May 14, 2026
Vice President J.D. Vance was in Maine today to tout what the Trump administration claims is its push to combat fraud in public services. Vance blamed Democrats for fraud in Medicaid programs and vowed that the Trump administration would stop such fraud by refusing to distribute funds to states that were not cooperating with the federal government’s anti-fraud efforts. He announced yesterday the administration intends to withhold $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments from California.
This alleged push against fraud is part of an old playbook the Republicans have used since at least 2000 in which they accuse the Democrats of their own weak points and misdeeds.
This play was often associated with Republican strategist Karl Rove, but in 2024, Caroline Wazer of Snopes noted that it is most usually associated with Nazi propaganda in the 1930s. Accusing opponents of what you, yourself, are doing, muddies the waters and makes it hard for real accusations against you for the same thing to stick.
Experts say fraud in federal programs is a real problem but that it is carried out primarily by transnational criminal organizations, not by individual recipients. Republican rhetoric claims a high rate of “improper payments,” but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services itself stresses that “improper payment measurement is not a measure of fraud.” Rather, that term identifies payments where the paperwork provided by the state or provider was incomplete. Those numbers have been high recently because the government allowed states greater flexibility during the Covid-19 public health emergency.
According to the nonpartisan Maine Center for Economic Policy, MaineCare is overseen by both state and federal agencies, and the most recent federal review found that only about 0.1% of total program spending was in incorrect payments. Indeed, last month, Reed Shaw of Just Security noted that the administration’s claim to be rooting out fraud appears simply to be a new way to punish perceived political enemies that might have a better chance of getting through the courts than the administration’s previous attempts did.
Accusing Democrats of fraud will also accomplish the political goal of muddying the waters to make it harder for voters to see that the Trump administration is the most corrupt U.S. administration in history. And concern about voters’ perceptions of corruption must be uppermost in the minds of administration advisors right now, since new Hungarian prime minister Péter Magyar’s landslide victory over Trump ally Viktor Orbán was driven in large part by voters’ fury at Orbán’s corruption.
Muddying the waters for voters is the best the Trump administration can hope for because, for all the administration’s claims to be fighting fraud, Trump’s corruption is mind-boggling.
He has fired or demoted twenty inspectors general—the people key to oversight—and in 2024 alone the people he has since fired or sidelined identified more than $50 billion in waste and abuse. Matthew Purdy and Luke Broadwater of the New York Times noted in March that in both terms as of March 2026, Trump has also pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 70 donors or allies who were convicted of fraud. One, Philip Esformes, was convicted of stealing $1.3 billion from Medicare.
Steven Greenhouse of The Guardian reminded readers today that in January, David D. Kirkpatrick of the New Yorker reported that the Trumps have pocketed about $4 billion, primarily through cryptocurrency enterprises. Greenhouse notes that Trump’s sons Eric and Don Jr. have invested in a drone manufacturer that is trying to sell weapons to Gulf countries currently at risk from the war their father started in Iran, and that the Pentagon recently awarded a $24 million contract to a robotics startup for which Eric is the “chief strategy advisor.”
Even as Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is acting as a chief negotiator for the U.S. in the Middle East, he has been trying to raise $5 billion from investors there for his investment firm. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, a sovereign wealth fund overseen by Saudi Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), has already invested $2 billion with Kushner.
And then there are Trump’s vanity projects to remake the national capital. As Greenhouse notes, corporations and billionaires have dropped millions of dollars in donations for Trump’s ballroom where the East Wing used to be and his proposed presidential library in Miami. In December 2025, Karen Yourish, Kenneth P. Vogel, and Charlie Smart of the New York Times estimated that Trump had raked in more than $2 billion for his projects or causes, more than half a billion of it from 346 people who each gave at least $250,000. Some of those people have received presidential pardons, others have been given jobs, and all have received access to the president.
On May 11, Jonathan Allen, Peter Nicholas, Matt Dixon, Henry J. Gomez, and Allan Smith of NBC News reported that Trump is using the planned Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event to be held on his birthday on the White House lawn as a new way for donors to funnel money to him. Although the UFC is paying for the event—and expects to lose as much as $30 million on it—and although tickets are technically free, Trump is picking who gets most of the tickets.
Sponsorship packages that include ringside seats have been selling for $1 million or more. Neither the White House nor the UFC would comment on where the money is going. A Republican lobbyist told the NBC News journalists: “It’s basically been added to the list of approved entities to give undisclosed money to and get credit with Trump. They are raising a sh*t ton of money and have used it as another unofficial vehicle for corporate donors to give and gain favor with Trump.”
And now Trump is in China on a state visit on which he took along seventeen CEOs of companies—many of which do business in China—including billionaires Elon Musk and Tim Cook of Apple. Together, the members of the delegation are worth more than a trillion dollars. Trump also took his son Eric, who runs the family business. As economist Paul Krugman said today, “He might as well have been walking around Beijing with a sign that says—in block capitals, of course, this is Trump—BRIBE ME.”
On Tuesday a group of Miami residents sued Trump, his library fund, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, Miami Dade College and its trustees, and Florida officials to stop the construction of Trump’s presidential library, charging that state officials violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause when they transferred almost three acres of prime waterfront land, worth between $67 million and $300 million, to Trump’s library foundation for $10. Trump has already said he wants to build a hotel on the site rather than a traditional library.
Andrew Duehren and Alan Feuer of the New York Times reported Tuesday that the Department of Justice was working with Trump to settle his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) after a contractor during Trump’s first term leaked tax returns from thousands of wealthy individuals to the media. The Department of Justice and Trump were eager to settle before the judge in the case could rule on whether the case was valid, a decision that could easily go against Trump since he was both the plaintiff and, as the person overseeing the IRS, the defendant in the lawsuit.
This evening, Katherine Faulders, Peter Charalambous, and Alexander Mallin of ABC News reported that Trump is in talks to drop the lawsuit in exchange for the government’s establishing a $1.7 billion fund to compensate those of Trump’s allies who claim they were harmed by the Biden administration’s alleged “weaponization” of the Department of Justice. Those eligible for payments from this taxpayer-funded account would include nearly 1,600 people convicted of committing crimes related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, people Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of shortly after he took office in January 2025. While Trump himself will probably be barred from direct payments, entities associated with him will not be.
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team told the ABC News reporters: “President Trump continues to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable.”
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Notes:
https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/fiscal-year-2025-improper-payments-fact-sheet
https://www.mecep.org/blog/7-things-to-know-about-the-political-attacks-on-mainecare/
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/karl-marx-enemy-quote/
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/us/politics/vance-medicaid-fraud-california.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/14/us/politics/medicaid-fraud-vance-republicans-maine.html
https://calmatters.org/health/2026/05/trump-medicaid-fraud-freeze-california/
https://www.justsecurity.org/136098/trump-administration-fraud-problem/
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/09/world/europe/peter-magyar-hungary-viktor-orban.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/30/us/politics/trump-administration-doj-watchdog-reuveni.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/us/politics/trump-fraudsters-pardons.html
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/14/trump-drain-the-swap-billionaires
https://www.newyorker.com/news/a-reporter-at-large/trumps-profiteering-hits-four-billion-dollars
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/business/jared-kushner-affinity-mideast-funds.html
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/22/us/politics/trump-donors-fundraising-benefits.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/13/florida-trump-library-lawsuit-miami-00919438
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/business/trump-suit-irs.html
https://abcnews.com/US/trump-poised-drop-irs-suit-launch-17b-weaponization/story?id=132962661
As a family doctor, I've spent decades watching my patients navigate a system that was imperfect but at least nominally trying. What's happening now is different. The institutions being dismantled — CDC, NIH, FDA — aren't abstractions to me. They're the infrastructure behind every vaccine recommendation I make, many treatment guidelines I follow, every public health crisis I help my patients understand. When those are hollowed out, along with millions kicked off health insurance or unable to afford sky-rocketing premiums, while billions flow to cronies and pardons go to literal felons and criminals, that's not any kind of excusable politics... that's a direct assault on my patients' health, and a moral injury to all of us. We need to say that loudly and clearly, as physicians, and we need to vote like our patients' lives depend on it. Because they freaking do. I'm also going to craft a post that will appeal to both sides regarding the UFC distraction, because that really gets me, granted they are counting on that very desecration "owning the libs" or some anti-American sentiment.
I'll go high. At least higher. Outside the cage they want all Americans inside, fighting like crabs.
Don’t just doom scroll. Take the information Professor Richardson provides every day and speak up! Resource below to easily contact all of Congress - Be LOUD. The administration is an embarrassment and dangerous for our country 💔🤍💙
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Goodtrouble) to contact members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly.
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
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