Isn’t it telling that every time Democrats talk about their intentions for illegal immigration and taxpayer-funded healthcare, they squirm, deflect, and finally, when cornered, they let the mask slip? The Schumer Shutdown has been revealing not just for the spectacle of Washington dysfunction, but for the shameless priorities on display. And nothing spells priorities quite like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his Democrat cohort pulling the plug on the federal government because they couldn’t force the rest of the legislature to bankroll full healthcare for illegal immigrants.
For anyone who doubted their intent, Democrats in Congress didn’t even bother to disguise their tactics. Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) let the cat out of the bag when he declared, “If that means we gotta shut this government down, so be it!”
The shutdown was a calculated move to hold the government hostage unless a laundry list of demands was met. President Donald Trump and the Republican leadership sounded the alarm well before the standoff began, warning that the Democrats were ready to trade away national security and military readiness for a bunch of pet policy objectives, particularly restoring free, full health care for illegal immigrants.
So the Schumer Shutdown wasn’t an accident but a deliberate act. Yet, amid this chaos, Democrats are still trying to run interference, trotting out the old line that illegal immigrants are barred from Obamacare and aren’t eligible for taxpayer-funded healthcare. It’s the same tired denial that always precedes the inevitable confession.
Cue Maxine Waters, who, perhaps unintentionally, gave the game away when she said, “Democrats are demanding healthcare for everybody. We want to save lives.” If one reads between the lines — and really, the lines themselves — the translation is obvious. Democrats are demanding healthcare for illegal immigrants and are happy to hold the government hostage to get it.
There’s no ambiguity here, and it’s always the case that the veneer of denial cracks with a little pressure.
Of course, there’s another layer to the Democrats' convoluted narrative. Many leading Democrats persist with an insistence that illegals are somehow barred from any and all taxpayer-funded healthcare, as if repeating it enough times will make it true. Yet the facts stubbornly get in the way. Fourteen states currently offer some form of healthcare to illegals through their state programs, and federal Medicaid dollars help fund those programs. Anyone who wants to believe that state funds are in some magic “lock box” that ensures no federal funds are being used is deluding himself. The truth is that everyone who pays taxes is footing part of the bill, like it or not. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill closed that loophole, and the Democrats have been angling ever since to pry it wide open again.
But even the left's facade that no federal tax dollars pay for illegal immigrant healthcare is cracking. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) made a stunning admission during a Fox Business interview, that yes, illegal immigrants are getting free healthcare — but only “a small portion.”
“The amount of money that actually is going towards people who are undocumented is such a small portion of the Medicaid cuts — or the Affordable Care Act — if at all. And so we can argue that point, but the reality that even the vice president would acknowledge, that anyone who looks at the numbers will acknowledge, is 90 to 95% of the funding we're talking about is […] funding for American citizens.”
REP. RO KHANNA (D-CA): "The amount of money that actually is going towards people who are undocumented is such a small portion." pic.twitter.com/Usvm58hyPI
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) October 1, 2025
Also for our VIPs: Here’s How We Know the Shutdown Is Backfiring on the Democrats
The left is moving the goalposts again. First, it was "not happening,” then “it’s only a little.” Before long, they’ll be insisting it’s a good thing that we can’t undo. But when 5 to 10% of Medicaid and Obamacare dollars are flowing to illegal aliens, that’s a world away from Democrats' favorite talking point that illegals are flat-out barred from taxpayer-funded health care.
So the message from Democrats is obvious to anyone willing to take their blinders off: They want free healthcare for illegal immigrants. They’ll deny it until pressed, then they’ll minimize it, and ultimately, they’ll celebrate it. The only question left is whether the public is paying attention or if it’ll take another shutdown to show whose priorities really run this town.
