Tag: taxes

State Department Defunds Foreign Groups That Promote DEI, Transgenderism

The U.S. Department of State announced on January 23 that it is expanding the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits foreign aid to groups that promote abortion, to also include groups that promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) and transgenderism.

The department released three rules that will implement this expansion. The rules, titled “Combating Gender Ideology in Foreign Assistance,” “Combating Discriminatory Equity Ideology in Foreign Assistance Rules,” and “Protecting Life in Foreign Assistance,” were published in the Federal Register on January 27.

Vice President J.D. Vance celebrated the policy change during his address at this year’s March for Life, stating that “with these additions, the rule will now cover [all] non-military foreign assistance that America sends. All in all, we have expanded the Mexico City Policy about three times as big as it was before.”

The policy, first implemented in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan, has been rescinded and reimplemented repeatedly by succeeding Democratic and Republican administrations. President Donald Trump had already expanded the rule in 2017 by having the policy apply to all foreign aid, rather than just aid intended for “family planning.”

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Outrage as ex-UCLA doctor imprisoned for sexually abusing patients has conviction overturned because juror barely spoke English

Say what?

An appeals court overturned the conviction of a disgraced former UCLA gynecologist serving 11 years in prison for sexually abusing patients, after determining the trial judge failed to disclose that jurors had concerns that one of their own barely spoke English.

James Heaps, 69, will be retried on the charges involving the two patients he was convicted of abusing in 2022, a three-judge panel of the California 2nd District Court of Appeal ordered on Monday, the Los Angeles Times reported.

John Manly, who represented more than 200 former Heaps patients in a lawsuit that resulted in a $243.6 million settlement, said the decision to toss the conviction is “an indictment of California’s criminal justice system which allows criminals to threaten public safety and prey upon the most vulnerable.’’

“These brave survivors suffered through a four-year ordeal of prosecution and trial resulting in an 11-year prison sentence for this monster. Now they are being told that they must start over. And why?” the attorney raged.

“Because California has produced laws, policies and some prosecutors and judges who defend the rights of criminals and throw victims to the wolves.”

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Seattle to pay $30M for teen death in anti-cop CHOP zone — because ambulances wouldn’t go there

The city of Seattle has been ordered to dole out $30 million to the dad of a teen who died from a gunshot wound inside a Black Lives Matter occupation zone in 2020 after first responders refused to enter the protest area.

The Emerald City was found liable by a jury Thursday of botching its emergency response to the still-unsolved shooting of Antonio Mays Jr., 16, on June 29 inside the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) zone — a movement that was established in response to George Floyd’s death at the hands of cops in Minneapolis, Minn., two weeks earlier.

The verdict came after an unusually long 12 days of deliberations by the 12-person jury — which only needed 10 to agree rather than a unanimous decision. Civil cases only require jurors to find claims were proven by the “preponderance of the evidence” — or over 50% probability — unlike a criminal case which requires jurors to find guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

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Inside Strum: How a Subscription Platform Funds Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Azov Brigade

One of the most persistent myths in Western political thought is the idea that the United States and its European allies are principled opponents of fascism and totalitarianism. This doctrine, which many Washington elites believe at an almost religious level, has served as the basis for the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine. Numerous politicians from both sides of the proverbial aisle have accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being a Nazi or a fascist. However, when the United States allows Neo-Nazi-linked Ukrainian organizations like the Azov Brigade to receive support, this undermines their narrative.

Now, after American and European taxpayers have already paid billions for Ukraine’s war, the Azov Brigade is attempting to extract more money from Westerners via a subscription service called “Strum.” But before discussing Strum, it is important to examine what the Azov Brigade is and why it requires additional funding in the first place.

The Azov Brigade (formerly known as the Azov Battalion and Azov Regiment) has been mired in controversy since its founding. The organization was founded in 2014 by Andrey Biletskyi, a political activist with ties to Neo-Nazi movements. The Azov Brigade began as an amalgamation of radical movements including the Patriot of Ukraine gang which “espoused xenophobic and neo-Nazi ideas, and was engaged in violent attacks against migrants, foreign students in Kharkiv and those opposing its views.” Following the Maidan Revolution, oligarchs and elements of the Ukrainian government backed the organization which was then incorporated into the National Guard of Ukraine. In 2016, the UN alleged that the Azov regiment violated international law due to its documented mass looting of civilian homes, its targeting of civilian areas, and its treatment of prisoners. During the Siege of Mariupol, the group was heavily involved in the fighting on the Ukrainian side though it eventually surrendered to Russia. In 2023, the Azov Regiment was reorganized into the Azov Brigade.

With resources dwindling and rampant foreign military aid corruption, Azov has increasingly relied on donations from individuals and companies. According to reporting from Svidomi, which included interviews with founders and project managers, a new project, Strum, has become the “driving force” behind the Brigade. The platform operates as a subscription service like Netflix or Spotify, but with some substantial differences and additional features.

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Fraud as Policy: The Incentives of the Modern Welfare State

The scale of fraud uncovered in recent years has exposed how government transfer programs function, even as meaningful public or legislative reckoning remains largely absent. What began as a series of pandemic-related scandals has revealed something broader and more troubling: large-scale fraud is not an anomaly within the modern welfare state. The federal government, taxpayers, lose between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud, based on data from 2018 to 2022.

It is a predictable outcome of systems that distribute vast sums of money without market discipline, rely on third-party payment structures, and diffuse responsibility across layers of bureaucracy. As Murray Rothbard argued, welfare gains can only be demonstrated through voluntary exchange, while state transfer programs necessarily rely on coercion and therefore cannot be said, in economic terms, to increase social welfare, only to redistribute resources while masking loss.

Minnesota provides one of the clearest illustrations of this dynamic, especially since a private reporter revealed massive fraud in the state at the end of last year. In the Feeding Our Future scandal, federal prosecutors alleged that more than $250 million intended for child nutrition was siphoned through non-profit organizations that billed the government for meals that were never served. A federal judge has since ordered the forfeiture of more than $52 million connected to the scheme, underscoring both the scale of the losses and the failure of oversight mechanisms designed to prevent them. The case involved federal funds administered by state agencies and distributed through private entities, with little meaningful verification before reimbursement.

This was not an isolated incident. Prosecutors in Minnesota have charged defendants in a wide range of fraud schemes involving pandemic unemployment benefits, economic injury disaster loans, autism-related health services, transportation programs, and other federally funded initiatives. These cases mirror prosecutions across the country. In Texas, defendants have been sentenced for multi-million-dollar disaster relief fraud. In Massachusetts, companies have paid millions to resolve allegations of PPP loan fraud and emergency rental assistance schemes. Similar cases appear regularly in Department of Justice press releases, spanning Medicare covid testing fraud, SNAP abuse, PPP and EIDL loan abuse, unemployment insurance fraud, and false claims against federal health care benefit programs.

Nationally, the numbers are staggering. Government watchdogs have estimated that fraud in pandemic unemployment programs alone may exceed $100 billion. Well over 200 billion was lost to fraudulent PPP and EIDL claims. Medicare billing schemes tied to covid testing generated billions in false claims. These figures do not represent marginal losses. They reflect a system operating at a scale where fraud becomes organized, repeatable, and profitable.

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High-level officials in Biden administration went to work for grant recipients, watchdog finds

The Department of Energy recently announced it’s eliminating more than $83 billion in what it called “Green New Scam” loans and conditional commitments made through the Loans Programs Office during the Biden administration.

The Trump administration has tried to roll back funding the Biden administration rushed out the door in its final months. 

Democracy Restored, a nonprofit government watchdog, calculated that following former President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate with now-President Donald Trump on June 27, 2024, the Biden administration began rushing billions out the door to more than a dozen environmental and climate-focused NGOs, including the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, Climate United Fund, the Ocean Conservancy, the Nature Conservancy, and Rocky Mountain Institute. 

Using data from USASpending.gov, Democracy Resorted found that federal agencies had obligated more than $600 million in taxpayer money to these organizations since July 1, 2024. The obligations began to drop the day after the election. Obligations to these same organizations since Nov. 5, 2024 fell to $246 million. 

While various agencies were providing millions in support to these organizations, high-level officials within the agencies either went to work for them after Trump took office, or they had previously worked for them prior to assuming key roles at the agencies under Biden.

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Eyes on California: 18% of Total US Home Health Care Billing Is Coming Out of LA County – One Doctor Billed Govt. for $120 Million IN ONE YEAR!

The Trump Administration and Dr. Mehmut Oz, the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, have turned their attention to Los Angeles County and the massive amount of alleged medical fraud that is being reported from California.

According to FOX News, one LA doctor billed the government $120 million, claiming to oversee 1900 patients… in one year!

18% of THE ENTIRE COUNTRY’S home health care billing is coming out of Los Angeles County! Almost 20%!

And, Los Angeles has almost 2,000 registered hospice agencies! That is more than 36 states combined and thirty-times more than the whole state of Florida and New York.

Dr. Oz explained how easy it would be to open a hospice in LA, you don’t even have to live there!

Dr. Oz: “How is that possible? And take a look at this map, a cluster of 287 hospice providers, in a two-mile radius, some in strip malls, unmarked buildings, even a wrecking yard and vacant lot. All of it is just paperwork. I could fill that out in Kazakhstan if I want and get a hospice license waiting for me.”

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Senate Republicans push for House GOP rebellion against funding package, voter ID legislation

A pair of Senate Republicans are pushing their House counterparts to reject the Trump-backed shutdown deal unless it includes Homeland Security funding and election integrity legislation. 

Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, are calling on House Republicans to push back against the Senate-passed funding package, which includes bills to fund five agencies, including the Pentagon, as a partial government shutdown continues. 

They contended that the package needs to be retooled, and must include a modified version of the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility Act, dubbed the SAVE America Act, and the Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill, which was stripped out after Senate Democrats threatened to blow up the government funding process. 

Doing so could extend what was expected to be a short-term shutdown.

Scott said congressional Democrats would “NEVER fund DHS” and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He voted against the package twice, arguing that the spending levels would further bloat the nation’s eye-popping $38 trillion national debt, and that the billions in earmarks betrayed Republicans’ previous vows of fiscal restraint.

“If House Republicans don’t put the DHS bill back in, add the SAVE America Act and remove the wasteful earmarks, Democrats win,” Scott said. “We must protect our homeland, secure our elections and end the reckless spending NOW!”

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Third Georgia Democrat State Lawmaker Charged with Defrauding Federal Government

Another day, another corrupt Democrat.

Georgia Democrat State Rep. Dexter Sharper was charged with defrauding the federal government by falsely claiming unemployment while he earned income.

According to federal prosecutors, Rep. Sharper collected nearly $14,000 in emergency Covid benefits while earning money from income.

“While many of his constituents and fellow citizens were losing jobs and desperately needed unemployment assistance during the pandemic, Representative Sharper allegedly pretended to be out of work to collect a share of unemployment benefits for himself,” said US Attorney Theodore Hertzberg.

“When government officials lie to take money, and do it while holding an elected office, it violates the trust of citizens and weakens faith in our elected government,” he added.

CBS News reported:

A third member of the Georgia House of Representatives has been accused of lying to collect thousands of dollars in unemployment benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rep. Dexter L. Sharper, who represents District 177, is the latest Democratic lawmaker facing federal charges of making false statements to obtain funds administered by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Investigators say Sharper applied for unemployment benefits from April 2020 to May 2021, claiming to have had only one employer, Dexter Sharper Party Rental. In the application, Sharper allegedly stated that he had not worked since March 13, 2020, claiming in 38 separate weekly certifications that he had not worked and was actively seeking employment.

However, prosecutors say the Valdosta man was working in the Georgia General Assembly in addition to running his party rental business and performing as a musician.

Authorities say Sharper collected more than $13,000 of unemployment assistance benefits during that time.

Dexter Sharper is the third Democrat state lawmaker to be charged with defrauding the federal government in the last few months.

Earlier this month, Georgia state Rep. Karen Bennett was indicted by a federal grand jury for Covid fraud.

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Ex–Nonprofit Leader Who Championed Social Justice Sentenced for COVID Fraud

A former Bostonian of the Year was sentenced in federal court in Boston for using thousands of dollars in donations to Violence in Boston to pay personal expenses and defrauding taxpayers. 

Monica Cannon-Grant, 44, of Taunton, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley to four years’ probation, with six months of home detention and 100 hours of community service. She was also ordered to pay restitution of $106,003 as well as forfeiture in an amount to be decided at a later date. The government recommended a sentence of 18 months in prison.

Cannon-Grant allegedly defrauded the City of Boston out of COVID-19 relief funds and rental assistance money, defrauded the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office out of Community Reinvestment Grant funds, filed false tax returns and failed to file tax returns for two years.

The founder and former Chief Executive Officer of a Boston-based nonprofit was sentenced today in federal court in Boston.

In September 2025, Cannon-Grant pleaded guilty to 18 counts: three counts of wire fraud conspiracy; 10 counts of wire fraud; one count of mail fraud; two counts of filing false tax returns; and two counts of failing to file tax returns. In March 2023, Cannon-Grant was charged along with her co-conspirator and late husband, Clark Grant, in a 27-count superseding indictment. 

Clark Grant’s charges were dismissed in May 2023 due to his death. Cannon-Grant and Clark Grant had previously been charged in an 18-count indictment in March 2022.

In 2020, Cannon-Grant was lauded as a Bostonian of the Year and social justice advocate, recognized for being a “voice for the community” and social justice advocate.

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