Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

A Taiwanese national security official said this week that the island now has a “real time” intelligence-sharing link with the Five Eyes, the Western intelligence alliance that includes the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Britain.

Tsai Ming-yen, the director-general of Taiwan’s National Security Bureau, made the comments during a legislative hearing. Tsai confirmed that Taiwan had been upgrading its computer systems to be able to share information with the Five Eyes nations.

“We can connect with the ‘Five Eyes’ alliance through a confidential system,” Tsai said, according to Reuters.

The comments are the latest example of Taiwan’s growing relationship with the US and its allies. The cooperation angers Beijing, which has responded to the increased US support for Taiwan by putting more military pressure on the island.

Also on Wednesday, the Taiwanese Defense Ministry said its upcoming military exercises will focus on breaking a blockade. China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) simulated a blockade around Taiwan in August 2022 in response to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) visiting the island.

China conducted similar drills after Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen recently met with the current House speaker, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), in California, although they weren’t as extensive as the Pelosi exercises.

Taiwan’s Han Kuang exercises will include tabletop drills from May 15 to 19 and live-fire exercises from July 24 to 28.

Authored by Jack Miller via RealClear Wire,

Over the last few years, the rallying cry of “woke” activists has become “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (often abbreviated to DEI). There is little reason to object to such principles on the surface. After all, America was founded on the principle that all people are created equal. Unfortunately, the meaning of words can change over time.  

Rather than the Founders’ vision of equal opportunity for all, the use of the word “equity” today denotes equal outcomes for all. The implementation of this “equity agenda,” however well-intentioned, will lead to terrible consequences. 

One of the prophets who warned us about the dangers of this understanding of equity was the great twentieth-century novelist Kurt Vonnegut. In his 1961 short story, “Harrison Bergeron,” Vonnegut imagined a society with perfect equity. “Nobody was smarter than anybody else,” the narrator says. “Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else.” 

As Vonnegut shows, a society looking to equalize outcomes for all citizens is no utopia – it is instead a nightmarish horror. The only way to guarantee equal results is to handicap everyone so that they perform at the lowest common level. In the terrifying world of “Harrison Bergeron,” for instance, the government burdens ballerinas “with sashweights and bags of birdshot” so they cannot move more beautifully than anyone else.

The push for “equity” in American society today resembles Vonnegut’s dystopia – but nowhere more dangerously than in the education system. 

At the university level, DEI bureaucracies have grown to absurd sizes, and they dominate much of campus life. A 2021 Heritage Foundation report found 163 DEI personnel at the University of Michigan, 94 at the University of Virginia and 94 at Ohio State, 86 at the University of California Berkeley, 83 at Virginia Tech, and 80 at Stanford (where Associate Dean for DEI Tirien Steinbach was recently put on leave for galvanizing an unruly protest by confronting a U.S. circuit judge who was trying to deliver a campus lecture). 

In a growing number of K-12 schools across the country, such as at Culver City High School in the Los Angeles area, honors classes are being eliminated so as not to “perpetuate inequality.” Proponents of this idea say that some students can still obtain an honors “label” by doing extra work. 

But more often than not, teachers are simply slowing down instruction for everyone. Students are increasingly taught at the lowest common denominator rather than being challenged to do their best. As one student recently told the Wall Street Journal, “There are some people who slow down the pace because they don’t really do anything and aren’t looking to try harder.” 

Current DEI regulations at the federal and state level, as well-intentioned as these regulations may be, are fostering this approach and handicapping our education system. For example, the Department of Education’s 2022 Equity Agency Plan goes so far as to connect DEI policies directly to federal funding for local schools. In their pursuit of “ensuring equity,” ideologues are killing opportunity for America’s students. 

The American Dream is that all citizens will have an equal opportunity to achieve their goals based on their individual talents and hard work. The Declaration of Independence does not guarantee happiness to every citizen – it only guarantees the pursuit of happiness. 

But the pursuit of the modern idea of “equity” rather than true equality is simply a race to the bottom. Socialist regimes in Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and so many other places show that radical egalitarianism simply does not work. America is more successful than these failed experiments because we cling to the principle of equality rightly understood. We cannot let that slip away. 

The good news is that many parents are mobilizing against far-left excesses. At the ballot box, school board meetings, and even at the dinner table, parents are standing up and saying enough is enough. They do not want to sacrifice academic excellence for grand social experiments. They want their kids to become educated and ambitious, not indoctrinated and complacent.

Most Americans believe in equality. We want to make sure that everyone has, to the greatest extent possible, an equal place at the starting line. From there, each individual has the freedom to achieve what their desires, ability, and hard work make possible. 

Achieving that kind of equality is the American dream, the engine that enables people from any walk of life to realize their dreams. Equity, as activists preach it, trades away this American heritage for abstractions and fantasies. Americans should instead hold fast to the political principles that have guided us to marvelous success and prosperity for nearly 250 years.

The Texas state senate passed legislation this week banning the purchase of farmland by citizens and entities linked to hostile foreign nations, a move which the author of the bill says will provide “sweeping state and national security protections.”

“This bill protects Texas farmland, oil and gas, rare earth materials and timber from being owned by foreign entities classified as hostile by the Director of U.S. National Intelligence for three consecutive reports. These nations currently include China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran,” wrote Sen . Lois Kolkhorst (R) following the passage of her legislation by a vote of 19-12 in the state Senate on April 26.

According to a 2022 threat assessment report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), China, Russia, Iran and North Korea pose the biggest threats to US national security. The report says that the CCP presents “the broadest, most active, and persistent cyber espionage threat to the U.S. Government and private sector networks.”

The Texas bill, SB 147, was introduced last November by Kolkhorst, and has the support of Gov. Greg Abbott (R). That said, the language of the original bill was toned down following criticism from some Democrats and locals over the bill banning property purchases of any individual who is “a citizen of China, Iran, North Korea, or Russia.”

In the final draft, the ban does not apply to lawful permanent residents, US citizens or dual citizens.

The property which the bill applies to includes agricultural land, improvements, mines and quarries, mineral deposits, and standing timber.

It also grants the Texas attorney general the authority to investigate potential violations if “reasonable suspicion” exists that an individual or entity making a property purchase is associated with one of the designated countries.

“Texas is rich in its natural resources and is home to invaluable strategic military bases and installations. With SB 147, we can protect our Texas food supply and energy resources as well,” wrote Kolkhorst – who built this legislation to dovetail with SB 2116 – the state’s “Lone Star Infrastructure Protection Act,” which makes it illegal for Texas governments and businesses to make critical infrastructure deals with entities from the banned list.

Texas Democrats are upset.

“Even with the amendments offered, this legislation still takes away the rights of an entire class of people without due process and solely on the basis of their national origin,” wrote Rep. Gene Wu, an outspoken critic of Kolkhorst’s legislation, adding that he’s “frustrated by the Senate’s passage of SB 147 in its current form.”

“National security is a serious issue, but if we are concerned about the actions of foreign governments, then legislation should only affect foreign governments and their agents,” Wu continued. “Our community will continue to work, in the Texas House, to eliminate the unnecessarily discriminatory aspects of this bill.”

Not all Texas Democrats…

State Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, a co-author of SB 147, is the lone Democrat who voted in favor of the bill on Wednesday.

“We’re not trying to target people. We’re trying to target nations that pose a security risk to this great nation of ours,” he said. “It’s incorrect to say that this bill is discriminatory.”

“We should not overlook the point that many of these nations are a threat to our security,” Hinojosa continued, adding that these countries “have made it very clear that they want to destroy our country, destroy our democracy, destroy our way of life.”

Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

The Great Divide

Robert Kennedy, Jr. is running for president. I could not possibly be more excited. So, I’m going to give Bobby some unsolicited advice, which, if he knows what’s good for him, he will not take.

I feel OK about doing this because, even if Bobby, in the wee hours of the night, when the mind is vulnerable to dangerous ideas, were to seriously consider taking my advice, I am sure he has people — i.e., PR people, campaign strategists, pollsters, and so on — that would not hesitate to take him aside and disabuse him of any inclination to do that.

OK, before I give Bobby this terrible advice, I have to do the “full disclosure” thing. I’m a pretty big fan of RFK, Jr. I don’t generally get involved in electoral politics, but, if I were a Democrat, I would definitely vote for him. Also, he was kind enough to blurb my book (which isn’t going to make his PR people happy) and invite me onto his podcast, RFK, Jr. The Defender, to talk about “New Normal” totalitarianism. So, I am fairly biased in favor of Bobby Kennedy. I think he is an admirable, honorable human being. I would love to see him in the Oval Office.

That isn’t going to happen, of course. The global-capitalist ruling classes are never going to let him near the Oval Office. They learned their lesson back in 2016. There are not going to be any more unauthorized presidents. The folks at GloboCap are done playing grab-ass, and they want us to know that they are done playing grab-ass. That’s what the last six years have been about.

As I put it in a column in January, 2021 …

“… This, basically, is what we’ve just experienced. The global capitalist ruling classes have just reminded us who is really in charge, who the US military answers to, and how quickly they can strip away the facade of democracy and the rule of law. They have reminded us of this for the last ten months, by putting us under house arrest, beating and arresting us for not following orders, for not wearing masks, for taking walks without permission, for having the audacity to protest their decrees, for challenging their official propaganda, about the virus, the election results, etc. They are reminding us currently by censoring dissent, and deplatforming anyone they deem a threat to their official narratives and ideology … GloboCap is teaching us a lesson. I don’t know how much clearer they could make it. They just installed a new puppet president, who can’t even simulate mental acuity, in a locked-down, military-guarded ceremony which no one was allowed to attend, except a few members of the ruling classes. They got some epigone of Albert Speer to convert the Mall (where the public normally gathers) into a ‘field of flags‘ symbolizing ‘unity.’ They even did the Nazi ‘Lichtdom‘ thing. To hammer the point home, they got Lady Gaga to dress up as a Hunger Games character with a ‘Mockingjay’ brooch and sing the National Anthem. They broadcast this spectacle to the entire world.”

Does that sound like the behavior of an unaccountable, supranational power apparatus that is prepared to stand by and let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., or Donald Trump, or any other unauthorized person, become the next president of the United States?

So, here’s my bad advice for Bobby.

Fuck them. They’re not going to let you win, anyway. They are going to smear you, slime you, demonize you, distort every other thing you say, and just generally lie about who you are and what you believe in and what you stand for. They are going to paint you as a bull-goose-loony, formerly smack-addled, conspiracy-theorizing, anti-vax fanatic no matter what you do. If you tone down your act and try to “heal the divide” and “end the division,” they are going to have you for lunch, and then sit around picking their teeth with your bones. You know, and I know, and the American people know, that the things you say you want to do as president — which I know you sincerely want to do as president and are crazy enough to actually try to do, i.e., “to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism in our country” — are things … well, as Michael Corleone once put it, that they would “use all their power to keep from happening.”

So, fuck it, and fuck them. Tell the truth.

Not the ready-for-prime-time truth. Not the toned-down-for-mainstream-consumption truth.

The truth. The ugly, unvarnished truth. The scary, crazy-sounding truth.

The angry, divisive, uncensored truth.

Yes, there is a “divide.” A great divide. A chasm. A schism. A gulf. An abyss. A gaping, yawning, unbridgeable fissure. A Grand Canyon-sized fault in the foundation of society. A rupture in the very fabric of reality.

As I noted in another 2021 column, the global-capitalist ruling classes have decommissioned one “reality” and are replacing it with another “reality” … corporate feudalism, pathologized totalitarianism, global corporatism, or whatever anybody wants to call it. Whatever we call it, everyone feels it. OK, I’m going to be obnoxious and quote myself again …

“During the changeover from the old ‘reality’ to the new ‘reality,’ the society is torn apart. The old ‘reality’ is being disassembled and the new one has not yet taken its place. It feels like madness, and, in a way, it is. For a time, the society is split in two, as the two ‘realities’ battle it out for dominance. ‘Reality’ being what it is (i.e., monolithic), this is a fight to the death. In the end, only one ‘reality’ can prevail.”

The folks at GloboCap are right on the verge of permanently implementing their new “reality.” In that “reality,” an apocalyptic virus (with a survival rate of roughly 99.7%) nearly wiped out the entire planet, and would have, if not for the Emergency Health Measures (i.e., mass house arrest, forced conformity rituals, cancellation of constitutional rights, censorship of dissent, official propaganda on a scale that even Goebbels could never have dreamed of, fomenting of mass hysteria and hatred, segregation and persecution of a designated scapegoat underclass) imposed on society by our admittedly imperfect but well-intentioned government and global health authorities. In that “reality,” the “vaccines” they forced on billions of people (who did not need them) are “safe and effective” (despite the fact, which even they now acknowledge, that they have seriously injured or killed millions of people). In that “reality,” a few hundred unarmed Trump supporters horsing around in the Capitol Building was an “insurrection,” or “attempted coup,” or … well, you get the picture. There are no neo-Nazis in the Ukraine. The Russians blew up their own pipelines. And so on.

What I am trying to get at, Bobby, is that those of us who have refused to convert to the new “reality” — which I am guessing is approximately 25-30% of the global population — are not looking for a leader who can “heal the divide.” We are in a fight. We are fighting for reality. We’re fighting for what’s left of reality.

And, at the moment, we are getting our asses kicked.

So, fuck it. What have you got to lose? Throw out the playbook. Fire your PR people. Go for broke. Tell the truth. Tell folks what we’re up against. That it isn’t something an election is going to fix. That it isn’t something a new president can fix. That it isn’t fixable. That it is a fucking fight. And not one according to the Queensberry Rules. A ball-kicking, eye-gouging, chair-swinging, bar fight. And that sometimes, like now, when there is nowhere to run to … well, you have to stand and fight, even if you know you’re going to lose.

That’s it. That’s my bad advice for Bobby. Hopefully, one of his staff will spot it and delete it before he reads his email.

Otherwise, I’m afraid he might be tempted to take it. He’s already leaning in that direction.

And … well, you know how those Irish love a good fight.

Authored by John Mac Ghlionn via The Epoch Times,

Soon after Tucker Carlson left Fox News, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, more commonly known by her initials AOC, celebrated on social media, telling her followers that “deplatforming works.”

.@AOC on @TuckerCarlson: “Deplatforming works and it is important.” pic.twitter.com/AZZj0wd3S9

— Donna, Independent 🌺🗽🇺🇸⏳ (@TruthFreedomPe1) April 25, 2023

Deplatforming, the practice of preventing an individual with specific views from voicing those views, might work for her, but it’s a disaster for broader society, according to a new peer-reviewed study (pdf).

The research, carried out by four esteemed cyber experts, warns that deplatforming regularly backfires, because it creates a sense of deep-seated resentment, driving the disenchanted and disillusioned to seek out “alternative platforms where these discussions are less regulated and often more extreme.”

In this particular study, the researchers analyzed changes in social media usage following the “Great Deplatforming” of 2021. For the uninitiated, the “Great Deplatforming” occurred shortly after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Following the event, a number of major platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, banned thousands of accounts. Ostensibly, as the researchers note, this was done to “limit misinformation about voter fraud and suppress calls for violence.” However, other less regulated platforms like Parler and BitChute were quick to give the homeless a home. In this age of maximum choice, with no shortage of alternative social media platforms, deplatforming is an ineffective tool. It’s the equivalent of taking a soup spoon to a knife fight. You simply can’t make people with alternative points of view disappear. These people will almost always find new homes.

One of the authors of the study, Martin Innes, a professor of crime, intelligence, and security at Cardiff University, told me that “deplatforming can have complex effects and not always those that are intended, including boosting the popularity of the target.”

Furthermore, “deplatforming can actually increase the toxicity of discourse and make the problems worse on the platform that people migrate to.”

In truth, he added, deplatforming tends to just displace the problem, not actually solve it.

As Innes and his colleagues note in the paper, contrary to popular belief, deplatforming is not “an effective tool for reducing the impact of malign actors on the public.” In fact, they contend, “deplatforming is ineffective at improving the information space,” simply because “banned actors can migrate to less regulated platforms, potentially promoting even more radical ideas.”

These findings echo the findings of other research papers. In 2021, Innes was part of another study that examined the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of deplatforming. Innes and his co-author coined the term “minion accounts” to describe how, following a “de-platforming intervention,” a number of secondary accounts are established to “continue the mission.”

When it comes to the creation of “minion accounts,” Andrew Tate, a man I have discussed in great detail elsewhere, is a shining example of the ineffectiveness of deplatforming. When he was unceremoniously booted off the Holy Quadrinity—YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok—last year, a whole host of fake accounts, powered by real people and tireless bots, quickly popped up, helping to keep the Tate-fueled fire burning.

Those in charge would have us believe that deplatforming is for our own good, that it’s a tool designed to curb the spread of disinformation. However, one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Deplatforming is, first and foremost, a form of social control. It’s designed to amplify certain narratives and silence others, perhaps explaining why AOC, a controversial individual with a very strict set of beliefs, appears to be such a fan of the practice.

All of this brings us back to Tucker Carlson, a man who won’t (and can’t) be silenced. Carlson is, in many ways, bigger than Fox News. He’s a brand, a celebrity, a highly bankable star. One needn’t possess more than a few functioning neurons to know that Carlson is going to be OK. In fact, because of his ouster, he has never been in a stronger position. Carlson is more marketable now than ever before.

Where will he go next? Rumble, perhaps. The remarkably popular online video platform service gives content makers a great degree of freedom. Russell Brand, one of the most popular public intellectuals in existence, is Rumble’s biggest asset. He currently boasts more than 1 million followers. Adding Carlson to its ever-expanding family would boost Rumble’s profile. It would also give Carlson a platform to continue preaching his rather unique gospel. The provocateur extraordinaire will be back. Watch this space.

Only 8% of the world’s population actually lives in a full, functioning democracy, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

Meanwhile, another 37% of people live in some type of “flawed democracy”, while 55% of the world does not live in democracy at all, based on the EIU’s latest Democracy Index Report.

As Visual Capitalist’s Avery Koop and Joyce Mas detail below, events such as the war in Ukraine and restrictive, long-lasting COVID-19 measures, have caused numerous declines to country democracy scores in recent years. Since the source report first began tracking scores in 2006, the global average has fallen from 5.52 to 5.29.

The Methodology

The EIU measures democracy by assessing 60 indicators across five key categories:

1. Electoral process and pluralism
2. Political culture
3. Political participation
4. Functioning of government
5. Civil liberties

Each category has a rank of 0-10 based on how the indicators fared, and the overall democracy score is an average of each of the five categories. For example, here’s a look at the U.S.’ scoring out of 10 in each of the overall categories in 2022:

This score defines the U.S. as a flawed democracy and ranks it 30th overall in the world, down four spots from last year’s ranking.

“Flawed” in this case simply means there are problems, ranging from poor political culture to governance issues, but flawed democracies are still considered to have free and fair elections, as well as civil liberties.

The World’s Democracies by Region

Below we map out the state of democracy across various regions around the world.

The Americas

One of the best performers year-over-year was Chile, with its score increasing by nearly 0.3. The country moved out of the flawed democracy category last year, largely because of the shift towards constitutional reform alongside President Gabriel Boric moving towards the political center, reducing polarization.

Only three other countries in the Americas are also considered full democracies: Costa Rica, Canada, and Uruguay—the latter of which is #1 regionally.

On the flipside, some of the world’s worst performers year-over-year are located specifically in Latin America, namely: El Salvador and Haiti. Much of the low scores in the region are associated with high crime rates and corrupt governance.

Africa

The only full democracy in Africa is the small, island nation of Mauritius. Overall, Africa is one of the lowest scoring regions with only five of the continent’s 54 countries ranking as some type of democracy.

Tunisia’s score decreased significantly in 2022. President Kais Saied dismissed parliament early in the year and took control of the electoral council, slowly shifting towards centralized power. And although there were critics, many have since been arrested, downgrading them in the EIU’s eyes from a flawed democracy to a hybrid regime.

Europe

Spain and France regained status as full democracies in 2022, mainly improving in the civil liberties and functioning of government categories thanks to the easing of COVID-19 restrictions. However, both countries face political polarization; in Spain this is largely exemplified in the attitudes surrounding the Catalan separatist movement.

Some of the lowest scoring regimes in the region are in Russia and Belarus. Russia’s war in Ukraine has violated international law, as well as another country’s sovereignty, decimating its score by 0.96 in the index. Belarus has continually allied itself with Russia, allowing troops—and likely missiles—to enter Ukraine from its borders.

Oceania and East Asia

In this region, levels of democracy were severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Hong Kong only removed restrictive policies like mask mandates in early 2023. In contrast, Thailand lifted these restrictions a year prior, providing more individual freedom, according to the report.

Malaysia’s fairly high score of 7.3 could face scrutiny, as the former Prime Minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, who was in office during COVID-19, is currently facing corruption charges for money laundering of COVID-19 stimulus package funds.

Central Asia and The Middle East

Finally, in the Middle East and Central Asia, there are no full democracies at all. The lowest scoring country globally is Afghanistan at only 0.32.

Israel, the only democracy of any kind of the region, actually moved down six spots in the global ranking from the year prior. Its lowest scoring category in 2022 was civil liberties. This year, the country is in the spotlight due to its judicial reforms proposed by the ruling nationalist party, and civil response has been strong. Mass protests continue around the country.

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Teachers from a California middle school are suing officials in their school district in federal court over policies that they say force them to conceal the transgender status of young students from parents.

The lawsuit happens to come after President Joe Biden’s remarks earlier this month in support of the nation’s teacher of the year angered parents by suggesting government knows best when it comes to the raising of children.

Biden quoted the teacher when he said, “There’s no such thing as someone else’s child.” The president then said, “Our nation’s children are all our children.”

The legal complaint (pdf) in the new case, Mirabelli v. Olson, was filed April 27 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. The teachers involved in the lawsuit are devout Christians.

The defendants are officials with the Escondido Union School District (EUSD), which is in San Diego County, and officials with the California State Board of Education.

The lawsuit was prompted by the K-8 school district’s recent policies affecting transgender or gender-diverse students.

The policies require teachers to assist in a student’s transgender “social transition” by accepting a child’s assertion of a transgender or gender-diverse identity and using during school hours any pronouns or a gender-specific name requested by a student.

At the same time, the policies also require teachers to revert to biological pronouns and legal names when speaking with parents in order to cover up information about a child’s purported gender identity from the child’s parents, according to the Thomas More Society, a nonprofit public interest law firm that filed the lawsuit.

“All of this is to be done without parent or guardian agreement or knowledge,” said Paul Jonna, Thomas More Society special counsel and a partner at LiMandri and Jonna.

“Schools routinely send notes home to parents about trivial matters, like missing homework, so it is unfathomable that Escondido Union School District has a policy that forces teachers to withhold from parents some of the most fundamental and basic information about their children,” Jonna said.

EUSD requires all elementary and middle school teachers to “unhesitatingly accept a child’s assertion of a transgender or gender diverse identity, and … [to] ‘begin to treat the student immediately’ according to their asserted gender identity,” according to the legal complaint.

“There is absolutely no room for discussion, polite disagreement, or even questioning whether the child is sincere or acting on a whim,” the complaint continues. “Once a child’s social transitioning has begun, EUSD elementary and middle school teachers must ensure that parents do not find out.”

“EUSD’s policies state that ‘revealing a student’s transgender status to individuals who do not have a legitimate need for the information, without the student’s consent’ is prohibited, and ‘parents or caretakers’ are, according to EUSD, individuals who ‘do not have a legitimate need for the information,’ irrespective of the age of the student or the specific facts of the situation.”

Read more here…

Authored by Jason Blair via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A doctor in Orange County, California, has been charged by federal prosecutors for orchestrating approximately $230 million worth of fraud during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Department of Justice announced the charges against Dr. Anthony Ha Dinh and 17 other individuals on April 20. The total “intended fraud loss” among all 18 defendants is over $490 million, in which Dinh accounts for about 60 percent.

They said the charges are part of a coordinated nationwide effort of law enforcement to fight COVID-19 health care fraud.

Dinh allegedly billed the government through the HRSA Uninsured Program with uninsured claims for patients who actually either had insurance, were never treated, or had treatments that weren’t medically necessary, according to the DOJ.

The HRSA Uninsured Program was intended to provide reimbursement to medical providers who treated uninsured patients for certain COVID-19-related treatments during the pandemic.

Authorities say Dinh was the second highest biller to the program in the country. He allegedly used over $100 million of the money for high-risk options trading.

Dinh also allegedly worked with Hanna Dinh, also of Orange County, and Dr. Matthew Ho of Brevard County, Florida, to submit more than 70 fraudulent loan applications, obtaining over $3 million from the PPP and Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs, according to the Justice Department.

Dinh is scheduled for arraignment on May 22 in federal court in Santa Ana. If convicted on all charges, he could face up to 50 years in prison, according to federal prosecutors.