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Trump and allies claim Democrats demand health care for ‘illegal aliens’ in shutdown fight. Here are the facts.

A sign tells visitors that part of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum is closed in Yorba Linda, California, on Wednesday. Due to the federal government shutdown, the Nixon campus is half open. The museum galleries, the interior of the presidential helicopter and the research room are closed. But, Nixon’s Birthplace, First Lady’s Memorial Site, the East Room, Rose Gardens, and the exterior of the presidential helicopter, along with the museum store are still open because they are operated by the Richard Nixon Foundation. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen/Orange County Register)
By Orion Donovan Smith orionds@spokesman.com(202) 853-2524

WASHINGTON – As a government shutdown began on Wednesday, Republicans could make a straightforward argument to blame the other party: Democrats are refusing to pass a bill that would simply keep funding the government at current levels until lawmakers can finish writing bipartisan spending bills.

Instead, President Donald Trump and many of his GOP allies in Congress have made a different accusation, focused on a familiar target: They claim that Democrats are forcing a government shutdown to demand that Congress fund free health care for immigrants who are in the country illegally.

“They’ve made a fairly outlandish demand of Republicans,” Rep. Michael Baumgartner, R-Spokane, said in an interview Tuesday. “They’re going to shut down the government unless Republicans massively increase Obamacare, including free health care spending for illegal immigrants, which would be a major policy change.”

In exchange for their votes to fund the government, Democrats are demanding the extension of expiring subsidies to help Americans pay for health insurance, the reversal of an estimated $1 trillion cut to Medicaid funding – a key pillar of Republicans’ signature legislation passed in July – and restrictions on Trump’s ability to cancel funding Congress has already approved.

None of those demands, however, would change the 1996 law that already prohibits the use of federal taxpayer dollars to provide Medicaid or other public benefits to unauthorized immigrants.

Immigrants who are in the country illegally also cannot receive the subsidies that Democrats are seeking to extend, which reduce premiums for health insurance purchased through state marketplaces like the Washington Health Benefit Exchange and Your Health Idaho. The Democrats’ proposal to reopen the government would do nothing to change that, either.

“If it seems like the only sentence that Republicans can form these days consists of a noun, verb and ‘illegal immigrant,’ that’s because they have to resort to outright lies to defend their truly god-awful health care policies,” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said in a news conference at the Capitol on Tuesday.

Democrats do, however, want to repeal a provision in the law Republicans initially dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that could take health care away from an estimated 1.4 million immigrants the federal government considers “lawfully present” in the United States. That category includes those who entered the country illegally as children and are protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, people with Temporary Protected Status, refugees who entered the country legally with the government’s help, and asylum seekers who are still going through a legal process to decide whether they may remain in the country.

Some state governments run by Democrats, including Washington’s, also provide Medicaid to unauthorized immigrants, many of whom work in industries like agriculture and construction, where demand for labor has outpaced legal guest-worker programs in the 39 years since Congress last overhauled U.S. immigration laws. Federal funds cannot be used for those programs.

Rep. Emily Randall, a first-term Democrat who represents Bremerton and the Olympic Peninsula, voted for the 2023 bill that expanded the state-funded Apple Health program to unauthorized immigrants when she was a state senator. In an interview Wednesday, she said she supports that policy because reducing the number of uninsured people in the state lowers health insurance costs for everyone else.

“They’re clearly mad at states like Washington for wanting to ensure that all state residents have access to health care, can work, can do so safely without being demonized and rounded up,” Randall said, citing the August arrest of two firefighters in Olympic National Forest by federal immigration agents. “It’s good for businesses, it’s good for all our health care, it’s good for our communities if we’re not on a witch hunt to round up brown people. And it lowers health care costs when more people have coverage.”

The government shutdown continued on Wednesday with neither party showing signs of giving in on its demands. But even if Republicans meet the Democrats’ terms, that wouldn’t mean giving federally funded health care to people living in the country unlawfully.