Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Tuesday he’s stopping more than $1 billion in federal Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota over suspected fraud.

“We are not sending Medicaid dollars out the door until we have confidence that they are being spent lawfully and appropriately,” Kennedy said at an announcement on Tuesday.

Kennedy said if California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) want the money to fund low-income healthcare, “they need to provide documentation that these payments are legitimate.”

Kennedy blamed the Biden administration and the Democratic leadership in both blue states for alleged misuse of taxpayer dollars.

“Instead of protecting your money, they open the floodgates to theft,” Kennedy said. “They dismantle basic program integrity and oversight.”

The health secretary criticized the Biden administration’s oversight of Medicaid, arguing that former HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra “looked the other way while fraud, waste, and abuse exploded.”

“The scammers got paid,” Kennedy said. “The taxpayers got stuck with these enormous bills.”

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is deferring over $200 million and over $867 million in federal Medicaid payments for Minnesota and California, respectively. The hold will be in place while federal officers review “high-risk Medicaid claims” and document deficiencies.

In Minnesota, the funding involves 14 high-risk areas that were identified as suspect because of vulnerabilities or evidence of fraudulent activity.

CMS officials suspect the questionable spending in California is rooted in in-home services. Over the past two federal fiscal years, California’s spending in these programs went up 24%, while the rest of the country’s average was 12%, according to CMS administrator Mehmet Oz.

https://nypost.com/2026/07/21/us-news/rfk-jr-yanks-medicaid-funds-to-california-and-minnesota/

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15993127/Ann-Widdecombe-hit-21-times-head-hammer-attack-caught-camera-killer-entered-open-door-ate-lunch-kitchen.html

Gavin Newsom has a $6.2 million diaper problem. His administration awarded a no-bid contract to Baby2Baby, a nonprofit with longstanding ties to the Newsom administration. One of its co-CEOs, Norah Weinstein, also serves on the board of the California Partners Project, the nonprofit co-founded by First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

Then Newsom told Californians the deal had gone through “a competitive bidding process.” It had not. California’s own contracting database labels the $6.2 million deal “NON-COMPETITIVELY BID.” Newsom’s administration now says the governor was referring to the “competitive nature” of the process.

But the department’s own chief deputy director told state senators in May what the exemption really does. It “allows you to essentially engage in negotiated contracting outside of state rules,” she said, because the normal bidding process “can be cumbersome and time consuming.” Apparently Sacramento has discovered a new form of government procurement: a contract that was not competitively bid but was competitive enough for the governor to call it competitive bidding.

The state asked organizations interested in participating in the program for information. Fifteen responded. The administration says all 15 were evaluated under the same process and that Baby2Baby was selected because of its ability to procure, warehouse and distribute diapers statewide. But the Request for Information, or RFI, explicitly stated it was “Not a Solicitation.” Whatever the administration wants to call the process now, it was not competitive bidding.

California had specifically exempted the diaper program from normal competitive-bidding requirements. Existing diaper banks had been told there would be an opportunity to compete. Yet some organizations that responded reportedly were never interviewed, and some learned Baby2Baby had been selected when Newsom publicly announced the partnership. Having several organizations express interest does not magically turn a no-bid contract into a competitively bid contract.

This also was not Baby2Baby’s first no-bid trip to California’s treasury. In 2022, lawmakers directed $1 million to Baby2Baby for a car-seat program. The following year, another $1.5 million was directed to the nonprofit for diaper distribution in Los Angeles.

https://californiaglobe.com/fr/newsoms-diaper-deal-stinks/

A serious software error at the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission led to roughly 6,600 non-citizens being erroneously added to the state’s voter rolls between June 2023 and June 2024, beginning nearly three years before Gov. Mikie Sherrill took office.

Fewer than 400 of those individuals ultimately cast ballots, a senior Sherrill administration official told the New Jersey Globe.

While applying for driver’s licenses or identification cards, the 6,600 individuals specifically answered “no” on a keypad when asked whether they were U.S. citizens. But motor vehicles registered them to vote anyway.

“Through no fault of their own, the system registered them,” Sherrill said in a statement obtained by the New Jersey Globe.

Sherrill will address the issue at a Statehouse press conference at 12:15 PM.

The New Jersey disclosure comes five days after President Donald Trump alleged during a prime-time address that as many as 35,152 non-citizens are registered to vote in New Jersey. Trump claimed that roughly 250,000 non-citizens were registered across New Jersey, California, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

The governor said she became aware of the problem last week and immediately ordered her chief counsel to investigate.

“I also ordered the removal of any residents from our voter rolls who were erroneously added between June 2023 and June 2024,” Sherrill said. “The new MVC administrator that I appointed has begun the process of replacing the vendor responsible for administering the system.”

That vendor, IDEMIA, is a large digital security and biometric identification company that operates TSA PreCheck enrollment services and provides identification technology to government agencies.

https://newjerseyglobe.com/governor/new-jersey-admits-6600-non-citizens-were-on-new-jersey-voter-rolls-after-motor-vehicles-software-error/

Carole Radziwill’s past comes back to haunt her in “The Real Housewives of New York City” Season 16.

In the trailer for the hit Bravo show’s forthcoming new season, Radziwill, 62, is confronted by a fellow New Yorker over her alleged ties to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“The Epstein files!” the stranger calls out, stunning Radziwill as she’s walking the streets with co-star Erin Lichy.

“She’s the one from the Epstein files!” the woman adds.

In the next scene, “RHONY” star Sai De Silva directly asks Radziwill if she has ever been to Epstein’s private island, where the American financier ran his sex trafficking and child abuse operation.

“No,” Radziwill promises. “You think I’m part of an international sex trafficking ring?”

Radziwill came under scrutiny earlier this year when her name surfaced in the Epstein files. While she later told the New York Times she “never knew Jeffrey Epstein,” she did open up about her former friendship with Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who was convicted for her role in aiding Epstein’s sexual abuse of young girls.

“Imagine knowing someone… and then they turn out to be, like, a monster,” Radziwill said in the March interview.

The reality star explained she was friends with Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence, “for five or six years” in the early 2000s, though never suspected she’d be capable of such egregious behavior. According to Radziwill, their friendship ended long before Maxwell’s crimes came to the surface.

https://pagesix.com/2026/07/21/entertainment/carole-radziwill-confronted-over-epstein-ties-in-rhony-season-16-trailer/

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