza.
Since 2015, the UK has supplied an estimated USD $676 million worth of arms to Israel, making it the second largest supplier of weapons to Israel behind only the US. The Labour government suspended 30 out of 350 arms export licenses last year—but did not include F-35 fighter jet parts in the ban. The UK supplies 13-15% of the components of the jet, which are manufactured in the US and sent to Israel.
Inès Abdel Razek, executive director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, said in a roundtable discussion with Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka that Western nations' support for a theoretical Palestinian state were not the same as support for actual Palestinian self-determination.
"In this context, genocide in Gaza is met not with consequences but with ceremony," she said. "The [Palestinian Authority] clings to optics, and Western states embrace symbolic gestures, while Palestinians are left with neither justice nor statehood, only a widening gap between lived reality and international performance."
Yara Hawri, co-director of Al-Shabaka, argued during the same panel discussion that recognition of a Palestinian state at this point was pointless given that Israel has made Gaza unlivable and is moving forward with plans to annex the West Bank as well, with officials recently approving the E1 settlement plan that would cut off the key city of East Jerusalem from the rest of the territory and make Palestinian statehood impossible.
"We are a colonized, besieged, and occupied people facing genocide in Gaza," she said. "Any serious political engagement must begin from this reality, not from the illusion of a state that does not exist. Instead of halting genocide and forced starvation—much of it facilitated by the very states offering recognition—we are told to focus on a fantasy of statehood that no one is willing to bring into being."
The Congressional Progressive Caucus over the weekend officially endorsed a bill that would block the sale of many offensive US weapons to Israel. This move coincides with growing outrage from US voters from across the political spectrum who say they have seen enough of American complicity with the genocidal humanitarian blockade and bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
“The United States cannot continue to send bombs we know will be used to commit terrible atrocities in Gaza,” said Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the CPC, the largest single caucus in Congress, with nearly one hundred members.
The Block the Bombs Act, first introduced in May by Rep. Delia C. Ramirez (D-Ill.) and now backed by 49 co-sponsors, calls for a prohibition on the sale of a variety of US weapons and a limitation on military services to the Israeli government, accused of committing a genocide in Gaza.
The vote by the caucus, which took place Saturday and was first reported by Zeteo, marks a historic shift—even for the most progressive group of lawmakers on Capitol Hill—that provides "a significant boost to efforts to hold Israel accountable for its genocidal war in Gaza."
While the CPC acknowledged that the legislation, H.R. 3565, "targets the most destructive and indiscriminate weapons systems, such as BLU-109 bunker buster bombs, 2,000-pound bombs, Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), 120mm tank rounds, and 155mm artillery shells," it does not put restrictions on what it terms "defensive systems," such the Iron Dome missile shield.
"Netanyahu and Trump are a lethal, unaccountable, extremist duo," said Ramirez in a statement on Sunday. “The Block the Bombs bill is the first step toward oversight and accountability for the murder of children with U.S.-made, taxpayer-funded weapons. In the face of authoritarian leaders perpetrating a genocidal campaign, Block the Bombs is the minimum action Congress must take. I am proud to be part of a caucus of progressive leaders who are challenging policies that destroy life, rob our children of futures, or dehumanize our neighbors."
Last week, despite a finding just earlier by the UN Commission of Inquiry that Israel is, in fact, perpetrating genocide in Gaza, the US vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and the resumption of humanitarian aid to Gaza, now undergoing a famine in which hundreds of people—young people and old—have died of starvation and otherwise preventable disease.
In a Saturday op-ed on Common Dreams, Peace Action president Kevin Martin said it's way beyond time for the US to end its arming of Israel, and he heralded Ramirez's bill, though not perfect, as the best vehicle in the moment for doing that.
"The bill is as close as we have to a de facto arms embargo on Israel," argued Martin, "as it would ban transfers of seven specific offensive weapons systems, from bunker-busting bombs to tank ammunition to white phosphorus artillery munitions.
"The Biden Administration’s support for Israel was bad, but predictably, Trump has been worse, accelerating transfers of bombs and guns with monolithic Republican," argued Martin, "and far too much Democratic, support, in spite of Israel’s clear violations of U.S. and international law in its mass killing of civilians and denial of life-saving humanitarian aid to Gaza."
DropSite News co-founder Ryan Grim emphasized the historic nature of the vote in a social media post following Saturday's news.
“Historically, the CPC had resisted weighing in at all on Israel because so many of its members were ‘progressive except for Palestine,'" said Grim.
"That era is fading," he added, "this endorsement is a major signal."
Accusations of supreme corruption, demands for an investigation, and calls for impeachment proceedings for several high-level Trump administration officials erupted on Saturday after it was reported that a Justice Department probe into Tom Homan, who serves as President Donald Trump’s border czar, was dropped despite documented evidence he accepted a bribe of $50,000 delivered in a bag by undercover FBI agents as part of a sting operation.
Citing multiple people “familiar with the probe,” a review of internal documents, MSNBC was the first to report that during “an undercover operation last year, the FBI recorded Tom Homan [...] accepting $50,000 in cash after indicating he could help the agents—who were posing as business executives—win government contracts in a second Trump administration.”
The New York Times, which also spoke to people familiar with the case, reported that the "cash payment, which was made inside a bag from the food chain Cava, grew out of a long-running counterintelligence investigation that had not been targeting Mr. Homan," and that the encounter, as MSNBC also reported, was recorded. The Times indicates that the recording was audio, while MSNBC's version of the evidence suggests that video footage exists.
"Americans deserve disclosure of evidence showing top DHS official Homan accepting a bag full of $50,000 in cash We need to know why the investigation was dropped—all the facts and evidence." —Sen. Richard Blumenthal
The case implicates both FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney Pam Bondi, who heads the Justice Department. Both were appointed by Trump and are deeply loyal to him politically.
MSNBC reports:
It’s unclear what reasons FBI and Justice Department officials gave for shutting down the investigation. But a Trump Justice Department appointee called the case a “deep state” probe in early 2025 and no further investigative steps were taken, the sources say.
On Sept. 20, 2024, with hidden cameras recording the scene at a meeting spot in Texas, Homan accepted $50,000 in bills, according to an internal summary of the case and sources.
The federal investigation was launched in western Texas in the summer of 2024 after a subject in a separate investigation claimed Homan was soliciting payments in exchange for awarding contracts should Trump win the presidential election, according to an internal Justice Department summary of the probe reviewed by MSNBC and people familiar with the case. The U.S. Attorney’s office in the Western District of Texas, working with the FBI, asked the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section to join its ongoing probe “into the Border Czar and former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan and others based on evidence of payment from FBI undercover agents in exchange for facilitating future contracts related to border enforcement.”
The revelations prompted Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) to declare that Trump's second term is the "most corrupt administration we have ever seen."
Matt Duss, executive vice-president at the Center for International Policy, asked: "Seriously though, has anyone ever been handed $50,000 cash in a paper bag for something legit?"
While that's not a legal standard, news of the dropped case against Homan, given his central role in Trump's ramped-up attacks on migrants and communities nationwide, sparked an array of outrage, many questions, and a demand for more answers from the Justice Department.
"Who's the illegal now, Tom Homan?" asked Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
"Tom Homan should be fired immediately and charged," said Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.). "Kash Patel should be suspended pending impeachment proceedings, and anyone who aided in this cover-up should be held accountable. Homan’s relationship with GEO Group, who own Delaney Hall in Newark, should be thoroughly investigated, and the facility closed pending that investigation. The amount of corruption in this administration is endless."
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) had a similar reaction. "Corruption that’s stunning even for this administration," Markey said. "Homan and anyone who knew and covered this up must resign."
As the Times reporting notes, the "episode raises questions about whether the administration has sought to shield one of its own officials from legal consequences, and whether Mr. Homan’s actions were considered by the White House when he was appointed to his government role."
In response to questions from MSNBC and the Times, Trump officials downplayed the seriousness of the case. They said that after it was investigated, the bribery allegations did not stand up.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson told MSNBC the probe that led to the recording of Homan was a "blatantly political investigation." However, it's clear from the reporting that the original investigation was not targeting Homan at all.
In a joint statement issued Saturday, Patel and Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, said the investigation “was subjected to a full review by F.B.I. agents and Justice Department prosecutors. They found no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing.”
That hardly satisfied Democrats in Congress, who said it's clear the public has a right to know every detail about what occurred and why the case was dropped.
"Release the tapes—Americans deserve disclosure of evidence showing top DHS official Homan accepting a bag full of $50,000 in cash," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). "We need to know why the investigation was dropped—all the facts and evidence."