Why Texas Must Win Its Fight against Biden’s Targeting of Republicans

L osing badly in the polls, Democrats are betting their entire campaign on attempting to convince voters of the lie that former president Donald J. Trump is a threat to democracy and a villain who will disregard the judicial system. In reality, while Trump has a consistent record of abiding by the decisions of the courts on policy, the same cannot be said of President Joe Biden and his administration.

It is President Biden who has repeatedly exceeded his authority by going around Congress and the courts to unilaterally pay off half a trillion dollars in student-loan debt. It is President Biden who has implemented reckless green policies aimed at crushing American energy, even though the Supreme Court has already rejected earlier iterations of the same policies. Instead of deference to the judicial system, the Biden administration has disregarded the courts when they are not conducive to its agenda or political goals.

That is exactly why a little-noticed ongoing court battle between Texas and the Biden administration could have major implications across the country. One of the most underreported stories of the Biden administration has been its hypocritical crusade to cut safety-net health-care funding by targeting red-state programs in Florida, Missouri, and Texas while increasing federal funding in blue states like California. Despite repeatedly launching false attacks claiming Republicans want to cut Medicaid, the Biden administration has been attempting to do exactly that by centralizing control of the program into the hands of D.C. bureaucrats at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and by giving them power to apply different standards to different states. As National Review has reported, emails from CMS officials suggest this weaponization had political purposes.

The rule would cost Texas billions by restricting the flexibility of the state to enter into arrangements with hospitals to fund its Medicaid program without raising taxes. Even though California and many other blue states engage in the same practices, the Biden administration has failed to apply the same standards to their political allies. In fact, while they are targeting states like Texas, they have rewarded California with record Medicaid funding.

In Congress, Representative Dan Crenshaw (R., Texas) has led the charge to take the Biden administration to task for this outrageous abuse of power. In a recent hearing, Representative Crenshaw pressed CMS deputy administrator Daniel Tsai on why the agency is attempting to cost Texas “billions of dollars.” Crenshaw blasted CMS for strongarming his state. Tsai acknowledged that many blue states engaged in the same funding practices, yet only Texas, Florida, and Missouri faced scrutiny.

Unwilling to accept this double standard, Texas is taking matters into its own hands. Perhaps the most important battle right now is happening in the courts in an ongoing case between Texas and CMS. Last July, federal judge Jeremy D. Kernodle — of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas — handed Texas an early victory and ordered CMS to halt this federal overreach, ruling that CMS ignored the limits of power granted by Congress and overstepped its legal authority when it threatened to suddenly halt funding to Texas.

The judge’s action has done little to stop the Biden administration from thumbing its nose at the courts. Nearly a year after a federal judge granted Texas emergency relief from CMS’s crusade, CMS released its Medicaid Managed Care Final Rule and accompanying bulletin — a backdoor scheme to implement the same policy. CMS continues to push its agenda against red states nationwide.

Recognizing that courts present a hurdle to the power grab, the Biden administration is now also attempting to escape accountability by pushing these cases to administrative courts outside of the normal judicial system. Fortunately, Texas is pushing back. The state is asking the United States District Court to protect regulated entities, such as states that handle Medicaid so that they can make these legal challenges in the regular court system instead of being stuck in administrative courts.

If Texas is successful in this litigation, this will not only be a major win for protecting health care but especially for critical American industries like energy that are under threat from the Biden administrative state. This victory would prevent the Biden Administration from using the same tactic to push important challenges to energy regulations into administrative courts, where they will have far more latitude to overreach their power.

That’s why this case will have enormous implications for legal challenges against the Biden administration’s weaponization of the administrative state to crush American energy.

Without the protection of the courts, the Biden administration will have free rein to target Republicans and the vital industries that make our economy run. The checks on federal power to punish its political opponents are growing weaker every day. Texas’s fight is not just about health care. It’s about holding the line on weakening those protections that every single American depends on.