Texas Weekly Online

Texas-trans-white
Menu
Menu

Author: shailender

Fraud-plagued Minnesota sues Trump admin for withholding $243M in Medicaid payments

Fraud-plagued Minnesota sues Trump admin for withholding 3M in Medicaid payments

Minnesota filed a federal lawsuit Monday against the Trump administration, accusing federal health officials of illegally withholding $243 million in Medicaid payments from the state. Attorney General Keith Ellison and the Minnesota Department of Human Services sued the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), arguing the funding freeze violates federal law. The state is seeking a temporary restraining order to immediately block the action. The dispute stems from a January notice in which the Trump administration said it would withhold more than $2 billion annually from Minnesota’s Medicaid program over what it described as “noncompliance” with federal regulations, specifically, alleged failures to “adequately identify, prevent, and address fraud in its Medicaid program.” USDA IMMEDIATELY SUSPENDS ALL FEDERAL FUNDING TO MINNESOTA AMID FRAUD INVESTIGATION State officials say they have not been told specifically how Minnesota is out of compliance or what changes the administration wants to see. The lawsuit follows a Feb. 25 announcement from CMS that it was deferring roughly $260 million in quarterly federal Medicaid funding to Minnesota, including about $243 million tied to “unsupported or potentially fraudulent” claims.  CMS said the deferral is part of a broader fraud crackdown and cited unusually high spending and rapid growth in personal care services, home- and community-based services, and other practitioner services. HEAVILY-REDACTED AUDIT FINDS MINNESOTA MEDICAID HAD WIDESPREAD VULNERABILITIES “For decades, Medicare fraud has drained billions from American taxpayers — that ends now,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement. “We are replacing the old ‘pay and chase’ model with a real-time ‘detect and deploy’ strategy, using advanced AI tools to identify fraud instantly and stop improper payments before they go out the door.” Minnesota officials contend the move improperly uses a funding “deferral” mechanism and amounts to denying the state due process before any formal finding of noncompliance. WALZ SLAMS TRUMP ADMIN FOR TEMPORARILY HALTING MEDICAID FUNDING TO MINNESOTA: ‘CAMPAIGN OF RETRIBUTION’ The threatened cuts represent about 7% of Minnesota’s quarterly Medicaid funding and could force reductions in healthcare services for low-income residents, according to Ellison’s office. “Trump’s M.O. is to cut first, no matter what the law says or who gets hurt, and ask questions later, if at all,” the attorney general said. “These cuts are the latest in a long series of efforts to go around the law to punish Minnesotans — but just as we fought back and won when they illegally tried to cut funding for childcare, hungry families and our schools, we are suing them again today to make them follow the law.”

Crenshaw says political enemies came out ‘with their knives’ as Texas GOP primary looms

Crenshaw says political enemies came out ‘with their knives’ as Texas GOP primary looms

Rep. Dan Crenshaw is heading into Tuesday’s Texas GOP primary warning that some of the biggest names in conservative politics are trying to take him down. “You know, my enemies have all come out with their knives — Tucker Carlson or Ted Cruz — for no good reason,” Crenshaw told Fox News Digital. Despite lacking endorsements from key political figures in the Lone Star State, Crenshaw said he likes his odds against Republican challenger Steve Toth, a state representative. “I’m literally at a polling location at the moment, and in areas where my opponent should be more popular because he represents this area as a state rep,” Crenshaw said. TED CRUZ ENDORSES TEXAS STATE REP. STEVE TOTH IN GOP PRIMARY CHALLENGE TO DAN CRENSHAW “You know, this is a guy who got zero bills passed in the last legislative session. I got more bills passed in Congress. That’s where it’s a lot harder. So, you know, he’s one of these guys who just always votes no, has never accomplished anything at all.” Toth did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. Crenshaw said he hopes to avoid a runoff election but did not rule out the possibility when asked whether he could clinch the primary Tuesday. “Anything’s possible,” he said. Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL who has not shied away from verbal confrontations with other Republicans, is pursuing his fifth term in Congress but must first defeat Toth. The sharp-tongued congressman has clashed with Cruz, Fox News personality Jesse Watters, Tucker Carlson and Alex Rosen, a YouTube political activist, over policy disagreements. Notably, Toth has received an endorsement from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who until last Thursday had not made a pick in the race. “I am proud to endorse [Toth] for Congress in Texas’s 2nd Congressional District. Steve faithfully served the people of Texas in the Texas House of Representatives, championing our Texas values of liberty, limited government and constitutional governance,” Cruz said in a post on X. CRENSHAW PRAISES MEXICAN OFFICIALS AFTER ‘EL MENCHO’S DEATH, CALLS CARTEL ‘TERRORIST INSURGENCY’ Cruz’s endorsement of Toth comes after he and Crenshaw split over Cruz’s ROTOR Act, an aviation safety bill. Crenshaw voted against the bill Thursday. Aside from disagreements over legislation, Crenshaw believes Cruz has more financially-based reasons for his endorsement. He noted that Robert Marling, CEO of Woodforest National Bank, financially supported Toth after Crenshaw urged investigators to examine Marling’s $20 million investment in 2023. In particular, Crenshaw, alongside other lawmakers, said Marling’s real estate loans appeared to be “attracting and enabling illegal alien settlement in the state of Texas” by offering easy-access credit with little indemnity verification, according to a letter he penned to Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office. Crenshaw signed the letter alongside 25 other Republicans. “Now, where does Cruz come into play? Well, that same banker is a mega donor for Cruz to the tune of millions of dollars,” Crenshaw said. Most recently, FEC records indicate Marling made a personal $14,000 donation to WinRed, a Republican fundraising organization, with the funds earmarked for Toth. Other FEC records indicate Marling has spent millions supporting other Republican candidates. In 2025, he has backed candidates such as Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., and Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wisc. TEXAS SENATE PRIMARIES EXPLODE AS CORNYN WARNS PAXTON COULD COST GOP MAJORITY, DEMOCRATS CLASH OVER RACE Despite Cruz’s opposition, Crenshaw noted that this would not be the first time he has had to run without Cruz’s blessing. “Cruz endorsed against me in my very first race. We saw the results of that,” Crenshaw said. “So now we’re feeling good about it. But it’s a race, and we’re gonna run through the finish line.” Polls in Texas opened at 7 a.m. and will close at 7 p.m.

Israel launches strikes on Beirut as troops advance into southern Lebanon

Israel launches strikes on Beirut as troops advance into southern Lebanon

NewsFeed Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr reports from the site of an Israeli attack in Beirut’s southern suburbs, which Israel says targeted a ‘Hezbollah area’. Israeli forces have taken more land inside Lebanon, expanding a de facto buffer zone that has already displaced tens of thousands of people. Published On 3 Mar 20263 Mar 2026 Click here to share on social media share2 Share plus2googleAdd Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Adblock test (Why?)

‘Russian oil will be sought’: What are Moscow’s gains from the war in Iran?

‘Russian oil will be sought’: What are Moscow’s gains from the war in Iran?

Moscow for decades has been Iran’s main international backer, shielding it from United Nations resolutions while trying to soften Western sanctions and selling weaponry worth billions of dollars to Tehran. Russian President Vladimir Putin lambasted the killing on Saturday of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as a “cynical violation of all norms of human morals and the international law”. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list Putin’s former prime minister and one-time successor Dmitry Medvedev sardonically called United States President Donald Trump a “peacekeeper who showed his real face”. Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s Federal Assembly, compared the war to what he alleged were the collective West’s attempts to destabilise Russia in the 1990s, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said US-Iranian talks about Tehran’s nuclear programme “degraded to direct aggression”. But as US and Israeli air strikes on Iran raged on for a fourth day on Tuesday, Russia appeared poised to benefit far more from the war than it looked to lose. Moscow’s most immediate gain is a boost in its oil revenues. The price of Russia’s Urals crude plunged to a new low in late February at $40 per barrel because of deep discounts caused by Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine. But as the price of the international benchmark Brent crude jumped by 13 percent by Monday, reaching $82 per barrel, Urals was traded at $57. ‘Russian oil will be sought after’ Russia, Iran and Venezuela are the world’s top producers of heavy crude that is exported to dozens of nations to be processed by their refineries. Advertisement Venezuela’s exports stalled after US special forces captured President Nicolas Maduro on January 3 and the White House gained control of Caracas’s oil trade. The suspension of Iran’s exports means that oil refineries designed to process heavy crude will have to rely on the Urals oil from Russia. “It means that Russian oil will be sought after because the rebuilding of technological processes of oil refineries takes long and costs a lot,” Igar Tyshkevych, a political analyst based in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, told Al Jazeera. “It means that the discounts for Russian oil will change.” If oil prices rise further, the Kremlin may propose to increase supply in exchange for Washington’s decision to partially lift the sanctions. Russia’s higher oil production would decrease petrol prices in the US before the midterm elections in November, he said. A second, longer-term gain could be Moscow’s attempt to act as a mediator in peace talks between Tehran and Washington. “It has been tried several times during conflicts between the US and Iran,” Tyshkevych said. “It didn’t always work, but Russia can try.” In March 2025, Putin offered to mediate US-Iranian negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear programme and three months later repeated the proposal while US and Israeli strikes were hitting Iran during a 12-day war. Washington ignored its offer both times. The conflicts with Iran have distracted Trump from trying to reach a US-brokered settlement of the Russia-Ukraine war, which entered its fifth year on February 24. The talks have stalled as Moscow has kept urging Ukraine to leave the Kyiv-controlled part of the Donetsk region in southeastern Ukraine. Washington will continue pressing both sides to settle, turning the talks into a “who blinks first” game, Tyshkevych said. “No one wants to say ‘no’ first but tries to create conditions for the opponent to loudly say ‘no’ and slam the door loudly,” he said. And as the attention of Washington and other Western powers is turned towards the war in Iran, Russia gets several weeks to come up with a new agenda for Trump, he said. Meanwhile, Ukraine could face a shortage of US-supplied missiles for Patriot air defence systems, which can shoot down Russian ballistic missiles, analysts warned. Patriot missiles are being redirected to Washington’s allies in the Middle East. “We felt a serious deficit before the war, and there is a high probability that the situation will only get worse,” Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy chief of the Ukrainian military’s General Staff, told Al Jazeera. Advertisement Patriot missiles “are manufactured in very low numbers. Americans have tried to change it, but with such demand, it can’t be done fast,” he said. However, Putin faces a tough choice between Washington and Tehran, according to a Russian expert on Iran. “Moscow has to choose, and for Putin, it’s a very tough choice because on the one hand, he doesn’t want to have a falling-out with Trump, but on the other hand, the regime in Tehran is one of the few serious foreign partners for the Kremlin for now,” Ruslan Suleymanov, an associate fellow at the New Eurasian Strategies Center, a US-British think tank, told Al Jazeera. “Besides, there is the heaviest choice between Iran and Israel,” he said. The Kremlin has tried to maintain a pragmatic partnership with Israel. “If we’re talking about immediate gains, then, yes, Russian propaganda can spin this episode with the killing of Khamenei as [an example of] Western treachery as in ‘Why can they do it and we can’t,’” Suleymanov said, referring to Khamenei’s killing and Moscow’s failed attempts to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “In any case, this situation is a blow to Putin’s image that yet again shows that he is incapable of really helping his partners, his allies,” Suleymanov added. Putin has already lost two key allies. In November 2024, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow, and Maduro’s abduction to the United States put an end to Moscow’s alliance with Venezuela. The Iran war has further ruined the authority of international law, according to a London-based expert on Central Asia. “The main argument against the Russian aggression in Ukraine so far has been the rude violation of international law and Ukraine’s sovereignty,” Alisher Ilkhamov, head of the Central Asia Due Diligence think tank, told Al Jazeera. The Kremlin may also use Khamenei’s killing as a way to persuade men of fighting age in the