The federal government shut down on Wednesday after Democrats refused to vote on a clean continuing resolution to keep the government funded for the next seven weeks. When Republicans pointed out that Democrats were unwilling to vote to fund the government without restoring health care eligibility for illegal aliens, the media and other Democrats jumped into action, “fact-checking” Republicans and claiming that wasn’t true.
These “fact checks” rely on the ludicrous claim that foreign citizens who were dumped into the United States by the millions by the Biden administration via blanket parole grants are not really “illegal” aliens.
Democrats refused to fund the government without a funding proposal that would, in part, rescind Subtitle B in Title VII of the One Big Beautiful Bill. That section had narrowed the eligibility requirements for government health care benefits (like Medicaid), restricting eligibility for certain foreign nationals, such as the 2.8 million otherwise inadmissible aliens who received blanket parole into the United States from the Biden administration.
But rather than acknowledge that Democrats’ proposal would extend federal health care to parolees, leftist mouthpieces insist that those millions of parolees don’t count as “illegal aliens” and therefore that no illegal aliens are getting Medicaid benefits.
That’s what Neera Tanden is doing when she insists the Affordable Care Act “bans care for illegal aliens.”
Or Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith, who claimed: “Undocumented immigrants aren’t even *allowed* to access Medicare, Medicaid or ACA credits.”
Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said in an X post: “‘Health care for illegal aliens’ is the new ‘immigrants are eating cats and dogs in Springfield.’ The Republican playbook is simple: make up a baseless lie, repeat it every chance you get, hope and pray that everyone blames Democrats for the crises you created.”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said: “To be clear, undocumented immigrants aren’t even allowed to enroll in federally funded health coverage.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told CNBC it is an “outright lie” and that “federal law prohibits the use of taxpayer dollars to provide medical coverage to undocumented individuals.”
New York Rep. Jerry Nadler said on X that “undocumented immigrants are not eligible for the ACA. Period.”
Democrats’ media allies were quick to jump in and reinforce the narrative.
CNN’s Tami Luhby declared Republicans’ claims “not true,” arguing that “Democrats are drawing a line in the sand over health care, but it doesn’t involve undocumented immigrants.”
The New York Times’ Linda Qiu wrote a piece claiming Republicans’ claims were “misleading.”
According to Qiu, Democrats’ “budget proposal does not make [illegal aliens] eligible for” Medicaid, Medicare, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or the Affordable Care Act.
Qiu then, however, explains that Republicans’ entire argument “may be referring to the law changing the eligibility requirements for certain immigrant groups. Under the tax cut and domestic policy law, certain groups of ‘lawfully present’ immigrants are no longer eligible for Obamacare subsidies. The Democrats’ proposal would restore that eligibility.”
She then says that “there is no uniform definition for ‘lawful presence,’ a term typically used by federal and state health care and social welfare programs to determine eligibility” but that it typically includes “refugees and asylum recipients, but the term can also include immigrants whose legal status is more complicated, like those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.”
The Daily Beast’s Tom Latchem leaned on The Times’ bogus fact-check to claim that Republicans’ claims are “exposed as fake.”
These talking heads rely on a narrow definition of “illegal alien” that excludes the millions of foreign nationals that the Biden administration either brought in or welcomed and effectively granted parole status by magic wand. They are intentionally misinterpreting Republican arguments in order to accuse Republicans of lying.
The Biden administration quietly dumped hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans and Nicaraguans into U.S. towns, sometimes by flying them into and around the country at night. Whatever “parole” distinction Biden officials gave them on paper, most Americans would consider those people illegal aliens. The same goes for the more than 1 million foreign citizens granted Temporary Protected Status by the Biden administration. Those are the people to whom Democrats want to give federal health care coverage by repealing Subtitle B.
While Democrats insist that illegal aliens are barred from federal health care benefits, they are at the same time working to expand the definition of who qualifies until it covers the very same people that Americans recognize as illegal aliens. That’s what Republicans are talking about.