June 2, 2026

MUCH MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: RFK Jr. announces largest autism fraud bust in history.

Kennedy highlighted that the original cost of the Early Intervention Development Program was a mere $38.1 million in 2020, but that it had ballooned to $442 million in 2026, with much of that increase stemming from fraud.

“Today’s arrests represent the largest autism fraud bust in American history,” he said. “This was an organized theft that exploited the most vulnerable, deceived families, stole taxpayer dollars meant to help children with autism access legitimate care and support.”

“Investigators uncovered brazen schemes that billed taxpayers for nonexistent services, fraudulent diagnoses, and fake care while criminals enriched themselves at public expense,” he added.

The bust came as part of a larger effort by the Trump administration to crack down on public fraud across the nation.

Just get the feds out of “helping” in state and local matters. That much money in one place always invites fraud, and except when Trump 47 is around, seemingly zero supervision.

Posted at 9:37 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: It’s Primary Day in California — Raise a Glass to the Underdogs. “That Karen Bass is still in this race is probably the only sign we need that Los Angeles is irredeemable. Her first term in office is completely devoid of anything that she can point to as a success. It doesn’t matter, of course, because she’s the first female mayor of the nation’s second most populous city. The Democrats are still all-in on diversity. Their politicians just need to check boxes, not be competent.”

Posted at 9:06 am by Stephen Green

SO NOW HE TELLS US: Sen. Murphy: Biden Should Have Left Race Earlier.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Sunday that Democrats must acknowledge mistakes made during the 2024 presidential election cycle, including former President Joe Biden’s decision to remain in the race, arguing that partisan loyalty can sometimes prevent political parties from confronting their own failures.

“I think Democrats do have to be honest about the mistakes that we made in 2024,” Murphy said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“Obviously, in retrospect, Joe Biden should have stepped away from that race. We should have had an open contest.”

Maybe Biden stayed in because he listened to… Sen. Chris Murphy: Sen. Chris Murphy on ‘Face the Nation,’ Feb. 11, 2024. “There are literally thousands of people alive in this nation today. Because Joe Biden is incredibly competent, and he’s incredibly effective. And this partisan- and this partisan hit job.”

The only thing that changed between February and Biden dropping out in July was a debate performance that removed any doubt about Biden’s accelerating senescence, even for people who hadn’t been paying attention.

Posted at 8:35 am by Stephen Green

DON SURBER: Democrats don’t know American men.. “Adolf Platner. Six Genders Talarico. Tampon Tim. The first two are Democrat Senate candidates while Walz was the party’s vice presidential nominee in 2024. Democrats aimed these weirdos at collecting the XY vote. They have the combined testosterone of my 5-year-old grandson. The more Democrats try to run candidates to lure American men into voting for them, . . . the more they show how little they know about the U.S. Male.”

Posted at 8:21 am by Glenn Reynolds

AND NOW FOR SOME GOOD NEWS:

Posted at 8:19 am by Stephen Green

SIX YEARS AGO TODAY, THE PIVOT BEGAN: ‘Did I miss the memo?’: Hospital workers in full PPE applaud George Floyd protesters as they march past.

As Greenwald writes in his follow-up tweet, “That episode single-handedly destroyed trust in public health officials, proving they’d politicize their expertise when convenient. Corporate media celebrated a douchebag-lawyer shaming families at deserted beaches, then — overnight! — cheered densely packed street protests.”

QED: Shot: Grief and COVID-19: Mourning our bygone lives.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an epidemiological crisis, but also a psychological one. While the situation provokes anxiety, stress and sadness, it is also a time of collective sorrow, says Sherry Cormier, PhD, a psychologist who specializes in grief and grief mentoring. “It’s important that we start recognizing that we’re in the middle of this collective grief. We are all losing something now.”

Many people are reckoning with individual losses, including illness and death due to the novel coronavirus, or loss of employment as a result of economic upheaval. But even people who haven’t lost anything so concrete as a job or a loved one are affected, Cormier says. “There is a communal grief as we watch our work, health-care, education and economic systems — all of these systems we depend on — destabilize,” she says.

—The American Psychological Association, April 1st, 2020.

Chaser: APA’s action plan for addressing inequality.

Dear Colleagues,

We are writing to you while still reeling from the tragic murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the ongoing protests, which are reverberating in a shockwave throughout our nation and around the world.

These recent events present us with an urgent challenge—as an association, discipline and profession, and individual psychologists—to bring our expertise to bear to address the range of underlying problems these events represent from discrimination to racism, which have resulted in long-standing social, economic, and political inequalities, from police brutality, to the disproportionate spread of the coronavirus among black and brown people, to the soaring unemployment rates among communities of color.

APA is urging psychologists to share their thoughts and recommendations for using the power of psychology to address the “pandemic of racism,” both in the short and long term. As part of that process, we must also examine our role as a field and as an association in perpetuating these ills.

—The American Psychological Association, June 2nd, 2020.

Note the photos atop those Webpages. The April 1st post is illustrated by photos of an elderly white woman looking frustrated in her apartment, and a young black woman staring wistfully into the distance outside the window of her apartment, with the photos separated by a white dividing line to emphasize both persons’ isolation from the world. Contrast that with the photo of the massed protestors carrying “Black Lives Matter” placards atop the June 2nd post.

NPR also pivoted on June 2nd, 2020:

The DNC-MSM and local mayors turned on a dime from enforcing hard-line lockdown rules and shaming anyone who went to church or got a haircut, to letting rioters congregate with impunity. Bill de Blasio was quoted five years ago today, “When you see…an entire nation, simultaneously grappling with an extraordinary crisis seated in 400 years of American racism, I’m sorry, that is not the same question as the understandably aggrieved store owner or the devout religious person who wants to go back to services.”

Flashbacks:

● After telling GOP to downsize convention due to COVID-19, N.C. governor marches in crowded protest.

● NJ governor admits COVID-19 double standard, says recent protests are different from business owners’ complaints.

● De Blasio: Large Group Protests Are Acceptable, Religious Observances Are Not.

● NPR: Dozens of public health and disease experts have signed an open letter in support of the nationwide anti-racism protests. “White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19,” they wrote.

● The Suicide of Expertise.

● Welcome to protest season, where the cause changes but the tactics stay the same.

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

BRITS AND EUROPEANS KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THE U.S., WHILE TRYING TO TREAT AMERICANS AS KNOW-NOTHINGS:

I remember, it must have been 20 years ago, I was on an NPR show with a German reporter debating U.S. foreign policy when she suddenly interjected “have you ever been abroad, do you even have a passport?” I replied that yes I did, and that in fact I had lived in Heidelberg while my dad taught at the university there, her alma mater.

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

JOEL KOTKIN: The anti-AI backlash is building against tech oligarchs playing God: The problem is not so much the technology but with the people building it, who have attracted the enmity of all political sides. “People across the West increasingly fear the tech oligarchs, people who run companies with stock market valuations larger than the GDP of most nations. By some measures, Apple alone is worth twice the GDP of Mexico; Microsoft is as large as Italy. Even people obsessed about their devices believe the tech overlords have overreached, enticing the enmity of Right, Left and pretty much everyone in between. Globally, trust in tech firms has been heading down for years, and is particularly low in Japan, France, and the US. In America, notes Pew, barely 10 per cent of people – Republican, Democrat or independent – see social media in a positive light.”

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY SEEMS DETERMINED TO RUIN ITS PUBLIC IMAGE: Judge Ross Should Have Been Punished For Abdicating Her Judicial Power To Her Law Clerks: Perhaps it is common enough for Presidents to sign executive orders he does not read, or for members of Congress to vote on bills they do not read, but federal judges should aspire to a higher standard. “Judge Eleanor Ross, who serves on the federal bench in Atlanta, engaged in multiple acts of misconduct. She carried on a secret affair with an Atlanta police department officer for nearly two years, repeatedly had loud sex in her chambers, lied about her trysts, and obstructed the investigation. Each of these actions warranted a public reprimand and an impeachment inquiry. But one of the more stunning allegations has flown under the radar: Judge Ross routinely signs judicial orders her law clerks prepare without even reading them. Indeed, it seems she never even talks about these cases with her clerks, so likely has no clue what she is even approving. Yet the council that reviewed this case found no misconduct.”

Posted at 7:18 am by Glenn Reynolds

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

More:

Posted at 7:17 am by Stephen Green

HOW IT STARTED: Paul Krugman’s totalitarian temptation.

Jared Loughner, the gunman charged with wounding Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and murdering six others in Tucson on Saturday, held bizarre beliefs about “conscious dreaming” and government mind control imposed through English grammar. No serious person would connect his belief system to a mainstream political ideology. But then there’s New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. He places the blood libel of blame for the Tucson murders squarely on the shoulders of “the crowds at the McCain-Palin rallies” and “right-wing extremism.” It’s the Republicans’ fault because “the purveyors of hate have been treated with respect, even deference, by the GOP establishment.” Krugman’s solution is for “decent people” to “shun” those he holds accountable. But the logic of his argument leads straight to calling for official restrictions on political speech after shunning inevitably fails to do the job. The totalitarian temptation is an ever-present possibility with people like Krugman.

—The Washington Examiner, January 10th, 2011.

How It’s Going:

To be fair, acknowledging that the economic “miracle of the 1940s” had a rather massive downside might actually be progress of a sort for Krugman in his dotage.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

FROM L.A. GREGORY:  Hawkwing: A Novel of the Bitterlands.

Hawkwing: A Novel of the Bitterlands

Kestrel’s land is scarred in ways its inhabitants cannot begin to understand, built on long-poisoned earth and menaced by twisted plants and animals. Farmers, hunters, and magic-users fight a long battle to create safe havens and reclaim lost ground, but their casualties mount over generations. Kestrel knows little and cares less about the patterns that shape her world. She’s a shapechanger and healer who has spent the handful of years since reaching womanhood cleansing the wildlife of her blighted land with medicine and magic. Sure of her place and confident in her skills, she takes care of her own and doesn’t poke at things that don’t concern her. But when she returns from a routine journey with her brother to find her home ransacked and empty, Kestrel must gather her remaining family and search for new allies before old magic and older hatred rob her kin of their freedom, their lives, and possibly their souls.

Posted at 7:06 am by Sarah Hoyt

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER: One Body Found, Ten Questions Left at Los Alamos. “The larger question explains why Casias’ recovery drew national attention. Her name has been tied to a broader list of workers, researchers, contractors, and former defense-linked employees who disappeared or died under troubling circumstances.”

Posted at 7:02 am by Stephen Green

THIS:

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds