Commentary Culture Investigations

After a gambling scandal cratered his college career, Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby tried to skip the fallout and fast track his future to the NFL. The league promptly slammed the door. It rejected his supplemental draft application and canceled the draft entirely leaving Sorsby stuck on the sideline until at least 2027.
The reason wasn’t complicated.
Sorsby admitted to placing thousands of bets, including wagers involving his own team that is the mortal sin of sports. This resulted in the NCAA banning him for life. He fought it in court, briefly won a reprieve, then retreated under a wave of backlash and aimed for the NFL as a reset button.
Rules and accountability are paramount, especially when the integrity of competition is at stake.
The NFL blew Sorsby’s end around before the snap.
In denying his petition, the NFL made its thinking clear: Sorsby failed to own up to his actions. His application glossed over key details, showed little accountability and did nothing to convince the league’s honchos that he understood, or would respect their rules on gambling. The NFL would be no redemption story for Sorsby.
So, the NFL dug in and made it a goal-line stand
On its merits, the NFL made the right call. Betting on your own team is not just another violation; it poisons the well. Every pass, every mistake, every outcome becomes suspect. Trust, the currency of any sporting event, evaporates.  Excuses do not suffice nor erase responsibility.
Consequences are part of the game, too.
And yet, the reaction says plenty about the uneasy moment contemporary sports finds itself in.
Granted, the NFL is taking a hard stance here but the league continues to cash in on gambling.
Pregame shows push odds. Broadcasts treat betting lines like weather reports. Stadiums double as billboards for sports books. The NFL is not just adjacent to gambling; it has partnered with it.
That is where the NFL’s hypocrisy runs out of bounds.
The league profits from the culture it punishes.
Fans know how glaring the contradiction is. They also don’t miss the inconsistency elsewhere. Gambling violations draw swift, unforgiving discipline, while other off-field misconducts are handled with far more flexibility.
The message can feel selective, even if the rule itself isn’t.
Then there is the cynicism baked into the system. Plenty believe talent eventually wins out and that some desperate NFL franchise will convince itself that the risk is worth it. It’s not a defense of Sorsby so much as an indictment of how often teams prioritize ability over judgment.
Still, this decision lands differently for one reason: the NFL didn’t hedge. It didn’t stall, soften, or spin. It simply said no.
Sorsby’s future is now uncertain, his career in limbo by his own choices.
Rules and accountability are paramount, especially when the integrity of competition is at stake.
However, skepticism still looms large regarding the institutions enforcing those rules.
The NFL’s decision may be widely seen as correct, but it also serves as a reminder of the contradictions embedded in modern sports where moral lines are drawn even as financial incentives continue to blur them.
READ MORE from Greg Maresca:
Where Art Rekindles Faith
The Missed Opportunity of the Semiquincentennial Minute
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In the long-awaited birthright citizenship decision, the majority ruled that anyone born in the United States is a citizen, even if his parents are here temporarily or illegally.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts argues that birthright citizenship is a part of the Common Law. The key is Justice Coke’s decision in Calvin’s Case of 1608, recognized as authoritative in England and in British America. The Dred Scott case rejected this when it ruled that Scott was common-law property and not a citizen, and America rejected that decision in the war fought largely over the issue of slavery.
If sovereign law doesn’t hold, being born there can bring no benefit from that law. No law, no citizenship.
Roberts makes a clear argument and presents it ably. His defense of it against Justice Thomas’ dissent is not as able.
This relatively short article allows only a brief look at the many pages of the Trump v. Barbara decision. As Roberts’ key argument is that birthright citizenship is based on Common Law and everything subsequent, such as the language of the Fourteenth Amendment, must be read in the light of its use in Common Law, the Common Law is where we will focus.
Basing himself on Coke’s decision in Calvin, Roberts sets out the Common Law claim — anyone born under the sovereign protection of the King owes him allegiance. Roberts elides over the difference between a subject and a citizen.
Justice Thomas attacks this elision. The feudal sense of allegiance due someone who enjoys sovereignty by reason of birth is alien to a republic in which the sovereignty belongs to the citizens. To be a citizen is to be invested with sovereign rights; to be a subject simply means one owes obedience to laws someone else has the right to make. As King Charles I said just before his execution, “A subject and a sovereign are clean different things.”
As the king made clear, such liberties as the people enjoyed came only through his sufferance in guiding his subjects through his laws — not the unalienable rights asserted later in the Declaration of Independence as the basis of self-governance.
The difference between subject and citizen has been bridged historically only by gelding the monarch politically. The last attempt of a monarch to revive political power, Queen Elizabeth’s decision acceding to PM Boris Johnson’s request to prorogue Parliament, was unceremoniously scuttled by a British court asserting powers their judiciary had not claimed since the days of Justice Coke. Coke failed, but his heirs are doing much better than the monarchs in wielding power in the British state.
America, on the other hand, rejected the very idea that sovereignty belongs to royalty or nobles. At the same time, it proclaims fidelity to common law concepts of liberty and some kinship with the evolving British constitutional tradition.
What Thomas is saying is that, while we maintain continuity with the English law tradition, we must not ignore the crucial differences over which we split. No kings! Power to the people! Roberts’ attempt to dismiss this fundamental difference weakens his case.
There is also another line of argument.
Grant Roberts’ reasoning, for the sake of argument, and say that Cokes’ Calvin ruling determines how we understand the Fourteenth Amendment and other relevant American law sources. As Roberts notes, Coke sets out some limitations to this birthright, which he acknowledges, such as ambassadors and the like who are here to represent another sovereignty. Coke also sets as exceptions such places where the king’s sovereignty is in name only, such as the claim of the British monarch to be the ruler of France. Coke ruled:
Seeing the King is not in actual possession thereof, none born there since the Crown of England was out of actual possession thereof, are subjects to the King of England.
Furthermore:
Any place within the King’s dominions without obedience can never produce a natural subject.
That is, if some other power holds part of the realm, say, a castle, those born there would have no natural allegiance to the king, for his law does not hold there. And that is the core issue for Coke, for he calls this a natural law of God that the one who is by nature subject is bound by the sovereign’s law. Here, since the king has no power, the subject has no obligation to obey.
There are places here where this applies in the U.S. Victor Davis Hanson has been talking much of the decline of California, where he still lives on land his grandfather owned. His area had been largely an area of immigrant farmers, who worked hard and thrived, loved their adopted home, treasured their shared community, and upheld its legal order.
Nearly all those families have left, and their land is in tatters. Laws there are enforced only among the remnant of the original families. The rest ignore the web of laws governing zoning, trash disposal, construction, and traffic. Little attempt is made to make them. And most of them got here due to a studied refusal to enforce the immigration laws of this sovereign nation.
Among the most irritating areas of the law’s unequal enforcement is taxes. A gigantic cash-only black market has developed in which the steep sales tax and other taxes are not enforced. Those left obeying the law are playing on an unequal playing field.
Is this not Coke’s exception? The laws do not apply here. The sovereign, who in America is “We the People,” holds no effective sway. There is allegiance to the sovereign’s laws, so there are no rights from the sovereign. The freedoms under law have been lost, citizenship is meaningless.
Thisfundamental issue lurks only in the background of the arguments in Trump v Barbara, it still looms large in the minds of many Americans. Is our entire sovereignty being gutted as the rule of law fails? How can we award citizenship’s shared sovereignty when the laws of that sovereignty do not hold?
There is a long history of the Left seeking to take back power by surging in large numbers of people selected for their likelihood to support the Left’s cause. Books were written on this topic, such as The Emerging Democratic Majority and ⁠Diversity Explosion. The unprecedented abandonment of all but a pretense of legal control of immigration under Biden has resulted in the abandonment of wide swaths of America to being less than sovereign within its own borders.
The Jewish law tradition has some insight on this situation. Jews have lived for much of their history under the sovereignty of other nations. Beginning from Jeremiah’s message that they were to seek the welfare of wherever they lived, they were and are explicitly bound by Jewish law to observe the civil laws of the lands where they live.
There is a large exception to this rule: if the laws are enforced unequally, the sovereignty is no longer legitimate and is in effect just a gang of robbers. If one group of people are free to evade law and taxes and the others are not, God’s authority no longer lies with the putative authority. It has failed its role under God’s law and is illegitimate.
This lawlessness as political policy undercuts Roberts’ argument. Natural law, as Coke rules this is, should manifest everywhere given the same circumstances, and that is what we see in Western Europe: whether in immigrant areas where police can only enter in a quasi-military role, and organized rape gangs targeting the native population have operated with impunity for many years.
If sovereign law doesn’t hold, being born there can bring no benefit from that law. No law, no citizenship. Those who flout the sovereign law can’t be rewarded with the privileges of that very sovereignty. Ruling otherwise is a significant step towards civilizational suicide.
This decision cannot be the last word.
READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin:
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If you want to know why Politico risked the inevitable mockery that will ensue by whining absurdly about the supposed dangers posed to the environment by the America 250 fireworks the answer is easily supplied by simply reading the first word of the title of their Friday KvetchFest, “Trump plans record fireworks show, internal docs warn of smoky skies.”

Substitute the name of any Democrat president such as Clinton or Obama or Autopen and the silly story by the Politico troika of Alex Guillen, Miranda Willson, and Ariel Wittenberg would have been nonexistent. Yes, they just can’t allow President Donald Trump to enjoy along with thousands of spectators what they consider to be a triumphal moment without raining on the parade. TDS is just that powerful, especially at Politico.

Now let us watch the Politico team make an attempt at a thin veneer of concern over supposed fireworks pollution despite us (and them) knowing what this is really all about:

Scientists have well documented the soot and heavy metal pollution that can spike severely in the wake of pyrotechnic displays, and the world-record-setting number of fireworks lined up for July 4 will mean an equally large jump in pollution, according to experts and internal NPS documents reviewed by POLITICO.

There are no indications that the administration plans to suggest masking or other personal protection for revelers viewing the fireworks from the nation’s front lawn. And the Environmental Protection Agency said tracking the air quality impacts of the fireworks isn’t their jurisdiction.

Any warnings by the government for people to mask up in the wake of the useless Covid mask warnings would be rightly ignored and/or laughed at.

The good news is that the dirty air doesn’t linger too long. One study found that particulate matter from July Fourth fireworks remained elevated for about 24 hours across 315 different monitoring sites. On average, the fireworks displays increased pollution by 42 percent. But after a day, fireworks pollution dissipates and usually blows away or settles into water and soil within a day.

Wow! So just wait for the wind to blow away whatever air pollution there is. It sounds much less than terrifying.

The drought means that pollutants may linger longer in the Potomac than they would under normal conditions, said Tyler Frankel, an associate environmental science professor at the University of Mary Washington. Contaminants can easily get trapped in the river near Theodore Roosevelt Island due to “tidal slosh,” a phenomenon where the water flows both upstream and downstream, Frankel said.

Amphibians and juvenile fish are particularly vulnerable to perchlorates, compounds used in fireworks to enable a rapid burn but that can also disrupt animals’ developmental processes.

If as few as just ONE Delta Smelt dies due to the America 250 fireworks, Trump must be held to account! Impeachment?

The Politico litany of dire America 250 fireworks threats to the environment and health continues on and on and on for our amusement.  Here are just a few more of the highlights spurred on by their derangement over You-Know-Who:

Other animals at risk include ospreys, iconic fish-eating birds that are currently in the midst of breeding season and are easily spooked by loud noises.

…Fireworks also rain down small but potentially potent amounts of heavy metals that are used to create vibrant colors but also pose serious health risks.

…No one has yet done epidemiological studies to look at whether hospital admissions for asthma or other cardiovascular and respiratory ailments increase after fireworks events, the kind of research that has been performed on wildfire smoke and ambient pollution.

…Observing the show from a greater distance would reduce exposure. So would staying inside and keeping windows closed. An indoor air filter will scrub out particles. And all those N95 masks left lying around from the pandemic would be effective, too.

… An organizer with Moms Clean Air Force who also has asthma, Schmitz spent last July Fourth “inside with a mask on, leaning over my air purifier struggling to breathe and weighing if I needed to go to the hospital.”

Will any of the Politico crew need to be mental health hospitalized (for TDS) if they spot anybody enjoying the terrific America 250 fireworks display?

Daniel Han, Politico

As Americans celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, critics on the Left portray the United States as a nation in irreversible decline. Having lived under both Mao Zedong’s China and the American constitutional republic, I see something very different.
America’s greatest achievement is not that it has existed for 250 years. Many civilizations are older. China’s recorded history stretches back thousands of years.
But if one has the privilege of choosing citizenship, I believe one should choose a nation that protects liberty, respects the rule of law, [and] safeguards human rights.
The remarkable achievement is that America’s constitutional system has endured for two and a half centuries while continually correcting itself. The United States has survived slavery, civil war, economic depression, world wars, terrorism, political polarization, and profound social conflict without abandoning its constitutional foundations.
Its institutional roots run even deeper than 1776. American constitutional government inherited centuries of English legal tradition dating back to Magna Carta in 1215. That uninterrupted development of liberty under law is one of history’s rarest accomplishments.
By contrast, China’s long history is largely a succession of dynasties, revolutions, and political ruptures. Governments rose and fell. Institutions were repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt. Modern constitutional democracy never had the opportunity to take root.
Watching Fourth of July fireworks this year, I found myself reflecting not on abstract political theory, but on the moments that taught me what America truly is.
I was born in Mao’s China, where the state decided nearly every aspect of one’s life. As a young man, I dreamed of becoming an artist, but the government sent me to work in the countryside instead.
Only after Mao’s death did opportunity begin to emerge. I studied relentlessly, won admission to Peking University’s Department of Economics, scored first in my graduate study exam, and in 1982 received the opportunity to study in the United States.
Like many Chinese students of my generation, I expected America to be wealthier than China. That surprised none of us.
What surprised us was something entirely different.
Americans seemed … happy.
I remember the celebrated Chinese writer Ah Cheng came to our school to visit and was asked what had impressed him most about America. His answer was disarmingly simple:
“The Americans are happy.”
At first glance, it sounded almost trivial. But the more I lived in America, the deeper that observation became.
Cashiers smiled. Government employees treated foreign graduate students with courtesy. Janitors greeted us cheerfully in university hallways. Strangers said hello.
These were not superficial cultural habits.
People generally chose their own careers rather than having them assigned by the state. Advancement depended far more on talent and effort than political connections. Because people possessed greater control over their own lives, they carried less resentment toward everyone else.
That stood in sharp contrast to Mao’s China, where class labels determined one’s future and political privilege shaped nearly every opportunity. Too often, people who had little control over their own lives vented their frustrations on those around them.
I remember a cafeteria worker at Peking University nearly striking a student in the face with a serving ladle. It was not a food fight; it was resentment born of a system in which the worker was forced to be a food server.
Two years after arriving in America, I returned to China to visit family.
Instead of feeling at home, I felt anxious.
Would I be allowed to leave again?
One fellow student visited an American female classmate conducting research in China. During one of the regime’s recurring “Strike Hard” campaigns, police arrested him simply because a Chinese man had entered a foreign woman’s hotel room. He lost an entire semester of graduate study in America.
Another close friend, then studying at Columbia University, told me something I have never forgotten.
When his plane landed at New York’s JFK Airport after visiting China, he said quietly:
“Home at last!”
We were foreigners in America, living on modest graduate stipends.
Yet America felt like home because freedom felt like home.
Professors Who Wanted Me to Stay — but Helped Me Leave
Although I quickly came to admire America, my original plan was not to stay.
After my first year at the State University of New York at Albany, many of my classmates back in China had begun taking positions in government agencies as Deng Xiaoping’s reforms gathered momentum. I wanted to return and do my part. I told my faculty advisor that I had decided not to pursue a Ph.D. Instead, I would earn a master’s degree and go home to help reform China.
My professor was genuinely surprised.
“Most Chinese visiting scholars and graduate students want to extend their studies or move from a master’s program into a Ph.D.,” he said. “You’re doing exactly the opposite. Think about it a little longer.”
Then history intervened.
The Chinese Communist Party launched its Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign, targeting Western ideas and liberal intellectuals. My professor looked at the news and said to me with a smile, “You’re lucky you didn’t go back. Otherwise, you might have become one of the sources of that ‘spiritual pollution.’”
His remark was humorous, but it carried a serious truth. It reminded me how fragile reform remained under one-party rule. Political winds could reverse overnight.
At the time, I believed China’s economic problems stemmed largely from overpopulation. (Only later, after studying demography, did I realize that China’s underdevelopment had far deeper institutional causes.) Because Princeton University was the world’s leading center for demographic research, I decided I wanted to continue my studies there.
I told my professors at Albany that I intended to apply to Princeton and asked whether they would write letters of recommendation.
They didn’t want me to leave.
I had performed exceptionally well in the department, earning the highest score in its history on the doctoral qualifying examination. Naturally, they hoped I would remain at Albany.
Yet they put my interests ahead of their own.
Princeton admitted me and even invited me to visit the campus at its expense before making my decision. During my visit, one Princeton professor remarked, “Your professors at Albany wrote extraordinarily strong recommendation letters for you.”
That comment has stayed with me ever since.
My professors would have preferred that I stay. But because they believed a teacher’s responsibility is to help students achieve their own aspirations — not to advance the professor’s interests — they wholeheartedly supported my next step.
That, too, was one of the lessons America taught me.
Princeton Three Musketeers
In 1987, as Beijing launched another political campaign against “bourgeois liberalization.” Liberal-minded party leader Hu Yaobang was purged. My father, Li Honglin, one of China’s leading advocates of intellectual freedom, was also removed from office.
Together with fellow students Yang Xiaokai and Yu Dahai, I helped organize an open letter from Princeton protesting the crackdown. More than a thousand Chinese students overseas signed it.
It was the first large-scale public petition organized by Chinese graduate students overseas against Communist political repression.
The New York Times covered the story with our pictures, and the three of us became known as the “Princeton Three Musketeers.”
None of that would have been possible without America’s protection of free speech.
The Pen That Saved Two Generations
The greatest lesson came in 1989.
After the Tiananmen massacre, my father was secretly arrested. I knew that silence would only endanger him.
I contacted Robert Bartley, the legendary editor of The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page. He immediately assigned Claudia Rosett to investigate my father’s case. Their reporting, along with international pressure, helped secure my father’s release ten months later.
Twelve years afterward, I was secretly arrested myself while crossing from Hong Kong into Shenzhen on charges of “endangering state security.”
Once again, The Wall Street Journal came to my defense. Claudia Rosett wrote “The 25th Hostage.” The U.S. Congress passed resolutions demanding my release. President George W. Bush personally intervened. Princeton University and Rutgers University publicly appealed for my freedom.
Five months later, I walked free.
When I landed in San Francisco, reporters greeted me at the airport.
Walking toward me through the crowd was Claudia Rosett herself.
Speaking to the cameras, I said the first people I wanted to thank were my country.
Chinese nationalists immediately attacked me online.
“Which country?” they demanded.
The answer was simple.
America.
I became an American citizen in 1995, not because it was convenient, but because I finally had the freedom to choose my country.
No one chooses where he is born.
But if one has the privilege of choosing citizenship, I believe one should choose a nation that protects liberty, respects the rule of law, safeguards human rights, and allows its citizens to criticize their own government without fear.
America is not perfect. But it is the best in the world. It possesses institutions capable of correcting their own mistakes.
That is why, after 250 years, the American experiment continues.
And that is why, having freely chosen America as my country, I will always hope to see her remain strong.
READ MORE from Shaomin Li:
250 Years and Still Sailing
The Old Man and the Sea
China: The Limits of Transactional Diplomacy
Shaomin Li is Eminent Scholar and Professor of International Business at Old Dominion University. Born in China, he became a U.S. citizen in 1995.

Generation X leadership is desperately needed in our country, yet why are the aging Boomers still adamant about holding the reins? (READ MORE: A Defense of Generation X As Its Moment Approaches)
The Spectacle Podcast hosts Melissa Mackenzie and ‘Gen X Spokesperson’ Scott McKay chime in on the debate over why Gen Xers should be running the country, arguing that Boomers are selfish and are not setting up the future generations for success. Melissa and Scott discuss the unique qualifications and upbringing of Gen Xers who have grown up with analog childhoods but adjusted to the digital world. They criticize Boomers for selfishly withholding what could be for future generations — pointing out the massive wealth, housing, and hoarding problems caused by the Boomers that are negatively impacting their offspring. (RELATED: ‘Old Fart’ Thinking Is Too Much in Our Way) 
Tune in to hear their discussion!

Listen to The Spectacle with Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay on Spotify.
Watch The Spectacle with Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay on Rumble.

The Trump administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced that it has charged 455 defendants in connection with over $6.5 billion in alleged healthcare fraud. While critics will point to the fact that these are merely charges, many of these will likely result in convictions and monetary recoupment to taxpayers. In fact, in the last two months alone, the DOJ has secured several major convictions and rewards in its pursuit of all kinds of fraud, with COVID-19 recovery and healthcare billing related fraud being standout examples.
COVID-19 Fraud
In June, the owner of a North Carolina tax return preparation business joined seven of his co-conspirator employees in pleading guilty to preparing false returns claiming fraudulent refunds based on COVID-19 tax credits. Sentencing is scheduled for August and September. Taxpayers stand to recoup significant funds given that as a result of the conspiracy, the IRS paid out approximately $13.9 million in fraudulent tax refund claims. In May, a Brooklyn tax preparer was sentenced to 36 months in prison for her role in a fraud scheme that fraudulently claimed more than $600 million in COVID-19-related employment tax credits.
The latest news of 455 more defendants being charged will likely continue to fuel successful anti-fraud activities.
Also in May, an Illinois woman was convicted of unemployment insurance fraud for submitting false claims to a COVID-19 assistance program. Haim Hmaidan of Illinois and her co-conspirators submitted nearly 700 fraudulent unemployment insurance claims that caused over $11 million in fraudulent unemployment benefits to be dispersed. Her sentencing is scheduled for October.
Also in May, a Florida man was sentenced to 63 months in federal prison for wire fraud and money laundering. As part of his sentence, the court entered an order of forfeiture for nearly $740,000, the proceeds of the offenses. The defendant had submitted a fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan application of a sham business.
Also in May, the DOJ obtained a court order authorizing the recovery of nearly $30 million in restitution for the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), after two defendants were sentenced for participating in a scheme to defraud the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). These two defendants had transferred millions from their personal brokerage accounts to newly-created family trusts after receiving funds from the PPP.
In April, a Pennsylvania man was sentenced to 30 months in prison for one count of wire fraud and one count of making and subscribing a false tax return, with the defendant being ordered to pay restitution of approximately $352,000 dollars. The defendant submitted at least 10 applications seeking pandemic stimulus funds through both the Economic Injury and Disaster Loan (EIDL) program, as well as the PPP, for companies that did not have business operations.
In April, an Oregon woman was sentenced to 28 months in federal prison, and three years of supervised release, for submitting fraudulent pandemic unemployment applications, falsely claiming over two dozen employees, and causing the government to pay her over half a million dollars in benefits. She was also ordered to pay approximately $581,000 in restitution.
In April, a resident of Los Angeles, California, was sentenced to 144 months in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to launder approximately $59 million to China through his involvement in a conspiracy to obtain state unemployment compensation funds, and other public funds, through fraudulent means. The defendant and his co-conspirators pretended to operate legitimate businesses selling masks and other COVID-19 personal protective equipment. The defendant was ordered to forfeit over $59 million, along with other properties.
Healthcare Billing Fraud
In May, a member of a Moscow-based criminal organization was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his participation in an approximately $2 billion international health care fraud conspiracy to fraudulently bill private health care benefit programs. Two of his co-defendants were sentenced to 120 months’ and 97 months’ imprisonment, respectively. The court ordered the first defendant to forfeit $3.2 million and one of his co-defendants to forfeit more than $1.8 million.
In May, a federal jury convicted a Michigan nurse and home health care agency owner for operating a $1.6 million scheme to defraud Medicare. She will be sentenced in September.
Also in May, two men were sentenced for their roles in a scheme to defraud Medicare, Medicaid, and private health insurance companies by submitting over $522 million in fraudulent claims for medically unnecessary genetic tests that were obtained through the payment of illegal kickbacks and bribes. Reyad Salahaldeen of Georgia, was sentenced to 151 months in prison, while Mohamad Mustafa of Georgia was sentenced to three years in prison. In addition to the prison sentences, Salahaldeen was ordered to pay over $84.5 million in restitution and to forfeit approximately $3.0 million from two bank accounts, a 2019 GMC Yukon, and properties in Texas and Georgia. Mustafa was ordered to pay over $64.3 million in restitution.
Also in May, three Florida men were sentenced to 60, 70, and 78 months in prison, respectively, for their participation in a scheme to defraud Medicare through fake durable medical equipment companies and to launder more than $2.2 million in illicit health care fraud proceeds. At sentencing, two defendants were ordered to pay approximately $2.2 million in forfeiture and $3.0 million in restitution, while the third defendant was ordered to pay approximately $1.7 million in forfeiture and $2.2 million in restitution.
Also in May, a California doctor was convicted for a $45 million scheme to defraud Medicare by submitting claims for Botox injections that were never provided and medically unnecessary, and for obstructing the investigation by manipulating and altering medical records in an attempt to mislead criminal investigators. Sentencing is scheduled for September.
Also in May, the founder and owner of a healthcare software company was convicted for his role in operating a platform that generated false doctors’ orders and prescriptions to defraud Medicare and other federal health care benefit programs out of more than $1 billion. A sentence hearing is scheduled for August.
The DOJ is having a very active spring in combatting all kinds of fraud, with COVID-19 recovery and healthcare billing fraud seeing lots of convictions and monetary recoupments. The latest news of 455 more defendants being charged will likely continue to fuel successful anti-fraud activities.
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Last Thursday, the Supreme Court made two major rulings in favor of the Trump administration’s immigration efforts. The Court ruled in favor of the administration being able to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian and Syrian migrants in the case of Mullin v. Doe,and upheld the administration’s use of “metering,” a policy that gives the federal government discretion over when and how asylum seekers may seek entry at the U.S.-Mexico border, in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado.
Put together, these decisions will fundamentally alter immigration into the U.S., with fewer waves of asylum seekers and stronger control at the border.
After the TPS ruling, which was decided 6-3 along ideological lines, takes effect in a month, around 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians will lose their work authorization and no longer be protected from deportation. Just ending TPS for Haiti and Syria isn’t the end goal, however. The Trump administration will be looking into TPS cases from several other countries as well, which could affect 1.3 million people. 
America’s immigration policy has become stricter, making the continent look less and less like a haven of escape for people with troubling situations in their home countries. Lower court judges had alleged that decision to end TPS came from a place of bigotry.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson countered those accusations, saying, “Today, the Supreme Court affirmed what President Trump has always maintained: temporary protected status is, by definition, temporary. It was never intended to be a pathway to permanent status or legal residency and it is committed to the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security. The Trump Administration continues to lawfully end the egregious abuses to our immigration system.”
Justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Sonia Sotomayor expressed intense disapproval in a dissent from the court’s opinion, where Sotomayor wrote that “[t]he consequences of today’s decision are predictable. More people will die. More people will attempt to cross the border illegally, and some will make it while others will not.”
She compared the Court’s decision as being as reckless as the treatment of Jews in WWII: “Congress passed the Refugee Act in 1980 because it did not want this country to repeat the mistakes of its past. Yet if the Jewish refugees aboard the M.S. St. Louis — the ship carrying more than 900 people fleeing Nazi Germany that was turned away by the United States and other countries before many of its passengers perished in the Holocaust — “were to arrive at a port of entry on our southern border today, the majority’s interpretation would allow immigration officers to refuse even to consider their asylum claims by physically preventing them from stepping onto U.S. soil.”
Some Republicans criticized the decision as well. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) commented after the ruling, “Just like it is not safe for Americans to go to Haiti, it is not safe to force Haitians to return at this current moment in time.” He added, “With our southern border now secure, we have the ability, and the responsibility, to pursue practical, targeted solutions that uphold the rule of law and recognize the harsh realities on the ground in Haiti.”
In the case the administration’s usage of “metering” which was also decided in a 6-3 vote, the court allowed the federal government to have the ultimate say on when asylum seekers will come into the U.S. giving control to the federal government instead of the will of the person seeking entry. 
Justices Samuel Alito and Sotomayor clashed over the interpretation of the phraseology in the case; “arrives in the United States.” Alito argued that the terminology of “arrived” in the states should be interpreted plainly, referring to a person having physically arrived in the States. He asserted it was illogical to say that someone has arrived in the states and not be physically there. Sotomayor, however, interpreted the phrase should also extend into contexts where someone is close by. 
The ruling gives federal officials the authority to have some people seeking asylum wait outside the U.S. border before they present their asylum claims. 
Put together, these decisions will fundamentally alter immigration into the U.S., with fewer waves of asylum seekers and stronger control at the border. 
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On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, as the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, historian Jon Meacham delivered a revisionist riff on the founding of America. 

He actually began well:

“The Declaration and the Constitution codified the centrality and sanctity of the individual and the equality, not of outcome and not of success, but equality before God and before the bar of history and before the courts of every individual soul.”

So far, so good: a clear rejection of the “equity” mindset that demands equal results rather than equal opportunity under the law. 

But Meacham quickly pivoted:

“There’s a very good case to be made, I think, that we were really founded in 1965. That’s when a multiracial, multiethnic democracy came more fully into being with the Immigration and Nationality Act, with the Voting Rights Act. And so we’re really about 60 years old.”

This is how many on the modern left approach American history. The New York Times’ 1619 Project sought to push the nation’s true founding backward to 1619, declaring the arrival of the first slaves as America’s real beginning. Now, Meacham effectively pushes the founding forward to 1965, to celebrate the Immigration and Nationality Act and Voting Rights Act. 

The common thread is a desire to redefine America’s origins in the service of contemporary progressive priorities.

In Meacham’s telling, the real founding occurred in the Great Society era. The actual Declaration and Constitution get downgraded to a kind of rough draft, with 1965 supplying the corrected, expanded edition.

This fits neatly with the narrative pushed by outlets like the New York Times. As Mara Gay of the Times editorial board suggested to Meacham, today’s multiracial left is the true inheritor of the Founders’ tradition. 

Yet that same left aggressively champions DEI initiatives pushing “equity” — precisely the equality of outcome rather than opportunity that Meacham himself just said the Founders rejected. Meacham correctly identified the principle, but then, by situating the founding in 1965, seemed to hand the inheritance to the very movement working to dismantle it.

@Morning_Joe Historian Meacham on 250th: America ‘Was Really Founded In 1965’ pic.twitter.com/iaGocOFlDR
— Mark Finkelstein (@markfinkelstein) July 1, 2026

As the country prepares to mark 250 years since 1776, expect more attempts to shift the focal point to the 1960s. The actual founding documents, and the generation that risked everything for self-government, deserve better than to be treated as a preliminary sketch awaiting the real work of 1965.

Note: Meacham, an Episcopalian, offered a distinctly Protestant reading of history. He praised the Gutenberg press because “you didn’t have to depend on [Catholic] monks” to do illuminated manuscripts, celebrated the Protestant Reformation, in bringing scripture into the vernacular [from the Catholic Latin], as an important step toward democratization, and decried the old vertical order in which “Popes and princes” ruled over subjects. 

In a discussion of America’s founding principles, many Catholics are apt to view Meacham’s references as gratuitous critiques of their tradition.

Here’s the transcript.

MS NOW
Morning Joe
7/1/26
7:23 am EDT

MIKE BARNICLE: Could you, in your, tell us what your definition today is of being an American? 

JON MEACHAM: The American, right. We are blessed to be in a country that was part of an unfolding drama in the West from Magna Carta and Gutenberg forward.  You know, the invention of movable type, which democratizes information. You didn’t have to depend on monks to do an illuminated manuscript. Anyone could go to a printer shop and print an idea and get it out there. It was the earliest form of the internet. 

The Glorious Revolution in England, which created a balanced constitution between King and Parliament — a vital reminder of how we have to keep those things in balance. The Protestant Reformation, you know, the translation of scripture into the vernacular. This whole idea, this whole shift — that the Constitution and the Declaration were, I think, the clearest political embodiments of the world being organized vertically—where Popes and princes were at the top and we were subjects. 

But the world was becoming more horizontal. We were born with the capacity to determine our own destinies. And what the Declaration and the Constitution did is, they codified the centrality and sanctity of the individual, and the equality—not of outcome and not of success— but equality before God, and before the bar of history, and before the courts, of every individual soul.

MARA GAY: You know, John, we’re in a moment where it feels sometimes as though there’s a great battle that we’re in the midst of, between a pro-democracy movement, of multiracial democracy, that claims to be the inheritor of what the Founding Fathers have given us of this great tradition. And then there are others, and you mentioned blood and soil, who want to limit what that means, and the definition of what it means to be American. 

I guess, I wonder who you think actually is the inheritor of this American tradition, and how we should think about the radicalism of the Founding fathers in this moment?

MEACHAM: You know, we talk about, directly to your point, we talk about this as the 250th anniversary, which it is, of the Second Continental Congress passing the Declaration of Independence, fully beginning the Revolutionary War, which ultimately leads, in 1787 through 1789, to the framing of the Constitution, the inauguration of George Washington, and the beginning of what we would see as a recognizable experiment in self-government. 

Except, that a lot of people weren’t included in that. And in that important sentence about all men being created equal, men had a very particular application in that era. 

It is a very — there’s a very good case to be made, I think, that we were really founded in 1965. That, that’s when a multiracial, multiethnic democracy came more fully into being with the Immigration and Nationality Act, with the Voting Rights Act. 

And so, we’re really about 60 years old.

The prolonged internal turmoil that had long plagued NexG Berhad has finally come to an end as Malay