On the first day of the government shutdown, Vice President JD Vance tried to claim that it’s all the fault of Democrats for wanting to give free health care to undocumented immigrants. 

“This is a Democrat talking point. They say we’re not actually trying to give health care benefits to illegal aliens. And here’s why it’s not true,” Vance said on Fox News on Wednesday. “There are two Biden-era programs that explicitly gave the taxpayer health care money to illegal aliens that we turned off when President Trump took over in January.… The Democrats want to turn it back on. And in their initial proposal, the first thing that they put out to reopen the government, they actually turned that money for health care benefits for illegal aliens back on. So it’s not something that we made up. It’s not a talking point. It is in the text of the bill that they initially gave to us to reopen the government.” 

.@VP nukes the Democrat lie that they aren't trying to give free health care to illegals:

"It's not something that we made up. It's not a talking point. It is in the text of the bill that they initially gave to us to reopen the government." pic.twitter.com/regw9fGH1i

In reality, Democrats are fighting to reverse Trump’s Medicaid cuts and extend Affordable Care Act tax subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of this year and would cause health care premiums to rise for millions of Americans.

And the text of Democrats’ proposal doesn’t say at all what Vance claims it does, as American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick pointed out. 

“That is an outright lie. You can read the text for yourself; the Medicaid section starts on page 55,” he wrote on X. “There is nothing in there AT ALL about ‘free healthcare’ for undocumented immigrants. Vance is just making that up COMPLETELY.”

Some on the right responded to Reichlin-Melnick by bringing up the fact that undocumented people would get treatment in an emergency room, cruelly conflating Medicare and Medicaid with the emergency medical services every Medicare-participating hospital is required to give under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986. 

“If you get hit by a car, they don’t check your papers before saving your life. That’s not going to change,” Melnick continued. “Again, absolutely nothing in either the GOP Medicaid cuts passed earlier this year or the Democrats’ demand to reverse those cuts has anything at all to do with EMTALA, the law which requires hospitals to treat people who arrive with emergency medical needs.”

And yet the vice president’s rhetoric went unchallenged live, as the GOP continues to spread misinformation to justify its slash-and-burn funding bill while pointing the blame for the shutdown at Democrats.  

On Tuesday evening, the Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV spoke out against anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States, as well as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bellicose rhetoric.

At an unusual gathering of military leaders earlier that day, Hegseth had told the top brass to be “prepared for war, not for defense,” while espousing the use of “overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy” and promising to “untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country.”

Speaking to reporters in Italian, Leo called Hegseth’s rhetoric “worrying,” per the Catholic News Agency, “because it shows each time an increase in tensions.” Citing Hegseth’s change in job title from “secretary of defense” to “secretary of war,” the pope said, “Let’s hope it is only a way of speaking.”

The pontiff also discussed Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich’s decision to present a lifetime achievement award to outgoing Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, who represents Illinois and is a Catholic, but whose support of legal abortion stirred conservative backlash against his announced honor. (Durbin ultimately opted to decline the award.)

“I’m not terribly familiar with the particular case,” Leo said in English when asked about the controversy. “I think that it’s very important to look at the overall work that a senator has done during, if I’m not mistaken, 40 years of service in the United States Senate.”

The pope noted that some people claim to be “pro-life” while failing to extend that sentiment to other issues.

“Someone who says, ‘I am against abortion,’ but says, ‘I am in favor of the death penalty’ is not really pro-life,” he observed. “Someone who says that, ‘I am against abortion, but I am in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants who are in the United States,’ I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”

While Leo didn’t name names, President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance fall squarely into this category, as professed pro-lifers whose administration’s policies on the death penalty and immigration are anything but Christian.

Ethics be damned, the Trump administration is blatantly pinning the government shutdown on Democrats.

An email issued to federal workers Tuesday left little room for doubt about how the executive branch wanted to frame the congressional failure.

“President [Donald] Trump opposes a government shutdown, and strongly supports the enactment of H.R. 5371, which is a clean Continuing Resolution to fund the government through November 21,” the email, which was obtained by HuffPost, stated. “Unfortunately, Democrats are blocking this Continuing Resolution in the U.S. Senate due to unrelated policy demands.”

The email was received by employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Social Security Administration, reported HuffPost. Leaders of those same agencies sent out the email.

That kind of language is in violation of the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch, according to ethics experts. It could also violate the Hatch Act, which is designed to limit partisan messaging from federal........

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