China Plans Planetary Defense Test By Slamming Mach 26 Spacecraft Into Asteroid
A new paper under peer review by the Chinese-language Journal of Deep Space Exploration lays out an ambitious plan to crash a spacecraft at Mach 26, or 20,000 mph, into a near-Earth asteroid to test new planetary defenses.
The South China Morning Post reports that a team led by Li Mingtao, chief scientist for planetary defense at the China National Space Administration, is planning a mission even more ambitious than NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART).
That mission would slam a spacecraft into 2015 XF261, an asteroid estimated to be about 30 meters wide, in either 2029 or 2030.
“Dart was the first to demonstrate asteroid deflection by kinetic impact in space, but it did not directly change an asteroid’s orbit around the sun relative to Earth, making it different from a real planetary-defense scenario,” the researchers wrote in the report.
The planned impact would be nearly 50% faster than NASA’s 2022 DART, which hit the asteroid Dimorphos at 6.1 kilometers per second, or about Mach 18.
According to the paper, the mission calls for two spacecraft: one interceptor and one observation spacecraft, which would use a Venus gravity assist before rendezvousing with the target. It would deploy a small probe to monitor the collision and measure changes to the asteroid’s orbit, shape, surface, and internal structure.
“Focusing on China’s first asteroid-defense demonstration and verification mission, planned for implementation before 2030, this paper systematically reviews the frontier scientific questions in kinetic-impact asteroid defense to support mission design, implementation, and preliminary scientific research,” the researchers said.
If successful, the test would become China’s first end-to-end demonstration of an operational planetary-defense system. It will help scientists better understand how – and when – a kinetic impactor spacecraft could be used to deflect an Earth-bound asteroid.
Meanwhile, SpaceX will launch the NEO Surveyor asteroid-detection telescope no earlier than September 2027, which will discover and monitor most of the potentially hazardous asteroids and comets that come within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit.
Ohioan John Ream is an accomplished aerospace engineer and brewery owner. He would like to try his hand at making Bourbon. However, federal law prohibits distilling spirited beverages at home. On Monday, he filed a petition in the Supreme Court of the United States asking it to hear his case, which raises important questions about the limits of federal power.
Home distilling is, of course, as American as apple pie, and certainly a lot older. George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate featured a distillery that, by 1799, was producing more than 10,000 gallons of whiskey per year. Nonetheless, Congress barred distilling inside any “dwelling house” or “shed, yard, or inclosure connected with a dwelling house” in what was, by all indications, a sop to the temperance movement. Later, Prohibition killed off what remained of craft spirits production.
The home-distilling ban ultimately survived both Prohibition and repeal, along with the distilled-spirits tax. Under the law, distilling, or even owning a set-up still, in a prohibited location like a home is punishable by fines, property forfeiture, and imprisonment. Given the draconian penalties, it’s little surprise that hobby distilling has floundered while craft brewing and small-batch winemaking, both of which the law allows, have flourished.
Mr. Ream filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging whether that disparity has any lawful basis. The federal government, after all, possesses only the limited powers specified in the constitutional text. States, meanwhile, retain broad authority to legislate for the public good. This vertical separation of powers between the federal government and the states promotes accountability, responsiveness, and ultimately individual freedom.
Or it would, if the Court hadn’t refashioned the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which authorizes Congress to “regulate Commerce…among the several States,” and had long been understood to reach only interstate trade and the channels of such trade. But in the 1942 Wickard v. Filburn ruling, the Supreme Court eviscerated such limitations. At issue was a Soviet-inspired law capping wheat production to “rationalize” the agricultural sector and, by limiting its volume, drive up prices. Roscoe Filburn was an Ohio farmer who exceeded the imposed cap and grew enough wheat to feed both his family and the animals on his farm. The Court held that Congress may regulate any activity that, in aggregate, has a substantial effect on interstate commerce. Because widespread home-production of wheat would prevent Congress from regulating interstate prices, Congress could therefore restrict home production as part of its price-regulation scheme.
For the six decades following Wickard, the Court demurred in enforcing the Commerce Clause’s limits. But by the mid-1990s, the Court appeared ready to chart a new course. First, it struck down the Gun-Free School Zones Act in a 1995 decision, United States v. Lopez, reasoning that merely carrying a gun near a school was too attenuated from interstate commerce to substantially affect it. Then the Court doubled down in United States v. Morrison (2000), which held unconstitutional a federal statute authorizing lawsuits by victims of gender-motivated violence. Morrison pared back Wickard‘s aggregation principle, suggesting that it applies only to inherently economic activities, and refused to defer to Congress’s view on whether local activities substantially affect interstate commerce. Legal observers proclaimed a nascent “federalism revolution.”
It didn’t last. The promise of Lopez and Morrison was cut short by a 2005 decision, Gonzales v. Raich, upholding the Controlled Substances Act’s prohibition on the home cultivation and consumption of marijuana subject to state regulation. Going well beyond Wickard, Raich applied its aggregation principle to noncommercial activity and adopted the maximally deferential “rational basis” standard for assessing Congress’s need to regulate non-interstate activities. Taken on its own terms, Raich all but declares that anything goes with regard to regulation under the Commerce Clause.
One doubts that is the view of the current Court. Justice Thomas is the sole holdover from Raich, from which he dissented. His opinion explained how, if the Raich majority were right, then “the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.” Chief Justice Roberts wielded that same logic in his opinion holding that Obamacare’s “individual mandate” to purchase health insurance was not authorized by the Commerce Clause, and the dissent joined by Justices Thomas and Samuel Alito reasoned similarly. Although the justices appointed by President Trump have not been afforded the occasion to opine on the Commerce Clause’s limits, all three take seriously the Constitution’s original meaning, its structural features, and the enumeration of powers as a constraint on federal power. Expect them to be more skeptical of assertions of federal authority than was the Raich majority.
John Ream’s current challenge to the home-distilling ban takes aim at the excesses of Raich, and would be a meaningful first step toward rekindling the federalism revolution.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld the home-distilling prohibition, ruling that the ban, while not a tax, “is a necessary and proper means of collecting the federal excise tax on spirits,” because stills could be hidden within homes in order to evade taxation.
The more defensible view on this same matter was expressed in a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit decision by Judge Edith Jones issued eleven days earlier. Far from furthering collection of the tax, the ban serves to “reduce revenue by preventing individuals from making distilled spirits” otherwise subject to taxation. It would be improper to allow Congress to “criminalize nearly any at-home conduct only because it has the possibility of concealing taxable activity.”
The split between the Fifth and Sixth Circuits on the home-distilling ban’s constitutionality is reason enough for the Supreme Court to take Ream’s case, resolve this conflict, and provide national uniformity in the law. But there’s also a need for further clarity on the Commerce Clause and Raich‘s continued viability. Given the massive growth of the federal government and its intrusion into every facet of modern life, there are few issues more important or pressing for the Court’s consideration.
Andrew M. Grossman and Robert Alt represent John Ream in his litigation and also the plaintiffs who prevailed before the Fifth Circuit. Mr. Alt is President and CEO of The Buckeye Institute, where Mr. Grossman is a Senior Legal Fellow.
Below is a ranking of states based on per-person health care spending:
Rank
State
Per-Capita Health Care Spending
1
Alaska
$14,044
2
District of Columbia
$13,865
3
South Dakota
$12,451
4
New York
$12,221
5
West Virginia
$12,055
6
Delaware
$11,987
7
Massachusetts
$11,985
8
North Dakota
$11,667
9
Vermont
$11,493
10
Indiana
$11,071
11
California
$11,054
12
Maine
$10,913
13
New Hampshire
$10,682
14
Connecticut
$10,639
15
Minnesota
$10,567
16
New Jersey
$10,468
17
Pennsylvania
$10,262
18
Ohio
$10,202
19
Nebraska
$10,192
20
Louisiana
$10,148
21
Wisconsin
$10,079
22
Missouri
$10,036
23
Kentucky
$9,964
24
Oregon
$9,931
25
Illinois
$9,895
26
Rhode Island
$9,864
27
Hawaii
$9,808
28
Montana
$9,747
29
Washington
$9,693
30
Wyoming
$9,640
31
Florida
$9,545
32
Maryland
$9,456
33
Virginia
$9,123
34
Kansas
$9,066
35
Oklahoma
$9,052
36
Michigan
$9,023
37
Colorado
$8,871
38
Tennessee
$8,761
39
North Carolina
$8,744
40
Georgia
$8,680
41
Iowa
$8,660
42
Arkansas
$8,562
43
Arizona
$8,556
44
New Mexico
$8,469
45
Mississippi
$8,135
46
Idaho
$8,078
47
Alabama
$7,980
48
Texas
$7,807
49
South Carolina
$7,741
50
Nevada
$7,536
51
Utah
$7,233
Alaska spent nearly twice as much per resident on health care as Utah in 2024.
Several Northeastern states, along with South Dakota and Washington, D.C., also ranked near the top. Meanwhile, much of the Mountain West and South recorded below-average spending.
Why Do Some States Spend More Than Others?
Higher spending does not necessarily mean residents receive more medical care.
Numerous studies have found that differences in prices, especially for hospital and physician services, explain much more of the variation in U.S. health spending than differences in how often people use care. Administrative costs, provider wages, and regional labor markets also play major roles.
State-specific factors matter as well. Alaska’s remote geography and limited provider network make delivering care significantly more expensive, while states with older populations often spend more because seniors tend to use more medical services.
Broader insurance coverage can also increase the share of care captured in personal consumption expenditures.
Health Care Spending Continues to Climb
Nationally, health care expenditures continue to rise.
CMS projects U.S. health spending will approach $9 trillion annually by 2034, driven by increased enrollment in Medicare and Medicaid, along with continued growth in health care prices. Despite already spending more per person than any comparable high-income country, the U.S. is expected to devote an even larger share of its economy to health care over the next decade.
International comparisons show the U.S. spends substantially more on health care than other high-income countries, largely because medical services cost more rather than because Americans use dramatically more care.
As national spending continues to rise, the nearly twofold gap between states highlights how geography remains a major factor in what Americans ultimately spend on health care.
Topline:Since 2019, school districts across 24 states and Puerto Rico have lost $225 million to fraud confirmed by the U.S. Department of Education inspector general’s semiannual report to Congress. No more than $67 million has been recovered.
Key facts: Open the Books and the State Financial Officers Foundation documented74 instances of confirmed school fraud, averaging over $3 million each. There are far more that have gone unprosecuted or undetected.
Florida and Illinois schools each had the most instances of fraud with 11.
Indiana lost the most money – $44 million – due to inflated attendance numbers that increased state funding to two schools. The schools’ founder then allegedly sent the money to companies he owned. The schools closed in 2019, and four alleged conspirators were charged in 2024.
At Broward County Public Schools in Florida, information officer Anthony Hunter allegedly used district funds to buy $17 million worth of school supplies from a friend’s business, ignoring the competitive bidding process. In return, the friend hired Hunter and his son to work a security job and sold Hunter a house for $150,000 below market value, state prosecutors claim
Chicago Public Schools received $1 million of federal grants meant for Native American students, using an application that included more than 1,000 students of South Asian descent. The district was unable to verify how many students were actually in the program, and agreed to repay the money.
Fraud arguably hits small school districts the hardest because they have fewer budgetary resources to begin with. When Janis Bucknor, former head of Community Preparatory Academy in California, admitted to stealing $3 million from the school over five years, it amounted to one-third of all the school’s state and federal funding.
Bucknor spent $220,600 of the money on Disney vacations and also funded her internet shopping and private school tuition for her kids. She was sentenced to three years of home detention and ordered to repay the money.
Summary: The government loses hundreds of billions of dollars to fraud annually, but redirecting money away from children’s education is especially egregious.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com
India expects to build domestically five small modular reactors (SMRs) by 2033, India’s Atomic Energy Minister, Jitendra Singh, said. The five SMRs would be part of India’s push to accelerate nuclear power capacity installations over the next two decades, the minister told lawmakers in a written reply to questions as carried by local media.
The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), India’s premier nuclear research facility under the Department of Atomic Energy, is currently developing a 220-MW Bharat Small Modular Reactor, a 55-MW reactor, and a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor designed to produce hydrogen, Singh said quoted by OilPrice.com.
As per India’s nuclear energy roadmap, the country aims to boost its installed nuclear power capacity from 8.78 gigawatts (GW) now to about 22 GW by the 2031-32 fiscal year, the minister said.
India goal is to boost its installed nuclear power capacity to 100 GW by 2047, up from just 8.8 GW now. This would require as much as 19.28 trillion Indian rupees, or $200 billion at current exchange rates, of cumulative capital, a panel set up by India’s power ministry said in the ‘roadmap to 100 GW’ report last year.
At the end of 2025, India’s government approved the landmark Atomic Energy Bill, which allows private companies to invest in its nuclear energy industry for the first time, as the country looks to boost nuclear power capacity tenfold within two decades.
The so-called SHANTI (Sustainable Harnessing of Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India) Act could drive huge investments from private companies in India’s nuclear energy sector.
Yet, Indian state-owned NTPC Ltd, the biggest utility in the country, is expected to account for 30% of the new nuclear power capacity installations by 2047.
NTPC, currently the only nuclear power generator in India, is now looking to acquire stakes in uranium assets globally to secure fuel for the expected massive expansion of India’s nuclear power capacity.
Through what he envisions as a federal declaration, consenting adults would be allowed to buy and sell homemade and farmstead food directly, without the costly commercial infrastructure and cumbersome government regulation currently in place.
Salatin’s mission reflects a push among homesteaders and independent farmers to cultivate local food networks, where food is grown and raised without chemicals and consumers can gain a more transparent connection to how food is produced.
The Next 15 Years
At its core, food emancipation and local food networks are about neighbors feeding neighbors, sidestepping a system many no longer trust.
Salatin told The Epoch Times that the American food system is at a historic inflection point. He points to an aging farm class; the average American farmer is now around 60 years old.
Around half of U.S. agricultural equity is expected to change hands in the next 15 years, he said.
“That’s the most unprecedented peaceful transfer in modern history,” he said.
In 2025, Americans spent 56.3 percent of their food dollars on items prepared outside the home, at restaurants, at fast-food chains, and through takeout delivery services. Overall, out-of-home food spending reached a record $1.41 trillion out of a total $2.51 trillion in national food spending, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Meanwhile, the farmer’s share of the retail food dollar after production expenses has plummeted to roughly 5.8 cents today, according to the USDA. That figure was 40 cents in the mid-20th century.
The idea of food emancipation is simple: Let small producers legally and freely sell directly to the people who want their food.
Salatin notes that the real barrier to young people entering farming is not access to land alone, but the inability to profit from small-scale, value-added food production under existing rules.
He illustrates the gap with a simple calculation.
On a couple of acres, a farmer might raise 1,200 pastured chickens, selling them as whole birds or cut-up parts at an average of about $30 per bird, yielding $36,000 in gross income, he said.
If that same farmer could legally turn those birds into homemade chicken pot pies – free of dyes, seed oils, and industrial additives – and market them as high-quality convenience food, the average value per bird could jump to around $200, he explained, turning the same flock into $240,000 in revenue on the same land.
Once a farmer moves from raw ingredients to prepared foods, the regulatory threshold explodes, going from a home kitchen with existing equipment to what he described as “a half-million-dollar requirement to sell one chicken pot pie.”
Saving The Family Farm
Pennsylvania dairy farmer Edwin Shank told The Epoch Times that his family nearly lost a four-generation farm after expanding from 40 to 300 cows under university-driven advice that prioritized volume above all else.
Despite filling a tractor-trailer with milk every two days, the Shanks were going bankrupt.
Milk checks came once a month – whatever the processor felt like paying. His banker warned that if nothing changed in three to four months, the farm would be gone.
A family portrait from that period, he said, looks idyllic – flowers, six children, a tidy yard – but behind the smiles they “were losing the farm.”
“Inside the fence, hope is outside the fence,” he said, quoting a conventional dairyman who described it as “a hard time to be a farmer these days.”
The Shanks’ response was to step outside the fence.
They converted their operation to certified organic; then, with borrowed money and little capital, they began selling raw milk directly from the farm under Pennsylvania’s permit system. They couldn’t afford a modern facility, so they bought used refrigerated semi-trailers – or reefers – for a few thousand dollars each and bolted them together into a makeshift cold-storage complex.
Business started to flourish after a phone call from New Jersey. A mother in Trenton asked if Shank could deliver raw milk across the state line. Legally, he could not, but he took a cue from Salatin.
“I told her, ‘I can’t deliver to you alone, but if you have enough friends, I can meet you at the state line,'” Shank recalled. The customer organized five families. That was enough for Shank to load his minivan and make the three-hour trip.
He drove down I-95 and reached the exit ramp to New Hope.
“Right there, it went through me,” he said. “God, are you telling me something?”
That first drop point grew into a network of 55 delivery locations. Shank’s business, The Family Cow, ships raw dairy, grass-fed beef, pastured pork and poultry, and other regenerative products five days a week to thousands of households.
‘Survival Of The Collaborators’
Around 90 percent of the business is now online, Shank said, with about 10 percent sold through a new on-farm retail store and cafe that offers sourdough-based sandwiches piled high with organic, grass-fed meats and slathered in real butter.
Shank abandoned the idea that his farm had to produce everything it sold. He opted to develop what he calls “survival of the collaborators.”
Multiple family farms share production.
Two dairies supply raw milk, seven families produce pastured eggs, and 11 families raise grass-fed beef. Other families specialize in pastured pork, turkeys, and piglets.
The Family Cow brought aboard three young families to raise pastured poultry. The farm provided the market, butchering, and marketing know-how, while the families provided the labor and land. In their first year, the group produced 10,000 chickens.
Shank is open to suggestions from entrepreneurs. A mother and daughter approached him, offering water kefir priced at $5 per jar. Initially, Shank acknowledged that he doubted customers would pay.
Within six months, they sold 10,000 jars through The Family Cow network, Shank said.
Getting Healthy
Max Kane, a raw milk activist and farmer in Wisconsin, reversed a life-threatening illness by changing his diet and has emerged as a leading voice in the fight for food sovereignty, raw milk access, and local farm-based economies.
Diagnosed with degenerative Crohn’s disease at 11, he spent more than a decade cycling through surgeries, supplements, and medications with little improvement. The Chicago native rejected the conventional medical path and switched to an all-unprocessed, farm-direct diet from local producers. That restored his health and allowed him to leave federal disability assistance and become what he calls “a functional, contributing member of society” in his mid-20s.
Today, Kane operates a 211-acre farm in southwest Wisconsin and a raw milk buying club that has served Chicago-area families for around two decades.
In 2009, he said, the USDA, Food and Drug Administration, and state authorities tried to put him in jail for 18 months over his raw milk deliveries to Chicago. The experience spurred his advocacy for legalizing raw milk and reinforced his view that Americans must have the freedom to opt out of the industrial food system and to form private food networks between farmers and consumers.
He created Farm Match, an online marketplace he described as “Etsy for local food.” The platform connects consumers directly with vetted farms and buying clubs.
Homesteading at any level – whether it involves full rural homesteads, balcony gardens in urban high-rises, or suburban backyard gardens – is on the rise because of the failures of the current industrial food system, defined by ultra-processed foods and unpredictable supply chains, Kane told The Epoch Times.
Industrial supply chains lack true transparency and traceability, which allows ingredients to be legally hidden from labels and makes it difficult for consumers to understand what they are eating or to track the source of contamination when something goes wrong, Kane noted.
Economically, this “takes the money out of the local economy and sends it far away, undermining rural communities and small producers,” he said.
“Simply put, the food people eat is the single biggest determinant of their ability to perform their life, no matter what they do for a living,” Kane said. “If citizens cannot legally build private food systems that nourish their bodies and minds, they risk becoming permanently dependent on an infrastructure that leaves them sick, disempowered, and economically sidelined.”
Sally Fallon Morell agrees. The founding president of the Weston A. Price Foundation – a nonprofit that promotes traditional diets, whole foods, and the consumption of animal fats – shared a simple grassroots strategy that bypasses corporate supply chains and empowers small, pasture-based producers during her discussion with The Epoch Times.
“If we asked people to spend half their food dollars on direct purchases from farms, it would change everything, and we’d get back to the kind of farming that we want to promote,” Fallon Morell said.
Her vision includes buying raw milk, eggs, and meat directly from regenerative farmers, and supporting local artisans and small-scale producers of sourdough bread, sauerkraut, and other traditionally prepared foods.
This encourages interdependence and local networks, she added.
“The goal is a resilient local web of producers and eaters, not a homestead cut off from the broader world,” she said.
These Are The States Where Speeding Is Most Likely To Kill You
Montana has the highest rate of speeding-related traffic deaths per capita in the United States, underscoring a reality that runs counter to how most people think about dangerous driving, according to a new study by Siegfried and Jensen.
While speeding is often associated with crowded urban highways and aggressive commuters, the greatest danger appears to exist on long, open rural roads where higher speed limits, lighter traffic, and longer emergency response times can turn a single mistake into a deadly crash.
Speeding claimed 11,288 lives across the country in 2024, making it the second-leading cause of fatal crashes behind only alcohol-impaired driving. It was a contributing factor in roughly 29% of all traffic fatalities, meaning nearly one out of every three people killed on American roads died in a crash where speed played a role.
A new analysis by Siegfried & Jensen ranked states by speeding deaths after adjusting for population. Montana finished first, followed by South Carolina, Wyoming, New Mexico, and North Carolina. Many of these states have similar characteristics, including vast stretches of rural highway, relatively high posted speed limits, and significant distances between towns, hospitals, and emergency responders.
The findings challenge the conventional wisdom that speeding is primarily an urban problem driven by congestion or road rage. Instead, the data suggests rural highways may be even more dangerous. Drivers often feel comfortable traveling well above the speed limit on open roads, but when crashes occur at those speeds, the consequences are far more severe. With fewer barriers, longer response times, and higher impact forces, accidents that might be survivable elsewhere are much more likely to become fatal.
There is also a seasonal pattern to these crashes. Fatal speeding accidents climb sharply during the warmer months, with May, June, and September each recording close to 1,000 deadly crashes involving excessive speed. The trend remains elevated throughout late summer and into early fall, suggesting increased travel, vacations, and heavier highway traffic all contribute to the higher death toll.
Despite decades of public awareness campaigns, stricter enforcement, and tougher penalties, speeding remains one of the nation’s deadliest driving behaviors. Unlike some other traffic risks that have gradually improved through advances in vehicle safety technology, excessive speed continues to claim more than 11,000 lives every year.
The report also notes that speeding’s true role in fatal crashes is likely even larger than official statistics indicate. A crash is only classified as speeding-related when investigators determine a driver was speeding, racing, or traveling too fast for road or weather conditions. In many serious collisions, speed may contribute to the outcome without ever being officially recorded as the primary cause.
The broader findings suggest geography plays an enormous role in roadway safety. While the country’s largest states record the highest raw number of traffic fatalities, smaller and more rural states consistently post the highest death rates after adjusting for population. Long travel distances, limited transportation alternatives, and high-speed rural roads appear to create a particularly dangerous combination.
The analysis serves as another reminder that speeding is far more than a traffic violation. It remains one of the leading causes of preventable deaths in the United States, and the places where drivers feel safest putting their foot down may ultimately be where the risks are greatest.
A man on the FBI’s Most Wanted Fraudsters list, accused of a scheme to defraud Medicare of $547 million, was arrested by authorities on Monday.
The foreign national, Khalid Satary, 54, owned and operated multiple diagnostic testing laboratories in the United States between 2016 and 2019 that billed Medicare for “expensive and medically unnecessary genetic tests,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a July 21 statement.
Satary is accused of conspiring with several patient recruiters and telemarketing services to generate unnecessary cancer genetic test samples that were reimbursed by Medicare at the rate of $10,000 to $20,000 per sample.
To run the operation, Satary allegedly paid millions of dollars in bribes and illegal kickbacks to patient recruiters and doctors.
The defendant was initially indicted in 2019. However, Satary was later released on bond, with the condition that he doesn’t work in the healthcare sector. While on bond, Satary allegedly conspired with labs in Texas to continue submitting fraudulent genetic testing claims to Medicare.
A federal arrest warrant was issued against him in December 2022. However, Satary failed to appear for a court hearing and was believed to have escaped the United States. On July 20 this year, the defendant was arrested in the Middle East with a fake Mexican passport using a fake name. He was then transferred to U.S. authorities.
The Most Wanted Fraudsters list was announced by FBI Director Kash Patel last month. The White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud partnered with the FBI to compile the list, according to a June 19 X post from Vice President JD Vance, the task force’s chairman.
The task force was established through a March 16 executive order signed by President Donald Trump, which said criminals and other individuals were exploiting various benefit programs intended to provide American citizens with a safety net.
Trump ordered the task force to “coordinate and accelerate a comprehensive national strategy to stop fraud, waste, and abuse within Federal benefit programs.”
One of those on the list, Said Abdullahi Ereg, surrendered to law enforcement on June 10, according to the FBI and federal prosecutors. Ereg is accused of laundering millions of dollars from a program that aimed to feed needy children during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Another individual on the list, Herbert Leon Kimble, accused of $1.2 billion Medicare fraud, was arrested on June 11 in the Philippines.
In its latest statement, the DOJ said that Satary has been charged with various fraud-related crimes, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and paying bribes and illegal healthcare kickbacks. He faces a multi-decade prison term if convicted.
“The arrest of Khalid Ahmed Satary and return to the U.S. is the third Most Wanted Fraudster capture from this FBI and our partners in just five weeks—continuing the historic run of success for this new initiative,” Patel said in the statement.
“This is another subject who exploited a program dedicated to helping our most vulnerable and instead stole for himself. Satary has been on the run since 2022, but we got him thanks to great work and coordination from the interagency and our overseas partners.”
The Epoch Times was unable to reach Satary’s legal representative.
According to the FBI’s website, Satary is one among nine individuals currently mentioned on the Most Wanted Fraudsters list.
One of the individuals is a naturalized U.S. citizen of Somali origin wanted for allegedly being part of a fraud scheme that exploited the federal Child Nutrition Program during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Another individual, a female from Jamaica, is linked to a scheme that fraudulently obtained more than $32 million from COVID-19 relief funds.
A third person, a U.S. citizen, is wanted for alleged involvement in a mail fraud scheme in Georgia. The man allegedly defrauded at least $10 million from his victims.
Meanwhile, on June 23, the DOJ announced that a coordinated enforcement action involving a whole-of-government approach led to the arrests of 455 individuals for their alleged role in healthcare fraud and opioid abuse schemes.
The schemes, which involved more than $6.5 billion in false claims, posed “significant patient harm,” including death. Among the arrested were two Estonians connected to a $10.6 billion fraud scheme.
Seven Pipeline Projects That Could Break Iran’s Grip On Hormuz Chokepoint
Brent crude futures topped $100 a barrel (Read RBC note) as disruption at the Strait of Hormuz spread to Bab el-Mandeb in the southern Red Sea. Combined with intensifying Black Sea fighting between Russia and Ukraine, the widening chokepoint crisis has put the energy complex and broader global commodities market on edge.
“The curve on Brent and WTI is getting again very steep backwardated compared to when the diplomatic route to solve the Middle East conflict was on the table and seemed to be making progress,” UBS analyst Claudio Martucci wrote in a note.
The reemergence of chokepoint chaos in the Strait of Hormuz, now spreading to Bab el-Mandeb, has provided Gulf states with a critical reminder of the risks associated with maritime export routes. This disruption is accelerating efforts to bypass vulnerable chokepoints and spurring a major infrastructure boom.
At least seven major pipeline projects are under construction, being planned or under discussion, according to the Associated Press.
Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline already provides the region’s most important alternative, carrying crude from Abqaiq to Yanbu on the Red Sea.
The UAE has also increased oil shipments to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman, bypassing Hormuz. Together, the Fujairah route and Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline had between 3.5 million and 5.5 million barrels a day of spare capacity before the war, according to the EIA. Both pipelines are now operating near capacity.
Even Dubai’s state-owned ports and logistics giant, DP World, is planning to bypass the critical waterway with a new container port on the UAE’s east coast in Fujairah.
The UAE has plans to expand Fujairah’s export capacity, and more recently, the US is backing talks to revive an oil pipeline from Iraq to Syria’s Mediterranean coast. This would create yet another export route that would entirely bypass the Hormuz chokepoint and, in turn, erode Tehran’s leverage over shipping traffic.
What’s key to understand here is that seven projects by U.S.-aligned Gulf states are set to rewire energy flows in the Gulf region, which will only erode Tehran’s leverage over Hormuz.
The Justice Department has withdrawn subpoenas for three reporters from The New York Times following criticism from a federal judge.
U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian indicated on July 23 that he would have granted the request from the newspaper to reject the subpoenas if the Justice Department had not withdrawn them.
Subramanian said that the government was required to ensure that it could not obtain the information it sought from any other sources before subpoenaing journalists.
“Subpoenas are not the first thing you do; they are the last thing you do,” the judge said.
The Justice Department issued subpoenas to three journalists at The New York Times on July 10 after the newspaper published a report on alleged concerns about the new Air Force One, the plane used by the president, which was donated by the Qatari government.
The report alleged that the new aircraft lacked advanced security features, including anti-missile capabilities. It also said the Secret Service had urged President Donald Trump to use the old Air Force One as he departed from the NATO summit in Turkey earlier this month.
U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton, who was nominated by Trump to be the next director of national intelligence, issued the subpoenas.
During the July 23 hearing, Subramanian questioned government lawyers regarding the steps they took in their investigation. He cited rules protecting against violations of the First Amendment and said the department’s actions had turned the law “on its head.”
“When you see something like this, if this were a civil proceeding, what I would normally do is ask the parties to show causes why sanctions should not be issued,” the judge said.
A Justice Department spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email on July 23 that Subramanian threatened the government attorneys with sanctions unless the subpoenas were withdrawn. The spokesperson said the judge also blocked the government from “presenting the meticulous process of this investigation.”
“The grand jury has a right to hear testimony from all material witnesses in a federal criminal investigation,” the spokesperson told The Epoch Times. “This judge’s conduct overrides clear longstanding principles and common sense-blocking the grand jury from receiving core evidence in a national security investigation.”
Despite withdrawing the subpoenas on Thursday, the Justice Department spokesperson confirmed that the investigation remained ongoing.
“Make no mistake, this investigation remains ongoing, and we will pursue justice against those threatening national security by leaking classified information, a serious federal crime,” the spokesperson added.
In a statement on July 11, David McCraw, the senior vice president and deputy general counsel for The New York Times, criticized the subpoenas as an “attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.”
The Justice Department’s rapid response account responded by saying that the department had an important role to ensure that people entrusted with classified information did not share it. “To be clear, reporters are not the targets; those leaking classified information are,” the department said.
On July 15, The New York Times asked a court to toss out the grand jury subpoenas. In a motion unsealed on July 20, the paper also said the Justice Department issued subpoenas to obtain phone records of the publication’s journalists and some of their family members.
“Two of the subpoenas seek records beginning on January 1, 2026, long before the events that are purportedly the basis for the Department’s investigation,” the publication wrote in a letter. “That timeframe strongly suggests that the Department is using this investigation not to focus on any purported concerns arising from the July 8 and 9 articles, but instead to forage for information about the Journalists’ source relationships more broadly.”
During his confirmation before the Senate Intelligence Committee on July 15, Clayton maintained that the Southern District of New York’s office followed protocol when issuing the subpoenas.
“I’m confident that the procedures that we have in place to protect the First Amendment and protect the freedom of the press and not result in intimidation of journalists or the like were followed,” he said.
