From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By Jason Hopkins

A state commission is encouraging Massachusetts to cut costs on emergency shelter services for migrants and other families by spending less on expensive hotels.

The emergency shelter system in Massachusetts housing migrant families and others experiencing homelessness is expected to spend over $1 billion in fiscal year 2025, according to a state commission report investigating the matter. The report comes as Massachusetts, a sanctuary state that limits cooperation with federal immigration authorities, is continuing to experience financial hardship over the border crisis and an influx of migrants into their communities.

The draft report proposed spending less on the most expensive accommodations for migrants — which would include hotels and motels. Prior reports have found that housing migrants in hotels or motels in the state can be as costly as $300 per night.

The immigration crisis taking place under the Biden-Harris administration has hit Massachusetts particularly hard. Roughly 355,000 illegal migrants and other inadmissible foreign nationals live in the state, and approximately 50,000 have arrived since 2021, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.

Democrat Gov. Maura Healey, in her efforts to clamp down on the state’s crisis, has publicly called on illegal immigrants to not go to Massachusetts, offered plane tickets for them to leave, and has asked residents to take in migrant families. The state has also experienced a rising number of deportation cases as illegal migrants continue to flock there.

Despite the growing pains with mass illegal immigration, the governor has remained steadfast in her opposition to President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for an immigration crackdown, and she confirmed that her state’s law enforcement would “absolutely not” help with mass deportation efforts. The entire state of Massachusetts is considered a sanctuary for illegal migrants for its laws limiting cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

The state legislature appropriated $639 million to the emergency assistance shelter system for fiscal year 2025, according to the report. However, expense projections are expected to hit $1.094 billion – leaving a shortfall of roughly $455 million for the fiscal year.

From LifeSiteNews

By Matt Lamb

“Our country is $33 trillion in debt. Taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for Dr. Fauci’s security detail, especially when Fauci was one of the highest-paid federal employees in the U.S”

American taxpayers spent at least $15 million on security and a private driver for Dr. Anthony Fauci after he left his government job.

Open the Books obtained “memorandum of understanding” covering January 4, 2023 through September 20, 2024 along with independent journalist Jordan Schachtel.

The government watchdog group said it is seeking information on if the contract is still in force. Fauci retired at the end of 2022.

The highest-paid federal employee, Fauci left the government after decades of work. For almost two years, if not longer, taxpayers spent money so he could have a private driver. This despite the fact that Fauci has an estimated net worth of $11 million and continues to profit off his experience in the government, including writing a book and speaking at events.

The exact specifics of the agreement are new. However, Republicans have previously criticized the special arrangement, after it came to light last year that Fauci continued to receive perks despite ostensibly retiring.

“When I discovered that Dr. Fauci still had a taxpayer-funded driver and personal guards after he stepped down, I felt that it was another example of Washington bureaucrats putting themselves above the American people,” Congressman Dale Strong said last year. He introduced legislation to end the special agreement.

“Our country is $33 trillion in debt. Taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for Dr. Fauci’s security detail, especially when Fauci was one of the highest-paid federal employees in the U.S,” Strong said.

The special deal comes after Fauci botched the handling of COVID-19, including by downplaying concerns it leaked from a lab in China. He also made misleading statements about the National Institutes of Health and its connection to a controversial lab in Wuhan, China.

He also made incorrect, and incredibly damaging, statements to the American public about the need for widespread lockdowns and other social restrictions and claimed that the COVID shots were both “safe” and “effective” against the spread of the virus. Faced with criticism, Fauci claimed that the attacks on him were really assaults on “science.”

As Open the Books reminds readers:

But his detractors recall a government official who led the fight to implement years-long draconian restrictions upon the American people, which devastated the fabric of U.S. society, greatly harmed the economy and caused all kinds of additional negative repercussions – including widespread learning loss among America’s youth. Fauci was never shy to advocate for lockdowns, social distancing, school closures, business closures, mask mandates, and vaccine passports from his powerful federal perch during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Senator Rand Paul, a frequent critic of Fauci, criticized Fauci’s taxpayer-funded arrangement.

“No more $ for the guy who funded dangerous research in Wuhan.,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

Open the Books spokesman Christopher Neefus said the NIH has a “pattern of obfuscation when it comes to the NIH’s financial arrangements.”

“Whether it’s Dr. Fauci’s contract and full compensation, or the NIH’s multibillion-dollar royalty complex, we’ve been working for years to get full transparency,” Neefus told National Review.

Fauci’s support for the shot included going door-to-door with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to browbeat residents into taking the jabs.

A PBS profile showed Bowser, who broke her own forced masking rules, going door-to-door with a crowd of people inquiring about their personal choices concerning shots.

“They need a push, a push, and a drag,” Mayor Bowser says in one clip, to Fauci’s approval, as LifeSiteNews previously reported.

Fauci, who retired at the end of December 2022, can be seen on the documentary criticizing Republican states and the people in those states in particular who declined to take the abortion-tainted jab.

“[Red states] are going to keep the outbreak smoldering in the country [because they won’t get jabbed],” he tells Bowser, who is part of the canvassing crowd. The video is from June 2021. “It’s so crazy. They’re not doing it because they say they don’t want to. They’re Republicans. They don’t like being told what to do. We need to break that.”