What A Day: Dude, Where’s My $5,000? Donald Trump’s new $1 trillion-plus scheme to rig the midterms. Matt Berg, Sep 10, 2026
Donald Trump’s got a new midterm pitch: Support the GOP and get $5,000. Politicians from both sides of the aisle say it’s obviously bogus.
Stop for a second. Do you believe that Donald Trump will give you $5,000 if the Republicans win?
The November midterms are rapidly approaching, and President Donald Trump is flailing. He knows the picture looks terrible for Republicans — and for his own prospects of holding power over Congress. He’s resorting to sketchy mob-boss-businessman tactics: promising loads of cash to Americans who help keep him in control.
The past 24 hours have seen two fresh attempts by Trump to convince Americans to vote for his party, in exchange for cold, hard cash. First: Trump pledged to give a $5,000 “Trump Dividend” to every adult in the United States if Republicans keep control of Congress after the midterms.
Second: Trump promised to hand out $500 checks to nearly one million Americans, who he claims have been overcharged by Obamacare.
Is that the same Obamacare that for the past ten years he has been promising to replace with a “better’ program?
Is that the same Obamacare that has been protecting millions of Americans, who otherwise couldn’t afford healthcare, and that now Trump’s “Big Beautiful bill has emasculated beyond recognition?
Do you believe that after cutting Obamacare to shreds, Trump now is going to give you $500 for it?
Artist’s concept of a trillion-dollar coin, featuring a similar obverse design to the reverse of the presidential dollar series.
Both ideas would be extremely costly and difficult to implement. And that’s why you shouldn’t start spending that dividend yet. Politicians brushed aside the initiatives as Trump just being Trump.
“Donald Trump is a known liar. I mean, [the dividend] was just a joke,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) told What A Day. “He’s been talking about giving out DOGE checks [which] never came.
He was going to do these $1,000 checks earlier this term. That never happened.”
He added: “People don’t want more lies. What they want is for him to actually focus on lowering the cost of their everyday goods.”
Democrats aren’t the only ones throwing cold water on the idea. “I would like to know how they would plan to pay for … well over $1 trillion,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), who is retiring.
Actually, paying for it would be no problem for the federal government, which could create that trillion dollars simply by pressing a trillion dollar coin and depositing it into the Federal Reserve Bank.
31 U.S.C. 5112(k) as originally enacted by Public Law 104-208 in 1996: The Secretary may mint and issue bullion and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary’s discretion, may prescribe from time to time.
In 2000, the word “bullion” was replaced with “platinum bullion coins”.[10] According to the United States Mint: “A bullion coin is an investment-grade coin that is valued by its weight and fineness of a specific precious metal.
Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School, said the legal basis of the trillion-dollar coin is sound and that the coin could not be challenged in courtas no one would have standing to do so.
Not only would that pay for Trump’s fever dream of sending you $5,000 or $500, depending on what he ate for dinner, but it also would pay for Social Security and no-deductible Medicare for everyone in America, and if Trump has any upcoming lawsuits for attacks on women, he’d want the coin to pay for those, too.
Of course, Trump is not going to do that or anything else that benefits you, because it wouldn’t benefit him. Once the election is over, there is nothing you can do for him, so you will mean nothing to him.
Vice President JD Vance claimed that the $5,000 checks would be covered by revenue generated from tariffs.
Fact check: Tariffs have not generated nearly enough money to cover the “dividend.”
How nice. Tariffs are a tax on YOU. So, Trump can tax you, give you your money back, and then claim he has done something for you. What a great deal.
Yes, Trump lies all the time, and he hasn’t followed through on past pledges to give out money. But there’s a bigger problem here: Trump has successfully normalized his interest in election tampering. That’s particularly concerning, as nearly half of Americans don’t think the midterms will be conducted fairly.
Vance warned GOP donors that Democrats will “bury the American people in investigations and bullshit” if they win.
And who would know better than Vance about burying the American people in investigations and bullshit, except by “American people” he really means “Trump and his crooked gang.”
“We’re thinking about all of the kinds of Trump grift and schemes,” Garcia told me. He listed a few issues off the top of his head: A Trump-linked firm selling pardons. Trump’s stock trading. His family’s crypto earnings. Don Jr. and Eric Trump’s other business ventures tied to the government. Jared Kushner’s business in the Middle East, while informally serving as a top diplomat.
“All of that has to be investigated, and we’re very committed to that,” Garcia said. “We’ve already started a lot of that work.”
Yes, despite the best efforts of the Supreme Court to make Trump king via their phony “Unitary Executive” claim, the Donald will still have to answer to the law. And let us be clear: No President in American history has broken so many laws, hurt so many people, and illegally so enriched himself as Donald J. Trump has.
If Trump doesn’t go to jail, then we might as well close all the jails in America, and free the majority of the inmates, because compared to Trump, they would look like angels.
Two things matter about this outrage. First, the federal government has unlimited power to create dollars, so there is no reason to withhold money that helps keep children healthy and alive.
The second thing comes in the red paragraph in the article.
Gov. Greg Abbott defends Medicaid funding for Texas
By Terri Langford, The Texas Tribune, September 2, 2026
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is doubling down on the state’s fight to recover nearly $10 billion in Medicaid funding that the Trump administration is withholding from Texas hospitals.
“Texas is working with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to protect funding that helps hospitals serve Medicaid patients and keeps critical emergency care available,” Abbott’s spokesman Andrew Mahaleris said in a statement.
The statement comes two days after The Texas Tribune reported that the governor’s office had stepped into a nearly year-long impasse between the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and Washington over the funding. The money helps hospitals close the gap between Medicaid reimbursements and the actual costs they incur to treat low-income Texans.
The money was to go to Texas hospitals beginning Tuesday, the start of the state fiscal year. Each day it is delayed, it costs Texas hospitals about $27 million, according to the Texas Hospital Association.
Texas hospitals pay about $4.2 billion annually to local taxing districts and the federal government matches that amount for the supplemental Medicaid funding.
Beginning last December, the federal government began questioning Texas HHSC, which administers Medicaid for the state, about how those taxes are generated and calculated, indicating the feds would withhold the money until those questions were answered to their satisfaction. But state health officials have insisted there’s nothing wrong with the way this money is collected and nothing has changed in its calculations.
“Texas’ financing fully complies with federal law, and Texas health care providers should receive the funding they are due,” Mahaleris, Abbott’s spokesman said on Wednesday.
Abbott’s statement and his letter to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last month in which the Republican governor characterized the $10 million hold as an economic “gun to the head” is not only a rare public disagreement with the administration, but also one of the strongest public stances his office has made in support of Medicaid funding for Texas.
Texas, under Abbott’s watch, is one of the few states that has not expanded Medicaid to more low-income Texans. This has contributed to Texas having the highest uninsured rate in the nation.
Now, MAGA Governor Abbott suddenly cares about low-income Texans?? He didn’t care when he forced these low-income people to do without healthcare, even though the federal government (under the Democrats) offered to pay.
Why did Abbot do something so stupid? Because Trump told him to, and Abbott is very obedient.
Suddenly, Abbott realizes that the Texas government has to pay, so he panics. Now he wants the federal government to do what it offered to do many months ago — what it is doing for all but the most MAGA-dumb states.
A reminder to Texans who vote Republican, no matter what. You get what you vote for.
Last year, Texas’ health agency had to fight back a measles outbreak as the state endured a claw back of $700 million in unspent COVID funding last year, plus millions more cut in public health funding.
Oh, you don’t believe in vaccination because a Trump dummy told you not to vaccinate. You do realize that Trump is completely vaccinated, don’t you?
Publicly, lawmakers praised the fact that the Trump administration was replacing hundreds of millions in healthcare cuts with a fraction of the loss through smaller grant programs.
Of course he did. Those are the lawmakers who would praise Trump even if he “shot someone on 5th Avenue.” I don’t want to demonstrate Schadenfreude here, because there are innocent children involved, and they can’t control what their damn-fool parents have done.
But if there were no kids involved, I would laugh and shout, “It serves you right, you bigoted fools, for backing America’s #1 bigoted fool. Now, your hatred and bigotry is coming back to bite you. You voted your hatred and now you reap the whirlwind.
But my heart goes out to the kids who have you as parents.
The federal government’s scrutiny comes after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Congress passed last year that cut $900 million from Medicaid.
The federal government could have created the needed money, simply by pressing a few computer keys. It had no reason to cut spending, especially while giving tax cuts to the rich.
Statement from the St. Louis Federal Reserve: “As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e., unable to pay its bills. In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets to remain operational.” (i.e., doesn’t borrow dollars and is not in debt.)
Alan Greenspan, Former Federal Reserve Chairman: “A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency. There is nothing to prevent the federal government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody.
The brunt of those cuts affected those states that expanded Medicaid, but a provision in the legislation effectively froze Texas’ taxing structure for hospitals, prompting the cutoff on the supplemental funding.
Late Tuesday, a CMS spokesman informed the Tribune that it is committed to ensuring that Medicaid funds are used appropriately but offered no other details about the dispute.
“The agency is working with all states to ensure compliance with both longstanding and recent statutory requirements and remains engaged with the state on these issues,” the agency said in a statement. “CMS will continue to monitor the implementation of these changes and their potential impact on access to care for Medicaid beneficiaries.”
The shortfall is the result of a decision by the Trump administration to withhold approval from Texas for about $9.8 billion in the next year from three programs, the bulk of which affects the Comprehensive Hospital Increase Reimbursement Program (CHIRP).
This program gives hospitals additional funding to cover the difference between Medicaid rate payments and the actual costs that hospitals incur to provide services to Medicaid patients. Essentially, hospitals, which often are paid less than what they spend on Medicaid patients due to outdated payment rates set by the state, are losing out on their additional reimbursement for 2027.
Local governmental entities collect taxes from hospitals — about $4 billion a year, according to the Texas Hospital Association — and under the Reimbursement Program, the federal government matches those funds so that Texas hospitals can then use them to cover the actual costs of providing Medicaid services. Hospitals say those Reimbursement Program dollars are critical and if they lose that funding, they will likely have to cut services to patients.
Keep voting Republican, Texas. Trump thanks you for buying his lies, and as for your poor kids, well you really don’t care about them, do you?
(Liz Landers is a correspondent for PBS News Hour, where she covers the White House and the Trump administration. Prior to joining the News Hour, she served as the national security correspondent for Scripps News, and also reported on disinformation for the network.)
What with Trump’s Iranian war, the advent of data centers, and Trump’s additional hatred of solar energy, we have a serious energy shortage.
Liz Landers: Several large-scale wind energy projects on the East and West Coast of the U.S. have been canceled in the last few months. In March, the administration announced a nearly $1 billion payout to TotalEnergies, which is a French company, to abandon an offshore wind project.
They had bought two leases in 2022, one off the coast of North Carolina. That was for more than $133 million, and then another off the coast of New York for $795 million.
And then last week, more than $900 million in additional payouts were made for two more projects, Bluepoint Wind off the coast of New York and New Jersey and Golden State Wind off the coast of California.
So in the last few months, these payments have totaled nearly $2 billion. The administration had initially tried to block some of these wind projects from going forward, citing national security concerns. Several courts struck that down.
And the Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum, told the Associated Press that these projects were only viable when they were propped up by taxpayer subsidies under the Biden administration.
We reached out to the Department of Interior to ask about this. We did not hear back from them in time.
There are serious questions about the legality of this.
I spoke with Liz Klein earlier today. She was the former director under President Biden of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. And she does not think that it is legal for the administration to be taking these kinds of steps. Here’s a little bit of what she had to say.
Elizabeth Klein, Former Director, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management: Many of us believe they have gone outside of what is lawful, certainly outside of any appropriate process.
They have crafted these agreements, which really the best way to describe them are backdoor deals that lack transparency. They lack an appropriate process that you would normally follow.
Liz Landers: Klein says that the agency that she used to oversee does not have the statutory or regulatory authority to refund the monies to these companies after they paid for the lease. And this is raising questions for members of Congress and also Republicans in New York state who are questioning the administration’s moves here.
But Trump has been bribed by the coal interests (He calls it “beautiful coal) to stand in the way of renewable, clean energy. Here’s what he lies (says, which in Trump’s case is the same as lying) about China’s wind energy:
“During a January 9, 2026, meeting at the White House with top oil executives, President Trump made the following statement during the meeting.
“All you have to do is say to China, how many windmill areas do you have in China? So far, they are not able to find any. They use coal, and they use oil and gas and some nuclear, not much. But they don’t have windmills, they make them and sell them to suckers like Europe, and suckers like the United States before.”
The U.S. Department of Energy Says Otherwise.
China has more wind and solar capacity than any other country in the world.The country analysis brief on China released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration in May of 2025, shows that China added 76 gigawatts of wind energy in the year 2024.
A full 16% of all electric generation in China comes from wind, as shown in the EIA chart below.
“The Largest Wind Power Project in the World. The Jiuquan Wind Power Base, otherwise known as the Gansu Wind Farm, is the world’s largest wind power complex; is located in the Gobi Desert near Jiuquan in China’s Gansu Province; has 7,000 turbines with a planned 20GW capacity; enough to provide electricity to a small country (more than 7.5 million homes).
Started in 2008, this multi-phase project is a major symbol of China’s renewable energy ambitions.”
Fact: China has four times more wind energy than America:
So, as always, Donald Trump is doing his favorite three things:
Lying
Hurting America for his own personal gain.
Giving to the rich and taking from the rest.
Social Security supposedly is running short of money. Medicare supposedly is running short of money. Helping the middle class and poor is “unaffordable.” But giving billions of dollars away to prevent wind energy is just fine.
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 