Ocasio-Cortez claims Trump cut Medicare payments 'for millions' in federal funds freeze; White House says it's an outage

Socialist Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York accused the Trump administration of "destroying" health care for millions of Americans over the federal funds freeze.

President Donald Trump issued a temporary federal funds freeze on tens of billions of dollars in order to allow a government audit to ensure funds aren't going to efforts banned by his executive orders. The order specifically excludes payments to Medicaid, but Democrats spread reports that those were being denied.

'This is a constitutional crisis. It’s a massive, illegal power grab that the House and Senate have a sworn duty to stop.'

Ocasio-Cortez pounced on the reports to accuse the Trump administration of destroying health care for millions of Americans.

"Trump is holding all the nation’s hospitals and vital services hostage to seize power from Congress and hand it over to billionaires," she said on social media. "We must state the truth: this is a constitutional crisis. It’s a massive, illegal power grab that the House and Senate have a sworn duty to stop."

The White House released a statement saying there was an outage in the payment system and that it would be restored soon.

"The White House is aware of the Medicaid website portal outage," said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. "We have confirmed no payments have been affected — they are still being processed and sent. We expect the portal will be back online shortly."

The memo had argued that Trump had a mandate from the presidential election to audit government spending and end the funding of left-wing policies implemented by the previous administration.

"The use of federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and Green New Deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve," read the memo. "This memorandum requires federal agencies to identify and review all federal financial assistance programs and supporting activities consistent with the president's policies and requirements."

Other Democrats and activists started repeating the notion that there was a "constitutional crisis" over the federal funds freeze and the Medicare outage.

"Financial assistance should be dedicated to advancing American priorities," read the memo.

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