President Donald Trump and Senate Democrats agree to a deal as Friday&#8217;s midnight deadline to avoid a partial government shutdown approaches, border czar Tom Homan puts anti-ICE activists on notice, and a federal minority contracting program bans more than a thousand companies after they refuse to prove they did any work.
It’s Friday, January 30, 2026, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. Today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
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<h2 style="text-align: center;">Government Shutdown Averted?</h2>
The White House and Senate Democrats say they’ve <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/white-house-and-senate-dems-strike-deal-ahead-of-government-shutdown">reached</a> a deal to avert a government shutdown as the Friday deadline inches closer. The deal would fund most government departments through September 30 and, in the short term, fund the Department of Homeland Security through a continuing resolution that expires after two weeks. In those two weeks, lawmakers are expected to negotiate over reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. President Trump took to Truth Social on Thursday evening, saying, “I am working hard with Congress to ensure that we are able to fully fund the Government, without delay.” He went on to say that he hopes “both Republicans and Democrats will give a very much needed Bipartisan ‘YES’ Vote.” The deal hit a snag on Thursday night as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/29/shutdown-spending-deal-trump-00756372">reportedly</a> blocked a vote over &#8220;a House-passed provision undoing a law that allows senators to receive cash payouts if they had their phone records seized by former special counsel Jack Smith,&#8221; according to POLITICO.
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Homan Vows Activist Crackdown</h2>
Border czar Tom Homan is putting anti-ICE activists on notice that they will be held accountable for obstructing law enforcement. Homan <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/homans-presser-sheds-light-on-trump-admins-shift-on-minneapolis-immigration-raids">took</a> the podium on Thursday for his first significant public remarks since being sent to clean up the mess in Minnesota. And he seemed to have a two-fold message. First, to make it clear that law and order are going to be restored. He pledged to remain on the ground “until the problem’s gone.” Then Homan also made it clear that despite the bad press coming from the shooting deaths of anti-ICE activists Renee Good and Alex Pretti, he’s not going to be deterred from investigating activist networks. Meanwhile, Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar is entering the race for governor. She first filed papers a week ago, but the incredibly bad optics of the chaos on the ground in Minneapolis again – the city was ground zero for Black Lives Matter unrest in 2020 – gives Klobuchar a chance to showcase herself as a moderate who will restore order.
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Government Contracting Fraud Exposed</h2>
One thousand companies were <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/a-quarter-of-minority-contracting-firms-banned-after-refusing-anti-fraud-check?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=A+Quarter+Of+%E2%80%98Minority+Contracting%E2%80%99+Firms+Banned+After+Refusing+Anti-Fraud+Check">banned</a> from the federal minority contracting program on Wednesday after they declined to provide records showing whether they were actually performing the work or simply keeping a cut while passing the contract to a larger company. The program is known as 8(a). Last month, Kelly Loeffler, the head of the Small Business Administration, which issues <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-the-military-gave-a-homeless-lesbians-minority-contracting-firm-19-million">8(a)</a> status, demanded that all firms provide bank statements and payroll records. It would have been a lot of work for the SBA to go through all those records. But the agency didn’t need to look at many at all, because a lot of fraudsters may have self-identified by choosing not to turn over records that would incriminate them. A quarter of all 8(a) firms, collectively receiving $5 billion over the last four years, didn’t turn anything in.

MRN_260130_V1

Morning Brief: Homan Puts Anti-ICE Activists On Notice & Government Shutdown Averted?

Government Shutdown

Kelly Loeffler

Minnesota

Morning Wire

Senate

Small Business Administration

Tom Homan

White House

Senator Ed Markey appears to be blocking a bill that would extend the statute of limitations for prosecuting fraud in COVID-era government programs, seemingly siding with fraudsters and against the United States government.
The House of Representatives <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/4495" target="_blank" rel="noopener">passed</a> the &#8220;SBA Fraud Enforcement Extension Act&#8221; in July by voice vote, signaling overwhelming bipartisan support. The <a href="https://docs.house.gov/meetings/SM/SM00/20250722/118539/BILLS-119HR4495ih.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">two-page bill</a> simply gives more time for prosecutors to charge people who swindled two COVID bailouts, the Restaurant Revitalization Fund and the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant.
The programs were so fraud-ridden, and the dollar amounts so great, that investigators and prosecutors have a large backlog. Congress already added another five years to the prosecution window for the biggest COVID programs, the Paycheck Protection Program and unemployment bailouts.
But Markey, the top Democrat on the Senate panel overseeing the Small Business Administration, which took the lead on the pandemic recovery, appears to be using his position to block passage in the upper chamber. The Senate Small Business Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), <a href="https://www.sbc.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2025/7/ranking-member-markey-votes-out-legislation-emphasizes-need-for-tariff-relief-for-small-businesses" target="_blank" rel="noopener">approved the bill</a> in July. But it has <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/1199?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%22s1199%22%7D&amp;s=1&amp;r=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">not been</a> brought to the floor for passage.
&#8220;Senate Democrats are blocking my commonsense bill to extend the statute of limitations for COVID crimes, meaning criminals like those recently exposed in Minnesota will get away with it simply because the clock will run out,” Ernst told The Daily Wire. &#8220;It should be a no-brainer to side with taxpayers instead of fraudsters.&#8221;
The apparent blockage raises the question of whether Democrats have become the party of fraud, siding with the likes of the notorious Somali fraudsters who cost the government billions but vote for Democrats as a bloc.
The Biden administration doled out COVID billions using a &#8220;pay and chase&#8221; philosophy, meaning they erred on the side of getting money out the door, with the justification that they would claw back wrongly paid payments later. But the schemes were so numerous that they are still being uncovered, so not extending the statute of limitations amounts to simply paying scammers and not chasing at all.
John Hart, a former Senate aide who now leads the spending watchdog group Open The Books, said under Senate procedure that if a bill passes a committee and has the support of the top Republican and Democrat on that committee, it is fast-tracked for passage by the full chamber. &#8220;If the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Markey, would give the go-ahead, it could be passed by unanimous consent. That process helps uncontroversial bills succeed without extensive Senate procedures,&#8221; he told The Daily Wire.
The restaurant program cost $29 billion, and the inspector general found that recipients representing 12% of that did not even file the required paperwork. The shuttered venue program, which bailed out concert halls, cost $15 billion, more than half a billion dollars of which was identified by SBA as <a href="https://www.sba.gov/document/report-25-21-sbas-oversight-shuttered-venue-operators-grant-recipients" target="_blank" rel="noopener">potentially improper</a>. Both programs ran out of money, meaning fraudsters likely stole slots from more deserving businesses.
A spokesman for Markey — who has represented Massachusetts in Congress since 1976 — did not return a request for comment on what, if any, objection he has to the bill.
<div id="attachment_1027513" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1027513" class="size-full wp-image-1027513" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-2214429130.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-2214429130.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-2214429130-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-2214429130-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-2214429130-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Ed Markey, at right (Photo by Mel Musto/Getty Images)</div>
Hart said it&#8217;s hard to see a legitimate gripe.
&#8220;This issue ought to be unanimous. It could be on President Trump’s desk today. What, exactly, is controversial about prosecuting cases of fraud? Every dollar spent this way is unavailable for Americans who truly need it,&#8221; he said.
Reducing fraud in all government programs used to be an area of bipartisan agreement, with members of the minority party joining the majority in wonky policy discussions. After all, stopping fraud means liberals would have more money for other programs, or Republicans could use the savings to lower taxes.
If the Democrats have moved from the party of big government to the pro-fraud party, one contributing factor could be identity politics. The Biden administration drew the ire of the SBA inspector general by deciding <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sba-wont-even-try-to-collect-on-ppp-loans-that-are-supposed-to-be-paid-back-citing-equity" target="_blank" rel="noopener">not to even attempt to collect</a> PPP loan repayment from businesses that were not eligible to have their loans forgiven, citing &#8220;equity&#8221; as justification.
In the state of Georgia alone, two state legislators, both of them black Democrats, have been accused of <a href="https://georgiarecorder.com/briefs/a-second-georgia-house-democrat-is-accused-of-unemployment-fraud/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stealing</a> from COVID bailout funds. In Virginia, a former state legislator, an Arab Democrat, was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/11/11/covid-relief-fraud-ibraheem-samirah/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">convicted</a> of taking fake PPP loans.
The case of an African-born <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/usaid-contracting-officer-charged-with-pandemic-bailout-fraud" target="_blank" rel="noopener">USAID employee</a> who stole PPP loans raises the question of whether the Biden administration even attempted to stop fraud. He got money on the basis that his purported company did not make as much money in 2020 as it did in 2019 due to the pandemic. But state records and federal tax returns would have shown that the company didn&#8217;t even exist.
Markey, as the top Democrat on the committee overseeing perhaps the most-defrauded government spending spree in history, is the poster child for the notion that Democrats may now simply be apathetic, or even in denial, about fraud — even as fraud in places like Minnesota reaches such heights that it could make Great Society-style programs impossible.
Last month, Hart, along with this reporter, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daily-wires-luke-rosiak-will-testify-before-the-senate-on-massive-federal-dei-scheme" target="_blank" rel="noopener">testified</a> before the Senate Small Business Committee about reducing fraud. Most Democrats on the committee didn&#8217;t bother to attend, and those who did — led by Markey — made no attempt to find ways to reduce fraud, instead suggesting that the programs at issue were not enough billions to care about, or using their time on anti-Trump tirades about topics outside of the committee&#8217;s jurisdiction.
Ernst was surprised, saying, &#8220;Individuals who used Barbie dolls as their photo identification were approved for SBA loans. This is totally unacceptable. &#8230; [Markey] said the largest amount of waste, fraud, and abuse is not in the Small Business Administration programs. &#8230; This is, however, the Small Business Committee. &#8230; Are my Democrat colleagues saying we should be ignoring billions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse?&#8221;

.S. Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA)

This Democrat Is Singlehandedly Blocking The Prosecution Of COVID Fraudsters

COVID

Ed Markey

Fraud

Joni Ernst

Politics

Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler said Thursday that nearly 7,000 people in Minnesota could face prosecution over potentially fraudulent federal loans taken during the COVID pandemic. 
Loeffler said her team had identified around $400 million in loans that may have been fraudulently obtained through the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. As a result, 6,900 borrowers in Minnesota were suspended from participating in SBA loan programs and could face further punishment. 
“Over the last week, SBA has reviewed thousands of potentially fraudulent pandemic-era PPP and EIDL loans approved in Minnesota,” Loeffler <a href="https://x.com/SBA_Kelly/status/2006893291241980325">posted</a> on X. “Today, our agency took action to suspend 6,900 Minnesota borrowers amid suspected fraudulent activity. In total, these borrowers were approved for 7,900 PPP and EIDL loans worth approximately $400M.”
She added that some individuals could be referred for federal prosecution. 
“These individuals will be banned from all SBA loan programs, including disaster loans, going forward. We will also refer every case, where appropriate, to federal law enforcement for prosecution and repayment,” she said. “After years, the American people will finally begin to see the criminals who stole from law-abiding taxpayers held accountable — and this is just the first state.”
Loeffler’s announcement comes as Minnesota faces a flurry of federal probes into alleged widespread fraud at purported daycare centers. In response, the Department of Health and Human Services <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-admin-freezes-all-child-care-payments-to-minnesota-amid-daycare-fraud-scandal">froze</a> all child care payments to the state on Tuesday. At the same time, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said more fraud prosecutions would follow. 
The Trump administration is also looking into an alleged scheme where parents have their child falsely diagnosed with autism at clinics where no such evaluations are performed. Much of the investigation has focused on the Somali immigrant community in the state, with 85 of the 98 people charged by the feds in fraud cases being of Somali descent. 
Democrat Governor Tim Walz has defended his record on fighting fraud, claiming that President Donald Trump was attempting to justify cutting off funding for his state.
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Reports have found COVID-era relief efforts rife with fraud. <a href="https://www.oversight.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reports/2023-06/SBA-OIG-Report-23-09.pdf">According</a> to the Small Business Administration Inspector General, at least $200 billion in potentially fraudulent handouts were disbursed, representing approximately 17% of all funds distributed through the PPP and EIDL programs. 
“The allure of ‘easy money’ in this pay and chase environment attracted an overwhelming number of fraudsters to the programs. [The inspector general’s] continuing reviews pertaining to oversight of SBA’s pandemic response have identified multiple weaknesses in controls that allowed fraudsters to take advantage of the economic crisis and divert funding intended for deserving, eligible American small business owners,” an inspector general report from June 2023 found.

Minnesota Public Schools Begin Year Days After Mass Shooting

Trump Admin Uncovers Another $400 Million In Suspected Minnesota Fraud

Trump Administration

Trump leans on both Ukraine and Russia as peace negotiations grind on, Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak heads to Capitol Hill, and a new memo reveals Biden knew his immigration policies would have chaotic consequences—and chose to proceed anyway.
It’s Tuesday, December 9, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. Today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below, and the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/mrn-251209-member-exclusive">video version can be seen on The Daily Wir</a>e:
<iframe style="width: 100%; max-width: 660px; overflow: hidden; border-radius: 10px;" src="https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/trump-presses-zelensky-bidens-immigration-ignorance/id1576594336?i=1000740381305" height="175" frameborder="0" sandbox="allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-storage-access-by-user-activation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation"></iframe>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Zelensky Rallies European Support Amid U.S. Peace Talks</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1011783" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/Trump-Presses-Zelensky-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/Trump-Presses-Zelensky-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/Trump-Presses-Zelensky-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/Trump-Presses-Zelensky-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/Trump-Presses-Zelensky-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/Trump-Presses-Zelensky.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Topline: President Zelensky met with European leaders on Monday to rally support for the war.
State of play: Peace talks have made some progress over the past few weeks, but that progress has stalled. After President Trump <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1997812364931195249">appeared</a> frustrated on Sunday and suggested that Zelensky was ignoring the peace plan, the Ukrainian president addressed the current framework on Monday.
According to Zelensky, the disagreement is over the Donbas region in Ukraine’s east. The Trump administration reportedly wants Ukraine to hand over control of the rest of the Donbas to Russia, which controls most of it already. In return, Ukraine would get security guarantees and financing to help rebuild. But Zelensky says he can’t because the Ukrainian constitution forbids ceding territory that way.
Zelensky’s corner: Zelensky wants a freeze along the current lines of the conflict. And he doesn’t appear to be alone. European leaders seem frustrated, too.
Zelensky appeared in London on Monday and met with the E3, or the top leaders in Europe: U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
“The principles remain the principles that we&#8217;ve operated on for a very, very long time, which is that we stand with Ukraine. If there&#8217;s to be a ceasefire, it needs to be a just and lasting ceasefire,” <a href="https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1998077179251261884">said</a> Starmer.
Merz was the most vocal about disagreements with the United States:
“We are still and remain strongly behind Ukraine and giving support to your country because we all know that the destiny of [Ukraine] is the destiny of Europe,” <a href="https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1998077179251261884">said</a> Merz. “I&#8217;m skeptical about some of the details which we are seeing in the documents coming from the U.S. side, but we have to talk about that.”
<h2 style="text-align: center;">The Daily Wire To Testify Before Congress </h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1011785" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/DEI-On-Display-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/DEI-On-Display-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/DEI-On-Display-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/DEI-On-Display-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/DEI-On-Display-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/DEI-On-Display.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Topline: Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak will testify to the Senate on Wednesday as an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daily-wires-luke-rosiak-will-testify-before-the-senate-on-massive-federal-dei-scheme">expert</a> on what he calls the government’s longest-running, largest, and most corrupt DEI program. Morning Wire spoke to Rosiak ahead of his appearance in the Senate. (The following interview has been lightly edited.)
Morning Wire: The Senate Small Business Committee oversees the Small Business Administration and its government-wide minority contracting program called 8(a) or “set-aside contracting.&#8221; Luke, you’re getting prepared to testify–that’s very exciting. First, how did this come about–it’s actually years in the making, right?
Rosiak: About 15 years ago, I was sitting in a cafe doing some computer programming when I got offered a job. A well-dressed black man was sitting next to me and said he noticed that I was programming in C++, and that he needed to hire some people quickly for the computer programming company he owned.
The problem is I was coding in a different language that looks nothing like C++. I tried to figure out how he owned a computer company and didn’t know that. He said it was an 8(a) contract from the government, and that he just gets contracts and then finds people to do the work.
It struck me that this is a pretty poor way to run the government. I’m not even a professional computer programmer; I just dabble in it. But for all I know, he was ready to hire me to build some sensitive government system.
Anyway, instead of taking the job, I dug into this 8(a) program, and what I found was that that’s more or less exactly how it works.
Morning Wire: Explain to us–what exactly is going on here?
Rosiak: If you’re a racial minority, the government can give you a contract without trying to find the best price or the best person.
More than five percent of all federal contracts are reserved for minorities and women, who are often really just men who put their company in their wife’s name. The program was created in 1978 to help black people, but now it’s gone really off the rails. Indians get preference for contracts even though they have a higher median income than whites, and they’re overrepresented in fields like IT, which didn’t even exist prior to the civil rights era. 
Morning Wire: So some of the people receiving these preferential U.S. government contracts are actually foreigners, people who are minorities because they’re immigrants.
Rosiak: Yes. But what I’m going to tell the Senate is that the scandal here is a little different than you might think. It’s really a loophole exploited by the government and big corporations, you heard Accenture mentioned in that video, to circumvent competitive bidding.
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Early Warnings About Border Chaos</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1011787" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/Willful-Border-Chaos-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/Willful-Border-Chaos-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/Willful-Border-Chaos-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/Willful-Border-Chaos-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/Willful-Border-Chaos-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/Willful-Border-Chaos.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Topline: A new report reveals that former President Biden was told he could’ve stopped illegal immigration, but chose not to during his tenure in the White House. 
A shocking <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/07/us/politics/biden-immigration-trump.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a> from The New York Times said that President Biden was warned while on the campaign trail, before he even assumed office, that some of his immigration policies would lead to political chaos. That&#8217;s exactly what happened as the consequences of Biden’s policies began to unfold at the border.
The record amounts of illegal immigration that swamped the border, then towns, then major cities, drove the immigration issue to become a priority for voters in the next election. The issue also likely played a major role in President Trump&#8217;s victory.
According to The New York Times, there were a number of memos and meetings where aides and experts brought up immigration and warned the Biden team that his policies needed to be stricter or the border would descend into what it became, which was millions of illegal immigrants coming across in a free-for-all.
In a 2020 memo from aides cautioned Biden’s “inner circle” “that his promises—coupled with pent-up demand from the Trump years and economic hardship from Covid—could provoke a spike in border crossings,” according to the Times.
The memo offered potential solutions to tighten permissions for illegal border crossers, “including making it easier to quickly reject asylum claims; holding people in ‘reception centers’ until their cases could be heard; transferring some migrants to other countries; and continuing to make some asylum seekers wait in Mexico, while ensuring they had access to shelter,” the Times reported.
Coulda, woulda, shoulda: After the fact, many former officials are saying there were many mistakes made on the Biden team and by Biden himself, who knowingly went against this advice. They scrapped rules such as asylum restrictions and remain in Mexico, which kept people in Mexico rather than releasing them into the United States after they crossed illegally.
After the changes, the number of illegal crossings ticked up–8 million illegal immigrants crossed into the country and many were released. Border authorities conducted poor vetting because Biden wanted a very quick, expeditious process. That let in terrorists, traffickers, and cartel members that led to chaos across the country, such as in Aurora, Colorado, where Tren de Aragua took over apartment complexes.

Luke Rosiak

Morning Brief: Get A Sneak Peak Of Daily Wire Investigative Reporter Luke Rosiak’s Senate Testimony

Donald Trump

Emmanuel Macron

Immigration

Joe Biden

Keir Starmer

Russia

The Daily Wire

Volodymyr Zelensky

A new lawsuit aims to end the government&#8217;s practice of assuming that people of certain races are &#8220;socially disadvantaged&#8221; and entitled to special benefits.
The case was brought on behalf of Revier Technologies, an artificial intelligence company that was denied a &#8220;Small Business Credit Initiative&#8221; subsidy because its owner, Matthew Schultheis, is white, and Young America&#8217;s Foundation, a conservative group that said the interns in its college program were barred from a Department of Homeland Security fellowship that relied on SBA&#8217;s &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; classification.
Agencies across the federal government rely on a decades-old Small Business Administration designation that, according to federal regulation, automatically applies to anyone of certain races.
&#8220;The federal government’s pervasive use of race as a proxy for determining who is &#8216;socially disadvantaged&#8217; — and therefore who receives contracts, grants, loans, investment capital, opportunities, and other benefits — is unconstitutional, and it must be stopped,&#8221; the suit says.
The move comes as decades-old affirmative action programs are being ruled unconstitutional one by one. Center for Individual Rights attorney Mike Petrino told The Daily Wire that his suit targets a central regulation that is relied on by at least 20 different government programs. That is the SBA&#8217;s 8(a) designation, which takes its name from a 1953 law and is fleshed out in regulations, with no significant updates since 1998.
The longstanding government rule won&#8217;t pass constitutional muster under recent jurisprudence, including a landmark Supreme Court case on affirmative action at Harvard, the lawsuit argues.
Precedent requires that racial reparations be &#8220;narrowly tailored,&#8221; but the list of races given preference under SBA regulations is not based on any data about specific groups facing discrimination in specific industries, the suit said.
&#8220;As just some examples, Uyghur heritage from Kyrgyzstan is not presumed &#8216;socially disadvantaged,&#8217; but Han Chinese heritage is. Pakistanis are in; Afghans are out. And because &#8216;Hispanic American&#8217; includes anyone of Spanish origin, the lineal descendants of the conquistadors are presumed socially disadvantaged.&#8221;
Courts have held that race-based programs must also have a “logical end point.” SBA has never removed a minority group from its list and &#8220;does not have criteria to evaluate whether a group should be removed from this list because it is no longer suffering the present effects of past discrimination,&#8221; the suit said.
The November 17 <a href="https://cir-usa.org/cases/ending-race-based-discrimination-across-federal-benefits-programs/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lawsuit</a>, filed in federal court in Louisiana, names as defendants SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler and Attorney General Pam Bondi. It could lead to a court ruling that would end racial giveaways in government — perhaps with a third-party group intervening to defend the practice–or to the Trump administration settling the lawsuit by changing federal rules. SBA spokeswoman Caitlin O&#8217;Dea did not return a request for comment.
The 8(a) language was written to implement a government-wide &#8220;minority contracting&#8221; program that &#8220;set aside&#8221; a percentage of all federal contracts, totaling tens of billions of dollars, for disadvantaged businesses. In 2020, Center for Individual Rights lawyers sued on behalf of a white-owned company that lost out on government contracts during the first Trump administration, alleging that the government&#8217;s tying race to &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; status was illegal.
For decades, courts had made clear that directly race-based government programs were constitutional, and SBA claimed it skirted that issue by affording minorities only a &#8220;rebuttable presumption&#8221; that they were disadvantaged. In other words, minorities would have less paperwork to complete, but a process was still in place to ensure that, for example, the child of a Chinese billionaire wouldn&#8217;t be considered to have suffered discrimination in America.
The 2018 case exposed that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/core-part-of-minority-contracting-program-is-illegal-judge-said" target="_blank" rel="noopener">this was false</a>: A process to rebut the disadvantaged status didn&#8217;t even exist.
In July 2023, a judge issued a preliminary injunction forcing the SBA to change the way it chose which companies were &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; for purposes of awarding government contracts. But the actual regulation was never changed, and other programs that piggybacked on it are still using it.
The Biden administration complied with the injunction by requiring potential 8(a) contractors to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20250208164952/https://sbaone.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CKB/pages/2768076819/Guide+for+Writing+a+Social+Disadvantage+Narrative" target="_blank" rel="noopener">write victimhood essays</a> describing how they had personally experienced discrimination in any aspect of life because of &#8220;racial, ethnic, or cultural bias within American society.&#8221;
The Department of Transportation also runs its own minority contracting program. The SBA and Transportation programs together likely make up the most lucrative race-based government programs in history. In 2021, 10% of all surface transportation money, more than $37 billion, was earmarked for &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; companies.
But in September 2024, that program was also hit with a preliminary injunction amid claims that the program violates the Constitution&#8217;s equal protection clause, though it applied only to the companies that were parties in the case.
In May 2025, the Trump administration told a Kentucky judge it agreed that “the DBE program&#8217;s use of race- and sex-based presumptions of social and economic disadvantage &#8230; violates the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause.&#8221; Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who argues for the federal government before the Supreme Court, said he determined that his department would not defend the law.
In October 2025, the Trump administration&#8217;s transportation department enacted an interim final <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/10/03/2025-19460/disadvantaged-business-enterprise-program-and-disadvantaged-business-enterprise-in-airport" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rule</a> that &#8220;eliminates presumptive eligibility based on race or sex and requires applicants to submit individualized evidence of social disadvantage.&#8221;
Petrino, the lawyer suing SBA, said the young, white business owner he represents could be considered under such a process without having his race held against him. &#8220;Our client from Louisiana is from a humble background, he&#8217;s faced struggles in life, he&#8217;s socially disadvantaged.&#8221;
It is unclear how the government could objectively verify, rank, and evaluate such claims, and whether the essays will merely be a pretext that results in essentially the same outcome: Preference given to minorities who write that they are disadvantaged because of their race. SBA has not responded to questions about the essays.
The set-aside contracting scheme has led to corruption as those who secure an inside track to government contracts often morph into influence-peddlers who rent out that access to &#8220;partners&#8221; or subcontractors–non-disadvantaged firms who do much of the actual work. The ability of government officers to steer funds directly to specific companies, without competitive bidding, has also facilitated <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/usaid-800m-migration-feds-bribes">bribery</a>.
Eliminating the existence of the set-aside programs, instead of just how they use race, would require an act of Congress, Petrino said. In the meantime, billions of dollars in government business are likely to be awarded based on essays written by business owners about their plight. The government already has a separate program reserving contracts for small businesses, the easiest and most objective way to ensure that someone is not privileged.
Last month, Loeffler, the SBA head, <a href="https://x.com/SBA_Kelly/status/1989805215919554580">said</a> a full review of the 8(a) program was underway, with an eye towards eliminating fraud. &#8220;For years, bureaucrats have turned a blind eye to rampant abuse within the contracting program for &#8216;socially and economically disadvantaged&#8217; small businesses,&#8221; she wrote, referencing a Daily Wire story. &#8220;That ends now – as SBA works to complete its full-scale audit of the 8(a) Program.&#8221;

Kelly Loeffler Appears For Nomination Hearing To Be Next SBA Administrator

New Lawsuit Could Topple The Heart Of Race-Based Federal Programs

Minority Contracting

The Small Business Administration on Friday ordered all companies that get preference for government contracts due to their status as &#8220;socially disadvantaged&#8221; minorities to provide detailed financial information to show they are not defrauding the program, The Daily Wire has learned.
The change represents a move to reevaluate a decades-old program that Washington insiders have long recognized as openly corrupt. The 8(a) program is one of the largest and oldest DEI initiatives in the country, affecting contracts at almost all federal agencies.
SBA administrator Kelly Loeffler said there is mounting evidence that minority contracts had become &#8220;a pass-through vehicle for rampant abuse and fraud,&#8221; especially after the Biden administration raised the target for contracts that are &#8220;set aside&#8221; for minorities from 5% to 15% of all contracting dollars.
&#8220;We&#8217;re committed to thoroughly reviewing every federal contract, contracting officer, and contractor — while working alongside federal law enforcement,&#8221; she said.
The records will shed light on the extent to which companies are subcontracting out the work to non-&#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; firms, while keeping a cut for serving as a middleman or &#8220;front&#8221; company. That would defeat the purpose of the program and result in higher prices for government services across the board.
Undercover journalist James O&#8217;Keefe caught employees from one such firm boasting that they did exactly that. <a href="https://x.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1981042870460252398" target="_blank" rel="noopener">O’Keefe Media Group</a> published a video exposing ATI Government Solutions, an 8(a) firm based on Native American ownership that is run by whites. Anish Abraham, senior director at ATI Government Solutions, acknowledged that his company was a “pass-through” that got a $100 million contract, kept $65 million, and paid another firm $35 million to do the work.
Such reports &#8220;have raised questions about widespread misconduct within the 8(a) Business Development Program, adding to years of credible concerns that the program designed to serve &#8216;socially and economically disadvantaged&#8217; businesses has become a vehicle for institutionalized abuse at taxpayer expense,&#8221; the SBA wrote to each of the 4,300 &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; contractors.
The letter, exclusively obtained by The Daily Wire, requires that the companies upload their general ledger, bank statements, payroll register, subcontracting agreements, and other detailed internal information to the agency. Those who do not comply by January 5 risk losing their eligibility for contracts.
Most of the records are requested in the computer-friendly CSV format, which may suggest a plan to use artificial intelligence to help find &#8220;pass-through&#8221; abuse.
Loeffler said SBA&#8217;s top-to-bottom review of the so-called 8(a) minority contracting program, which has been in place since 1978, began in June after a criminal case revealed that one such firm had received more than <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/usaid-official-three-contractors-plead-guilty-to-half-billion-dollar-bribery-scheme" target="_blank" rel="noopener">half a billion dollars in USAID contracts</a> after bribing a government official with $1 million.
The 8(a) program is also called &#8220;set-aside&#8221; contracting because contracts are set aside from open competition and can be &#8220;sole-sourced&#8221; to a specific company, without needing to show that it&#8217;s the best qualified or provides the best value.
Without the 8(a) program, the contracting officer would have had difficulty following through on the bribe because he would be tasked with running a competition and awarding the work to the firm that was objectively best.
Pleading guilty were USAID official Roderick Watson; Walter Barnes, founder of Vistant, a company whose business model was getting contracts based on &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; status and pairing with other companies who did the work; and Darryl Britt, founder of 8(a) form Apprio Inc. Britt was, at the time of his guilty plea, a member of Carnegie Mellon University&#8217;s Business Board of Advisers.
A mark of how minority set-aside contractors routinely game the system is how small companies receive contracts for widely divergent fields of work — a sign that they are simply having others do it or hiring staff afterwards with little knowledge of the subject area. Apprio’s contracts with government agencies range from developing websites to medical care to human resources to “ebola efforts.”
Other USAID contracts to Vistant include a $15 million contract “to help protect cyberspace and communications network domains to block the spread of insecure information.” A $28 million USAID contract was for “lab institutional contractor – mega bridge contract,” and a $40 million contract was for “creation of the PDEX award.” A $204,000 contract was for a “senior advisor to the Belarus country director.”
Even after Barnes&#8217;s misconduct had been detected, a joint venture between Vistant and a &#8220;small business&#8221; operating out of a home, called CollaborateUp, was awarded potential work up to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/usaid-800m-migration-feds-bribes" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$800 million</a> to solve &#8220;the root causes of irregular migration from Central America to the United States.&#8221;
Since the O&#8217;Keefe exposé of ATI Government Solutions, whose <a href="https://atisolutions.us/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">website</a> openly advertised its main selling point as its ability to easily win government contracts through its affiliation with a Native American tribe, the SBA suspended the firm and a slew of others tied to its chief executive, Firmadge Crutchfield, who is white.
Tribe members <a href="https://x.com/jamesokeefeiii/status/1988770902243176767?s=42" target="_blank" rel="noopener">emotionally said</a> they were victims of the pass-through scheme, and that if a contracting program intended to steer work to Native Americans, that work should actually be done by Native Americans.
The minority set-aside program will need to be re-evaluated anyway because of recent <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/core-part-of-minority-contracting-program-is-illegal-judge-said" target="_blank" rel="noopener">court rulings</a> blocking the government from doling out benefits based on race.

Kelly Loeffler, U.S. President Donald Trump’s Administrator of the Small Business Administration. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Trump Orders All Beneficiaries Of The Largest DEI Program To Turn Over Internal Financial Records

NATO ups its support for Ukraine as the United States pursues peace talks, the Trump administration freezes asylum and visa reviews from 19 countries, and a watchdog exposes billions of taxpayer dollars in fraud under Biden-era diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
It’s Thursday, December 4, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. Today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below, and the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/mrn-251204-member-exclusive">video version</a> can be seen on The Daily Wire:
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<h2 style="text-align: center;">NATO Wants A Say On Ukraine</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-1009649 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/NATO-Backs-Ukraine-1024x576.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/NATO-Backs-Ukraine-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/NATO-Backs-Ukraine-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/NATO-Backs-Ukraine-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/NATO-Backs-Ukraine-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/NATO-Backs-Ukraine.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
Topline: The United States continues to facilitate talks between Russia and Ukraine while other NATO countries rally support for Kiev.
NATO wants to be more involved in the discussions on Ukraine than it has been recently. Almost every foreign minister for NATO met in Brussels on Wednesday to discuss that and the broader approach to Ukraine.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was notably absent from the meeting — the first time in over two decades that the U.S. secretary of State had missed a gathering like this. Though that didn’t deeply concern many officials because Rubio has built up a lot of trust among NATO allies. 
Rutte digs in: The United States has been trying to find an end to the war that both sides can live with. But NATO’s secretary-general, Mark Rutte, has made plans to keep funding Ukraine through 2026 and maybe longer if necessary.
“We have to make sure that whilst [peace talks] take place and we are not sure when they will end, that Ukraine is in the strongest possible position to keep the fight going, to fight back against the Russians, but also in the strongest possible position when peace talks really get to a point where they sit at the table,” Rutte <a href="https://x.com/TRTWorldNow/status/1996176461934534920">said</a> on Wednesday.
Some members of the NATO alliance have poured money into a program to buy U.S. weapons for Ukraine to the tune of about $1 billion a month.
Moscow talks: The Kremlin said Tuesday that it couldn’t find a compromise it could agree with after U.S. officials met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Moscow said that some of the American proposals have been good — likely in reference to the early framework that received so much pushback from Ukraine and the rest of Europe.
Moscow seems to be dead set on territorial gains over what it has control of already, however. Putin has repeatedly signaled that he wants all of the Donbas region, which he does not have full control over.
50% off DailyWire+ annual memberships will not return for another year, so don’t miss this deal! Join now at <a href="http://dailywire.com/cyberweek">DailyWire.com/cyberweek</a>.
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Trump’s Immigration Moves After National Guard Shooting</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-1009647 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/22Countries-Of-Concern22-1024x576.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/22Countries-Of-Concern22-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/22Countries-Of-Concern22-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/22Countries-Of-Concern22-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/22Countries-Of-Concern22-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/22Countries-Of-Concern22.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
Topline: The Trump administration halts more immigration following the D.C. shooting of two National Guard troops by an Afghan migrant.
Trump has already halted the processing of asylum applications and put a pause on visas, but there is a lot more being done. The Trump administration has directed U.S. citizenship and immigration services to look at 19 countries that it says are of concern as potential hotbeds of terrorism. Those countries include Afghanistan and several others in the Middle East, in Africa, and in South Asia.
The Trump administration wants USCIS, the agency that vets immigration applications, to scrutinize individuals who are applying or have been accepted to some programs. What this looks like in practice is the administration halting all processing of any legal immigration applications from individuals from these 19 countries.
For those who have been accepted to become green card recipients or citizens already, swearing in ceremonies have been put on pause as the Trump administration more thoroughly vets them.
National Guard shooting: The Department of Homeland Security now says this individual was barely vetted. Interestingly, when the United States left Afghanistan during the botched withdrawal from the country, the alleged shooter had no criminal background check. Nor did he have a biometrics check, cyber background check, or financial background check.
Nor was he the only one who came through this way. There were about 77,000 others admitted into the country through what&#8217;s called Operation Allies Welcome.
This lax vetting has already been pointed out before. A government watchdog came out months after the withdrawal and said the vetting was poor and minimal at the time. In some known cases, individuals were “vetted,” let into the country through this program, and then only after were their links to terrorism discovered.
<h2 style="text-align: center;">The SBA Program Spending Taxpayer Money On DEI</h2>
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Topline: New investigations from Peter Schweizer’s Government Accountability Institute have revealed just how much taxpayer money has been funneled through federal DEI initiatives – sparking more allegations of widespread fraud and corruption under the Biden administration that still needs to be rooted out.
Morning Wire spoke with Seamus Bruner, director of research at the Government Accountability Institute, about what&#8217;s being called the “DEI Industrial Complex.” (This interview has been edited for clarity.)
Morning Wire: Your team has done extensive research on what&#8217;s being called the “DEI Industrial Complex.” We&#8217;ve had our own investigative reporter, Luke Rosiak, digging into this and revealing some pretty alarming findings. First, what kinds of potential abuses are we seeing related to DEI in the federal government?
Bruner: This our latest exposé, and we give Luke a great shout out in it. He&#8217;s done amazing work on this Small Business Administration program. It&#8217;s called 8(a). Kind of an unwieldy title, but the devil is in the details with this. It&#8217;s a multi-billion dollar pass through scheme that rewards minority contractors or people who are “disadvantaged,” which has a very loose definition. I mean, perhaps even just not having access to internet when you&#8217;re way up in your mountain cabin in Yosemite or wherever could qualify you. But you have these firms that set up, Native American firms or any other sort of minority group — Native Americans have been pretty blessed by this program to the tune of billions of dollars. And it turns out that they&#8217;re not disadvantaged at all. The shareholders wear Rolex watches and are very wealthy. Well, in turn, this allows them to partner with real big firms like the Boston Consulting Group or McKinsey &amp; Company or firms that are not at all disadvantaged, and they receive no bid contracts under this program. And for anybody who knows anything about a no bid contract, it&#8217;s about as corrupt as it can be.
Morning Wire: Right. Why are we just now learning about this corruption?
Bruner: The program has been around for decades, but only under the Biden administration did the quotas triple. It really exploded just in the last several years. There was a USAID program, the contracting officials at USAID were taking bribes, over $1 million in bribes. We&#8217;ve also seen a $100 million contract. The minority contractor got 65% of that $100 million. So, well over $50 million. They only did a small fraction of the work.
Morning Wire: Do you think the DEI movement in particular really ratcheted this up – is that the culprit here in terms of the scale that we&#8217;re seeing now?
Bruner: Yeah, absolutely. President Trump, SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler, and Treasury Secretary Bessent deserve credit. They really kicked off the investigations into this. The problem is that even though the Trump administration has declared war on DEI in the federal government, this isn&#8217;t necessarily called a “DEI program.” We&#8217;re seeing this across all kinds of sectors, especially in education. They&#8217;re getting rid of the word “DEI” and they&#8217;re using new words – “disadvantaged” or what have you. And the problem is, that there are “disadvantaged” people in America and we do want to support them and help them. But when you are giving multi-billion dollar conglomerates contracts under the banner of being “disadvantaged,” it hurts everybody.

MRN_251204_V!

Morning Brief: NATO Steps Up For Ukraine, Trump Expands Immigration Crackdown, & More Biden DEI Fraud

Morning Brief: NATO Steps Up For Ukraine, Trump Expands Immigration Crackdown, And SBA Funds DEI

Afghanistan

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Marco Rubio

NATO

Ukraine

A judge in 2021 ruled that a key part of the government&#8217;s multibillion-dollar minority contracting program was illegal, potentially giving the Trump administration inroads to kill the fraud-ridden program.
In 1953, Congress instructed the Small Business Administration to reserve some federal contracts for &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; businesses. Beginning in 1986, SBA counted businesses owned by racial minorities as &#8220;presumptively&#8221; disadvantaged. That meant instead of an applicant having to show that he had actually faced discrimination, he simply needed to show his race. The result was the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/feds-crack-down-on-minority-contracting-schemes-d-c-s-worst-kept-secret?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Feds+Crack+Down+On+Minority+Contracting+Schemes%2C+D.C.%E2%80%99s+Worst-Kept+Secret">8(a) program</a>, a sprawling DEI enterprise that has impacted every aspect of government.
That continued even during the first Trump administration. In one case in 2018, the Department of Agriculture reserved work on a particular project for &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; businesses, even though it internally acknowledged that doing so would cause an &#8220;adverse impact&#8221; on Ultima Services Corp, which had been doing similar work for the agency for years.
Ultima <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.tned.93612/gov.uscourts.tned.93612.1.0_1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sued</a> in March 2020, alleging anti-white discrimination, but the Trump administration fought it, filing a motion to <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.tned.93612/gov.uscourts.tned.93612.20.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">dismiss</a> in July 2020.
Documents unearthed through that lawsuit revealed that even though the government claimed being a racial minority merely provided a &#8220;rebuttable presumption&#8221; that someone had experienced discrimination that &#8220;could be overcome with credible evidence to the contrary,&#8221; it had no mechanism for someone to actually rebut it. That means even &#8220;nepo babies&#8221; and people who worked in industries where their race never experienced discrimination were put on the fast track to government contracts.
A &#8220;socially and economically disadvantaged small business&#8221; is one that is at least 51% owned by a disadvantaged person. So, soon people began forming 51-49 partnerships where one person&#8217;s role was essentially to be a racial minority so contracts could be awarded to the company with no competition, while the other provided the actual expertise and work.
That leads to increased prices, because the firms essentially have to pay a middleman&#8217;s fee. It also generates a worse work product, since the government isn&#8217;t seeking multiple bids and choosing the best.
James O&#8217;Keefe recently captured an executive from one such business admitting to <a href="https://x.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1981042870460252398" target="_blank" rel="noopener">being a &#8220;pass-through&#8221;</a> that collected tens of millions of dollars by being a Native American-owned company that got government contracts and subcontracted the work to others, and SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler said a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/feds-crack-down-on-minority-contracting-schemes-d-c-s-worst-kept-secret">full review</a> of the 8(a) contracting program is underway.
Discovery in the Ultima lawsuit showed that SBA has never removed a group from &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; status, making it a permanent reparations program instead of one that worked to offset past discrimination for a specific period of time.
It also revealed that SBA made no effort to determine whether specific minority groups had faced discrimination in specific industries. It simply assumed that all minority groups were disadvantaged in all fields — even giving Indians a leg up in computer science, a field in which they have been dramatically overrepresented for its entire history.
During the course of the lawsuit, SBA implemented a rule that said people would no longer be considered disadvantaged “if their net worth exceeds $850,000, their adjusted gross income exceeds $400,000, or their total assets exceed $6.5 million.” Ultima said those thresholds &#8220;only disqualify the richest individuals.&#8221;
The Biden administration continued fighting the lawsuit, while President Joe Biden increased the goal for minority &#8220;set-asides&#8221; from 5% of all federal contracts to 15%.
But in July 2023, Judge Clifton Corker, a Trump appointee in the Eastern District of Tennessee, <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.tned.93612/gov.uscourts.tned.93612.86.0_1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ruled</a> that assuming every minority was disadvantaged in every field was illegal, especially after Supreme Court precedent such as the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions case that ruled that affirmative action was illegal in colleges.
Biden&#8217;s excesses in flagrant racial favoritism led to court rulings that didn&#8217;t exist years prior, and included ruling against a program — also administered by the SBA — that prioritized minorities for coronavirus aid.
Corker wrote that &#8220;The Supreme Court has held that the government has a compelling interest in &#8216;remediating specific, identified instances of past discrimination that violated the Constitution or a statute.&#8217;” SBA never identified specific instances of racism that it was addressing, but merely provided nationwide statistics that showed minorities earning less money generally.
Ultima said the list of minorities given preference is essentially random, including Indian Americans, who out-earn whites, while excluding Arab Americans. Corker said SBA also &#8220;does not consider other groups, such as Hasidic Jews who have faced similarly appalling discrimination, eligible for the rebuttable presumption of social disadvantage.&#8221;
The government must identify “prior discrimination by the governmental unit involved” or “passive participation in a system of racial exclusion” before it “embark[ed] on an affirmative-action program,” Corker said, citing precedent.
SBA argued that &#8220;the presumption is flexible because it may be overcome with evidence that an individual is not socially disadvantaged,&#8221; but the judge said he &#8220;struggles to see how that process would work in practice,&#8221; with an SBA employee admitting &#8220;[t]here’s no process for a third party to question someone’s social disadvantage.&#8221;
Judge Corker said precedent requires that a race-conscious program &#8220;must be appropriately limited such that it will not last longer than the discriminatory effects it is designed to eliminate,&#8221; and have a &#8220;logical end point.&#8221; Seventy years after its advent, SBA conceded that &#8220;the 8(a) program has no termination date.&#8221;
&#8220;Defendants have failed to show that the use of the rebuttable presumption in the 8(a) program is narrowly tailored,&#8221; Judge Corker ruled. &#8220;Use of the rebuttable presumption violates Ultima’s Fifth Amendment right to equal protection of the law,&#8221; he said, enjoining the federal government from assuming that minorities are all disadvantaged.
That dealt a massive blow to the government&#8217;s multibillion-dollar DEI contracting regime.
In July 2024, the Biden SBA issued an <a href="https://www.sba.gov/federal-contracting/contracting-assistance-programs/8a-business-development-program/updates-8a-business-development-program" target="_blank" rel="noopener">advisory</a> acknowledging that most 8(a) contracts had been awarded based on the applicant&#8217;s race, with no showing of actual discrimination. It said to receive new contracts under &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; set-asides, firms would need to &#8220;submit a social disadvantage narrative,&#8221; meaning an essay demonstrating that they are a victim.
It said, &#8220;the examples you include in your social disadvantage narrative can be related to any time in your life but must include detail of how the incident impacted your entry or advancement in the business world.&#8221; Those whose essays pass muster &#8220;will receive a Social Disadvantage Qualification letter.&#8221;
But the Biden administration may have simply sidestepped the injunction, and it is not clear how things have changed in the second Trump administration.
In July 2025, The Daily Wire submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for statistics on whether any minorities were rejected based on their essays, as opposed to disregarding the judge&#8217;s ruling by rubber-stamping them. The Daily Wire also requested copies of the victimhood essays.
Despite legal requirements, the Trump administration has not even acknowledged the FOIA request four months later. It has not responded to numerous follow-up inquiries about how it is dealing with the 8(a) program in light of the Ultima ruling, and spokeswoman Caitlin O&#8217;Dea did not return multiple phone calls.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/usaid-official-three-contractors-plead-guilty-to-half-billion-dollar-bribery-scheme">USAID Official, Three Contractors Plead Guilty To Half-Billion Dollar Minority Contracting Scheme</a>

The Core Part Of This Federal Race-Based Contracting Program Is Illegal, Judge Says

Congress gears up for a fight over the fate of Obamacare, Hollywood suffers a monstrous slump, and a federal contracting program aimed at minority-owned businesses fields fraud accusations.
It’s Friday, November 14, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. Today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below, and the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/mrn-251114-member-exclusive">video version can be seen on The Daily Wire</a>:
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<h2 style="text-align: center;">Lawmakers Prepare For Battle Over Obamacare</h2>
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Topline: With the shutdown finally ended, the fight between Democrats and Republicans over healthcare subsidies and the fate of Obamacare is only ramping up.
Obamacare subsidies were expanded in 2021 during the COVID pandemic. The subsidies, which are technically tax credits, were supposed to last only 2 years, but Democrats extended them through the end of this year.
Currently, about 24 million Americans are on Obamacare plans, up from 11 million at the start of the pandemic. It’s a considerable increase, mainly due to subsidies. It’s <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-would-eliminating-0-marketplace-premiums-affect-insurance-coverage/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">estimated</a> that about 42% of 2025 Affordable Care Act (ACA) enrollees pay less than $10 a month, with a vast majority paying nothing at all. Notably, Democrats removed the income cap on subsidy eligibility, so people earning over 400% of the federal poverty level qualify for these subsidies, too.
The cost: The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says that extending the subsidies through 2035 would increase the federal deficit by about $358 billion.
Democrats’ message: Democrats reportedly want to make the midterms about healthcare. Their message is that inaction from Republicans will drive up healthcare costs for millions of Americans.
Morning Wire spoke to Ryan Long, a Senior Research Fellow at Paragon Health Institute, to explain all of this. He said that if these subsidies expire as scheduled, people on ACA plans will once again return to paying something, even if it’s just a small amount, instead of having access to $0 plans. Those $0 plans, he said, have actually led to widespread fraud and abuse.
GOP’s message: Republicans generally want the subsidies to expire when the Democrats scheduled them to expire. They argue that Obamacare is a failure and needs serious reforms or a complete overhaul. Premiums, for example, rose <a href="https://www.cms.gov/cciio/resources/forms-reports-and-other-resources/downloads/uninsured-affordability-in-marketplace.pdf">143%</a> in the first six years after the ACA took effect. Next year, premiums are set to rise another <a href="https://www.kff.org/quick-take/aca-insurers-are-raising-premiums-by-an-estimated-26-but-most-enrollees-could-see-sharper-increases-in-what-they-pay/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">26%</a>.
As for the fate of Obamacare, President Donald Trump has ramped up calls to move on from the “Obamacare madness.”
&#8220;I am calling today for insurance companies NOT to be paid. But for this massive amount of money be paid directly to the people so they can buy their own healthcare,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1988810290767548793?s=20">said</a> Trump.
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Hollywood’s Serious Slump</h2>
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Topline: Hollywood is in a major slump, with October marking the worst box office revenues in nearly 30 years. Even Halloween weekend, usually a horror cash machine, failed to draw audiences.
With the exception of the COVID-19 shutdown year of 2020, when theaters were closed, October was the worst box-office month since 1997. Halloween weekend had the worst earnings in 31 years. The biggest culprit appears to be the lack of must-see content.
The numbers: Disney’s &#8220;Tron: Ares&#8221; opened to $38 million — the franchise’s worst debut. A24’s &#8220;The Smashing Machine&#8221; with Dwayne Johnson got $11 million. The Bruce Springsteen biopic earned $9 million. The total October take was $425 million.
The first couple of releases of November aren’t faring any better. &#8220;Christie,&#8221; starring Sydney Sweeney, came out last week and was a major flop. Some are suggesting politics played a role, but given Sweeney’s popularity, that isn’t very likely. The most probable explanation is that Sweeney’s young male fan base wasn’t especially interested in seeing her look nothing like herself playing a boxer.
Expert says: Veteran Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1489424842344237">told</a> finance outlet, Cheddar News, that a couple of Japanese anime movies outperformed expectations, and without them, the story here would be even worse.
“There was just nothing commercially exciting enough to mainstream audiences to drive them in huge numbers. And you know, last year, there was a Venom movie that opened at $50 million in October. We didn&#8217;t have that this year. And so I think that definitely hurt the box office,” said Dergarabedian.
The deeper issues: The ongoing disruption of streaming and social media is always at play, but not necessarily in the way typically thought. Many veteran filmmakers are starting to talk about the problem of what gets greenlit — they say studios are playing it safe and aren’t willing to gamble on creative, out-of-the-box ideas, so audiences are getting tired of seeing the same old thing.
Directors like Michael Bay and James Cameron are warning that something bigger may be broken. In an interview a few months ago, Bay voiced frustration over what he called “a system afraid of risk.” Now, he’s the king of big-studio blockbusters, but he said he’s moving into independent filmmaking so he can be more creative.
And he said that Cameron told him that no individual executives are empowered to greenlight anything anymore. The result is too many sequels, too few original ideas, and a growing reliance on algorithms to decide what gets made.
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Crackdown On Minority Contracting Fraud</h2>
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Topline: The Trump administration is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/feds-crack-down-on-minority-contracting-schemes-d-c-s-worst-kept-secret">turning</a> its eye on a long-running DEI program that may be one of Washington’s most corrupt. The federal government awards a percentage of contracts to companies whose owners are “socially disadvantaged.” But they might not even be the ones doing the work. 
At issue is a process known as 8(a) contracting or “set-aside” contracting, where certain contracts, which could be for tens of millions of dollars, are either given to one company with no competition, or limited so that only “disadvantaged” companies are eligible to compete – essentially, racial minorities and women-owned companies.
This way of contracting is likely behind much of the poor performance in government, such as websites seeming old-fashioned and broken. But this has been the way Washington works for decades. Typically, GOP-favored interest groups such as disabled veterans and Alaskan native corporations have gotten a share. And then big, non-minority-owned companies end up doing much of the actual work as subcontractors.
ATI: One company, ATI Government Solutions, seemed to admit to the cozy dealmaking in an <a href="https://x.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1981042870460252398">expose</a> put out by undercover activist James O’Keefe last month.
ATI is a company that gets contracts because it’s owned by Native Americans, though on ATI’s website, all the executives listed appear to be white.
The website is almost entirely focused on selling the idea that it’s easier for government officials to skip holding a competition to find the best company for a job. Meanwhile, big companies can get a shortcut to a government contract by working with ATI, which essentially has an automatic in because it’s partly owned by an Indian tribe.
Seems sus: Kelly Loeffler, the head of the Small Business Administration, said there’s a “full review of the 8(a) program” underway that has found “institutionalized abuse” to the tune of billions.
Loeffler said ATI’s CEO, Firmadge Crutchfield, had a network of seven companies, all of which had been suspended from receiving new contracts, and that their names were provided to law enforcement. 
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), chair of the Senate Small Business Committee, said the Biden administration tripled the goal for minority set-asides from 5% to 15%, and did little to make sure they were actually doing the work, instead of serving as pass-throughs. 
“Small business contracting programs were never intended to function as welfare systems for favored classes or give no-bid contracts to do-nothing companies,” Ernst said, adding that over the decades, “penalties against rulebreakers have not been swiftly and resolutely imposed.”

MRN_251114_V1

Morning Brief: Obamacare Battle Brews, Hollywood Slump, & D.C.’s DEI Rackets

Hollywood

Obamacare

Sydney Sweeney

Washington D.C.

For decades, a portion of all federal contracts has been &#8220;set aside&#8221; for minority- and women-owned businesses, which can be awarded millions of dollars with little or no competition.
The 8(a) program, operated by the Small Business Administration, is meant to help &#8220;socially and economically disadvantaged businesses.&#8221; But in practice, the program has led to open corruption and the waste of hundreds of billions of dollars, with &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; firms often simply &#8220;partnering&#8221; with a non-minority firm that owns 49% of the company, but does much of the work.
Take ATI Government Solutions, a firm that claimed Native American ownership to get 8(a) status. Its website focuses on its &#8220;Tribal Advantage: <a href="https://atisolutions.us/tribal-advantage/">Procurement Advantages</a> for Government and Industry by Partnering with ATI,&#8221; even though all the executives listed on its <a href="https://atisolutions.us/team/">leadership page</a> appear to be white.
Last month, <a href="https://x.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1981042870460252398" target="_blank" rel="noopener">O’Keefe Media Group</a> published an undercover video in which Anish Abraham, senior director at ATI Government Solutions, acknowledged that his company was a “pass-through” that got a $100 million contract, kept $65 million, and paid another firm $45 million to do the work.
Melayne Cromwell, a black woman who previously worked as director of contracts at ATI, was also captured saying the firm only does 20% of the work. “A lot of our subcontractors bid on contracts that were perfect in their industry, but because they weren’t Native American, they wouldn’t win it, so we bid on it for them, and they became our subcontractor,” she said.
Now, top officials say set-aside contracting, a mainstay of the Washington swamp, could be changing for good.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), the chair of the Senate Committee on Small Business, wrote to SBA&#8217;s inspector general October 30, saying &#8220;over the years an egregious pattern has emerged where a special subset of 8(a) participants, the &#8216;Super 8(a)’s,&#8217; may be taking undue advantage of their ability to obtain sole-source awards in unlimited amounts.&#8221;
&#8220;I request the SBA OIG immediately investigate ATI, its Super 8(a) parent entity Susanville Indian Rancheria, and its network of 8(a) subsidiaries,&#8221; she wrote in a letter obtained by The Daily Wire.
On Saturday, SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler said that &#8220;As part of our ongoing investigation into ATI Government Solutions, SBA has uncovered and now suspended a network of SEVEN additional companies connected to its CEO Firmadge Crutchfield.&#8221;
&#8220;Their names have been provided to law enforcement. Thank you to every federal agency that has joined us in the effort to crack down on fraud in the 8(a) Program for &#8216;socially and economically disadvantaged&#8217; small businesses.&#8221;
Ernst told The Daily Wire &#8220;I will not rest until every last fraudster is held accountable and the program is reformed. Administrator Loeffler has done a tremendous job and I am confident that she will ensure that exploitation of the SBA’s small business programs is no longer excused or overlooked.”
Ernst said in her letter that the Biden administration &#8220;tripled the 8(a) contracting goals from 5 percent to 15 percent,&#8221; but when she requested reports that are required to be filed with the SBA by certain minority-contracting firms to monitor for fraud, she found that &#8220;Biden’s SBA failed to track and retain them.&#8221;
&#8220;It is obvious that the Biden Administration’s indifference toward meaningful oversight in the 8(a) program allowed swindlers and fraudsters to treat federal contracting programs like personal piggy banks&#8230; Small business contracting programs were never intended to function as welfare systems for favored classes or give no-bid contracts to do-nothing companies,&#8221; she wrote.
&#8220;Penalties against rulebreakers have not been swiftly and resolutely imposed. Deterrence has completely failed&#8230; This stops now,&#8221; she continued.
She requested &#8220;All documents and communications related to any disciplinary or corrective actions SBA has taken on 8(a) firms over the last 5 years, including suspensions, disbarments, and removals from the 8(a) Program initiated by the SBA,&#8221; and asked:
<ul class="ul-list" data-mark="*">
<li class="md-list-item">When would a contractor be suspected of violating the limitations on subcontracting?</li>
</ul>
<ul class="ul-list" data-mark="*">
<li class="md-list-item">What is the specific process that occurs when a prime contractor is suspected of having violated the limitations on subcontracting, up to and including resolution?</li>
</ul>
<ul class="ul-list" data-mark="*">
<li class="md-list-item">Have any contractors been found to have violated the limitations on subcontracting over the last 5 years?</li>
</ul>
Ernst also wrote to the SBA&#8217;s Inspector General, who has found abuse of minority contracting programs for decades.
She said there is little reason to believe anyone is actually tracking whether the minority-owned company actually does at least half of the work, as required, rather than having their &#8220;partner&#8221; or subcontractors do it.
&#8220;While this requirement is designed to restrict small businesses from acting as pass-through companies for ineligible firms, in practice, weak enforcement of this rule leaves the door open for abuse,&#8221; she wrote. &#8220;In the coming days and months, I expect to see significant 8(a)-related accountability actions and investigations initiated.&#8221;
In June, Walter Barnes III, the founder of contractor Vistant (previously known as PM Consulting Group, or PMCG), pleaded guilty to paying bribes in exchange for <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/usaid-800m-migration-feds-bribes" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$544 million</a> in USAID contracts. The court documents established that Barnes&#8217; firm got contracts through being a black-owned firm; then, when it earned so many millions of dollars that it &#8220;graduated&#8221; from the 8(a) program, it would enter into 49%-51% &#8220;partnerships&#8221; with other firms that still had disadvantaged status. A USAID contracting official was able to ensure that contracts went to the people who paid him bribes because his minority status gave him the power to &#8220;sole-source&#8221; awards, instead of being obligated to give it to the lowest-price firm.
This year, the Justice Department stated that Vistant, as a corporation, was guilty, but granted it a deferred prosecution agreement. Despite more than a half-billion dollars going to a firm that was involved in massive fraud, the company is still eligible for contracts, and the government has continued to send it work through partnerships with &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; firms.
The Daily Wire reported in June that the government allowed Vistant to tap into potential contracts amounting to as much as $800 million through a partnership with CollaborateUp, a &#8220;small business&#8221; <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/usaid-800m-migration-feds-bribes">operating out of a house</a>.

SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler and Senate Small Business Chair Joni Ernst

Feds Crack Down On Minority Contracting Schemes, D.C.’s Worst-Kept Secret

Elon Musk, the world&#8217;s most successful businessman and President Donald Trump&#8217;s top White House adviser, said this week that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has uncovered shocking cases of fraud within the federal government.
Musk made the remarks during a Monday meeting with the president and his cabinet secretaries.
&#8220;One case of fraud was with the Small Business Administration, where they were handing out loans—$330 million worth of loans—to people under the age of 11,&#8221; Musk said. &#8220;I think the youngest, Kelly, was a 9-month-old who got a $100,000 loan.&#8221;
&#8220;That’s a very precocious baby we’re talking about here,&#8221; Musk quipped.
SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler followed up Musk&#8217;s remarks by saying, &#8220;We&#8217;re tackling the fraud, waste, and abuse at the agency.&#8221;
&#8220;We’ve seen, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud go unprosecuted, so we’re taking that on,&#8221; she said. &#8220;We have a zero-tolerance policy for fraud, and we continue to crack down on it and make sure people are held accountable.&#8221;
Trump said that they have found &#8220;far too much&#8221; fraud, waste, and abuse in the government over the last couple of months.
&#8220;It’s pure fraud,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We like to use the words &#8216;waste&#8217; and &#8216;abuse&#8217; because they sort of sound good, but many of these things are pure fraud.&#8221;
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Elon Musk at The White House cabinet meeting: “A clear case of fraud was with the SBA, they were handing out $330 million worth of loans to people under the age of 11.. The youngest was a 9 month-old, who got a $100,000 loan… That&#39;s a very precocious baby” <a href="https://t.co/dAt4WWQ3iL">pic.twitter.com/dAt4WWQ3iL</a>
&mdash; America (@america) <a href="https://twitter.com/america/status/1904226469762461840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 24, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

US-POLITICS-TRUMP-CABINET

Musk Reveals Shocking Cases Of Fraud Found At Small Business Administration

Crime

Elon Musk

President Donald Trump revealed on Friday that the Small Business Administration (SBA) and Health and Human Services (HHS) will take over some education programs after Trump signed an order Thursday seeking to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-signs-order-dismantling-department-of-education" target="_blank" rel="noopener">dismantle</a> the Education Department.
The SBA, headed by Administrator Kelly Loeffler, will now be in charge of all federal student loans while the HHS, led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., will oversee special needs and nutrition programs, Trump told reporters, including The Daily Wire&#8217;s White House Correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan, who was in the Oval Office.
&#8220;We have a [student loan] portfolio that&#8217;s very large. Lots of loans, tens of thousands of loans,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;Pretty complicated deal. And that&#8217;s coming out of the Department of Education.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
NEW: POTUS says <a href="https://twitter.com/KLoeffler?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@KLoeffler</a> will handle student loans <a href="https://t.co/evfMLKI4zG">pic.twitter.com/evfMLKI4zG</a>
&mdash; Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) <a href="https://twitter.com/MaryMargOlohan/status/1903108947730440681?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 21, 2025</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;So I think that will work out very well. Those two elements will be taken out of the Department of Education,&#8221; Trump added. &#8220;And then all we have to do is get the students to get guidance from the people that love them and cherish them, including their parents, by the way, who will be totally involved in their education along with the boards and the governors and the states. And it&#8217;s going to be a great situation.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
🚨 President Trump announces that the SBA will begin handling student loans &#8212; and that HHS will handle the special needs and nutrition programs.
&quot;Coming out of the Department of Education immediately.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/2gbz2n2Q7s">pic.twitter.com/2gbz2n2Q7s</a>
&mdash; Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1903109579895963703?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 21, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
More than 40 million Americans have student loans through the Department of Education totaling $1.6 trillion, CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/21/student-loans-will-be-handled-by-small-business-administration-trump.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. The SBA will be taking on student loan responsibilities as it makes major cuts to its workforce. The SBA <a href="https://www.sba.gov/article/2025/03/21/small-business-administration-announces-agency-wide-reorganization" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> on Friday that it will &#8220;reduce its workforce by 43% – ending the expansive social policy agenda of the prior Administration, eliminating non-essential roles, and returning to pre-pandemic staffing levels.&#8221;
Trump&#8217;s executive order on Thursday directed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the States and local communities.” The order was a move to fulfill a promise Trump repeatedly made while on the campaign trail after Republican politicians and presidential candidates had suggested abolishing the Education Department for decades.
“We’re going to be returning education, very simply, back to the states where it belongs, and this is a very popular thing to do, but much more importantly, it’s a common sense thing to do, and it’s going to work. Absolutely, it’s going to work,” Trump said during the order signing ceremony.

Trump Reveals Which Agencies Will Take Over Ed Dept Duties

Department of Education

Education

Executive

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