Susannah Luthi of the Washington Free Beacon highlights a questionable use of California taxpayers’ money.

A California health department poured millions of taxpayer dollars into anti-police groups over the last year for projects ranging from COVID-19 treatment to coaching teens on social justice activism, a Washington Free Beacon review of state grant spending found.

The Department of Health Care Services (DHCS), which runs the Golden State’s Medicaid program for some 15 million residents, or a third of the population, doled out nearly $2.4 million to the anti-police groups. Recipients include the Anti Police-Terror Project, an Oakland-based police abolition group, and several organizations that joined its defind the police coalition, such as Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice.

DHCS, which has a $164 billion budget and a staff of nearly 4,700, promises “to use our state’s tax dollars as effectively as possible.” The grants, meanwhile, were awarded during the 2023-24 budget year, as California faced a $22.5 billion shortfall. A DHCS spokeswoman said the department wouldn’t be able to provide a response before “the middle of next week.”

“The Newsom administration spent itself into a massive deficit, and programs like this are Exhibit A for how it happened,” the California State Assembly’s top Republican, James Gallagher, said. “The health department should stick to health programs—not woke nonsense that wastes tax dollars. I’m looking forward to budget hearings next year when they can explain why they think this was an appropriate use of scarce state resources.”

Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice, for example, received $1 million from DHCS in June “to elevate the voice and power of systems-impacted and formerly-incarcerated young people through culturally-rooted healing, education, organizing, and legal support.” The project is slated to run through November 2026.

Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice is an Oakland nonprofit that lists “Defunding, decertifying, developing community-based alternatives to policing” among its primary goals. Its programs include a paid fellowship for formerly incarcerated young adults aiming to “dismantle the racist institutions of policing and incarceration.”