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Medicaid Work Requirements: Cruel, Stupid and Illegal
Statement of Robert Weissman, President, Public Citizen
WASHINGTON
Note: The Trump administration has proposed imposing work requirements on Medicaid recipients.
The Trump administration's new policy of permitting states to impose work requirements for Medicaid eligibility is cruel, stupid and illegal.
It is cruel because it not only denies the basic truth that health care is a right, it explicitly conditions access to health care on wealth. The work requirement will deny care to untold numbers of Americans. It will cause needless suffering and kill people - low-income people only.
It is stupid because it will actually prevent people from working - with health needs unattended, many low-income people will be unable to seek work. Even worse, it will undermine broad public health priorities. Medicaid plays a key role in the national response to the opioid epidemic, which the Trump administration has declared a public health emergency, for example. Imposing work requirements on Medicaid eligibility will directly worsen the epidemic.
It is illegal because it contravenes Medicaid's purpose of providing medical assistance to low-income and vulnerable people.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma has condescendingly talked about combating the "soft bigotry" of low expectations for Medicaid recipients. What she is in fact doing is promoting the hard bigotry of animus against poor people - the hard and shameful bigotry of health care denial based on wealth.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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Judge Orders ICE to Release Family Who Spoke Out About Medical Neglect, Poor Conditions in Detention
Hayam El Gamal and her five children were detained last June after her husband was charged in connection with an attack in Colorado.
Apr 21, 2026
A lawyer for a family that has spent close to a year at an immigration detention center in Texas at the insistence of the Trump administration demanded the family's release late Monday after a federal magistrate judge found that "requiring them to endure further detention... risks compounding the constitutional violation."
“A federal court has determined [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement]'s prolonged detention of this family violates the Constitution,” the lawyer, Eric Lee, told The Houston Chronicle. “Nevertheless, ICE has not yet released the family. No more delays, no more obfuscations: release the El Gamal family immediately."
Hayam El Gamal and her five children, including five-year-old twins, were detained last June after her husband, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was charged in connection with a firebombing attack that targeted protesters who were calling for the release of Israeli hostages who had been kidnapped in the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack.
The family has reportedly been detained longer than any other immigrant family under the Trump administration. Under court-mandated restrictions, the federal government is not permitted to detain children longer than 20 days.
El Gamal entered divorce proceedings with her husband after his arrest and is legally separated from him. She has maintained that she and her children knew nothing about his plans to attack the protesters, but the White House's official account on the social media platform X threatened the family with deportation after they were detained.
“Six One-Way Tickets for Mohamed’s Wife and Five Kids. Final Boarding Call Coming Soon,” the White House said last June. Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also said the Department of Homeland Security was investigating what the family knew about the attack.
Three months after they were taken to Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Dilley, Texas, an immigration judge determined last September that the Egyptian family did not pose a threat to the public and ordered them released on a $15,000 bond, but the Board of Immigration Appeals—part of the executive branch—ordered the judge to hold a new hearing and he later reversed his decision.
Monday's ruling came days after El Gamal was taken to a local emergency room with a lump in her chest; Lee said in court filings that El Gamal had not been given proper medical attention at Dilley. Doctors at the local hospital found fluid around El Gamal's heart but did not determine the cause of the lump. Lee told the Chronicle that ensuring El Gamal, who fears the lump could be cancerous due to her family history and medical neglect at the facility, gets urgent medical care following her release is a top priority.
The family has raised alarm for months about medical neglect, which has been reported at numerous ICE facilities, as well as rotten food and unsafe drinking water.
"I have seen with my own eyes, food that has mold in it. I even saw food with actual worms," El Gamal's 16-year-old son wrote in a letter shared publicly by Lee earlier this year. He also said he suffered "severe abdominal pain" and was unable to walk to the facility's medical unit. He was finally taken to the unit hours later in a wheelchair, but was told by a nurse, "I can’t help you. Go and come back if you still have pain in 3 days." He later vomited and was taken to an emergency room where it was determined he had appendicitis.
A friend of El Gamal's eldest child was among those who spoke out on behalf of the family at a protest at Dilley on Sunday and read from a letter written by Hayam El Gamal.
"My kids, two of whom are five years old, have been struggling to live in a place that isn't suitable for such long periods of time," the young woman read. "We didn't do anything to deserve this. Children shouldn't be punished for their parents' actions."
Friends of the family in Colorado Springs, where they lived before their detention, also organized a rally over the weekend.
"Reminder that children shouldn't have to organize protests to release their classmates from prolonged federal detention!" said Lee.
US Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), who has advocated for the El Gamal family and other families detained at Dilley, noted that one of El Gamal's five-year-old children was also denied dental care.
Lee told The Texas Tribune that conditions have deteriorated for the El Gamal family since they began speaking out about their treatment at Dilley. The eldest daughter in the family, 18-year-old Habiba Soliman, was separated from her mother and siblings after telling reporters about the conditions at the center.
The attorney told NBC News that the family "feels vindicated" by the judge's decision, but "they have gone through enough in the last 10 and a half months of detention to know it’s not over yet, because of how brazen and sadistic the White House has been to this family and five innocent children."
"They're still detained," said Lee Monday night. "Release the El Gamal family immediately!"
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Trump Invokes Wartime Law to Fulfill 'Wish List for Oil, Gas, and Coal Industries'
"Trump is abusing emergency authorities and wasting taxpayer resources through unprecedented abuse of the Defense Production Act to promote his politically favored fossil fuel projects."
Apr 21, 2026
US President Donald Trump on Monday invoked wartime authority in an effort to boost domestic fossil fuel production—with the help of taxpayer funding—as his administration faces growing political backlash over gas price spikes, driven by the illegal assault on Iran.
The five presidential memos Trump signed cite his executive powers under the Cold War-era Defense Production Act, which gives the president the ability to expand and accelerate production of key supplies. Critics accused Trump of abusing his emergency authority, once again, to give handouts to an industry profiting massively from the Iran war, which the president launched without congressional authorization.
"President Trump is abusing emergency authorities and wasting taxpayer resources through unprecedented abuse of the Defense Production Act to promote his politically favored fossil fuel projects at the expense of energy affordability and common sense," said Tyson Slocum, energy director at the consumer watchdog Public Citizen. "Today’s unjustified suite of executive orders is a wish list for the oil, gas, and coal industries, who are already enjoying record profits under Trump’s Energy Unaffordability Agenda."
“America is already—far and away—the world’s largest oil and gas producer, and the world’s largest petroleum and gas exporter," Slocum added. "Promoting more fossil fuel exports at a time when Trump has failed to deliver affordable, sustainable energy for American communities is just another example of the president’s incompetent, failed energy policies."
Trump's memos aim to bolster petroleum, coal, and liquefied natural gas production, asserting that the nation's "current inadequate and intermittent energy supply leaves us vulnerable to hostile foreign actors and poses an imminent and growing threat to the United States’ prosperity and national security."
"Action to expand the domestic petroleum production, refining, and logistics capacity is necessary to avert an industrial resource or critical technology item shortfall that would severely impair national defense capability," the memos state.
Trump signed the directives hours after he publicly disagreed with his own energy secretary's assessment of when Americans can expect to see relief at the gas pump, where they're paying over $4 per gallon on average nationwide. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Americans might not see significantly lower gas prices until next year; Trump claimed that assessment was "totally wrong,” even as economists warned of lasting impacts to US and global energy markets stemming from the Iran war.
The world's largest oil and gas giants have profited massively from war-induced price spikes, with the biggest beneficiaries—including US-based Chevron and ExxonMobil—banking over $30 million an hour in windfall gains during the first month of the conflict.
Trump's memos came days after a group of Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced legislation aimed at shielding fossil fuel companies from legal action to hold them accountable for their central role in the climate emergency.
“Big Oil companies have raked in massive profits at the pump while lying to the American people about the catastrophic harm of their products, and now they want to deny Americans their rightful day in court and stick taxpayers with the bill for the mess they made," Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, said in response to the bill. "If fossil fuel companies have done nothing wrong, why do they need immunity?"
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Trump Loses Another Cabinet Secretary as 'Scandal-Ridden' Chavez-DeRemer Resigns
"Chavez-DeRemer failed to protect workers, jeopardized the Department of Labor's work to support the economy, drove down morale among agency staff, and abused federal government resources to serve her own whims."
Apr 20, 2026
President Donald Trump's "scandal-ridden" Department of Labor leader, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, resigned from her post on Monday, making her the third member of his Cabinet to leave since the beginning of the year, following the firings of former US Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Confirming reports of the latest departure, White House spokesperson Steven Cheung said that "Chavez-DeRemer will be leaving the administration to take a position in the private sector. She has done a phenomenal job in her role by protecting American workers, enacting fair labor practices, and helping Americans gain additional skills to improve their lives."
Her deputy, Keith Sonderling, "will take on the role of acting secretary of labor," Cheung added.
As Politico noted Monday, "Chavez-DeRemer has been under scrutiny since January, when DOL Inspector General Anthony D'Esposito opened an investigation into allegations that she was involved in an extramarital affair with a member of her security detail, that she drank on the job, and that top aides concocted official events to facilitate her personal travel plans."
That probe led to allegations—initially reported by The New York Times in February—that the secretary's husband, Shawn DeRemer, "has been barred from the department's headquarters after at least two female staff members told officials that he had sexually assaulted them." DeRemer denied the claims, and police have reportedly closed a related investigation.
As NOTUS reported Monday:
A source close to the president told NOTUS last week that the White House viewed Chavez-DeRemer as an effective spokesperson for the president's economic message and implementer of workforce policy. But the tales of the labor secretary's alleged scandals had become palace intrigue among people close to and inside of the White House.
Two Republicans who speak with President Donald Trump told NOTUS they expected him to pull the trigger on removing Chavez-DeRemer on Wednesday, when she was due for what was expected to be a bruising hearing in Congress. Some inside the White House anticipated Democrats at the hearing would focus on Chavez-DeRemer's alleged transgressions.
Responding to the resignation on social media, the Democratic Party highlighted Bondi and Noem's ousters, and declared, "This administration is imploding."
Before joining Trump's Cabinet, the outgoing secretary represented Oregon's 5th Congressional District in the US House of Representatives. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, a Democrat who serves the state's 1st District, said that "Chavez-DeRemer failed to protect workers, jeopardized the Department of Labor's work to support the economy, drove down morale among agency staff, and abused federal government resources to serve her own whims. She should be held accountable for the damage that occurred on her watch."
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