“Sleeping On The Job”: DC Opens Medicaid Investigation Following Nurse And Aide Neglect Claims
D.C.’s inspector general has opened an investigation after complaints surfaced about home health nurses and aides allegedly sleeping while on duty, following a News4 I-Team report that included hours of video showing caregivers appearing to sleep overnight, according to NBC.
The investigation stems from the account of Damon Brooks, a D.C. resident who shared his experience publicly in December. His story, viewed by more than half a million people online, described repeated instances where he said caregivers failed to respond when he needed assistance.
NBC writes that Brooks, a paraplegic sports journalist, relies on in-home care through the District’s Elderly and Persons with Physical Disabilities waiver program, which is funded by Medicaid. He said he struggled for years with aides who could not be awakened at night, even as he worried that speaking out could jeopardize his care. “Sadly, like, I’ve had large gaps in my schedule. Sometimes I get people, sometimes I don’t,” Brooks said.
After the story aired, Brooks said investigators from the Office of the Inspector General contacted him. “They explained to me that some of the things that I’ve been subjected to were not right. They were deemed fraudulent, and that they’re opening an investigation to see how they could possibly assist me with hopefully rectifying the issue,” he said. He added that since the report, he has not seen aides sleeping on the job.
“I don’t want anybody to be a casualty or anybody to lose the quality of life due to somebody’s negligence,” Brooks said.
The report also renewed scrutiny of broader staffing challenges in the program. D.C. Councilmember Christina Henderson, who chairs the health committee, said the issue extends beyond the District. “It’s a complicated issue, but it’s certainly not an issue that is unique to the District,” she said. Henderson noted that over four years, D.C. has lost about 13% of licensed health aides and 28% of certified nursing assistants.
Henderson said better pay is critical to retention, estimating it would take more than $89 million over four years to raise wages. “It’s hard to recruit someone who could be making more at Starbucks or another retail job and it be less labor-intensive work than what they’re currently providing,” she said. “I think it pushes us to think about priorities, right? To think about what is super, super important to us and to try to become creative with that.”
The Department of Health Care Finance, which oversees the waiver program, said in a statement it investigated the complaints and took corrective action but did not specify details. The Office of the Inspector General’s inquiry into Brooks’ case is ongoing, as the District pursues measures to expand and stabilize the caregiving workforce.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said on Jan. 21 that Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist at the center of the Trump administration’s deportation battles, may be removed to Algeria.
Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, who leads the department’s Office of Public Affairs, made the announcement during an appearance on the NewsNation show “Katie Pavlich Tonight” in response to a question about Khalil.
“It looks like he’ll go to Algeria. That’s what the thought is right now,” McLaughlin said. “It’s a reminder for those who are in this country on a visa or on a green card. You are a guest in this country—act like it.”
Khalil, who is a green card holder and thus a permanent resident, has been the subject of a longstanding legal controversy ever since he was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on March 8, 2025. He was involved in protests against Israel for actions during its war with Hamas in Gaza, which began after the terrorist group attacked the country on Oct. 7, 2023.
The Trump administration sought to remove Khalil from the country based on his activism at Columbia University, citing a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that permits the removal of foreign nationals whose presence may have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the United States.
The administration later added another charge of deportability, arguing in an immigration court that in his application to adjust status and become a lawful permanent resident, Khalil willfully misrepresented a material fact. Namely, he allegedly failed to disclose his affiliation with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) and Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), an organization that opposes the Israeli government.
On these charges, Khalil was issued an order of removal on Sept. 12, 2025, by an immigration judge, sending him to Algeria, and in the alternative, to Syria. Khalil later filed a petition for release from ICE custody, seeking a writ of habeas corpus from federal district court, which was initially granted but later reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, allowing for his re-arrest.
The government successfully argued before the court of appeals that Khalil could not be granted relief from a federal district court until he had been issued a “final order of removal,” that is, at the conclusion of his deportation proceedings. Khalil’s attorneys, by contrast, argued that his continued detention was a violation of his constitutional rights.
Khalil has not exhausted all of his legal options to remain in the United States. He could petition for a rehearing of the case by the full appeals court. If a rehearing is denied, he could also petition for a writ of certiorari from the Supreme Court to hear the case.
Additionally, Khalil could appeal the immigration judge’s removal order to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which specifically hears appeals from immigration courts. Thereafter, if the board denies him relief, he could appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, as the judge’s decision was issued in La Salle, Louisiana, which lies within their jurisdiction.
Khalil is a citizen of Algeria and was born in Syria in 1995. His wife, Noor Abdalla, a dentist and pro-Palestinian activist, as well as his minor son, are both U.S. citizens. His detention and removal proceedings have been highly criticized by free speech activist groups and some Democratic officials, such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Khalil’s attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union did not respond to The Epoch Times’ repeated requests for comment.
Watch: Convicted Minnesota Scammer Says Walz, Ellison Were Aware Of $250M Fraud
The media has been giving quite a lot of attention to Aimee Bock, the head of a Minnesota nonprofit at the center of the largest pandemic relief fraud in the nation’s history – which she now says Governor Tim Walz and AG Keith Ellison had to have known about.
To review; Bock’s organization, Feeding Our Future, fraudulently signed off on $250 million in federal funds meant to feed underprivileged children in Minnesota roughly 125 million nonexistent meals. According to prosecutors, as little as 3% of the funds were actually used to feed children. Bock, 45, was charged with signing off on reimbursement claims for the unserved meals, as well as collecting bribes. She maintains her innocence, while one Somali community leader told a local reporter that Bock was “a modern-day Robin Hood.”
Feeding Our Future was a “sponsoring organization,” meaning it approved meal sites, approved meal counts, and distributed the reimbursements to hundreds of sponsored food sites across the state which were mostly operated by Somalians that submitted fraudulent claims. However, in exchange for Bock’s sponsorship and approvals (she sued the state for discrimination in November 2020, claiming the Department of Education was unfairly targeting minority-led programs), the Somalians paid kickbacks to Bock and other Feeding Our Future employees, prosecutors said.
So far, 98 people have been charged in the fraud, 85 of whom are Somalians – unlike Bock, who is white. Hence the media focus on her. Over 64 of those charged have either pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial.
Karen Undone
Bock, who’s awaiting sentencing and faces up to 33 years in prison, is now giving jailhouse interviews to mainstream outlets – telling CBS News that she wishes she could “go back and do things differently, stop things, catch things.”
She claims she was doing everything in her power to root out fraud, and terminated agreements with dozens of entities she believed were cheating the system.
“I was the only one that stopped a claim and said, this is fraudulent,” she said. “There are tens of millions of dollars in claims that we did not pay, that we refused.”
Feeding Our Future notably submitted $3.4 million worth of meal claims in 2019 – a figure which exploded to nearly $200 million in 2021, which Bock attributed to looser guidelines during the pandemic that allowed parents to pick up meals and bring them home.
Walz Knew?
Bock blames Minnesota officials for not catching the fraud, telling CBS: “We relied on the state,” adding that local officials, including Rep. Ilhan Omar, would often visit the meal sites. “We told the state, this site is going to operate at this address, this time, and this number of children. The state would then tell us that’s approved.”
Now, Bock says there’s no way Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison weren’t aware of the fraud.
“I have to believe that the governor’s office and Keith Ellison’s office were aware of this. They’ve said they were involved in helping the FBI. They’ve said they were made aware, but apparently I’m scary, so they couldn’t do anything,” Bock told Fox News. “I honestly believe Keith Ellison and Gov. Walz need to be held accountable. There needs to be an investigation done. If they weren’t aware, that’s concerning.”
👂🏻👂🏻👂🏻👂🏻👂🏻👂🏻👂🏻👂🏻👂🏻👂🏻
WORTH A LISTEN
Aimee Bock from behind prison is naming names in the Minnesota fraud scandal… which she believes was no surprise to local Democratic leaders. pic.twitter.com/UfrKsvJNjV
Ellison’s office told the outlet that Bock lacks credibility, pointing to her conviction.
“She is a liar, fraudster, and manipulator of the highest order who has never acknowledged or accepted her guilt. Now, she’s on a media tour to deflect her guilt onto others instead of finally taking responsibility for the fraud scheme she ran,” said a spokesperson.
“Federal and state investigators meticulously examined the crimes Bock and her accomplices committed,” the Ellison spokesperson continued. “Bock alone is responsible for her own actions, which was proven in court beyond a shadow of a doubt, and her claim about Attorney General Ellison is a lie without a shred of evidence behind it.”
According to the House Oversight Committee’s James Comer (R-KY), the DOJ has issued over 1,750 subpoenas, executed over 130 search warrants, and conducted over 1,000 witness interviews in a sweeping federal probe. Comer says federal prosecutors believe at least $9 billion has been stolen across multiple fraud schemes in Minnesota.
“The breadth and depth of this fraud is breathtaking. And I fear it is just the tip of the iceberg. Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Minnesota’s Democratic leadership have either been asleep at the wheel or complicit in these crimes,” he said. “They failed Minnesotans and all Americans, handing millions of taxpayers’ money to fraudsters.”
“This is how tyranny looks in the modern world. It arrives dressed as dialogue, consensus, and expertise. It is imposed by people who sincerely believe they are doing nothing at all.”
– DataRepublican
Davos — The World Economic Forum (WEF)— is toast. Trump, Bessent, and Lutnick exposed the wretched org of overcompensated squishes to too much light and heat and it flared into such a pathetic little smoldering cinder that its spoxpersons said the meeting might get moved out of Davos altogether next year to Dublin or Detroit. Closer to the people, you understand (except there are hardly any people left in Detroit, thanks to the fifty years of WEF influence on manufacturing policy and the people of Dublin are now Nigerians, Somalis, and Congolese, thanks to the WEF’s retarded migration doctrine).
All of which means that its trademark, WEF Globalism, is dead, too. No more aspirations of One World Government (as if Earth was the Planet Krypton). . . no more You will have nothing, be happy, and eat bugs. . . no more green energy gaslight. . . no more all women are women, including men pretending to be women. . . no more wide-open borders. . . no more of their preposterous elitist armchair totalitarianism. In fact, if anything, the WEF had terminal boundary problems, much like the Cluster-B personalities that infest the upper echelons of the NGO alternative universe that carried out the WEF’s dastardly programming for them. They didn’t know when to stop.
Before he got washed-up in a slop of sexual accusation and embezzlement, WEF-Fuhrer Klaus Schwab used to brag about plugging his Young Global Leaders into top government jobs all over the place (e.g., the disastrous Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland in Canada). That’s over. Western Civ has suffered enough. One by one, the Big Dawgs of the EU are quietly backing-off of their insane migrant importation policies.
Border control is nature’s way of fixing boundary problems of-the-mind.
No one personifies the problem more than Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen, the archetypal Cluster-B “devouring mother” costumed as a harmless finishing school headmistress. She is the unelected (appointed by committee) President of the European Commission who has been telling the elected squish leaders of France, Germany and elsewhere what to do — and, remarkably, they did exactly what they were told! Invite the Third World for an overnight and see what happens. . . ditch your nuclear power plants. . . ruin your farmers. . . laugh and clap when the Nord Stream pipeline blows up and your citizens must freeze in the dark.
“Europe stood firm and united in full solidarity with Greenland & the Kingdom of Denmark,” Ursula tweeted the other day.
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission
That’s rich. (And fake.)
What really happened at Davos this week is uproariously simple.
Mr. Trump just notified the parties involved that an agreement dating from 1951 gives the USA “unrestricted access” to Greenland, for the excellent reason that the US military prevented the Nazis from seizing it during World War Two, with all that implies. Fait accompli. The USA will now do what it requires in Greenland — with all that implies about updated geo-realpolitik of 2026.
The dirty secret about political reality in Europe now is that the masterplan to bankrupt, ruin, and break up Russia has completely backfired.
Europe is now ruined. Voila!
Ironically, it has been the UK (a.k.a. Great Britain) that led the way in this quixotic fiasco — you might recall that they actually voted to quit the EU in 2016. And yet, the UK has managed to engineer NATO’s idiotic program to keep the War in Ukraine going as long as possible. Recall, also, PM Boris Johnson’s 2022 mission to scuttle the Istanbul Communiqué involving Ukrainian neutrality that might have prevented the war from getting out-of-hand.
The payoff for Great Britain: Keir Starmer becomes the actual Big Brother depicted by George Orwell with all the trappings of despotism and economic decline that goes with that. Britain is left destitute, cultureless, and raped at will by its own houseguests. Meanwhile, France is dissolving in an acid bath of Islamic turbo-birthrates, and Germany under the feckless Olaf Scholz and now Friedrich Merz gets a one-way ticket to the Palookaville of neo-medievalism. Good show, boys!
And meanwhile, as I have informed you previously, Mr. Putin is methodically rolling up the unfortunate business in Ukraine as Mr. Zelenskyy’s long-running NATO-subsidized misadventure dwindles to its ignominious close. Yes, you are seeing boundaries reestablished. Mr. Putin is not one of your junior high school mean-girls or a deluded finishing school headmistress. He’s an able, masculine manager of his own sovereign polity and he is reestablishing Russia’s age-old sphere of influence in the ambiguous frontier region of Ukraine. The world will be better off when this is settled.
And Mr. Trump emerges from the Davos miasma with a geopolitical plan to defend Western Civ and to re-prioritize business in the USA so that Americans can once again make a living and lead purposeful lives. The Cluster-B mean-girls hate this. They want the men of America to fail better, as they had been failing until Mr. Trump came back on the scene.
Anyway, it was minus-20 degrees in Minneapolis this morning — not very good weather for blowing your whistle at US immigration agents — so don’t expect a whole lot of excitement out of that place for at least another week.
Do keep an eye on Virginia, where new Governor Abigail Spanberger, meanest of all mean-girls, is fixing to wreck the state.
Prediction: Harmeet Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division will shortly be all over that deranged bitch like white on rice. Wait for it.
US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he is sending an “armada” towards Iran, threatening Tehran against resuming its nuclear program.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One after returning from meetings with world leaders in Davos, Switzerland, Trump said Washington was closely monitoring Iran as US naval assets moved into the region. “We have a lot of ships going that direction, just in case,” Trump said. “I’d rather not see anything happen, but we’re watching them very closely.”
He added: “We have an armada heading in that direction, and maybe we won’t have to use it.”
US officials, speaking anonymously to Reuters, said the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and several guided-missile destroyers were expected to arrive in the Middle East in the coming days.
One official said Washington was also considering deploying additional air defense systems to protect US bases from potential Iranian retaliation in the event of an American strike.
The deployments expand Trump’s military options and follow a US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities in June. The summer strikes were widely seen as a violation of international law.
The warships began moving from the Asia-Pacific last week as tensions rose following a crackdown on protests across Iran. Tehran has accused Washington of encouraging the unrest.
Trump has repeatedly threatened intervention warning Iran against killing protesters, but in the end US strikes were called off. Demonstrations appeared to ease last week.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said “”several thousand” people were killed during weeks of nationwide protests.
Trump claimed on Thursday that Iran had cancelled nearly 840 executions after US warnings. “I said, ‘If you hang those people, you’re going to be hit harder than you’ve ever been hit,’” Trump said. “It’ll make what we did to your nuclear program look like peanuts.”
He said the executions were cancelled an hour before they were due to take place, calling it “a good sign”.
Iran’s top prosecutor Mohammad Movahedi, however on Friday dismissed Trump’s claim suggesting the judiciary had authorised mass executions, calling the allegations baseless.
Speaking in comments carried by the judiciary’s Mizan News Agency, Movahedi said “this claim is completely false; no such number exists, nor has the judiciary made any such decision”.
Approximate location of USS Abraham Lincoln Aircraft carrier strike group
Trump also repeated his warning that the US would strike again if Iran restarted its nuclear program. “If they try to do it again, they have to go to another area. We’ll hit them there too, just as easily,” he said.
Protests in Iran began on December 28 with demonstrations over economic hardship in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar before spreading nationwide. An Iranian official told Reuters that the confirmed death toll had exceeded 5,000, including 500 members of the security forces.
Here Come Humanoid Robots: Industry Makes Clear Pivot Toward “Dedicated-Purpose” Commercial Deployments
Goldman analyst Jacqueline Du published her field trip notes after speaking with six C-level management teams at robotics companies across Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Shenzhen in recent days. The companies she met with include Unitree, Mechmind, Fourier, LimX Dynamics, UBTech, EngineAI, Paxini, and Orbbec.
“Overall, we see the humanoid robot industry is experiencing a clear pivot towards ‘dedicated-purpose’ commercial deployments,” Du told clients on Thursday morning.
Home humanoid robots are getting closer.
Shenzhen MindOne Robotics is testing their robot brain on the Unitree G1, and it looks like the G1 has already learned to do human-like household chores.
Watering plants, moving packages, cleaning mattresses, tidying up, etc.
She continued: “This strategic focus leverages current, achievable task planning, mobility and interaction capabilities, leading to more reliable and immediate deployment in specific vertical applications. Examples include security patrolling, guiding/guest services in public venues, and logistics tasks such as pick-and-place and sorting simple items in factories.”
Du said humanoid robot shipments are set to accelerate from estimated 2025 global volumes of around 15,000 to 20,000 units to “multi-fold increases in shipment volumes into 2026-2027E.”
Here are more of Du’s key takeaways from the AI robotics field trip in China:
Targeting a multi-fold increase in shipment volumes into 2026-2027E
Based on the collective feedback from the major humanoid robot players and key supply chain companies we met on this trip, we believe global humanoid robot shipments in 2025 might have reached around 15,000-20,000 units vs. GSe of 20,000 (report link) and third-party data of 13,000-16,000 (see link and link), with Chinese players contributing to the bulk of these volumes at the moment, which came from scientific study, robotics AI training, education, entertainment/stage performance, and data factory demand last year. At such an early and nascent stage of the humanoid robot market, the exact shipment figures are less critical than the overall growth trajectory and the rapid pace of technological development in our view. For the 2026-2027 outlook, these leading humanoid robot manufacturers anticipate multi-fold increases in shipments. Following the 2025 figures, which range from several hundreds to thousands of units, their targets for 2026 and 2027 are set in the thousands to tens of thousands. This projected acceleration is underpinned by an increasingly mature supply chain, optimized cost curves, and expanding application opportunities. However, achieving these targets is anticipated to be challenged by the imperative for robust production consistency and the implementation of novel, multi-stage testing protocols inherent to this nascent industry.
Encouraging progress in motion control with rapid iterations
We watched the live demos of the published products of these humanoid robot makers, which in our view revealed significant advancements in motion control, exhibiting enhanced robustness and flexibility across both wheeled upper-body platforms and full bipedal systems. This represents a substantial improvement compared to their performance in the preceding year. One manufacturer asserted the achievement of ‘cerebellum-level’ whole-body control, substantiated by two practical evaluation criteria: the robot’s ability to navigate previously unmapped terrains and its capacity for comprehensive remote control of the entire body, rather than segmented upper or lower body control. Furthermore, insights from multiple companies indicate an accelerated product iteration cycle for humanoid platforms, now reaching approximately 6-8 months per generation. This rapid iteration is largely attributed to an 80-90% in-house component design capability, which is crucial for ensuring seamless hardware-software integration and optimizing their respective performance’ upper limits’ within condensed R&D and testing cycles.
Clear pivot towards “dedicated-purpose” commercial deployments
The current reliance on simulated and synthetic data for pre-training with a significant ‘sim-to-real’ gap remains a challenge, with simulated accuracies of 80-90% often collapsing to below 50% in real-world scenarios. As both large-scale high quality real-world data collection and world model approach requires time, leading Chinese humanoid robot developers are increasingly prioritizing “dedicated-purpose” commercial deployments. These applications, such as security patrolling and guest services in public venues (e.g., hotels, banks, museums, exhibition centers, auto dealerships, and supermarkets), effectively utilize existing task planning, mobility and interaction capabilities while circumventing the complexities of highly dexterous manipulation. Within industrial applications, the utility of humanoid robots requiring dexterous hands or grippers is presently confined to logistics tasks like box movement and simple item sorting, primarily due to AI limitations in addressing unpredictable corner cases in factory environments.
Advancing robot intelligence through hybrid AI and data strategies
In the near term, humanoid robot manufacturers are increasingly standardizing their approach by integrating with established Large Language Model (LLM) and Vision-Language Model (VLM) stacks, such as those offered by Alibaba (Qwen), Doubao, and Tencent. This strategic alignment positions proprietary data engines as the critical differentiator for developing deployable robotic intelligence. High-quality real-world data is identified as the primary constraint bridging the gap between mature hardware technologies and scalable, practical applications. Consequently, companies are engaged in a ‘data recipe’ arms race, with differentiation driven by their target end-applications. While all robot OEMs are pursuing data collection strategies, they converge on varying mixes of three primary data inputs: (1) teleoperated human or expert demonstrations, which offer high control but are typically expensive for imitation learning; (2) simulation, which is cost-effective per additional sample but suffers from imperfect realism; and (3) real-world video datasets, which provide the highest data availability but may exhibit poor translation to real-world accuracy. From this trip, increasingly we heard more mentions of the world model approach which may potentially empower robots with a form of common sense about their environment, moving them beyond reactive behaviors to proactive, intelligent agents capable of complex planning and adaptation.
Differentiated profit models for 2C and 2B markets
A range of profit models has emerged, broadly categorized by their target markets: 2C (business-to-consumer) and 2B (business-to-business) applications.
For companies targeting 2C applications, the primary focus is on delivering differentiated functionality and enhanced user experience. This often involves emphasizing “emotional value” and capturing specialized vertical niches where unique features or interactions can command a premium. The goal is to create a product that stands out through its capabilities and the user’s engagement with it.
In contrast, companies targeting 2B applications anchor their pricing strategies to the customer’s Return on Investment (ROI). This typically involves demonstrating how the robot can improve throughput, enhance efficiency, or reduce labor costs. For instance, UBTech has indicated that in sorting and logistics applications, customers are willing to invest in robots once they achieve approximately 50% of a human worker’s throughput. This level of performance can lead to a payback period of around two years, assuming a run-time of about 10 hours per day. Even a three-year payback period is considered acceptable by customers operating in particularly labor-constrained environments, highlighting the value proposition of automation in addressing critical operational challenges.
Investment implications: We recommend being selective; Buy Sanhua H and Sell Moon’s Electric
2026 overall may shape up to be a critical “proof-of-volume and expectation-reset” year, as we believe investors likely will continue to value key supply chain stocks on (i) whether milestone volume expectations (e.g., the “one million robots” narrative) get revised up or not, which is likely driven by the evolution pace of AI generalization capability or effective data/model strategies; and (ii) evolving market share and content per robot for individual supply chain companies. Given high market optimisms and long run expectations have been baked into the current share price per our tests (see Sanhua Intelligent Controls (002050.SZ): Downgrade Sanhua A to Neutral on recent outperformance; expectations for humanoid robots are too high, too soon and Moons’ Electric (603728.SS): D/G to Sell on continuously evolving dexterous hand technology roadmap and narrowed opportunity for coreless motor), we recommend staying selective. Among our coverage, we are Buy-rated on Sanhua H, Inovance and Shuanghuan, Neutral-rated on Sanhua A, LeaderDrive and Best Precision. We are Sell-rated on Moon’s Electric.
Separately, in the U.S., Tesla said it is on track to begin volume production of the Cybercab in 2026, with Optimus humanoid robot output “hopefully” starting toward the end of the year.
Next week, we are expected to conduct our own field trip of AI robotics and counter-AUS companies at undisclosed locations. We’ll see how that turns out – watching the rise of Skynet in real-time.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is seeking to change a rule that determines eligibility for permanent residency—commonly known as a green card—based on whether an applicant is considered a “public charge,” someone who is likely to depend primarily on public benefits.
That rule—known as the public charge ground of inadmissibility—generally applies to green card applicants, with the exception of certain categories such as refugees and asylum seekers.
In 2022, 54 percent of households headed by immigrants—naturalized, legal, and illegal—used one or more major welfare programs. That’s compared to 39 percent of U.S.-born households, according to Census Bureau data.
In November 2025, DHS issued a proposal to repeal existing public charge regulations and institute a broader, discretionary standard.
The proposed policy change would allow immigration officials to take into account the use of a wider range of public benefits—including food stamps, Medicaid, and housing assistance—to determine whether a green card applicant will become a public charge.
In its notice of proposed rulemaking, DHS states its goal is to encourage self-reliance and prevent public benefits from becoming an incentive for immigration.
Critics say the proposed policy change will lead to confusion and “decreased participation in public benefit programs” by people who need them.
The mandatory public comment period for the proposed rule ended on Dec. 19, 2025, drawing more than 8,800 comments, including a letter of objection signed by the attorneys general of 20 states. DHS has now entered a mandatory review phase in which it must read and address the substantive points raised by the public.
Once this review is complete, which can take months, the government may modify the rule based on the feedback received before a final rule is published and officially takes effect.
Here’s what we know about the proposed changes.
Key Changes
The changes are designed to undo what the proposal calls “unduly restrictive” public charge rules. Under the old rules, put in place under the Biden administration in 2022, officers couldn’t consider whether green card applicants used benefits such as food stamps (SNAP), the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Medicaid, or housing assistance.
The only benefits officers could take into account were cash benefit programs that provide direct, monthly payments intended to cover basic needs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Supplemental Security Income, as well as long-term care in a facility such as a nursing home, when the government pays for it.
Under the new proposal, officers would also be empowered to consider all individualized, case-specific facts and any data relevant to a person’s self-sufficiency.
The changes will restore a process that “trusts in and relies on DHS officers’ good judgment and sound discretion as envisioned by Congress,” the proposal says.
The new DHS proposal also clarifies that receiving “any means‑tested public benefit” is considered a breach of the public charge bond—a monetary guarantee, made by a citizen or U.S. company, that a green card applicant will not become a public charge.
Under the new proposal, an affidavit of support also carries less weight.
Currently, officers must “favorably consider” any eligible affidavit of support—an agreement in which a U.S. citizen, a green card holder, or a company pledges to provide financial backing to the applicant, if needed.
The new rule would also eliminate protection for immigrants who used benefits while they were in certain exempt categories.
For some of those categories, there is a path to citizenship that is also exempt from the public charge rule. For others, there is not—including those with Temporary Protected Status, which is a temporary stay of deportation provided to nationals of certain countries that are undergoing armed conflict, disaster, or other extraordinary conditions.
Under the 2022 rule, people with Temporary Protected Status were shielded from having public benefits used against them, even if they later moved into a non-protected status. The new proposal would allow DHS to consider an applicant’s use of public benefits at any time, regardless of when those benefits were received.
The new policy could cut government spending by about $8.97 billion each year because of people who would stop or avoid enrolling in public benefits, DHS stated in its proposal. That includes $5.29 billion less from the federal government and $3.68 billion less from states.
Under current rules, an applicant is mostly evaluated individually, whereas the new rule takes into account an applicant’s family members living in the same household, including a mixed-status household, which consists of people with different immigration and citizenship statuses.
There were an estimated 4.7 million mixed-status households in the United States in 2022, according to a Center for Migration Studies analysis. Mixed-status households receive more than $51 billion annually in public benefits, according to an analysis by The Epoch Times, based on DHS data.
However, public benefit use can’t be considered against immigrants in mixed-status households who entered the United States as refugees or asylum seekers. Between 1990 and 2022, the United States has welcomed more than 2.1 million refugees and accepted more than 800,000 asylees, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
DHS said the new rule could impact some U.S. citizens who live in mixed-status households. It could penalize green card applicants if direct family members in the household, including U.S. citizens, receive public benefits. Those U.S. citizens may decide to avoid public benefits so the green card applicant isn’t penalized.
Within mixed-status households, roughly 9.2 million individuals receive food stamps, Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Supplemental Security Income. And about 343,000 households receive Federal Rental Assistance, according to DHS data.
DHS estimated that about 950,000 individuals, or 10 percent, will likely stop participating in or choose not to apply for public benefit programs if the current proposal is implemented.
Studies found large drops in benefit enrollment after the 1996 welfare reform law, with decreases ranging from 21 to 54 percent, DHS noted.
The new proposal acknowledged the changes could also affect organizations that rely on public benefit funds. These include hospitals and nonprofits tied to Medicaid, companies that make medical supplies and drugs, grocery stores that accept SNAP benefits, farmers who supply SNAP-eligible foods, and landlords involved in federally funded housing programs.
Evolution of the Policy
The United States has used “public charge” as grounds for rejecting permanent residency applications since the 19th century. The Immigration Act of 1882 specified that aliens who became public charges within a year of arriving in the United States would be deported.
For more than a century, immigration officers were given broad discretion, known as the “totality of the circumstances” framework.
Then, in 1996, Congress set new requirements and policy goals. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 required officers to consider, “at a minimum,” five statutory factors: age, health, family status, financial situation, and education and skills.
A meteorologist’s main purpose: keep you alive, and marked safe.✅
There is nothing we can do to stop this epic week of weather, and believe me, I have been trying to find silver linings or rays of sunlight.
So, the best preparation is fresh, accurate, and expert information from trusted sources.
While every new weather model run (alphabet soup of acronyms) shows slight adjustments in who gets the most freezing rain (ice) and snowfall❄️ there is little doubt about the aftermath of the massive ice storm: hazardous cold like January 21, 1985 when the United States 🇺🇸 average low temperature sunk to 4°F.
Many of these record lows are still standing.
⚠️You should be prepared for extended power outages with subzero temperatures outdoors. Think about where you can go, what you can do, and who needs even more help to survive this week ahead. This is not hype or a joke.
Temperature Analysis January 21, 1985 | PRISM Oregon State
Let’s dig in (or out) of this Winter Storm that is actually 2 waves of moisture that finally consolidate into a rather powerful Nor’easter.
If you’re younger than 40 years old, then you may be experiencing the worst winter weather of your lifetime depending upon where you are over the next 10-14 days.
Plan for extended power outages with brutally cold temperatures for many days. pic.twitter.com/GYaXpU3A8Z
A massive “slug of moisture” will stream out of the subtropical Pacific and then the Gulf of Mexico to combine into an “atmospheric river”. Normally that would be heavy rain and maybe snowfall where the air is below freezing.
Not this time — we will have extremely cold Arctic air flooding southward: and the atmospheric river will go up and over the more dense cold air near the surface. When the warmer subtropical moisture falls through the : it turns to snow or freezing rain or sleet.
Total Snowfall Amounts (NOAA Blend of Models — trust this b/c it includes the ECMWF or Euro flagship model) may be an underestimate (!)
Freezing Rain Expected from Winter Storm
We can partition the precipitation (called QPF for quantitative precipitation forecast) into rain, snow, sleet, and freezing rain by using the temperature and humidity of the column of air above the surface.
These amounts forecast by ECMWF 12z will not all immediately freeze on contact with surfaces like trees and power lines, but a LOT of it will accrete, and cause potentially catastrophic damage.
The National Weather Service forecasts 0.25″ to 0.5″ inch of ice accumulating across across Texas, and nearly an inch in northern Louisiana into Mississippi. Then, cold air damming by the Appalachians keeps enough cold air at the surface (easterly winds) to put Atlanta under threat of significant icing. Not good!
After a sequence of events beginning in the Western Pacific Ocean led to disruption of the stratospheric polar vortex, a massive persistent circulation pattern has allowed the formation of extreme “cold pools” over Canada 🇨🇦 with air temperatures brutal cold throughout the entire troposphere: -40°F near the surface and -40°F at the mid-way point of 500 millibars.
The Polar Vortex Unleashed with multiple “lobes” dropping south and whipping through like a pendulum: next 7-days
Two swings of the “wrecking ball” from the tropospheric Polar Vortex anchored over Ontario, Canada 🇨🇦
The second Arctic blast is actually partly triggered by a PV anomaly in the Arctic north of Greenland that gets stretched, and descends the chute into 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/EiB8v0dmeL
Arctic Blast 1.0 — Frigid as temperatures plummet into Texas and the Deep South. Absolutely brutal in the Midwest and Great Lakes with minus 20s and minus 30s — and that’s not the wind chill.
Low Temperatures on Saturday
Low Temperatures on Sunday
5°F in Dallas, Texas Monday morning –> frigid
But we are not done — the Polar Vortex anchored over Canada reloads with another massive blast of cold air into next week. That makes 3 total if you are counting!
Over the next week –>
Arctic Blast 1.0 and Arctic Blast 2.0 merge
into Super Arctic Blast
that will entomb the Eastern U.S. into a frigid hellscape.
Temperatures 35°F to 45°F below normal will cripple 🇺🇸 east of the Mississippi.
You can see the evolution of the air mass colored by “deviation from normal” or anomaly, which I’ve color coded using a Barney and Baby Bop theme. This is on par with the O.G. polar vortex from January 2014 when social media (Twitter) weather was just getting started.
And, that will be the end of January, and we will make it!
I made all of these maps and animations (from scratch w/raw data and code) and actually 90% of the weather maps that you see on social media. I don’t “dumb down” anything for my audience because I assume everyone has a PhD in something.
You can receive even MORE in depth weather articles at my growing Substack blog (Weather Trader)
Trump Touts “Total And Permanent” Access To Greenland, While Nobody Has Any Clue What’s In The Deal
Trump said on Thursday he had secured “total and permanent” US access to Greenland in a deal with NATO, whose head said allies would have to step up their commitment to Arctic security to ward off threats from Russia and China.
News of a framework deal came as Trump backed off tariff threats against Europe and ruled out taking Greenland by force, bringing to an end what was brewing to be the biggest rupture in transatlantic ties in decades. Yet despite the optimism, details of any agreement were unclear and Denmark insisted its sovereignty over the island was not up for discussion. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the bloc’s U.S. relations had “taken a big blow” in the past week, as EU leaders met for an emergency summit.
Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen welcomed Trump’s comments but said he was still in the dark on many aspects.
“I don’t know what there is in the agreement, or the deal, about my country,” Nielsen told reporters in the capital Nuuk.
“We are ready to discuss a lot of things and we are ready to negotiate a better partnership and so on. But sovereignty is a red line,” he said, when asked about reports that Trump was seeking control of areas around U.S. military bases in Greenland as part of a wider deal.
“We cannot cross the red lines. We have to respect our territorial integrity. We have to respect international law and sovereignty.”
Meanwhile, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on his return from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump said a new deal was being negotiated that would be “much more generous to the United States, so much more generous.” And while he skirted questions on sovereignty, Trump said: “We have to have the ability to do exactly what we want to do.”
Earlier Trump told Fox Business Network the deal would essentially bring “total access” for the United States. “There’s no end, there’s no time limit.”
A source familiar with the matter told Reuters that NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and Trump had agreed in Davos on further talks between the U.S., Denmark and Greenland on updating a 1951 agreement that governs U.S. military access and presence on the Arctic island. The framework they discussed also calls for prohibiting Chinese and Russian investments in Greenland, the person said.
Another source familiar with the matter said what had been agreed was “a frame on which to build,” adding that “anything being reported on specific details is speculative.”
Rutte told Reuters in Davos it was now up to NATO’s senior commanders to work through the details of extra security requirements.
“I have no doubt we can do this quite fast. Certainly, I would hope for 2026, I hope even early in 2026,” he said.
Meanwhile, the country that Greenland (semi-autonomously) belongs to, remains fully in the dark: Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said no negotiations had been held with NATO regarding the sovereignty of Greenland.
“It is still a difficult and serious situation, but progress has also been made in the sense that we have now got things where they need to be. Namely that we can discuss how we promote common security in the Arctic region,” she said.
Speaking later ahead of the emergency summit of EU leaders, Frederiksen called for a “permanent presence of NATO in the Arctic region, including around Greenland.”
Kallas said “disagreements that allies have between them, like Europe and America, are just benefiting our adversaries who are looking and enjoying the view.”
Finnish President Alexander Stubb said he hoped allies could put together a plan to boost Arctic security by a NATO summit in Ankara in July. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told Rutte on Thursday that the UK stood ready to play its full part in ensuring security in the Arctic.
After meeting with Rutte, Trump said there could be a deal that satisfies his desire for a “Golden Dome” missile-defence system and access to critical minerals while blocking what he says are Russia and China’s ambitions in the Arctic.
Adding to the confusion, Rutte said minerals exploitation was not discussed in his meeting with Trump, even though Trump said that it has been.Specific negotiations over the Arctic island would continue between the United States, Denmark and Greenland itself, he said.
The 1951 agreement established the U.S. right to construct military bases in Greenland and move around freely in Greenlandic territory. This is still the case as long as Denmark and Greenland are informed of its actions. Washington has a base at Pituffik in northern Greenland.
“It is important to clarify that the U.S. had 17 bases during the Cold War and much greater activity. So that is already possible now under the current agreement,” said Marc Jacobsen, a professor at the Royal Danish Defence College.
“I think there will be concrete discussions about Golden Dome, and I think there will be concrete discussions about Russia and China not being welcome in Greenland.”
Separately, China’s Foreign Ministry told Reuters on Friday that claims China is a threat are “baseless”, when asked to respond to the Arctic comments. At the same time, the ministry said that China opposes other countries using it as “an excuse” to push their own agenda.
China has repeatedly said its scientific expeditions in the Arctic and commercial shipping operations in the region followed international treaties and laws, accusing the West of distorting facts and hyping up its activities as clues to military intent. Last week, the state-backed Global Times newspaper said in an editorial that it ” firmly opposed attempts by the United States and Europe to label China with terms such as ‘military threat,’ ‘resource grabber’ or ‘rule breaker’ in Arctic affairs.”
Eslewhere, the president of the European Parliament said the European Union will likely resume work on a trade deal with the United States after Trump took back his tariff threats. The parliament decided this week to suspend work on the deal because of Trump’s threats. However, diplomats told Reuters EU leaders will rethink U.S. relations as the Greenland episode has badly shaken confidence in the transatlantic ties. Governments remain wary of another change of mind by Trump, who is increasingly seen as a bully whom Europe will have to stand up to, they said.
Residents in the Greenland capital, Nuuk, are also wary.
“It’s all very confusing,” said pensioner Jesper Muller. “One hour we are, well, almost at war. Next hour everything is fine and beautiful, and I think it’s very hard to imagine that you can build anything on it.”
Nobody asked Muller if he would rather have gotten $10 million and agree, together with the other 57,000 residents, to cede Greenland to the US.
Dollar Crashes As Yen Soars After ‘Intervention’ Chatter Grows (& Why It Matters For US Equities)
Update (1230ET): Chatter about the potential intervention overnight in Japanese Yen (as we detailed below) is growing and has sparked a dramatic bid for the Japanese currency against the dollar…
…crashing the US Dollar Index…
And in case you wondered why an equity trader might care about chaos in the Japanese currency, here’s SocGen to explain:
Since the summer 2024 equity market sell-off (the yen carry-trade unwind)…there has been a curious relationship between the Japanese currency and the performance of short-term equity volatility in the US.
The gray line represents the returns from buying very short-term volatility on S&P500, and this part of the volatility surface has significantly underperformed since June 2025.
If the relationship is to continue, perhaps a stronger trade-weighted yen will be an important catalyst for a risk-off sentiment for the broader equity markets.
* * *
Technically, the Bank of Japan actions overnight should be seen as “a hawkish hold”, according to Goldman Sachs Delta-One desk-head Rich Privorotsky.
The Bank raised its growth estimate and maintained its hawkish inflation forecasts on Friday even as it kept interest rates steady, signaling its confidence a moderate recovery would justify raising still-low borrowing costs further.
While Ueda had suggested that overall inflation will weaken below 2% soon, he also left open the possibility of an early rate hike.
“April is a month where there’s relatively high numbers of price revisions,” Ueda said.
“We have a certain amount of interest in that, and while it’s not the most important factor in deciding the next rate hike, it’s one of the factors.”
The BOJ gave other signs of a more robust view, too.
It softened its assessment of economic risks as they are now generally balanced. With the negative impact of US tariffs receding, the bank cut the wording that it needs to watch if the economic outlook will materialize “without any preconceptions.”
However, Governor Ueda’s press conference leaned cautious on market functioning, flagging discomfort with the pace of long end moves and a willingness to act if volatility becomes disorderly.
Ueda said the central bank may conduct operations to smooth volatility in the bond market in a nimble fashion if needed, while indicating that exceptional circumstances would be needed.
“In a situation that’s different from usual, we could conduct nimble operations to encourage stable yield formation in the markets,” Ueda said.
“We’ll keep closely cooperating with the government and keep watching the situation while considering our respective roles.”
That’s not a return to formal YCC, but it does keep a soft backstop in place.
The immediate reaction made sense…
front-end rates higher,
some flattening further out,
and FX weaker (could be a lot weaker if people think YCC is back).
It remains very hard to thread the needle of strong growth, high inflation, stable rates, and a stable currency.
Repatriation flows help at the margin, but the currency still looks like the pressure valve.
Privorotsky ended his note by pointing out that “sharp moves as this is going to press, curious if some intervention happening…”
“USD/JPY initially moved higher after Governor Ueda’s comments were interpreted as slightly more dovish on rate hikes,” said Fukuhiro Ezawa, head of markets Japan at Standard Chartered Bank in Tokyo.
“The pair then pulled back, prompting market chatter that the move may have reflected intervention or a rate check. USD/JPY subsequently drifted lower, though dip-buying emerged on the downside, allowing the pair to retrace part of the move.”
Around 2amET, as Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda ended his post-policy decision press conference, with JPY weakness accelerating above 159/USD (near the 160 Maginot Line), there was a sudden and very violent lurch higher in the yen (USDJPY puked 150pips in minutes)…
The volumes traded during that period were dramatically above normal..
But, not particularly significant relative to recent (alleged) interventions…
Of course, that could simply reflect the ever shrinking level of liquidity (and this lower level of actual intervention required to move the Japanese currency).
“It is tempting to conclude that we may be in the early stages of an official intervention,” said Valentin Marinov, strategist at Credit Agricole.
“The reaction is also showing how nervous the markets are when the JPY is trading so close to the ‘line in the sand’ – levels where we had interventions in the past.”
Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama declined to answer when asked if Japan had intervened in the market, keeping investors in the dark regarding the moment of yen volatility.
“We’re always watching with a sense of urgency,” she said.
As a reminder, the government spent almost $100 billion on yen-buying to prop up the currency in 2024.
On each of the four occasions the exchange rate was around 160 yen per dollar, setting that level as a rough marker for where action might take place again… and very close to where we saw this move overnight.
The bottom line is simple: by refusing to admit they can control two opposing variables simultaneously, they will lose control of everything and as Privorotsky notes… the currency will likely be the release valve (hence the ‘alleged’ intervention)
Overnight Ueda effectively confirmed YCC coming, sparking yen selloff… then immediate U-turn spike driven by what appears to be one-time small intervention by MOF/BOJ.
BOJ hoping to control yields (yen negative) while intervening in FX to prop it up.
