Congress is trying to pull a fast one to begin the New Year.
They're counting on conservatives being asleep at the wheel.
And Senate RINOs are preparing one sick betrayal that left Tim Walz cackling in delight.
Senate GOP ready to fund the chaos Trump just shut down
President Trump suspended the U.S. refugee program on his first day back in office.
He made clear refugees can only enter when their admission serves the national interest and shifted the program to prioritize white South Africans over third-world refugees.¹
Trump specifically said he doesn't want immigration from countries like Somalia.
Now Senate Republicans are preparing to stab him in the back with $5.69 billion for refugee assistance programs.²
Republican Senators Mike Lee and Rand Paul just announced they're voting no on their own party's spending bill because of this funding.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune wants to ram it through as part of a five-bill package before the February 1 deadline.
Lee and Paul are the only two with enough backbone to stand with Trump.
The rest are playing their typical game – pretending to support the President while quietly funding the very programs he's trying to destroy.
Tim Walz built this nightmare
Walz knows what this money buys because he watched it wreck Minnesota.
The HHS Administration of Children and Families runs these programs that handed out medical care, cash payments, and welfare benefits to refugees for years.
Minnesota now has over 75,000 people of Somali ancestry.³
More than half of children in Somali immigrant households live in poverty compared to only 8% in native-headed homes.⁴
About 39% of working-age Somalis have no high school diploma versus just 5% of natives.
Among Somalis who've lived here for more than a decade, half still can't speak English "very well."⁵
About 54% receive food stamps and 73% have at least one member on Medicaid.⁶
Somali gangs with names like "Somali Mafia," "Taliban," and "Young n' Thuggin" terrorize Minneapolis neighborhoods.⁷
The Minneapolis Somali community is at the center of a multibillion dollar welfare fraud scandal.
FBI Director Kash Patel called Minnesota prosecutions "the tip of a very large iceberg."⁸
Nearly 90 people have been convicted in schemes that stole hundreds of millions from child nutrition programs during COVID – and 78 of 86 charged are of Somali descent.⁹
One woman participated in a scheme that looted at least $14 million from a health care program.¹⁰
This is the system Walz defended as governor.
He even wrote to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2019 offering his "consent to continue refugee resettlement in the State of Minnesota" and praising Minnesota's "strong moral tradition of welcoming those who seek refuge."¹¹
Now the GOP wants to hand him billions to keep the disaster going.
Republicans tripled spending under Biden then pretended to care
Congressional funding for these programs stood at $1.91 billion in fiscal year 2021.¹²
Democrats immediately tripled it to $4.8 billion in 2022, then jacked it up to $6.42 billion the next year.
It stayed above $6 billion through 2024 and 2025.
Now Republicans want to drop it to $5.69 billion and call that fiscal restraint.
That's still three times what Americans paid before Biden opened the floodgates.
They're betting conservatives won't notice because the funding is buried in a package with a government shutdown threat providing cover.
Trump shifted the refugee program's target demographic to white South Africans after suspending it.¹³
Yet the Senate GOP is about to hand nearly $6 billion to keep the old system running.
They're funding Walz's Minnesota model after Trump rejected it.
Lee and Paul get it.
The rest of the conference needs to kill this funding or explain to voters why they're working against Trump's agenda.
Republicans just got a mandate in November to end refugee resettlement.
Trump delivered by shutting it down.
Now Senate RINOs are trying to reverse that with taxpayer dollars.
¹ Lucy Hartnett, "Republicans are divided on Afghan immigrant policy after the National Guard shooting," NPR, December 16, 2025.
² Thérèse Boudreaux, "GOP fiscal hawks balk at $5.7B for refugees in 2026 HHS funding bill," The Center Square, December 31, 2025.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Jason Richwine, "Somali Immigrants in Minnesota," Center for Immigration Studies, December 12, 2025.
⁵ Ibid.
⁶ Ibid.
⁷ Andrew Mark Miller, "Tim Walz opened Minnesota's door to Somali immigrants as gangs became more prevalent," Fox News, August 14, 2024.
⁸ Emma Colton and Eric Revell, "Minnesota fraud: Key questions answered as FBI investigates," NewsNation, December 28, 2025.
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ Ibid.
¹¹ Miller, Fox News.
¹² Boudreaux, The Center Square.
¹³ Hartnett, NPR.