The pages of history are filled with towering examples of human perseverance. Men confined unjustly or crushed by the weight of circumstance who, rather than languish in despair, turned their solitude into greatness. From Sir Walter Raleigh penning The History of the World in the Tower of London, to the Apostle Paul writing his epistles while under house arrest, history reminds us that adversity, in the hands of the capable, becomes fuel for brilliance.
But what happens when adversity isn’t handed to the wise or the driven — but to the idle, the overpaid, and the extravagantly self-involved?
Johnson: They want to fund healthcare for illegal aliens. It is in their bill.
Brennan: I have looked at that text. It doesn’t explicitly say what you are indicating
Johnson: Yes, it does pic.twitter.com/fnrGvBdPPR
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 5, 2025
The ongoing government shutdown has handed us an answer that is as tragic as it is unintentionally comical. Since October 1, thousands of federal workers — furloughed, non-essential, and clearly restless — have flooded the internet with a tidal wave of frivolity. Gone are the quills and parchment. In their place? TikTok dance routines. Lip-syncs. Mirror selfies. Melodramatic “day in the life” reels. This is the federal workforce, untethered from responsibility, and seeking solace not in productivity or introspection, but in the hollow comfort of internet clout.
It would be one thing if this were just an embarrassing footnote to the shutdown. But the broader context reveals something far more consequential.
4. Medicaid’s rigged incentives
$9 For the Able-Bodied, $1.33 for the Truly Needy
The federal government gives states 7X!! more for able-bodied working-age adult enrollees than for kids, pregnant women, seniors and the disabled. pic.twitter.com/IoPL27exOb
— Rep. Eric Burlison (@RepEricBurlison) May 16, 2025
At the center of the standoff is yet another fiscal battle over entitlements — this time, Democrats demanding to renew federal subsidies for Obamacare plans and reverse Medicaid work requirements recently signed into law by President Trump. And that’s where the irony sharpens. These TikToking federal employees, whose relevance to the functioning of the Republic is tenuous at best, are being treated as the political face of the shutdown — while the real debate is about funding health care for people who are not supposed to be in the country in the first place.
Despite media spin, the evidence is clear and abundant. States like New York, California, Massachusetts, and Illinois openly provide Medicaid coverage to illegal immigrants — not just emergency care, but full-scope benefits. They claim it’s funded by state dollars, but the money trail inevitably leads to federal subsidies, accounting tricks, and backdoor financing. In other words, the taxpayer foots the bill, whether they live in Vermont or Nevada.
Consider Texas. From November 2024 to February 2025, over 100,000 patients in Texas hospitals admitted to being in the country illegally. Another 600,000 refused to disclose their status. The cost? $120 million per month — a staggering sum that strains ERs, depletes resources, and delays care for American citizens who’ve paid into the system all their lives.
This is an amazing sentence to see in a @wapo editorial. I am truly impressed. pic.twitter.com/l9E82bMl0X
— Conn Carroll (@conncarroll) October 6, 2025
And yet, when Republican lawmakers raise this issue, the response from mainstream outlets is telling. Words like broadly or technically litter their so-called fact checks — flimsy linguistic hedges designed to obscure the truth without technically lying. Meanwhile, federal agents are accused of fear-mongering simply for stating the obvious: the Medicaid system is being abused.
Even The Washington Post editorial board, in a rare moment of candor, recently criticized Democrats for attempting to extend ACA subsidies without any plan to pay for them. It’s a late admission, but a revealing one — a crack in the progressive armor that has long insisted Obamacare was a panacea, not a burden.