RFK Jr. showed up in Los Angeles on Tuesday to talk about homelessness, and the irony practically wrote itself. The man Donald Trump put in charge of the nation’s health bureaucracy can’t cast a ballot in his own country because a judge ruled he has “no legal residence.” A cabinet secretary. Legally homeless. While standing in front of cameras talking about getting homeless people off the streets.
Funny how that works.
Here’s how we got here. When Kennedy ran for president as an independent, the Democratic Party sued him in 12 states to get him off the ballot. New York Judge Christina Ryba decided the address he listed in Katonah was a “sham” because Kennedy had only slept in the spare room once and actually lived in California with his wife, Cheryl Hines. Ryba called his testimony that he might return to that bedroom with his wife, family, and “multiple pets” “highly improbable, if not preposterous.”
Then Kennedy endorsed Trump. And the same party that fought to kick him off the ballot turned around and sued to keep him on it. They wanted his name lingering on ballots to siphon votes from Trump. Ask yourself who benefits from that little switcheroo.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsThe result? A judge declared Kennedy has no legal residence anywhere. No state where he can register. No ballot he can touch. The man who spent his career suing polluters and pharmaceutical companies is now the one American citizen who literally cannot vote. And the people who engineered this want you to believe it’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
Meanwhile, Kennedy was in LA doing something the establishment actually hates: threatening to cut off the money hose. The Trump administration is staring down the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority with $240 million in federal funding on the line. HUD Secretary Scott Turner held up a brown paper bag he said was being distributed to homeless people with taxpayer dollars, containing what he called drug paraphernalia. Turner’s message was simple: “Our aim is that LAHSA does not receive another dollar until it has accountability.”
Kennedy went further. “If a program’s metrics show they are just maintaining people on the streets instead of curing the underlying dependency, their federal funding stops immediately.”
Now, I’m not a lawyer. I’m not an expert. But I can read a bank statement, and so can you. Los Angeles has poured billions into homelessness over the past decade, and the tents keep multiplying. The “housing first” model, which hands out permanent subsidized housing without requiring treatment, has turned the homelessness crisis into a permanent industry with a permanent budget. Every year the problem gets worse, and every year the agencies ask for more money. Ask yourself who benefits from a problem that never gets solved.
Shealeah Craighead (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsLAHSA is now challenging the suspension in front of US District Judge David O. Carter. A federal judge in Rhode Island has already blocked the funding shift, ruling HUD didn’t complete a required review process. So the bureaucracy has its shields up. The agencies that failed are running to other arms of the government to protect their funding. The system defending the system. Imagine that.
Kennedy also took a swing at former HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, claiming Becerra transferred 76 of 80 oversight workers responsible for monitoring $2.2 trillion in annual payments. Kennedy called it “an invitation for the fraudsters to come in and steal everything.” He cited tens of billions in fraudulent billing in Los Angeles alone, through fake autism services, phony medical equipment, and bogus hospice accounts.
So there’s your establishment in a nutshell. They sued a man until he had no home, no ballot, and no state. They built a homelessness industry that doesn’t cure homelessness. They stripped the oversight out of their own agencies and let the money walk out the door. And when someone finally shows up with a pair of scissors and a backbone, they run to a judge.
The only person in this story who can’t vote is the