Speaking at the White House Easter lunch today, President Trump told Erika Kirk, the widow of TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk, to sue those who have been defaming her. Seeing her at a table, Trump declared, “Hello, darling! Wow. There’s a good table. I like that table. You’re doing well, right? I think you should sue ‘em. I told her, ‘You oughta sue some of these’ — They’re so jealous of Erika. I said, ‘You oughta sue their —’ I can say it; you’re not allowed to say this; you have to be nicer. Sue their ass off.”

A stunning report from City Journal alleges that while California collects some of the nation’s highest taxes to fuel a $300 billion annual budget, a mounting body of evidence suggests that systematic fraud has siphoned off at least $180 billion during Governor Gavin Newsom’s tenure. From the collapse of the unemployment system to “ghost” healthcare providers and embezzled homelessness funds, public records paint a picture of a state government that has allegedly frequently suspended basic oversight, creating a vacuum filled by international crime rings and opportunistic scammers. The most documented alleged failure occurred within the Employment Development Department (EDD) during the pandemic. According to fraud specialist Haywood Talcove and subsequent state admissions, the Newsom administration “suspended all of the rules” for eligibility to expedite payments. The state officially admitted to paying out $20 billion in fraudulent claims, though independent experts like Talcove place the figure at $32.6 billion. State records confirmed the EDD paid out hundreds of millions in claims to active prisoners, including 133 inmates on death row. Memphis rapper “Nuke Bizzle” pleaded guilty to federal charges after recording a music video bragging about exploiting the EDD; he successfully obtained $700,000 using stolen identities. California’s Medicaid program (Medi-Cal) has seen its budget double to nearly $197 billion under Newsom. However, the California State Auditor has designated “Medi-Cal Eligibility” as a “high-risk” issue every year since 2007, noting “eligibility discrepancies” that the state has failed to fix. In 2025, the DOJ announced charges against three individuals for using Monte Vista Pharmacy to process fraudulent prescriptions by exploiting loosened pandemic-era restrictions. Sources at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimate a 25% fraud rate in Medi-Cal since 2019. Using a more conservative 15% rate, experts calculate a loss of $146 billion on Newsom’s watch. “Meantime, in Sacramento, state legislators have begun sounding the alarm,” City Journal writes. “In February, Leticia Castillo, a Republican in the California State Assembly, proposed a bill that would create a Medi-Cal ‘fraud assessment task force’ to ‘review current fraud prevention tools’ and ‘evaluate how best practices from the federal government and other states could be applied in California.’ To date, Newsom has not supported the bill publicly.” The In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program, which pays family members to care for the elderly, lacks basic oversight like unannounced home visits. Recent federal prosecutions have targeted caregivers who claimed hours for recipients who were actually incarcerated or deceased. Despite spending $24 billion on homelessness in five years, California’s state auditor reported in 2024 that the government lacked sufficient data to even assess if the programs were working. Cody Holmes, CFO of a state-funded developer, was charged with embezzling $2.2 million in homelessness funds to pay for exotic cars and a 6,500-square-foot mansion. In 2024 and 2025, federal authorities charged over 50 individuals—many with alleged ties to Romanian organized crime—for using “skimming” devices to steal millions from the state’s Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) system. In November 2025, Newsom’s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, was charged with fraud for allegedly siphoning campaign and COVID-19 recovery funds. While Williamson has pleaded not guilty, two other well-connected aides struck plea deals.

Another illegal immigrant has allegedly committed a murder in Virginia. This time, the accused is suspected of killing his 3-month-old daughter. Police arrested Guatemalan illegal immigrant Misael Lopez Gomez, 28, after finding the unresponsive infant at a home in Fairfax County Friday, according to WUSA9. First responders attempted to save the child by administering CPR. The child later died at the hospital, and her death was determined to be caused by blunt-force trauma, the local news outlet reported. Lopez Gomez admitted that he illegally crossed the southern border in July 2023 near Albuquerque, New Mexico, according to the Department of Homeland Security. He now faces murder and felony child abuse charges. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has since lodged a detainer requesting that local authorities hand over the illegal immigrant for deportation. DHS is also calling “on Governor Spanberger to commit to not releasing this barbaric animal from jail into Virginia communities,” Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement Wednesday. “This monster should have never been allowed in our country by the Biden administration. We need cooperation from sanctuary politicians to stop criminals from being released from jail to perpetrate more crimes and create more innocent victims,” Bis said. Upon entering office, Spanberger ended a cooperation agreement between state and local law enforcement and ICE. A day after one of the recent killings, the Democratic official characterized ICE as “unaccountable agents” who “terrorize our communities” in her party’s response to the State of the Union. On Sunday, authorities arrested Guatemalan illegal immigrant Anibal Armando Chavarria Muy, 38, after he allegedly repeatedly stabbed a man to death in Fairfax County, according to ABC7. Just weeks before, 41-year-old mother Stephanie Minter’s lifeless body was found at a Fairfax County bus stop after she was fatally stabbed by an illegal immigrant with a lengthy rap sheet. Sierra Leone national Abdul Jalloh, 32, who had 30 prior arrests for rape, malicious wounding, assault, drug possession, identity theft, trespassing, larceny, firing a weapon, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and pickpocketing, according to DHS. After ICE lodged a detainer for Jalloh’s arrest, Spanberger said the request wouldn’t be enough for local law enforcement to hand him over. The governor said they would only comply with a warrant signed by a judge, which isn’t a standard practice in such instances. Fairfax County has notoriously operated as a sanctuary for illegal immigrant criminals and the local sheriff’s office has notoriously ignored ICE detainers.

Most of the Department of Homeland Security could reopen pending a House vote, as Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced Wednesday that they will go ahead with the Senate-approved plan and fund ICE and Border Patrol through a separate reconciliation bill. President Donald Trump posted to Truth Social that he wants to fund the two agencies through reconciliation, as that would not require Democratic votes. “We appreciate and share the President’s determination to once and for all bring an end to the Democrat DHS shutdown,” Johnson and Thune said in a joint statement. “In the coming days, Republicans in the Senate and House will be following through on the President’s directive by fully funding the entire Department of Homeland Security on two parallel tracks: through the appropriations process and through the reconciliation process,” the leaders added. The move could effectively limit the Democrats’ ability to successfully negotiate for any federal immigration policy reforms, which is why the shutdown began in the first place. House and Senate Republicans were at odds last week over the best path forward: the Senate approved a funding plan that did not include ICE or Border Patrol, whereas the House approved a 60-day temporary funding plan, known as a continuing resolution, that would fully fund DHS until May 22. House Democrats wanted the House to approve the Senate plan, so all but three voted against the continuing resolution. However, not all Republicans are on board with the suggested plan on Wednesday. “Funding for ICE and CBP must never be separated from DHS funding,” Rep. Keith Self (R-TX) posted to X. “If Republicans isolate it, they’re handing our border and ICE agents straight to the radicals who will defund and dismantle them every chance they get.” “Fund DHS fully, or the open borders globalists win,” Self added.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled in Chiles v. Salazar. The basic concept of the Supreme Court ruling was that the state of Colorado was wrong to ban what is called conversion therapy.  The 2019 Colorado law prohibited licensed mental health professionals from engaging in conversion therapy with patients under 18 years of age. They defined conversion therapy to include any practice or treatment that attempts to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, as well as any effort to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions toward individuals of the same sex. That same law allowed counselors to provide “acceptance, support, and understanding for identity exploration and development,” and to assist persons “undergoing gender transition.” In other words, the Colorado law said that if a kid comes to you with gender confusion, you are not allowed to say, “Boys are boys and girls are girls. Let’s help you be more comfortable in your body.” If a boy says, “I’m a girl, “you have to affirm him. And if you don’t affirm him, you’re engaged in conversion therapy, and you can be prosecuted under the law in the state of Colorado. If a kid comes to you and says, “Listen, I’m confused about my feelings of sexual attraction,” you’re not allowed to talk that through and say, “You know what? You’re 14 years old. A lot of people are confused about sexual attraction at 14 years old. You’re being hit by hormones that you’ve never experienced before, and you really don’t have any sort of clear line as to how to live your life, so let’s talk this thing through.” That might be conversion therapy, because that could be construed as an attempt to change behavior, or eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction toward individuals of the same sex. Instead, you’re supposed to just give that kid a Pride flag and tell them to get out there and march. The plaintiff in this case, Kelly Chiles, holds a master’s degree in clinical mental health and a state counseling license in Colorado. According to the Supreme Court, Chiles doesn’t start counseling with any predetermined goals. Instead, she sits down with clients, discusses their goals, and then formulates methods of counseling that will most benefit them, seeking throughout to respect their client’s fundamental right of self-determination, matters of sexuality and gender. The clients sometimes have different agendas, according to the Supreme Court; some are perfectly happy being gay or lesbian or transgender identifying, and others want to reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions, or change sexual behaviors, or grow in the experience of harmony with their bodies. Under Colorado law, those last people are just plumb out of luck. There’s nothing they can do. Because if you, for example, are a person who has a fetish and you don’t want to have that fetish anymore, according to Colorado law, you are not allowed as a therapist to try to change an individual’s behaviors regarding sexual or romantic attraction. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who is not a strict textualist when it comes to these matters, wrote the opinion, and his basic opinion is pretty simple: The First Amendment allows therapists to say what they want to say during therapy.  The only person who voted in dissent was, of course — wait for it — Ketanji Brown Jackson, the dumbest person on the Supreme Court. This is saying a lot because Sonia Sotomayor is also on the Supreme Court. Gorsuch wrote: Consistent with the First Amendment’s jealous protections for the individual’s right to think and speak freely, this Court has long held that laws regulating speech based on its subject matter or “communicative content” are “presumptively unconstitutional.” … We have recognized, as well, the even greater dangers associated with regulations that discriminate based on the speaker’s point of view. In other words, the big problem here is that it’s not just that Colorado is putting regulations on speech; those regulations on speech are content-dependent. Colorado says you can say these things that we agree with, but you cannot say these things with which we disagree. Gorsuch continued: While the First Amendment protects many and varied forms of expression, the spoken word is perhaps the quintessential form of protected speech. And that is exactly the kind of expression in which Ms. Chiles seeks to engage. As a talk therapist, all Ms. Chiles does is speak with clients; she does not prescribe medication, use medical devices, or employ any physical methods. … Consider, too, where the State and dissent’s logic leads. Not long ago, many medical experts and organizations, including the American Psychiatric Association, considered homosexuality a mental disorder. On the view Colorado and the dissent advance, a law adopted during that era prohibiting counselors from engaging in the “substandard care” of affirming their clients’ homosexuality would have been subject to only rational-basis or intermediate-scrutiny review—and likely upheld. Today, tomorrow, and forever, too, any professional speech that deviates from “current beliefs about the safety and efficacy of various medical treatments” could be silenced with relative ease. In other words, the court is saying, “If Colorado is suggesting that a state can determine what is the best course of care with regard to opinions on open matters of gender and sexuality, and then mandate that sort of stuff on subject matter basis, that is violation of free speech.” The court goes out of its way to really slap Jackson. That last statement — “Today, tomorrow, and forever, too, any professional speech that deviates from ‘current beliefs about the safety and efficacy of various medical treatments’ could be silenced with relative ease,” is followed by this: “It is a consequence Colorado freely acknowledges. And one the dissent embraces.” The opinion then cites Buck v. Bell. That is a scathing rebuttal to Jackson, because Buck v. Bell was the case that suggested that you had the ability under the law to sexually sterilize inmates of institutions, because that was the prevailing science of the time. Jackson has said that she liked that law. Jackson said in the Chiles case that Colorado was simply “restricting a dangerous therapy modality,” adding that the court’s opinion was “unprincipled and unworkable.” She followed with a long statement about how wonderful the gender orientation of left-wing philosophy is. Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent is a reminder that if the Left had complete control over the mechanisms of government, it would simply regulate into law all of the most specious and idiotic views about science. Without President Trump as president, we were super-close to that world, because President Trump is responsible for several selections on the Supreme Court. In this case, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor ruled with the majority.  But if there were a bunch of Democratic appointees on the court, is that how this would have gone?