The longer Russia’s illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine continues, the more things in Russia (and occupied Ukraine) seem to be breaking.
The lines are growing at Russian gas stations — and so is the frustration and uncertainty as several months of Ukrainian attacks have set oil refineries ablaze and choked supplies for motorists across the vast country.
Ukrainian forces struck Russia’s major Ufa oil refinery for the second time in a week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday.
Almost daily long-range attacks on Russian oil facilities have created a fuel crisis and heaped political pressure on the Kremlin as its all-out invasion of Ukraine stretches into its fifth year.
The Ufa refinery is one of Russia’s largest producers of lubricants and is located more than 600 miles from Ukraine, Zelensky said on social media.
Ukraine also struck a plant producing missile components in Russia’s Penza region southeast of Moscow, some 300 miles from Ukraine, Zelensky said.
Russian officials did not confirm the strikes, which could not be independently verified. The Russian Defense Ministry reported intercepting 179 Ukrainian drones over 16 Russian regions, the annexed Crimea and waters of the Azov and the Black Sea.
Evidence suggests that Ukrainian drones are most often intercepted by their targets.
Fuel rationing has been introduced in many Russian regions, with hourslong queues of cars snaking beside roads. Social media videos show drivers aghast at the lines or swearing at empty gas pumps and rising prices. The mayor of the Siberian city of Irkutsk even ordered portable toilets brought in to accommodate those in line.
Siberia is full of oil, yet there’s still a shortage of gasoline there.
The fuel crisis — unprecedented for a nation that is one of the world’s biggest energy producers — has brought Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine home to ordinary Russians like few other events in the war, now in its fifth year.
It drew a rare admission from President Vladimir Putin, who acknowledged “problems persist for both motorists and businesses,” and “there are still queues at petrol stations, and finding the right grade of petrol isn’t always easy.”
He insisted the shortages are “not critical” and “temporary.”
I’m sure the situation will ease once the three day special military operation concludes…
But that appeared to do little to reassure at least one motorist in Moscow, the wealthy capital typically better-insulated from economic shocks than the rest of the country.
“I think the situation is not very good,” the motorist waiting in line told the Associated Press on Monday, the day after Putin’s televised remarks.
“They say one thing on television, and in reality it’s another. … People are queueing everywhere,” he added, declining to give his full name out of safety concerns.
Zelensky on Monday echoed that sentiment, writing on Telegram that “Putin can go on and on, claiming on TV that he supposedly has everything under control,” but Russians can see that the war “has reached the point where even an oil state — a gas station, as Russia used to be called — is now facing gas shortages.”
An AP count shows over 50 reported attacks by Ukraine on oil refineries, depots, terminals and other energy infrastructure in Russia and the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula since March. Often, the same facility was hit more than once -– such as the refinery in the Black Sea town of Tuapse that was struck four times.
The amount of crude oil Russia processed into fuel in June was down 25% from a year ago, to 3.95 million barrels per day — the lowest level in over two decades, said Gary Peach, oil markets analyst at Energy Intelligence.
“The outages are extraordinary,” he said.
Gasoline production has fallen 17% to 850,000 barrels a day, from 1.03 million a day a year ago — far short of what the domestic market needs. Russia exports relatively little gasoline.
About a third of Russia’s oil refining capacity is offline, said Chris Weafer, CEO of Macro-Advisory Ltd. Consultancy, noting that because refineries don’t publicly confirm the extent of the damage, his estimate comes from anecdotal evidence and oil industry sources.
“It comes at a very critical time for the Russian economy, in that the agriculture season, particularly the harvest season, is now starting to ratchet up,” increasing demand, Weafer said.
Ukrainian officials describe the strikes as a campaign to pressure Moscow to end the war by undermining military logistics and supply lines and weakening its ability to mount front-line assaults.
In particular, Kyiv has sought to isolate Crimea, which was seized from Ukraine in 2014 in a move most nations don’t recognize. Attacks this year forced the Moscow-installed authorities to enact fuel rationing on the peninsula in May and halt sales to civilians there altogether. Limited sales later resumed in the city of Sevastopol.
Speaking of occupied Crimea, so many people are seeking to escape the resource-starved peninsula that the traffic jam at the Kerch Strait Bridge is visible from space.
“Thousands of cars rushed the last route out of Crimea, now jamming the Kerch Bridge with thousands of cars at a complete standstill.”
“The delays result not only from the number of people wanting to leave, but also from repeated closures during Ukrainian drone alerts, intensified security inspections, and worsening logistical disruption across Crimea.”
A “few motorists still driving into Crimea strapping industrial fuel tanks onto the roofs of their cars and connecting them directly to their fuel tanks with hoses. The improvised setup is extremely dangerous, creating obvious fire and explosion risks, yet many drivers appear willing to accept those dangers simply to carry enough gasoline to be able to escape the peninsula once they finished what they came to Crimea to do.”
“Russian military decisions are simultaneously making the situation even worse, as Russian commanders have redirected both civilian and military traffic onto the Kerch Bridge. Instead of being one of several transport arteries, the bridge has become the peninsula’s primary logistics lifeline, working beyond its practical capacity, due to the Ukrainian strikes that have repeatedly disrupted the Melitopol-Mariupol corridor and heavily damaged northern Crimean crossings.”
“Military convoys, fuel trucks, civilian traffic, and freight vehicles all compete for the same limited crossing. Rather than solving Russia’s logistics problems, rerouting traffic has concentrated nearly everything onto a single vulnerable bottleneck.”
“The resulting congestion has forced Russian authorities to adopt extraordinary measures, declaring a state of emergency within Crimea. This grants them broad powers to restrict civilian movement and establish procedures to prioritize military transportation over civilian traffic.”
“Residents increasingly complain that gasoline has become unavailable and that public transportation is being disrupted because minibuses cannot obtain sufficient fuel. These shortages coincide with repeated Ukrainian strikes targeting Crimea’s broader energy network, including the Kerch and Simferopol thermal power plants, electrical substations, gas compressor stations, and various major and minor fuel and gas depots. Together, these attacks have affected electricity generation, gas distribution, fuel storage, and logistics simultaneously, causing rolling blackouts, water supply disruptions, and persistent fuel shortages affecting civilian life.”
“Instead of easing the burden by facilitating departures, Russian authorities are using emergency powers to preserve transport capacity primarily for military logistics. Civilians therefore bear much of the cost of sustaining Russian operations, finding themselves trapped by restrictions while essential supplies are increasingly directed toward the military.”
And after four years of war, the Russian military is running out of, well, pretty much everything.
“Russia is running out of bombers, and it can’t replace those that are being destroyed. There’s a deep crisis in Russia’s aviation sector, and it spells disaster for Putin’s plans for 2027.”
“There is nothing that demonstrates Russia’s problems better than what is happening with its Tu-22 bombers. On June 16, Euromaidan Press revealed that Russia started its war with Ukraine with a stockpile of 41 Tu-22M3 bombers. Now, it may only have nine left.” Euromaidan is, of course, firmly pro-Ukrainian.
‘Every Tu-22 that goes down is an airframe that can’t be used to pelt Ukraine with missiles and bombs.”
“Russia hasn’t made any new Tu-22s since 1993. Russia has been losing Tu-22s by the bucketload, and absolutely none of them are being replaced.”
“Since the beginning of the Ukraine war, at least 24 Tu-22s have been destroyed or damaged, and all that Russia has in place is a modernization program designed for the declining stockpiles of Tu-22s that it still has in its arsenal. There are no spare parts. Even minor damage to one of these bombers can result in it being completely written off, as Russia doesn’t have what it needs to make repairs. That means that every Tu-22 that goes down is a bomber that Russia will never be able to replace.”
“It’s a systemic production failure problem that extends to the entire Russian aerospace industry, both military and commercial.”
Management turnover at Tupolev snipped.
“Russia’s Defense Ministry received almost $53.5 million in combined settlements from Tupolev. That number is interesting, because it is roughly the same as the cost to modernize a Tu-95MS bomber, and it’s about a quarter of the amount that Russia spends to build a Tu-160M. In other words…not a whole lot. And if that’s all that Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed, it reveals plenty about the state of Russian bomber manufacturing. The company that is supposed to be refurbishing Russia’s aging fleet could even push one Tu-95MS out of its doors. Looking beyond that, the company was also supposed to produce four Tu-160Ms for the ministry, all of which were to be built between 2022 and 2023, and delivered in 2025. But only two ever reached the Russian military, and both arrived in 2026, which is a year after the initial deadline.”
“One of the biggest problems Russia faces [is] being forced to burn through multiple old tanks just to get one up and running again. Euromaidan Press reported on this issue in April, noting that Russia was running out of T-72Bs that it could refurbish, which had led to it cannibalizing older T-72As just to get some metal on the battlefield. At the time, Russia had between 800 and 900 T-72As, though only around 500 could be possible candidates for refurbishment. The rest would have to be stripped for parts to be used in that refurbishment, and Russia would likely have been far short of what it needed to get all 500 possible refurbs functioning.”
“Now, take that problem and transplant it into a bomber fleet for which there are only a few dozen airframes available, rather than hundreds. Cannibalization still has to happen. But Russia runs out of the parts it needs much faster, and, as with its tanks, it doesn’t have the facilities needed to build more. These are, by and large, Soviet-era bombers, and Russia has long shut down many of the plants that made the parts used to build these airframes decades ago.”
“Since production resumed on the Tu-160 in 2019, only six have been delivered to the Russian armed forces. Russia lost twice that many bombers to Operation Spiderweb alone, and it’s lost many more besides.”
“This is a problem that we see across all of Russia’s military. The Soviet-era systems on which Putin has relied so heavily in the war against Ukraine are one-and-done. Geopolitical Monitor says that in the air, Su-25 close support aircraft are no longer produced, meaning that the airframe has the same problems as Russia’s bomber fleet. The T-80 tank family also can’t be replaced, which means every ‘new’ T-80 we see on the battlefield is really just another refurb that Russia managed to create by stripping away parts from other T-80s.”
“TL;DR: If it was made during the Soviet era, Russia no longer has the tools or know-how to replace it.”
“Russia is launching 180 to 250 glide bombs at Ukraine every single day, which requires the flying of 200 sorties per day, which, in turn, places enormous amounts of stress on pilots and their airframes. Now, consider this rate of aerial attack when stacked up against Russia’s bomber problem. Russia’s bombers are used to launch cruise missiles and glide bombs. Every single time one of those bombers goes down, be it to a Ukrainian attack, a crash at a base, or simple maintenance issues caused by flying far too many sorties, that’s an attacking threat that is permanently grounded.”
“Slowly, but surely, Russia is running out of its irreplaceable Tu-22s and Tu-95s, and it isn’t building Tu-160s at anywhere near the rate needed to keep up the pressure. When the bombers run out, the attacks stop.”
Then there’s the nuclear issue, as all those dwindling numbers of bombers are nuclear weapon capable. “Given how much Russia loves to throw around its nuclear weight as an intimidation tactic, the real-time crumbling of a large part of its nuclear triad is a situation that actively weakens Russia on the global stage, not just in Ukraine. Russia’s nuclear threat is losing muscle by the month.”
Russia has similar problems keeping it’s seized Boeing and Airbus airliners flying. “In January, The Moscow Times reported that one of Russia’s solutions for the inevitable shortages this situation creates is going to be to send Russian airlines mothballed Soviet-era aircraft in 2026 and 2027. That isn’t a solution. It’s a continuation of the problem that we’re seeing in Russia’s bomber fleet.”
“Not even Russia’s modern airframes can escape the sanctions problems. In both the Su-34 and Su-35S, around 80% of the critical electronic components needed to make those jets usable are made in the West.”
“There is no road to recovery that can be followed while the Ukraine war continues.”
Every day Putin continues his illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine, more and more things in Russia break.
A class action lawsuit has been filed against memory giants Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron alleging the nefarious, cartel like action of…making the products with the highest profit margins.
The world’s biggest memory chip makers are once again facing accusations of manipulating prices.
A class-action lawsuit filed on Thursday, June 25, in a California federal court alleges that Samsung Electronics (SSNLF), SK Hynix (SKHY), and Micron Technology (MU) coordinated to restrict DRAM supply and push prices sharply higher during the AI boom.
The complaint, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California under case number 3:26-cv-06345, claims the companies reduced production of traditional DDR3 and DDR4 memory while shifting capacity toward high-margin AI memory products such as HBM chips used in data centers.
Not to mention DDR5.
However, the companies have not been found liable for now, and no trial date is set.
According to the lawsuit, DRAM prices have surged nearly 500%-700% over the past four years, reported Time of India. Plaintiffs argued that in a competitive market, rising prices should attract more supply, but production cuts continued instead.
Snip.
According to Jefferies, memory prices could rise another 40%-50% next quarter and 30%-40% more in the following quarter, reported analysts like Bull Theory on X, with normalization unlikely before 2028. The rising memory costs are already filtering into consumer electronics prices worldwide.
Does this situation suck if you’re trying to buy or build a new PC with lots of RAM? Absolutely. But there’s no nefarious market coordination at work among those big three, just the confluence of a variety of market trends. So let’s break it down:
Manufacturers switching production from a less profitable product to a more profitable product isn’t some nefarious conspiracy, it’s how the market works. If they’re getting premium pricing for HBM memory that sells out instantly for the AI bubble, that’s what they’re going to produce. A whole lot of tech companies depended on the spot market for RAM because it gave them more flexibility and costs savings, but now it’s biting them in the ass. Their lack of foresight does not indicate a conspiracy or market failure.
Why are there only three big RAM manufacturers? Because a whole lot of other companies dropped out of the market because the game became too expensive to play. RAM makes money hand-over-fist during boom times (like now), but barely breaks even during busts. A whole lot of different companies used to produce memory, Intel and Texas Instruments among them. Remember when Japan Inc. was going to take over the world and the Japanese semiconductor giants (NEC, Toshibu, Fujitsu, Hitachi, etc.) were accused (with some justification) of dumping RAM below cost to capture market share with the backing of state agency MITI? None of those Japanese giants are in RAM any more because, in the wake of the Japanese asset bubble busting in 1991, building new state-of-the-art fabs that doubled in price every four years became a game too expensive for them to play.
Rising prices should attract more supply, but it takes about three years and costs about $25 billion to build a state-of-the-art fab. Because standard memory technology still has a capacitance limit, you don’t necessarily need an under-10nm fab, so maybe you can spend a bit less, but you’re still spending over $10 billion on a fab, and you probably still need an ASML EUV stepper, though not the very latest one.
And indeed, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron all have two new fabs each in the pipeline scheduled to come online this year through 2028. The Micron and SK Hynix fabs will both be dedicated to producing memory. As for Samsung (which has a lot of fingers in a lot of semiconductor pies), I would guess their newest South Korean fab will be dedicated to memory, while their 4-5nm Taylor, Texas fab will not. Building new fabs are not the actions of monopolists who want to artificially constrain supply.
Indeed, the “they’re artificially constraining supply” nonsense suggests that they’re producing fewer memory chip than they could otherwise, and that’s just not how the industry works. Fab production lines run 24/7/365 (indeed, they pay technicians triple to work Christmas), because every hour a modern fab is down they’re losing millions in lost profit.
Building new fabs is still a risky bet, because the industry is extremely cyclical. No matter how furious the boom now, the next bust is always around the corner. Back when I was working at Applied Materials, the cycle was described as trains linked together with slinkys. First software takes off, then hardware gets yanked along, then the chip manufacturers get yanked, and then, finally, semiconductor equipment manufacturers get yanked into motion, and shortly after that happens, the bust hits the front of the train, and the trailing cars all crash into each other. (The standing joke at Applied Materials was that you could tell the bust was on the very moment the company broke ground on a new manufacturing facility.) Build a new $25 billion fab at the wrong part of the cycle and it could take a company much longer to amortize it than they expected. That’s why so many companies switched to the foundry model.
Speaking of foundries, could they be a solution to the memory crunch? Potentially, but there you’re running into the same AI boom-induced wafer start constraints that plague the memory sector. TSMC is fabbing AI chips for Nvidia (and most of its competitors) as fast as it possibly can. Maybe they can profitably book runs on slightly older (but not “mature”) TSMC fabs, but they’re still competing with every other fabless company supporting the AI build-out for the same wafer starts. A whole lot of different silicon goes into a data center.
Could an existing semiconductor manufacturer jump into the existing space? Yes, and in fact Intel has announced plans to do just that, though evidently with their own proprietary, next gen “Z-Angle Memory (ZAM),” which isn’t going to do squat to relieve this year’s DDR3/4/5 shortage. Still, they have enough slightly trailing edge fabs to do it, though Intel has had trouble executing at speed in the past.
Could another company jump into the semiconductor fab race as an integrated device manufacturer for memory? Risky but possible. Someone like Apple could decide that memory shortages are an existential threat to its business model and spend the tens of billions to get into the game. (And indeed, Apple is already spending some $500 billion to reshore its supply chain back into the US, so that would fit right in. Apple could potential contract with TSMC (or even Micron) to build and run a memory fab. (Samsung is a trickier proposition, since the two are fierce competitors as the biggest smartphone manufacturers in the world, but there’s still a lot of “cooperatition” between the two, so it’s not beyond the realm of possibility.) But the three year lead time still applies.
Entire tech boom and bust cycles have come and gone in an era in which RAM is cheap and plentiful, a situation people have come to think of as “normal.” Just as with higher credit rates, a whole lot of business models that were viable in an era of cheap memory are suddenly going to stop being so in an era of scarcity. Some companies will be able to raise prices and remain profitable, and others won’t. Not everyone will be hit, as a lot of embedded devices use older types of memory that hasn’t gone through the roof. There are all sorts of older fabs churning out older types of memory that aren’t relevant to this discussion.
The idea that Samsung and SK Hynix are colluding is particularly laughable, as the two Korean chaebol backing SK Hynix (Hyundai and LG (AKA Lucky Goldstar)) both hate rival Samsung with a passion.
The current shortage, as painful as it is to so many, isn’t the result of a nefarious cartel, it’s just the free market working like it always does at the interface between supply and demand. It’s just that cutting-edge semiconductor supply has a whole lot more lead-time constraints that most other economic sectors.
The AI Bubble seems considerably worse than the Dotcom Bubble (which was only partially about the Internet; updating hardware and software to avoid the Y2K bug also drove a lot of spending in the same timeframe), and its inevitable bursting (or just deflating) is going to relieve pressure on everyone else that needs 10nm or smaller wafer starts.
Democrat-run locales seem incapable of understanding that government programs should benefit taxpayers rather than their cherished illegal aliens. So the Texas Supreme Court had to issue an injunction against Harris County’s illegal alien defense slush fund:
The Supreme Court of Texas (SCOTX) has issued an injunction against a Harris County initiative that provides taxpayer-funded legal defense to illegal immigrants facing deportation.
While not ruling on the merits of the case, justices on the state’s highest civil court expressed skepticism that the program is allowed under the Texas Constitution.
County Judge Lina Hidalgo requested the creation of the Immigrant Legal Services (ILS) fund in 2020, saying the U.S. immigration system was “deeply broken and complicated.” That year, commissioners approved $2 million to the ILS, and had spent at least $8 million overall when in October 2025 they approved another $1.3 million.
The new allocation prompted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to file suit on grounds that the program violates a state constitutional prohibition on giving gifts or conferring private benefits to individuals and groups that do not serve a legitimate public end.
In December 2025 a district court judge ruled that Paxton’s lawsuit could proceed, but declined to issue an injunction.
Last Friday, SCOTX granted the injunction and wrote that “we conclude that there exists ‘serious doubt about the constitutionality of the’ Harris County program at issue.”
“Among other things, it is not clear that the County has constitutional or statutory authority to conduct the program. And after the funds are expended, they ‘cannot feasibly be recouped,’” wrote the court.
Paxton called the injunction a “major win for protecting taxpayer dollars.”
“It’s deeply wrong that any Texan should be forced to have their hard-earned dollars taken from them only to be handed out to defend illegal aliens,” Paxton said in a statement. “It’s unacceptable, it’s illegal, and it will not stand in the Lone Star State. I commend the Texas Supreme Court for correctly ordering that this unlawful program is frozen as the case continues.”
Snip.
Harris County’s ILS supplies funds to several groups providing services for those facing deportation, including BakerRipley, the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, Justice for All Immigrants, KIND, Inc., Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Service, and the county’s Housing and Community Development Department. The county also provides funding for an Immigrant Resources Hotline (IRH).
So Democrats were funneling their illegal alien slush fund money to leftwing groups that want to help Democrats import more illegal aliens.
Last year, Paxton called the recipient groups “radical open-border activist groups,” and earlier this year also sued Bexar County to block a similar program. A district court judge dismissed the Bexar County case in March 2026, but Paxton has appealed.
Both Bexar and Harris counties are members of the Safety and Fairness for Everyone (SAFE) Network, founded by the Vera Institute for Justice, which provides legal services to immigrants facing deportation. SAFE encourages local and state governments to create taxpayer-funded programs that assist noncitizens facing deportation regardless of criminal history.
Translation: They want to keep violent illegal alien felons here on the streets where they can continue to victimize citizens.
The group’s stated goal is to make publicly funded representation for all illegal residents a federal mandate, and describes the country’s immigration system as “racist.”
Of course. Everything that thwarts the left’s Will To Power is ipso facto “racist.”
No taxpayer money should be spent to defend illegal aliens from deportation, and no taxpayer money should be funneled to far-left NGOs whose goals are undermining America’s border security.
SCOTUS ruled 6-3 to end a precedent that the president set in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States from 1935.
Therefore, Trump had the authority to fire FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter.
Humphrey’s held that “The Federal Trade Commission Act fixes the terms of the Commissioners and provides that any Commissioner may be removed by the President for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
“Humphrey’s framework has not withstood the test of time,” wrote the majority. “From the start, Humphrey’s was tethered to a highly circumscribed view of the FTC’s role. Humphrey’s by its terms applied only to agencies that occupy ‘no place in the executive department,’ are ‘independent of executive authority,’ and exercise ‘no part of the executive power.’”
I’m glad that SCOTUS pointed out that independent agencies are not independent:
Slaughter relies on reliance. She argues that Congress has relied upon Humphrey’s to create agencies that are “insulated from presidential control.” Brief for Respondent 15. But that is precisely the problem. Despite what Humphrey’s may say, independent agencies are not “independent” in the sense that they are free of the President and thus responsive “only to the people of the United States.” 295 U. S., at 625. Placing the power to administer laws in officers who enjoy “freedom from Presidential oversight (and protection)” does not deliver us to a promised land of technocratic governance—it often results only in an “increased subservience to congressional direction.” FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., 556 U. S. 502, 523 (plurality opinion). Pp. 21–25.
The FTC falls under the authority of the executive branch. It is only “independent” because a cabinet secretary does not oversee the agency.
So where does the FTC fall? The majority explained (emphasis mine):
With these principles in mind, the FTC’s for-cause removal provision violates the separation of powers. In its present form, the FTC enforces and administers some 80 statutes covering almost every facet of the Nation’s economy, and the tasks it undertakes are “the very essence of ‘execution’ of the law.” Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U. S. 714, 733. The FTC has the power to promulgate substantive rules carrying the force of law, investigate businesses and enforce statutes through inhouse adjudications, and file civil suits on behalf of the United States in federal court. The FTC unquestionably exercises executive power and must therefore be controlled by the Chief Executive. Pp. 25–27.
“All the Court does today is recognize what has been clear for a century—that those who fall within the President’s ‘general administrative control’ must be removable by the President at will,” the majority wrote.
To “discharg[e] the duties of his trust,” the President must have the assistance of officers he can trust. 30 Writings of George Washington, at 334. Although it is up to the Senate to decide whether to confirm those with whom the President would prefer to work, neither Congress nor the courts may saddle him with those with whom he cannot work. Subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him. Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people.
Those unelected bureaucrats who consider themselves part of the #resistance to Trump? That’s the Deep State (or at least a part of it).
Now President Trump has a Supreme Court-approved tool to clear out the deadwood holding back reforms. Every agency head resisting Trump’s policies should be sacked and replaced with someone loyal to the Constitution rather than the Democrat Party. (I couldn’t tell you how many that still applies to, but there are a lot of ostensibly “independent” agencies that exercise executive branch powers.) All of them should have Trump-appointed heads, and all should undergo DOGE audits to determine how money was spent under previous regime, and charging those who have abused taxpayer money.
The headline “Fujimori Wins in Peru” might leave some readers wondering which decade they’ve woken into, but the Fujimori in this case is daughter Keiko rather than father Alberto.
Conservative candidate Keiko Fujimori, age 51, appears to have won election for the Presidency of Peru. She leads her left-wing opponent by around 50,000 votes, out of more than 18 million cast…
Reuters reports,
Keiko Fujimori’s expected victory returns divisive dynasty to Peru
I had mentioned before that Fujimori’s 2026 victory margin is larger than either of her election defeats in 2016 or 2021. But, somehow, it’s her victory that’s divisive. Her narrow defeats are merely democracy at work.
As Reuters frames it,
Fujimori will become Peru’s first elected female president. Her win follows three previous failed bids — in 2011, 2016 and 2021 — each decided by narrow margins and shaped in part by a persistent “anti-Fujimori” vote that has defined the country’s elections for years.
Get this,
Fujimori takes over from Jose Balcazar, who assumed office earlier this year after Congress removed his predecessor over a scandal involving undisclosed meetings with a Chinese businessman.
So “divisive” is seen as being worse than outright corruption.
Keiko’s father Alberto Fujimori was “divisive” because he revived Peru’s economy and destroyed the Maoist Shining Path guerillas while being a non-leftist. Faced with political deadlock against corrupt parties on both the left and right, he launched an autogolpe, or self-coup, in which he assumed dictatorial power with the backing of the military. But the autogolpe was widely popular with the majority of Peruvians, and Papi Fujimori used that power to crush Shining Path and institute free market reforms in the economy, then returned the country to democracy, winning reelection in 1995 with 2/3rds of the vote.
In the end, he too fell into Peru’s long history of authoritarian strongman habits, with the usual abuse of power, corruption, and human rights abuses. He won a third term in a scandal-plagued election in 2000, but ended up fleeing the country before he could be arrested. And despite that, he was still arguably the most successful (and important) President in Peru’s troubled history.
The problem is, just about every Peruvian president has either been impeached for corruption, been ousted in a coup, ruled for a time as a dictator, or ate a bullet, as you can see perusing the Wikipedia list of Peruvian presidents. And you can’t trust that list, since Dina Boluarte is listed as an “independent” rather than on the left, but she was actually a Marxist, as was immediate predecessor Pedro Castillo, whose own autogolpe failed.
Faced with such a long history of corruption and dysfunction, much of it carried out by lefties or Marxists (in South America, the difference can be thin to non-existent), the Alberto Fujimori era now looks like something of a golden age for Peru. No wonder they’re willing to elect Keiko Fujimori, much like Filipinos were willing to elect Bongbong Marcos there…
Babylon Bee: “We Asked AI To Simulate If The U.S. Had A Second Civil War.”
Here are the results:
“In the city, we’re used to being able to burn down a target and no one does anything. I guess it’s different in the suburbs, though.”
“One of the big issues is how we hate guns. But the right loves them. I guess none of us considered how big a disadvantage that would put us in a civil war.”
“Many of the losing combatants fled to the far north. Starvation was rampant among them from lack of access to DoorDash.”
More Medicare scammers captured, Trump wins multiple border security cases at the Supreme Court, the Supremes also drive a stake through a vampire, Ukraine hits a whole lot of bridges in occupied Crimea, dirty commies win Dem primaries in New York, and Tom Scott looks at some furry workers.
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel announced that another suspect on the T White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud’s new Most Wanted Fraudsters list has been apprehended.
Patel posted on X Saturday that Herbert Leon Kimble, 60, was arrested in the Philippines thanks to the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) task force led by Vice President JD Vance and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
“In just over two weeks, this is the second Most Wanted Fraudster arrested on the FBI’s list led by Vice President Vance and the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud,” wrote the director. “Herbert Leon Kimbel was apprehended in the Philippines and is now back in the United States, on the run since 2024 after he allegedly orchestrated a $1.2 billion healthcare fraud conspiracy that targeted the Medicare system – particularly elderly victims – from 2014-2019.”
Kimble of Chicago, Illinois, is accused of targeting Medicare in a “large-scale healthcare fraud conspiracy” via “the improper marketing and distribution of durable medical equipment (DME), particularly orthopedic braces.”
According to the FBI, from 2014 to 2019, he operated a scheme in which victims — often elderly — would be unnecessarily prescribed orthopedic braces for pain relief by telemedicine providers via call centers in the Philippines.
DME suppliers affiliated with Kimble would then bill Medicare for reimbursement, resulting in over $1.2 billion in Medicare charges.
On April 4, 2019, in the District of South Carolina U.S. District Court, he pled guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States, to make a false claim to a department of the United States, to commit mail fraud, to commit wire fraud, to commit healthcare fraud and to offer kickbacks and bribes in connection with the scheme.
He subsequently failed to appear for his sentencing hearing on August 27, 2024, resulting in the issuance of a federal arrest warrant that same day, charging him with failure to appear.
The FBI offered a reward of up to $150,000 for information leading to his arrest and conviction.
Kimble is the second individual on the most wanted list that has been apprehended.
Last week, Said Abdullahi Ereg, 47, was also arrested after he surrendered to authorities in connection with an alleged $4 million scheme involving the Federal Child Nutrition Program during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ereg ran a grocery and deli in Minneapolis sponsored by Feeding Our Future. He was initially issued a federal arrest warrant in January 2024 and was indicted in June 2024 by a federal grand jury for conspiracy involving wire fraud and money laundering.
The FBI’s Most Wanted Fraudsters list can be found here.
The Supreme Court this morning, in a pair of 6–3 opinions written by Justice Samuel Alito, gave the Trump administration’s border policies two more big wins. Both pared back humanitarian bases for admitting people into the country. Mullin v. Doe allowed the administration to revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations granted by the Biden administration — specifically for Haitians and Syrians, but the decision’s logic, which bars judicial review of revocations, would seem to compel the same outcome for Venezuelans. Mullin v. Al Otro Lado allowed immigration officials to prevent people from reaching the border to present asylum claims, because the law allows those claims to be presented by an alien who “arrives in the United States.”
Along with Tuesday’s decision in Blanche v. Lau, which strengthened the government’s power to exclude criminal aliens prior to their convictions, this was a clean sweep for immigration hard-liners. That may take some of the sting out of the Court’s pending decision in Trump v. Barbara, which could come as soon as Monday and is expected to be a loss for Donald Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship.
In the backdrop of Mullin v. Doe are the divergent attitudes of the Biden and Trump administrations toward TPS, but the actual ground of battle, as our editorials have emphasized, is the language of the TPS statute and whether courts should take the written law seriously.
The TPS statute, enacted in 1990, allows the president to designate particular countries as unsafe because of war, natural disasters, epidemics, or other temporary crises and therefore give their nationals temporary protection to stay within this country. Before the statute’s enactment, presidents would sometimes grant such protection as a discretionary matter but with no statutory authorization and, in effect, no rules. In that sense, TPS is like the 1977 tariff statute at issue in Learning Resources: It was designed to provide rules of the road for the executive to follow in responding to emergencies. Prior to 1990, the judiciary had treated these executive decisions as exercises of discretion that courts could not review.
Of course, nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program. For some countries, TPS has been continually in force now for decades, making a mockery of the “temporary” designation. Somalia has had a TPS designation for 35 years, and Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador have been so designated for more than 25 years. Haiti received a TPS designation because of an earthquake 16 years ago.
The statute is written to reflect broad executive discretion. The secretary of homeland security “may” grant TPS to nationals of a particular country based on a series of statutory criteria but is under no obligation to do so. Several of the criteria explicitly reference conditions “temporarily” existing in the foreign country. By contrast, the statute requires TPS to be terminated if the secretary finds that the home country “no longer continues to meet the conditions for designation.” The law thus contemplates ongoing review — the secretary is mandated to conduct a new review at least once every 18 months — and DHS violates the law if it extends TPS when the conditions justifying it no longer exist.
That may be particularly important when a foreign tyranny is suddenly toppled and replaced by a new government, as has happened recently in both Syria and Venezuela. Syria’s designation was applied in 2012 because of the civil war that sought to topple the Assad regime, which ended with Assad’s departure in late 2024. Once TPS is revoked, the affected foreign nationals are given 60 days before they must either leave the United States or secure some other legal basis to stay. The 60-day provision was designed by Congress to accommodate the reliance interests of foreigners here temporarily, who have been given work permits but who knew from the outset that shelter on American shores was explicitly temporary.
The Biden administration tried to lock in its successor on these inherently fluid, temporary foreign policy assessments by granting TPS extensions, in some cases just days before Joe Biden left office. For example, Alejandro Mayorkas, the impeached-but-not-tried secretary of homeland security, extended TPS for Venezuela on January 17, 2025. By contrast, the Trump administration has terminated every TPS it has reviewed, 13 of them so far. Trump has been quite open about this as a deliberate policy.
Can courts review TPS designations? Congress didn’t think so. We know that because Congress said so in terms that could hardly be more explicit: “There is no judicial review of any determination of the [secretary of homeland security] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state.” The TPS litigation that has been ongoing since the outset of the second Trump term has dragged on this long because multiple lower court judges (including the Ninth Circuit) decided to judicially review what Congress said explicitly they may not judicially review. As Alito noted, judicial orders stopped Trump from ending TPS for Haiti, Syria, Venezuela, Burma, and Ethiopia and also prevented Trump from ending TPS for Haiti during his first term, in 2018.
Alito began with whether the law written by Congress means what it says, and his opinion is almost comical in attempting to take seriously the ridiculous contention that it doesn’t. “This text is clear, and its plain meaning is very broad,” he noted, and he explained why the word “determination” means decisions that the secretary is empowered and in some cases required to make.
“Supreme Court Drives a Stake Through Hawaii’s ‘Vampire Rule.'”
IAt stake was a Hawaiian statute, Act 52, that inverted the usual presumption that governs public access to generally accessible private property, but only where firearms are concerned. Prior to the passage of Act 52, Hawaiians who were able to obtain carry permits (which, before Bruen, was effectively impossible) were allowed to enter any generally accessible private space while carrying a firearm — unless the property owner explicitly signaled otherwise. After Act 52, Hawaiians with carry permits were allowed to enter any generally accessible private space while carrying a firearm only if the property had signaled that it was acceptable. (Gothic lore holds that vampires must be explicitly invited to enter one’s home before they may cross the threshold. Hence: “vampire rule.”)
As the Court correctly noted, this change — which was made directly after Bruen, and which shifted only the rules governing firearms, and no others besides — was explicitly designed to impede “the ability of law-abiding citizens to exercise the right Bruen recognized as they go about their daily lives.” That being so, it fell.
Writing for the majority, Justice Alito recorded that:
At common law, opening up private property to the general public implies a “license to all persons to enter,” meaning that “no person is a trespasser by merely entering therein” unless the property owner has given “due notice” that such a person is banned.
“Hawaii’s shift from the common-law rule,” Alito concluded, “unquestionably imposes a new and significant burden on the exercise of the right recognized in Bruen.”n a 6–3 vote, the Supreme Court has struck down Hawaii’s “vampire rule” as a violation of the Second and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. This was the right result, and, once again, it is a disgrace that the decision was not unanimous.
During briefs and at oral argument, Hawaii offered up three main defenses of its law. The first defense was that it has historically had much stricter firearms laws than much of the rest of the United States. Alito dealt with that one quickly:
As the plurality explained in McDonald, the Second Amendment has the same meaning in all parts of the United States. 561 U. S., at 784–785. It cannot give way to “the spirit of Aloha” in Hawaii, contra, State v. Wilson, 154 Haw. 8, 27, 543 P. 3d 440, 459 (2024), any more than it can yield to the spirit of the Big Apple (Bruen) or the Windy City (McDonald).
Aloha, “spirit of Aloha.”
No, Hawaii, you can’t argue that “Historically, Hawaii has ignored the constitution” as an excuse to ignore it further…
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the sentencing eight “North Texas Antifa Cell” operatives to a total of 450 years in prison on Tuesday for their various roles in the July 4, 2025 attack on the Prairieland U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention Center in Alvarado.
“Testimony and other evidence at trial established that the defendants were members of a North Texas Antifa Cell, part of a larger militant enterprise made up of networks of individuals and small groups primarily ascribing to an ideology that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and the system of law,” a June 23 DOJ press release said.
On July 4 of last year, the Antifa members dressed in dark clothing with head and face coverings, forming a “black bloc” in order to conceal their identities and make them indistinguishable from each other. Evidence revealed they had 11 firearms, body armor, and 11 “military-grade first aid kits with tourniquets and other items to treat gunshot wounds to the scene of the attack.”
They began shooting fireworks and vandalizing vehicles and a guard shack at the property. Alvarado police officers responded to a 9-1-1 call about the attack. Ringleader Benjamin Song was heard on a bodycam recording yelling, “Get to the rifles!” — after which the group opened fire on the officer, hitting him in the neck.
Many of the Antifa members were arrested near the scene, but Song escaped and was not arrested until July 15.
The DOJ said this is the “first sentencing of defendants affiliated with Antifa following President Donald J. Trump’s executive order designating the group as a Domestic Terrorist Organization in September 2025.”
In March, nine of the Antifa members were convicted for “their roles in rioting, using weapons and explosives, providing material support to terrorists, obstruction, and the attempted murder of an Alvarado police officer.”
Of the nine, eight were sentenced on Tuesday, including Song, who received the harshest sentence of 100 years in prison for the attempted murder of the officer. Evidence from the trial showed that Song acquired and distributed firearms to the co-defendants and “recruited members at gun ranges and combat sessions he conducted, as well as from various ideologically aligned groups.”
Maricela Rueda was sentenced to 70 years; Cameron Arnold, Savanna Batten, Zachary Evetts, Bradford Morris, and Elizabeth Soto to 50 years each; and Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada to 30 years.
Ines Soto was granted a continuance and will be sentenced on July 1, along with seven co-defendants who all pleaded guilty to one count of providing material support to terrorists: Seth Sikes, Nathan Baumann, Joy Gibson, Susan Kent, Rebecca Morgan, Lynette Sharp, and John Thomas.
Seven others who pleaded guilty to providing support to the terrorists will be sentenced on July 1.
Fauci, as NIAID director, directed millions in U.S. taxpayer funds (via Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance and other entities) for gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan.
Fauci had close relationships with intelligence-community leaders and provided hand-picked NIAID-funded scientists as advisors, which was used to promote a natural-origin narrative and downplay the lab-leak theory. Fauci played a direct role, even meeting with the CIA to assist in a coverup.
Fauci LIED to Congress in 2024 when asked about his involvement in these schemes (there is a long trail of evidence proving this).
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released declassified documents to support her claims, which can be found here.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that signal repeaters on the territory of Belarus that had been helping Russian drones strike Ukraine ceased operating on 22 June….
“Based on the available information reported to me by the Commander-in-Chief [of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Syrskyi] and intelligence services, the relevant signal repeaters stopped operating on the territory of Belarus on 22 June. I don’t know yet whether they have been dismantled, to be honest. But we are working on this, and I am keeping a very close eye on the situation and receiving daily reports. It is a fact that the signal repeaters are not operating today.”
On 19 June, Zelenskyy issued an ultimatum to self-proclaimed Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, giving him a week to dismantle the signal repeaters used to adjust Russian drone strikes on Ukrainian cities, or Ukraine would do it itself.
Old and busted: Russia puts heavy air defense around Putin’s vacation palace. The new hotness: Russia torn down the palace. Puzzling.
Things went from bad to worse for Democrats on Thursday afternoon after a judge in Virginia issued a preliminary injunction on the “assault firearms” and high-capacity magazine ban that was set to go into effect in the Commonwealth on July 1. The judge from Lancaster County, located in the Northern Neck of Virginia, ruled that the Virginia State Police (VSP) cannot enforce the bans through December 31, 2026 or until a final order is issued.
The lawsuit was brought against the superintendent of the VSP by the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) and Gun Owners of America (GOA), who took well-deserved victory laps on social media.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s endorsement proved influential in three key congressional primary races on Tuesday, as his favored progressive candidates prevailed over opponents more closely aligned with the Democratic establishment.
New York State Assemblywoman Claire Valdez and Harlem community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier, both of whom were also backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, won races in New York’s seventh and 13th congressional districts, respectively. Meanwhile, former city comptroller Brad Lander, a progressive former DSA member, pulled off an impressive upset over incumbent Representative Dan Goldman in NY-10. Lander is a Jewish progressive who left the DSA in 2023 after it held a pro-Palestinian rally just one day after Hamas’s terror attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Lander and Goldman, who is also a Jewish Democrat, both made their stances on the Israel-Hamas war a key part of their respective campaigns. Lander, who sits to the left of Goldman politically, had criticized his opponent for failing to take a tougher stance on Israel.
Avila Chevalier prevailed over incumbent Representative Adriano Espaillat despite her status as the most controversial of the three Mamdani-backed progressives. While Espaillat is the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus “who has over the years built a political machine of his own in upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx,” according to Politico, Avila Chevalier is a first-time candidate who was well known in Harlem for her pro-Palestinian activism but whose unearthed social media posts made her a political liability for the DSA. Those posts included messages blasting Democratic politicians, including one 2021 post in which she wrote “f*** Kamala Harris,” and others against an array of topics from the police to Israel and private property.
Mamdani, for his part, said he wasn’t aware of her past comments when he endorsed her, but he did not pull his endorsement nonetheless.
The mayor also endorsed Valdez in her bid to assume the seat left open by retiring Representative Nydia Velázquez. The outgoing Democratic congresswoman had endorsed Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso as her replacement. Mamdani and the DSA’s decision to endorse a different candidate led to a falling out with Velázquez, who had been an early supporter of Mamdani’s mayoral run.
In late May Chinese leaders travelled to the Zhoushan National Oil Reserve and discovered the nation’s strategic oil reserves weren’t there. For over a year, the disruption of oil supplies from Venezuela and Iran had left Chinese oil reserves reduced. Despite that, government documents indicated that China still had 1.2 billion tons of oil reserves. That’s equivalent to 8,756,117,022 barrels.
China’s strategic oil reserve, to the surprise of the government officials who went to verify the reserves in May, was instead composed of water, sludge, various debris and overflow from nearby sewer lines.
Because the Americans dominated global energy supplies, the Chinese oil reserve served as a major cushion to any disruptions to Chinese oil imports from the Persian Gulf, especially Iran whose main customer was China. Under America’s global energy stranglehold, Chinese crude oil stockpiles have reached the verge of collapse at the slightest exposure.
The current Chinese vulnerability stems from the American disruption of Venezuelan oil exports to China and more recently a similar situation with Iranian oil exports to China.
China’s strategic oil reserve was insurance against disruptions in Venezuelan and Iranian imports. With its oil reserves revealed as a sham, China finds itself in a desperate situation. What happened to Chinese oil? It was soon discovered that corrupt government officials and oil reserve personnel had sold the oil and pocketed the proceeds. The local buyers were often operators of small, locally owned refineries that turned the oil into commercial products that were sold throughout China. Most of these oil criminals then fled, often leaving China for sanctuary states that would welcome any affluent Chinese and their new wealth. The only winners were a few conniving Chinese and the Americans, who continued to dominate the global energy system.
Important tip: If you’re a Bexar County judge and you’re given an official YouTube channel to livestream your court proceedings, don’t use it for your book club.
“Woman who emptied Knicks trashcan on street — then stole it — is fired from JPMorgan Chase, was DEI exec.” Shocked face engaged. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
The Lock-Picking Lawyer: “I didn’t think it was possible, but somehow Master Lock has now tarnished its name even more with a brand new line of padlocks.” Evidently the Elite line isn’t.
Republican U.S. Rep. Pat Fallon of Texas has introduced legislation that would prohibit federal funding for higher education institutions that partner with the Chinese Communist Party.
H.R. 9123 would “establish intelligence community funding restrictions on institutions of higher education that have a relationship with certain entities in the People’s Republic of China.”
The legislation amends the National Security Act of 1947 to prohibit intelligence community support for any higher education institution that participates in a series of relationships with entities tied to China.
This would seem a common sense policy implemented that should have been implemented long before now. Communist China is always looking to steal technology from the West through its “Thousand Talents” espionage program, and Chinese nationals have been stealing technology from American universities (including Texas A&M) for a while now.
Examples of these entities include:
Confucius institutes
Institutions that participate “in the Chinese defense industrial base”
Institutions that are “affiliated with the Chinese State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for the National Defense”
Institutions that receive “funding from any organization subordinate to the Central Military Commission of the Chinese Communist Party”
Institutions that provide “support to any security, defense, police, or intelligence organization of the Government of the People’s Republic of China or the Chinese Communist Party”
The legislation also places restrictions on partnerships that undermine America’s relationship with Taiwan and on Chinese propaganda efforts against U.S. citizens.
This is a good first step, but we should go further and ban Chinese nationals from holding any position at any U.S. research university, laboratory or institute that takes federal money.
To paraphrase Bob Dylan, you have to serve somebody, and it shouldn’t be communist China. As I’ve said before, anything that discourages colleges and universities from working with a genocidal communist dictatorship is a good thing.
It turns out if you repeatedly flout Uncle Sam’s immigration laws, sooner or later Uncle Sam is going to notice.
Congressional Republicans have launched an investigation into Travis County District Attorney José Garza’s handling of immigration-related cases, accusing his office of adopting policies that shield illegal aliens from immigration enforcement and undermine public safety.
In a letter obtained by Texas Scorecard, U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R–Ohio), Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement Subcommittee Chairman Tom McClintock (R–California), and Constitution and Limited Government Subcommittee Chairman Chip Roy (R–Texas) demanded records from Garza’s office related to its interactions with federal immigration authorities and treatment of noncitizen defendants.
“The Committee on the Judiciary is conducting oversight of state and local jurisdictions that endanger American communities through their refusal to cooperate with federal immigration officials and their prioritization of illegal and criminal aliens over American citizens,” the lawmakers wrote.
The letter points to campaign promises made by Garza regarding immigrant communities and his office’s consideration of immigration consequences in criminal prosecutions.
According to the lawmakers, Garza previously pledged to “protect immigrant communities” and create policies that consider the immigration consequences of criminal charges and convictions. The committee also highlighted Garza’s support for diversion programs that could allow noncitizen defendants to avoid criminal convictions carrying immigration consequences.
“Under your office’s pro-crime, pro-illegal immigration policies, illegal alien criminals are allowed to freely operate, terrorize local communities, and reoffend without consequences,” the lawmakers wrote.
The committee is seeking a broad range of records dating back to January 2021, including communications with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, policies related to the prosecution of non-U.S. citizens, training materials concerning immigration consequences, and communications with local law enforcement agencies regarding immigration enforcement.
Lawmakers also requested records involving cases in which prosecutors considered immigration consequences, including instances in which defendants were allowed to replead charges or had convictions reduced or vacated.
Roy said the inquiry builds on concerns he has previously raised about Garza’s office.
“Under District Attorney José Garza, Austin has been failed by pro-criminal policies that weaken accountability and prioritize lawbreakers over public safety,” Roy told Texas Scorecard. “This dereliction of duty has raised serious questions about whether repeat offenders, including criminal aliens, are being adequately prosecuted and whether the safety of law-abiding Austin residents is being put first.”
Of course American Citizens aren’t being put first. Garza and Soros prioritize putting criminal back out on the streets in the name of socials justice, not to mention the needs of keeping illegal aliens around as welfare state clients and to vote for Democrats.
Congressional hearings are one thing, but Roy et al need to refer Garza to the Department of Justice for prosecution (and all other Soros-backed DAs) for ignoring the law in favor of putting hardened criminal and illegal alien felons back on the street.
One billion dollars is a sum that gets your attention, especially when it’s alleged Medicare fraud.
A Las Vegas nurse practitioner…
Not an administrator, not a doctor, a nurse practitioner. Although the average nurse practitioner earns about $130,000 a year in Texas, that’s still not the sort of profile you usually see in billion dollar fraud cases.
..who operated wound care clinics in Pearland and Manvel has been indicted on federal charges alleging she masterminded one of the largest Medicare fraud schemes ever prosecuted in the Houston area, billing the government for nearly $1 billion in treatments prosecutors say were medically unnecessary, falsified, or administered to patients who were already dying.
Pearland and Manvel are to the south of Houston, exurbs that are turning into suburbs. 60 years ago, Manvel had a hundred people, and now it has an estimated 17,261 population, doubling what it had in 2020.
Marizel Yukee was indicted June 18 in the Southern District of Texas on charges including conspiracy to commit health care fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to pay and receive illegal kickbacks, and money laundering, according to the federal indictment. A warrant for her arrest was issued the same day.
Prosecutors allege that between October 2023 and April 2026, Yukee and unnamed co-conspirators submitted more than $906 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare and TRICARE, the federal health insurance program covering military members and their families, through four wound care companies she owned: Wound Medic, My BestHealth First, AllCare Mobile Wound Treatment, and Oracle Wound Treatment. From those claims, the government paid out approximately $297 million, according to the indictment.
The scheme centered on skin-substitute allografts, which are bioengineered from donated placental tissue and used to treat chronic wounds. According to prosecutors, Yukee’s clinics applied those grafts to wounds that were already healed, infected and ineligible for treatment, or to patients who had no qualifying wounds at all. In some cases, hospice patients received grafts and died within days, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors allege Yukee paid health care providers to refer patients to her clinics, and separately received nearly $16 million in kickbacks from allograft distributors whose products she used. In one documented example from the indictment, she paid $1,600 for a graft product and then directed her billing company to invoice Medicare for $3,900, more than double the actual cost. She averaged more than $1 million in billed claims per patient, according to prosecutors.
The indictment accuses Yukee of falsifying patient records to make the treatments appear medically appropriate and of instructing colleagues via email to inflate prices when seeking reimbursement.
Prosecutors allege the proceeds funded an extravagant personal lifestyle.
Of course she did.
The indictment identifies a Ferrari valued at more than $500,000, an $865,000 Bulgari diamond necklace, a $1 million home in Hawaii, and a $4.6 million beach resort under construction in the Philippines. Investigators have also seized a Porsche, a Mercedes, an Escalade, two Teslas, and roughly $467,000 in cash.
She should have tried building her stolen money resort in a country without an extradition treaty with the U.S. Then again, it probably won’t shock you to learn that Yukee is herself a Philippines national.
The government is seeking forfeiture of several properties, including real estate in Hawaii and Las Vegas and a commercial property in Pearland.
I have to think that the sheer scale of her operation probably doomed her. Employees in her Houston-area clinics had to have known skin drafts for dying patients weren’t medically necessary. All it takes is one or two of them squealing for the feds to lower the boom.
I notice she started her (alleged) shenanigans under the Biden Administration. How many more untold billions in fraud did that headless machine enable?
