Better in their words…

JEFF CHILDERS APR 10, 2026

Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday! Your end-of-week roundup includes: Kennedy’s exciting bureaucratic jiu-jitsu on ACIP; California’s eye-watering $267 million hospice fraud bust (and Newsom’s tell); Melania revives Epstein story while making Democrats own it; and Trump’s historic Medicare sequestration that nobody’s screaming about — because fraud changed the narrative.

ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY

Call it the Kennedy two-step. Yesterday, the New York Times alarmingly reported, “New Charter Allows RFK Jr. to Reclaim Vaccine Policy Despite Court Ruling.” The sub-headline explained, “The charter, published on Thursday, alters the makeup and purpose of the panel, opening the door for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to reclaim his revision of national vaccine policy.”

Last year, RFK Jr. fired all 17 independent experts who had previously served on ACIP —the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the panel that sets national vaccine policy— and replaced them with his own selections, including several scientists who share his view that vaccines shouldn’t be installed in hand sanitizer stations.

In March, two days before a critical ACIP committee meeting, Boston U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy (Obama appointee) ruled that HHS had violated longstanding procedures governing the committee’s membership under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The committee was “unlawfully reconstituted,” the judge found, because certain committee members lacked the right vaccine credentials. He vaccinated the committee against itself, voiding every one of its decisions to date.

Corporate media was rapturous. MAHA people were anguished. Certain now-suspended committee members went on podcasts and called it doom. The HHS folks were tight-lipped. They would not say what they planned to do about it.

On Thursday, the CDC —now under the temporary leadership of my friend Jay Bhattacharya— unexpectedly published a brand new ACIP charter that completely revised the committee’s purpose. The new charter removed the strict scientific expertise requirements that formed the basis of Judge Murphy’s ruling —replacing them with “geographical balance”— and, crucially, expanded the committee’s mandate to include vaccine safety surveillance and adverse event review. It also widened the qualification domains to include biostatistics, toxicology, immunology, family medicine, and nursing.

The HHS spokesperson called it “routine statutory requirements” that “do not signal any broader policy shift.” That is technically accurate yet functionally misleading. Certainly, the institutional players don’t believe it. Richard Hughes, a lawyer for the medical groups that sued to shut Kennedy’s committee down, called it “a calculated effort to shift the focus and balance of the committee to advance an anti-vaccine agenda.”

Pro-jab people saw it, even if MAHA didn’t. For example:

The Times’ foolish article —which was not about disease in general or even any particular vaccines— referred to “polio” four times. I believe that is now a mandatory part of the Times’ style guide. Every story about the health agencies must reference polio at least four times. It also included an equally mandatory quote from former CDC monkeypox czar and Satanic bondage aficionado Demetre Daskalakis, who called it an outrage or something. 🙄

For purposes of length, I won’t bother fisking the article’s ridiculous claims, although it would be fun. For example, polio has nothing whatever to do with the vaccine committee’s purpose. It only appears in the article to manufacture fear, but the reporter was too chicken to draw the logical argument to a close. They implied that if Kennedy “gets away with it,” everybody will get polio. But that is so ridiculous even the Times couldn’t come out and say it. They just left it for the comments. Whatever.

💉 I am more interested in pointing out the genius of Kennedy’s maneuver. Instead of appealing Judge Murphy’s micromanagement, HHS took it to the next level. Don’t think our candidates’ resumes comply? Fine, we’ll just revise the committee’s entire purpose. And now the charter expands to include vaccine safety and jab injuries. So there. Want to go again?

It was a power move. HHS didn’t fight the judge on his chosen ground. HHS switched battlefields.

It reminds me of a rookie mistake young lawyers make. Occasionally, someone will sue your client, and you discover their complaint is riddled with mistakes. The temptation is to pounce, and move to dismiss the lawsuit over its flaws. The trouble is, judges will usually agree, but will almost always let the plaintiff amend their complaint to fix the mistakes.

In other words, while it feels satisfying to point out all the errors, doing so only helps the plaintiff improve their complaint. It is much better to keep your legal powder dry, wait, and only raise the issues later, like at trial, when it is too late to fix. But that takes discipline and patience.

The pharma plaintiffs fell into the same trap. They sued HHS too early. It gave Kennedy the chance to amend the ACIP committee. It’s much more MAHA now. That’s bureaucratic jiu-jitsu: using your opponent’s strength against them.

💉 Meanwhile, following the March setback and HHS’s failure to immediately appeal, doomscrollers and black pillers had a circus on social media and Substack, darkly accusing Secretary Kennedy of selling out, up to and including accusing him of losing on purpose. Don’t make me cite examples. These people really need to get a grip on themselves. If they’d only waited a little longer to see what HHS would do, they would have seen it was even better than appealing.

Trying to run HHS with MAHA questioning every single decision must feel like a bunch of workmen excavating an old sewer line on a hot, cloudless Florida afternoon, with a group of elderly HOA board members standing nearby demanding answers every two minutes. Why are you using a wrench? What’s that stuff coming out of the pipe? Don’t you think you should stop it up faster?

Please stop distracting them. Just let the men work.

🔥🔥🔥

The fraud arrests are beginning to come in a flood. As a sign that Democrats have given up denying the fraud exists, they are now joining in on the prosecutions. Yesterday, CBS reported, “Arrests made in California fraud crackdown targeting LA hospice ring allegedly behind $267 million in bogus charges.”

If you are looking for a reliable, recession-proof business model in the great state of California, you might want to consider opening a hospice.

Traditionally, a hospice is a place where medical professionals provide comfort and care to people who are terminally ill. But in Southern California, thanks to the miracle of government bureaucracy, a hospice is a place where you can bill the taxpayers millions of dollars to provide end-of-life care to people who are currently out playing pickleball.

This week, federal and state authorities announced a massive crackdown on health care fraud in Los Angeles. They busted a sprawling network of fake hospices that allegedly bilked Medicare and Medi-Cal out of more than $300 million combined.

The feds called their takedown “Operation Never Say Die,” which is an excellent name for a James Bond movie, but a slightly disturbing name for an investigation into end-of-life care.

According to the Justice Department, these enterprising entrepreneurs figured out that the government is essentially a giant ATM that never asks for a debit card. So, they opened up sham hospices and started billing Medicare for “patients” who were not actually dying.

How did they find these patients? In one case, according to the feds, a nurse named Lolita Minerd (who ran a facility called Topanga Hospice Care) simply approached a couple at a local market. She and her ‘team’ visited the couple at home and offered them a deal: Sign up for our hospice, and we will give you $300 a month in cash, handed over in a white envelope. They also threw in some free nutritional shakes and a wheelchair, just to sweeten the pot.

The couple, who were perfectly healthy, agreed. Why not? It’s like joining a Costco rewards program, except instead of getting a discount on bulk toilet paper, you get cash and a free set of wheels.

Topanga Hospice was paid $8.5 million and had a “non-death discharge rate” of 85 percent. Since you are probably not medical experts, a hospice is generally supposed to have a non-death discharge rate of roughly zero. If 85% of terminal patients are walking out the front door to go to the Sizzler early bird special, Lolita was either performing actual Biblical miracles, or committing massive federal fraud.

Topanga is just the tip of the iceberg of fraud.

Getting in on the action, State Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the dismantling of an even bigger ring that defrauded California out of $267 million. This group didn’t even go to the market. They went onto the dark web, bought the stolen identities of people who didn’t even live in California, and enrolled them in Medi-Cal. Then, they used “straw owners” to buy 14 different hospice companies and started billing the state for end-of-life care for people who a) weren’t dying, b) didn’t live in California, and c) had no idea they were even in a Los Angeles hospice.

Over the life of this $267 million scheme, Attorney General Bonta noted, “not a single legitimate hospice service was ever provided.” One wonders what kind of monitoring the state must have been doing. In California, “monitoring” apparently means looking the other way.

Not one service! You have to admire the sheer, brazen efficiency of it. They didn’t even bother buying a stethoscope or a box of Band-Aids. They just set up a router, logged onto the dark web, and started printing taxpayer money. When authorities finally raided their locations, they seized two handguns and over $757,000 in cash. Because nothing says “compassionate palliative care” quite like a duffel bag of stacked hundreds and a couple of Glocks.

Of course, oleaginous Governor Gavin “Hairdo” Newsom immediately weighed in on the bust, proudly declaring that California holds fraudsters accountable. Now it does. He then added, completely unprompted, “Since these are state charges, Donald Trump cannot pardon these individuals in exchange for campaign donations.” City Journal, April 1st:

Thank you, Governor! It is comforting to know that even when the Golden State is bleeding hundreds of millions of dollars to dark-web identity bandits running fake death-wards, its leaders are laser-focused on the real issue: emitting cheap political soundbites against the President.

The truth is, California’s Medi-Cal system is so bloated, so poorly managed, and so fundamentally broken that you could probably bill them for providing hospice care to a frisky golden retriever, and the check would clear in three to five business days.

Still, I find Fraud Emperor Newsom’s modified tone to be highly significant. Democrats have clearly decided that denying fraud is a losing position. But they aren’t out of the woods yet. Their problem is that California’s generous state courts will sentence the fraudsters like they were Summer of Love shoplifters, which is to say, let them go with a stern warning.

Meanwhile, the DOJ’s fraud-prosecution pace is accelerating. There are too many arrest stories to keep up with. This is going to be massive.

🔥🔥🔥

Yesterday, the BBC reported an extraordinary White House statement, headlined, “Melania Trump denies ties to Jeffrey Epstein and urges hearing for survivors.”

The rare public statement could be described as having two parts: a legal defamation warning, and a call for transparency.

The First Lady read a prepared statement in which she completely denied any connection with Jeffrey Epstein, including the widely circulated claim (by Democrats) that Epstein originally introduced Melania to the President. “My attorneys and I have fought these baseless lies with success, and will continue to maintain my sound reputation without hesitation. To date, several individuals and organizations have been legally obligated to publicly apologize and retract their lies about me, including the Daily Beast, James Carville, and Harper Collins UK.”

It’s true. Last August, for instance, Democrat operative James “Ragin’ Cajun” Carville posted a podcast video repeating Michael Wolff’s debunked allegation that Melania and Trump met through Epstein’s modeling agency. Melania’s lawyers sent him a demand letter. Shortly thereafter, Carville opened his podcast saying, “We took a look at what they complained about, and we took down the video and edited out those comments from the episode. I also take back these statements and apologize.” Womp.

Now all media actors are on notice. The First Lady isn’t playing. Stop lying about me, or else.

🔥 But then she went further. She called for survivor hearings. In other words, for more transparency.

“Epstein was not alone,” Melania said. “Several prominent male executives resigned from their powerful positions after this matter became widely politicized. We must work openly and transparently to uncover the truth. I call on Congress to provide the women who have been victimized by Epstein with a public hearing specifically centered around the survivors. Give these victims their opportunity to testify under oath in front of Congress with the power of sworn testimony. Each and every woman should have her day to tell her story in public if she wishes. Then her testimony should be permanently entered into the Congressional record.”

It was exactly what the “survivor groups” have been demanding. Time on the record before Congress. Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) has long demanded Congressional hearings with survivors. She’s been pushing the House Oversight Committee to hold exactly the kind of hearing Melania just called for. But after Melania’s statement, an anonymous group of “survivors” immediately pivoted to saying they don’t want to testify. Yesterday’s Guardian headline:

Now they say they’ve already done their part, even though the anonymous survivors never complained when Representative Pressley demanded survivor hearings. Meanwhile, named survivors, like Lisa Phillips, went on CNN last night praising Melania’s statement as “huge” and noting that “nobody’s ever said that.”

And, just a second. I’m sorry, but I must ask: what’s with calling them survivors? None of the victims died. The only person who died was Jeffrey Epstein. Is that how they’re survivors? They outlived Jeffrey? Oh, never mind.

For some reason, the BBC topped its story with a full video of Melania’s statement. It’s like they didn’t quite know what to make of it or how to frame it. It came right out of left field. More importantly, it revived a flagging story. NBC’s Garrett Haake tweeted that the speech was “breathing new life into the Epstein saga.” Fox noted that Melania’s statement resurrected the Epstein story “just when it finally seemed to be fading, as the country’s attention is riveted on the Iran war and its shaky ceasefire.”

The tentative media narrative is currently hinting at some kind of secret schism between Melania and Trump; a disagreement to which neither has hinted, but drawing the conclusion that Melania is somehow working against her husband, who, the media believes, would prefer the story die in prison. (For example, Reuters ran a one-sentence story headlined, “Trump tells MS Now he did not ‘know anything about’ Melania’s statement.”)

I highly doubt any secret schism exists. More likely, Trump isn’t ready for the Epstein story to fade out. But if Trump pushed the story, trad-media would wave it away as “Trump weaponizing Epstein to distract from the Iran war.” So now appears Melania, courageously calling for survivor hearings and confounding reporters.

Corporate media keeps framing Epstein as Trump’s vulnerability. But every move the Trumps make suggests they see the story as a weapon. And weapons don’t get boxed up in the attic until the threat has been vaporized.

🔥🔥🔥

Two days ago, President Trump uploaded a ‘sequestration order’ for Fiscal Year 2027 that he quietly signed on April 3rd. It directs that, starting October 1st, a set of automatic, across‑the‑board spending cuts will kick in for “non‑exempt” federal programs. On the same day, conservative firebrand Russell Vought’s Office of Management and Budget produced its formal report to Congress, laying out the required percentage cuts and the dollar amounts for each affected account. Those cuts fell heaviest on one of the “third rails of politics:” Medicare. NBC reported, “Trump says it’s ‘not possible’ for the U.S. to pay for Medicaid, Medicare and day care: ‘We’re fighting wars.’”

“It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things,” President Trump told an Easter luncheon crowd. “They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.”

If that sounds like it should generate a political firestorm, you may have noticed something odd: a week later, there isn’t one.

Under the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act (the ‘Gramm‑Rudman sequester law’), OMB doesn’t pick specific winners and losers one by one; it applies a formula. It calculates how much must be saved, then applies uniform percentage cuts to broad categories of “direct spending” (mandatory programs) that are not explicitly exempted by statute. Social Security, Medicaid, SNAP, and most core VA benefits are off‑limits. Medicare isn’t.

The law caps Medicare’s sequester hit at a modest 2%, but with Medicare benefit spending running well north of a trillion dollars a year, that “mere” 2% translates into tens of billions in reduced payments to hospitals, doctors, Medicare Advantage plans, and Part D drug plans in FY 2027. Other non‑exempt mandatory programs —farm supports, certain highway and justice funds, student‑loan origination subsidies, and assorted state grant streams— take a higher uniform haircut to make the math work, often in the mid‑single digits.

In other words: this isn’t just a line on a spreadsheet; it’s already real money. But wait. It’s even bigger than that. Under President Trump’s OBBBA, another 4% cut applies, for a 6% total Medicare reduction— a historic number. Last year —pay attention— Congress waived the extra 4%, thereby preventing those cuts from taking effect in FY 2026 and nobody outside government even noticed. This happens almost every year.

It’s easy to understand why Congress always punts on Medicare cuts. Historically, anything that can be spun as “cutting Medicare” draws howls from the usual suspects: Democrats, hospital lobbyists, AARP, and their media amplifiers. But this time, the Beltway outrage machine over pending 6% cuts seems curiously subdued. Where are the breathless cable hits about “Trump slashing Medicare”? Where are the ominous ads showing Bad Orange Men pushing wheelchair‑bound grandmas off of cliffs?

Consider what’s in the headlines right now:

• A string of high‑profile Medicare fraud prosecutions: telemedicine schemes, phony equipment suppliers, and a $273 million hospice racket where patients who weren’t actually terminally ill were parked in “hospice” beds to run up hundreds of millions in bills.
• DOJ and HHS‑OIG are boasting of record False Claims Act recoveries in health care for 2025, much of it tied directly to Medicare and Medicaid abuse.
• Policy reports and op‑eds blasting Medicare Advantage overpayments and “wasteful spending” as a major driver of Medicare’s financial problems.

The media narrative right now is not “poor, underfunded Medicare.” It’s “Medicare is an overstuffed piñata for crooks and insurers.” The administration is tracking right along with that, rolling out a branded anti‑fraud campaign, new DOJ programs, and touting crackdowns as a way to “protect seniors and taxpayers from fraud.”

Drop a 6% across‑the‑board payment cut into that media environment, and what does the average voter hear? What does Congress hear?

Not “Trump is cutting seniors’ Medicare benefits,” but something more like: “Washington is finally trimming a bloated, fraud‑ridden program, and 6% doesn’t sound like nearly enough.” To the extent anyone off of Capitol Hill notices the sequestration order at all, it can be framed as part of the anti‑fraud, anti‑waste crusade: we’re reducing payments into a system that has been hemorrhaging billions to scams and upcoding, not chucking grandma into free-fall.

Meanwhile, the actual mechanics remain foggy, bureaucratic, and strategically ambiguous. The White House order says, in essence, “we will cut non‑exempt mandatory spending by exactly the amount OMB calculated,” and OMB’s same-day report, in turn, is presented as a neutral, data‑driven exercise following statutory requirements to the letter. The president is “just following the law,” OMB is “just doing the math,” and if you don’t like the outcome, Congress needs to change the statute.

Which isn’t bloody likely this time, given the current fraud environment.

You don’t have to believe in 4‑D chess to notice that this is remarkably convenient timing. On one side of the ledger, the administration is merely enforcing a long‑standing sequester law and an OBBBA “Paygo” Provision in a way that trims projected Medicare and other mandatory spending by historic amounts. On the other side, the media environment has been saturated with viral videos about Learing Centers, immortal hospice patients, and fake autism offices—stories that make a 6% haircut look not like a draconian austerity move, but more like the bare minimum.

Somehow, once again, “reckless” President Trump has “stumbled” into a third-way permission structure that is letting him achieve the politically impossible— stopping Congress from preventing budget cuts. Right now, politically speaking, complaining that Washington isn’t spending enough on Medicare is a much harder sell than complaining that Washington isn’t doing enough to stop Medicare fraud.

TAW.

Have a fantastic Friday! Slide back into the DMs tomorrow morning, for another elucidating edition of Coffee & Covid, and its essential news and optimistic commentary.

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