Saturday, July 11, 2026
Note to Ldotters:
Please remember, no duplicates, no blog posting
unless you have permission from staff, no local crimes and
no posting just to elicit nasty reactions.
Any post with three lines or fewer will be deleted.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Lucianne.com Ad-Free Subscription
Learn More or Enter Code
Latest Posts
Nick Shirley is back, this time exposing large-scale Medicare fraud involving senior centers for elderly Koreans and Chinese. It’s another video that’s nearly an hour long, which he posted in full here: “Your tax dollars are paying for elderly Koreans and Chinese to play ping pong and do tai chi, while the fraudsters give kickbacks to those who enroll,” Shirley wrote. A circulating clip shows Shirley confronting an employee at a center in Flushing, where he is presented with some hard numbers about the facility. Shirley asked him whether there were more than 7,000 members at this center, and he flatly denied it.
Two teenage boys who identify as girls withdrew their lawsuit in New Hampshire following a Supreme Court ruling that upheld state bans on boys competing in girls' sports.
Parker Tirrell and Iris Turmelle filed lawsuits against New Hampshire's ban on males competing on female sports teams, and in 2024, they amended their complaint to include a challenge to Trump's executive order last year that aimed to protect females from having to compete against males in sports, the Associated Press reported.
A federal judge had granted a court order that allowed the boys to compete against girls while the case proceeded.
Venezuela, as an oil-producing country, appears to be making its comeback as the Trump administration’s efforts to reform the country’s oil law come to fruition.
The South American country appeared to take another big step in that effort this week when acting President Delcy Rodriguez signed regulations reforming Venezuela's main oil law.
Under the new regulations, the country’s national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), effectively loses control of Venezuela’s vast oil resources.
Under the former communist regime, the country’s oil industry (snip) was producing less than 600,000 barrels of oil a day, (snip) This past May, it was producing nearly 1.2 million barrels of oil per day.
NASA is looking for four volunteers to spend a year living and working in a simulated deep-space mission designed to help prepare astronauts for future trips to the Moon and Mars.
The agency announced it is recruiting participants for the first Moon and Mars Exploration Analog (MMEA) mission, which is scheduled to begin no earlier than August 2027 at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The yearlong study will place crew members in isolated, confined environments that simulate interplanetary travel and planetary surface operations. Researchers will study how participants adapt to the physical and psychological demands of long-duration missions while testing technologies and procedures that could support future human exploration.
WATCH: Early Graham Platner critic unloads
on 'unapologetic' Senate candidate in
scathing rebuke replies
on 'unapologetic' Senate candidate in
scathing rebuke replies
As Democrats scrambled to abandon embattled candidate Graham Platner, after a rape allegation against him torpedoed his insurgent campaign, one progressive lawmaker said it "was a very easy call" to never back him in the first place.
Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., had no endorsement to rescind, having been among a small handful of Democrats who publicly warned against Platner amid growing controversies, even as much of the party continued embracing him.
"I’m relieved. I'm sure Mainers are relieved. He disqualified himself," Dean told Fox News Digital in an interview after Platner announced his intent to drop out of Maine’s Senate race. He later officially dropped out Friday evening.
Under the leadership of President Donald Trump and Secretary Markwayne Mullin, the Department of Homeland Security will launch a new “deportation airline” in order to carry out deportation flights on a round-the-clock basis. In order to carry out the monumental task of mass deportations, DHS has procured a fleet of two Gulfstream 550s and six Boeing 737-700s at the cost of $140 million. The government fleet will allow for DHS to have autonomy in carrying out their own deportation logistics rather than having to rely on chartered flight with independent contractors.
The news of the new fleet comes as ICE has surged their arrest and deportation operations.
Nearly seven years ago, a campus speech hosted by conservative students featuring famed economist Arthur Laffer abruptly ended as vocal leftwing protesters interrupted his talk and campus police got involved.
Next week, a jury is scheduled to decide if that shutdown in November 2019 was a violation of students’ First Amendment and equal protection rights. (snip) As Young America’s Foundation has previously stated about the controversy: “Instead of removing the disruptors, the university chose to escort Laffer out of his own lecture. The university’s use of a heckler’s veto violates the students’ constitutional rights.”
A judge's ruling pushing back a decision over whether to send Charlie Kirk's alleged assassin Tyler Robinson to trial has sparked frustration and scrutiny.
After five days of pre-trial probable cause hearings, Utah District Judge Tony Graf said he will wait to make his decision on whether Tyler Robinson will face trial until September 1.
Many observers had anticipated Graf would make his ruling on Friday at the conclusion of the final hearing - with Kirk's widow Erika issuing a legal filing soon after urging Graf to come to a 'prompt' decision due to the 'overwhelming evidence.
If one wanted to assemble a laundry list of things you could do to destroy any confidence the public ever had in the election process, one could hardly do any better than to look to California for a model. The once-Golden State's elections are already a hot mess, approaching - never mind that, attaining banana republic level. Now, they're about to make things an order of magnitude dumber. California is now recruiting teenagers as young as 16 for poll workers, able to issue ballots, assist voters, and operate election equipment, and more. Here's the real kicker: These teens don't even have to be citizens.
Independent journalist Natalie Winters has the details
Volkswagen Will Eliminate Almost Half
of Production Models After Losing Market
Share to China replies
of Production Models After Losing Market
Share to China replies
The European auto industry is a case study on how short-sighted trade policy goals, results in consequences.Previously, German auto companies like Volkswagen entered into trade agreements with China and began manufacturing their vehicles with immediate financial success in the market. However, it did not take long for Chinese auto companies to reverse the engineering and begin to deliver the same quality vehicles at much lower prices.
Number of NYC child gunslingers shoots
up disturbing 133% — and lefty law being
blamed: NYPD data replies
up disturbing 133% — and lefty law being
blamed: NYPD data replies
The number of kids pulling the trigger in shootings in the city has skyrocketed 133% in the nine-year span since a lefty Albany law gave young offenders carte blanche to run amok, NYPD data obtained by The Post show.
Fifty-six children have been arrested or identified as suspects in shootings so far this year, more than twice as many at the same point in 2017 when there were 24, the data show.
The only time the number of teens arrested for shootings was higher was in 2021 when there were 57 and 2022 when there were 76, the data shows. The controversial law, called Raise the Age,
I bet Gaza could use the tourist dollars, and apparently a lot of the aid money was looted by Hamas, and fancy nightclubs are springing up on the Strip.
That was my first thought when I read that the Egyptians had followed the Turkish example of denying entry to the Virgin cruise ship hosting a gay-themed cruise. [snip for X]
What were they thinking, scheduling a gay cruise to visit Muslim countries? It's not that Egypt or Turkey is exactly a craphole—both have been centers of civilization at times, and neither is crushingly poor in the way that Conan O'Brien's and Anderson Cooper's favorite vacation destination, Haiti, is.
I do not often write about movies. In fact, I have not written an essay about one in more than thirty years. (Snip) That film, of course, is Citizen Kane, returning this week for a commemorative limited engagement in theaters across the fruited plain.
Does Citizen Kane live up to the hype? Of course not—not eighty-five years later, at least. But that is precisely the point.
The picture was so different, so audacious, so avant-garde in 1941 that calling it “groundbreaking” understates the case. And because so much of filmmaking since has descended from it—or from films that themselves descended from it—it is easy now to miss the treasure
I do not often write about movies. In fact, I have not written an essay about one in more than thirty years. (Snip) That film, of course, is Citizen Kane, returning this week for a commemorative limited engagement in theaters across the fruited plain.
Does Citizen Kane live up to the hype? Of course not—not eighty-five years later, at least. But that is precisely the point.
The picture was so different, so audacious, so avant-garde in 1941 that calling it “groundbreaking” understates the case. And because so much of filmmaking since has descended from it—or from films that themselves descended from it—it is easy now to miss the treasure
Several New York Times reporters hit with
subpoenas after reporting on Trump's new
Air Force One replies
subpoenas after reporting on Trump's new
Air Force One replies
The Trump administration subpoenaed several New York Times reporters on Friday following the news outlet's recent reporting on security issues involving the newly commissioned Air Force One, according to the Times.
The aircraft, which President Donald Trump accepted as a gift from Qatar, entered service last week and has already been used for official travel.
According to the newspaper, the subpoenas require the journalists to appear before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday. The Times said federal agents personally delivered some of the subpoenas to reporters at their homes.
Wisconsin Election Commission tells DOJ
it’s not responsible for keeping noncitizens
off voter rolls replies
it’s not responsible for keeping noncitizens
off voter rolls replies
Wisconsin’s election managers are reminding everyone that non-citizens are not allowed to vote in the state. But the state’s Election Commission is stopping short of promising to work with the Trump Administration to make sure they don’t.
The Justice Department this week sent a letter to all 50 states that promises to prosecute any election manager who “who knowingly retains noncitizens on the state’s [voter list] or facilitates noncitizens in receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability."
"An intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens could also constitute a violation of [federal law],
President Trump on Friday night doubled down on his threat to “decimate and destroy” Iran should the regime succeed in assassinating him.
“1000 Missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands of more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat, pronounced in many corners of the Globe, to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate, the sitting President of the United States of America, in this case, ME!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“Orders have already been given, and the U.S. Military is ready, willing, and able, for a one year period of time, subject to extension,
Huntington Beach’s grip as Orange County’s conservative stronghold is under threat from a new court ruling. But this isn’t the first time the attorney and one of the plaintiffs have led the charge to reshape a conservative city.
In late June, Orange County Superior Court Judge Craig Griffin tentatively ruled that the city must switch to ranked-choice voting, undoing the “at-large” system in which voters in Huntington Beach have always cast ballots. The decision came after a lawsuit brought by the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project and local Huntington Beach resident Victor Valladares.
The week began with Independence Day, and it featured a lot of World Cup action. If you can call anything that happens in soccer action. Europe sweltered under a non-air conditioned heat wave, and the Iran conflict resumed. But what motivated meme-makers more than anything else was the spectacular implosion of the Graham Platner Senate campaign. I suppose because it was so unexpected: who would have imagined that the campaign of a Nazi-tattooed Communist would come to grief?
Khan!!! Done Wrong
replies
Almost exactly a month ago, I told you the tale of the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor, a revolting and hubris-enrobed individual named Karim Khan (whom you may remember from this most memorable of his stunts)... ...had been suspended from his schweet, schweet gig after a two-year-long (!) investigation for thinking all the ladies found him as irresistible as his mirror did and acting on that ill-founded assumption without asking politely, 'May I?' first. Now, I had not heard that the UN investigation also established the delightful and personable Mr. Khan had retaliated against other court employees who had reported the sexaul misconduct allegations, but it's certainly unsurprising.
Iran out of patience?
A defensive Mayor Zohran Mamdani tried to downplay his international affairs commissioner’s boneheaded attempted meeting with the anti-US Iranian ambassador — as he faced heat from aghast GOP lawmakers Friday. Mamdani said he never knew about Commissioner Ana Maria Archila’s scheduled — and thwarted — confab this week with Amir-Saeid Iravani, Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations, until he received a press inquiry about it.
He repeatedly stressed the sitdown never took place and chalked it up to a scheduling snafu.
“The commissioner recognizes that this was made in error and we’re working on a new process
The rate at which Islam is growing in the United States is alarming because of the totalitarian nature of the political, social, economic, and religious doctrines of Islam. Mosques are appearing everywhere, even in the reddest of red states. They have increased by over 30% since 2010.
Islamic communities that support Sharia law are popping up in numerous states, and most shockingly, in Arkansas under Governor Sanders. The Islamic Center of Little Rock states on its website that its movement began in 1979 with just a couple of dozen Muslim families in the area. They started out by converting an old theater into their first mosque. They also met
Rep. Chris Pappas (D.), running for Senate in New Hampshire on an "anti-corruption" agenda against "corporate special interests" in Washington, serves on a House committee that oversees Uber, where his husband, a former lobbyist, serves in an executive policy role.
Pappas, a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is married to Vann Bentley, a policy manager for cybersecurity and privacy at Uber who previously worked as a lobbyist for Amazon, according to his LinkedIn profile. That poses a potential conflict of interest for Pappas because of Uber's aggressive lobbying activity, including on bills spearheaded by the transportation committee. Uber has spent $1.5 million on lobbying in the
A senior official in socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration had planned to meet with an Iranian envoy, until the meeting was reportedly shut down by the State Department. Commissioner Ana María Archila, who is the leader of the Office of International Affairs for the Mamdani administration, was slated to meet with Iran’s representative to the United Nations, Amir-Saeid Iravani.
However, after the State Department became aware of the meeting between Archila and Iravani, the meeting was called off and State Department officials met with Mamdani officials to clarify