May 29, 2026

FRAUD ALL THE WAY DOWN: Former Minnesota employee reveals suspected fraud scheme of ‘fake injuries’ at Somali businesses.

Balsimo spent her last years at the Department of Human Services (DHS) in the Tort Recovery Unit as a tort specialist.

She said that she wanted to blow the whistle on workers’ comp cases after what she noticed the last couple of years at her job—as hindsight and the exposure of fraud throughout Minnesota provided even more perspective.

Balsimo explained how she “recovered taxpayer dollars where another party should have been paying for the bills. For instance, like auto accidents or work comp. So we would get cases from attorneys representing the client.”

“And then when the case would settle, we would get paid, the attorney would get paid his fees. DHS would get paid our portion. And then the client would be awarded whatever type of injury that they had back, usually got more awards than neck or arm. So they would get anywhere from $20,000 to $150,000 for their award for their injuries,” Balsimo explained.

However, she noticed a strange trend emerging in her normally routine work. “About a year ago, I can remember my caseloads of Somalian cases were going way up. They were going up so much I even confided in another coworker. She had noticed it as well,” Balsimo said.

And then nobody seems to have done anything.

Posted at 10:42 am by Stephen Green

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Don’t Take Medical Advice from Jill Biden.

Jill Biden, the former first lady and assisted caregiver to the president, has a memoir coming out next month. The publicity tour kicked off this week with a series of interviews and published excerpts. It’s safe to say the esteemed doctor maintains her abiding faith in the American public’s capacity to consume utter bullshit.

For example, Jill recalled how “frightened” she was watching her husband ramble on about beating Medicare on the CNN debate stage. “I had never, ever, seen Joe like that—before or since,” she told CBS News. “I don’t know what happened. I mean, when I, as I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.”

Is that so? In the book, which purports to “set the record straight,” Jill recalls her first interaction with Joe as he walked off the debate stage. He wanted to know if he had “really f—ed up,” and she agreed that he had. Granted, I don’t have the ex-first lady’s medical background, but that seems like a harsh way to speak to a loved one who might be having a stroke. Unless she’s lying, which she is.

Jill did not appear to be deathly worried about Joe’s health when she joined him after the debate and told supporters how proud she was that he “answered every question” and “knew all the facts.” She could have taken him to see a real doctor. Instead they made an appearance at a local Waffle House, where Jill looked on in terror as reporters asked Joe about his performance.

Elsewhere in the book, Jill describes being worried that Sleepy Joe had accidentally “drugged” himself with sleeping pills or cough syrup. That she presents this as a plausible scenario does little to dispel concerns that the president’s brain was not functioning and she knew all along.

As Jim Geraghty adds. “When every second counts, you don’t keep the president suffering an ongoing stroke up on the stage, waiting until the end of the debate and hoping for the best. What Jill Biden is unwittingly declaring in this implausible nearly-two-years-late spin is, ‘I thought my husband was suffering a medical emergency that risked permanent brain damage and possibly death, but I concluded that finishing the debate was more important.’”

Posted at 10:35 am by Ed Driscoll

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: 442 colleges could close in next decade over ‘financial exigency’: report.

Related:

All is proceeding as I have foreseen.

Posted at 10:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

YES:

You could do much worse than a reality TV star, Los Angeles — in fact, you already have.

Posted at 10:26 am by Stephen Green

VIDEO AND MORE: Blue Origin’s Earth-Shattering Kaboom. “So that was a big badda-boom — very nearly a Wickwick Event. I’ll explain that last part in just a moment, but first the big news.”

Posted at 10:11 am by Stephen Green

CHANGE: ExxonMobil shareholders approve plan to redomicile to Texas.

In March, ExxonMobil Corp., based in Spring, Texas, announced its board unanimously recommended its shareholders approve changing its legal domicile from New Jersey to Texas, where its leadership and core operations have been based since 1989. The board hadn’t held a meeting in New Jersey for more than 40 years, and 30% of ExxonMobil’s global employees are located in Texas. Seventy-five percent of its U.S. employees live and work in Texas.

ExxonMobil said the reason for changing the legal domicile was Texas’ legal and regulatory environment, including its modernized business statutes and new Texas Business Court, The Center Square reported.

Not soon after, the New York City comptroller; Glass, Lewis & Co., and Institutional Shareholder Services recommended ExxonMobil and Chevron investors vote against their boards’ position on the shareholder proposals, including ExxonMobil’s plan to redomicile.

Looks like a shareholder win — Texas, too.

Posted at 9:40 am by Stephen Green

ALIENS AMONG US. Haha.

Posted at 9:10 am by Glenn Reynolds

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Hide Your Kids — Pride Month Is Almost Here. “The rhetoric of the LGBTQ people does not match reality. I would like a list of what any of the letters aren’t free to do. The ‘courageous visibility’ line is utter stupidity. Pride parades have been going on since Richard Nixon’s first term in the Oval Office. After more than half a century of dudes in harnesses and garish drag queens in rainbow makeup marching down the street, trust me, they’re visible.”

Posted at 9:09 am by Stephen Green

#JOURNALISM:

Posted at 8:45 am by Glenn Reynolds

I LIKE THE CUT OF HIS JIB: Florida Governor Calls for Special Session to Eliminate Property Tax for Homeowners.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on May 27 called for a special legislative session to pass his plan to exempt homeowners from paying property taxes on their permanent residence.

The Republican governor revealed his plans to sign a proclamation that would require state lawmakers to convene in Tallahassee and discuss his “Save Our Homes” proposal starting on June 1.

“Taxing something that you own repeatedly, which is a property tax, is the worst way to do taxation,” DeSantis said in a news conference on May 27.

DeSantis said he hopes that eliminating taxes from Florida homesteads could be a bipartisan effort.

“You pay all these taxes to acquire that property, and then year after year, you’re just having to write a check just for the privilege of being able to maintain ownership of something that is supposedly yours,” he said.

Indeed.

Posted at 8:38 am by Stephen Green

JAMES TALARICO COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT:

Posted at 8:22 am by Stephen Green

WINNING: Republicans are poised to finish this year’s redistricting war 10 seats ahead of Democrats.

The coast-to-coast battle to gain an edge in November’s elections through partisan gerrymandering is racing to its conclusion – with Republicans poised to finish with as many as 10 seats ahead of Democrats through redistricting alone.

The GOP kicked off the fight last year in Texas, changing boundaries for US House districts in the hopes of improving the party’s chances of surviving a blue wave this fall, with Democrats responding in turn. The US Supreme Court’s blockbuster decision last month to gut one of the remaining pillars of the 1965 Voting Rights Act further supercharged redistricting efforts across the South, prompting several Republican-controlled states to move election dates and eliminate districts with sizable Black populations.

The moves could be a major boon in efforts to protect House Speaker Mike Johnson’s razor-thin majority ahead of the midterm elections. But regardless of the outcome in November, the mid-decade redistricting battle has likely altered American politics permanently – fueling a growing appetite to redraw lines for partisan advantage every election cycle, rather than every decade after the census, as is traditional.

“There is no normal,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Marymount’s law school who runs the “All About Redistricting” website. He pointed to the high court’s string of election-related rulings in recent years, including a 2019 opinion declaring that federal courts could not police partisan gerrymanders, as helping pave the way for the extreme actions now taking hold.

“The Supreme Court has effectively announced that the adults have left the room,” he said. “What you see is what you get when you reward bad behavior, which is a lot more bad behavior.”

With primaries well underway around the country, both parties now have run out of battlegrounds on which to wage new redistricting fights this year. But they are gearing up for even more aggressive gerrymanders in the 2028 election cycle.

This is CNN, so of course the story paints a most unflattering picture of Republicans districting the way Democrats do. Although that’s (D)ifferent because reasons.

But no matter how the media chooses to frame the story, the 10-seat gain is real.

Posted at 7:36 am by Stephen Green

FROM CELIA HAYES:  The Quivera Trail (Adelsverein).

The Quivera Trail is intended as a sequel to the Adelsverein Trilogy, as picks up in 1875, with Dolph Becker courting and marrying a young Englishwoman, Isobel Lindsay-Groves. Isobel has several problems, the first of them being a domineering and cruelly judgemental mother, and the second, that she has made a dreadful hash of her debut year and failed to marry – marry well, or marry anyone at all. She is plump, socially inept, loves dogs and horses, and wishes wistfully for a quiet and modest country life. Dolph Becker is the answer to a prayer, for he offers all that … but the price for escape from a gilded world of privilege and the casual malice of her mother and Society … is to marry a man she barely knows, and follow him to Texas.

Accompanying Isobel on the journey to her new home in Texas is Jane Goodacre, her personal maid and confidant. Jane, the daughter of a small country shop-keeper, also has ambitions – and talents that she hardly suspects. The limitations and expectations for a young working-class woman in Victorian England weigh very heavily on Jane, although she does not realize that … until she and her lady mistress arrive in Texas.

Posted at 7:32 am by Sarah Hoyt

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Is Kimmel’s Pratt Assault Start of New Late-Night War?

“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” became the first late-night show to take on the upstart candidate head on. It’s surprising that Kimmel and co. have mostly held their fire up until this point.

Pratt isn’t a traditional Republican. Nor does he mention ideology when promoting his efforts to replace L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. He still seeks to upend California’s Democratic dominance, and that’s a bridge too far for a progressive activist like Kimmel.

“Then you get a guy who is on a reality show, who’s on a lot of reality shows. His profession is to be the screaming jerk on reality shows, and his house burns down, and even though he had no private insurance on his house and doesn’t believe in climate change, he is understandably upset about his house burning down.”

Exit questions:

Earlier, from Glenn: Bringing Back Normality: And striking fear into Democrats.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll