Good morning!

Healthcare is the American federal government’s biggest expense: $1.8 trillion last year alone—more than Social Security, more than defense, more than interest on the national debt. Yesterday, the Justice Department reminded us what kind of fraud and ugliness happens when that much money is floating around in an even larger sea of dishonesty.

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• In the “largest coordinated anti-fraud effort to date,” the doj charged 455 defendants—including 90 doctors and other licensed medical professionals—for schemes totaling more than $6.5 billion in false claims. Cases span 56 federal districts and 45 states and territories. The scope is staggering.

The predators were everywhere.

• One Arizona executive allegedly billed wound grafts at more than $1 million per patient, siphoning $1 billion in taxpayer funds to buy luxury homes, cars, jewelry and an entire hotel in the Philippines.
• A hospice owner allegedly enrolled patients who weren’t terminally ill. When federal analytics flagged his suspiciously low death rate, he allegedly began bribing a funeral home employee $1,000–$3,000 per name to bill Medicare for the already-dead.

But this record takedown is trifling compared to the scale of the total known fraud. Dr. Mehmet Oz, who runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, estimates that a breathtaking $100 billion is filched from Medicare and Medicaid every year. That’s $274 million daily.

• The largest fraud crackdown in doj history caught “just” $6.5 billion of it—about three weeks’ worth of apparently routine theft. As anti-fraud efforts get stronger, the fraudsters get cagier.

It is grotesque to see grifters living luxuriously at taxpayer expense, particularly given America’s unrelenting budget deficits, skyrocketing debt and imminent national insolvency.

• Dr. Oz argues that eliminating fraud would double the life expectancy of the Medicare Trust Fund. But who cares whether it dies if you already have your fleet of Lamborghinis?

What a curse is human nature! These are extreme examples, but truly, the same ugly, selfish impulses that bill Medicare for the dead also cheat on spouses, defraud business partners, lie under oath, and betray friends for personal gain.

God’s law is the solution. It addresses the roots of this evil:

• The Eighth Commandment strikes at theft; the Ninth at deceit; the Tenth at covetousness and greed. Several of God’s statutes command fair dealing with neighbor.
• Jesus’s formulation in Matthew 7:12, “all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them,” makes Medicare fraud not just illegal but unthinkable.

“This present evil world” will always be plagued by these problems. But God promises to solve them. He will establish His rule on Earth and write His law not on stone or in federal statute but on human hearts (Jeremiah 31:33).

Gerald Flurry’s booklet Character in Crisis explains what it costs a nation when its law-abiding foundation erodes—and what kind of character God’s law produces.

Iran War Update

• U.S. government divided: The Senate yesterday passed a non-binding resolution demanding congressional approval for any additional military operations against Iran. The measure, which originated in the House, highlights that the U.S. government cannot even agree with itself on the conflict.
• Iran defiantly rejects limits: President Masoud Pezeshkian announced yesterday, alongside Pakistan’s leader, that Iran’s missile program was never part of the U.S. memorandum of understanding and “will never be.”
• Iran claims control of Hormuz: Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator with the U.S., declared on Monday that “international regulations will be observed, but Iran will administer the Strait of Hormuz.” Freedom of transit for oil shipments may now be gone for good.
• Trump accuses Iran of lying: President Donald Trump yesterday blasted the Iranian government for making “false statements” after it claimed it had not agreed to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections.

Household Debt Raises Alarm

The savings rate of the average American has dropped to its lowest level since 2022. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the average person is saving only 2.6 percent of what they have left after taxes. At the same time, households are carrying record debt.

This low savings rate is worrying investors, including Albert Edwards, strategist at Société Générale.

• Edwards explained in a note to clients last week that U.S. consumers are saving less and borrowing more because of the “wealth effect”—they feel richer because the value of their homes and of their stocks is high.
• He warned that saving less and spending more right now is risky because home and stock prices are inherently volatile and can drop quickly.

“The U.S. consumer currently resembles the Wile E. Coyote character, running off the cliff and suspended in thin air briefly, before collapsing,” Edwards said. “It doesn’t take a Fed PhD economist to tell us that if the U.S. saving ratio stops falling, consumer spending will grow in line with income, which is falling.”

U.S. household debt reached a record $18.8 trillion in the first quarter of 2026, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. This works out to $140,000 to $155,000 in debt per household.

• About 70 percent of this household debt is mortgage debt, 9 percent is auto loan debt, 9 percent is student loan debt, 7 percent is credit card debt, and 5 percent is other types of debt.
• This debt level, though high, is not necessarily unsustainable if a household has financial reserves to weather an emergency. But many families have no such reserve. Lending Tree surveys indicate that the average household is on the hook for $1,600 in debt repayments each month, yet the average person is only saving $148 per month.

This is what has strategists like Edwards concerned. Roughly one third to one half of Americans do not have enough cash to cover a $1,000 emergency expense.

• An economic downturn could be devastating for both them and the overall economy, since consumer spending makes up around 70 percent of U.S. gdp.

Proverbs 21:20 says, “There is treasure to be desired and oil in the dwelling of the wise; but a foolish man spendeth it up.” Based on this wisdom, Solve Your Money Troubles! recommends setting aside 5 percent of your earnings until you have accumulated six months’ worth of emergency savings.

Many Americans are instead maxing out their spending capacity on the assumption that they can always tap home equity or stock portfolios. When the next downturn arrives, many will learn the hard way why this is unwise. Many people need to reduce their standard of living.

Mexico Defies Trump

Mexico will begin sending oil to Cuba, despite the U.S. embargo against the Communist nation, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Monday. These shipments will be made through private companies, rather than Mexico’s national oil company, to make it harder for the Trump administration to impose sanctions on the Mexican government.

• This decision could create problems between Sheinbaum and President Donald Trump, who has increased enforcement of long-standing sanctions and added new ones.

Mexico sells billions of dollars in goods to the United States every year, so Sheinbaum initially tried to keep a friendly relationship with Trump. Yet after the Trump administration indicted several members of Sheinbaum’s morena party on charges of drug trafficking, their relationship soured.

• On June 3, Sheinbaum’s mentor, former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, accused President Trump of employing “interventionist and unscrupulous practices” to weaken Mexico’s leftist movement, indicating that morena is pivoting to open opposition toward the Trump administration.

MORENA is like the Communist Party of Cuba and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela in that it regards its nation’s drug cartels as engines of profit at home and weapons of war abroad, the Texas Public Policy Foundation argues.

• For the past decade, morena has quietly supported the cartels while trying to keep trade relations with the U.S. intact. Now that the Trump administration is targeting Mexican politicians in league with the cartels, Sheinbaum is trying to strengthen relations with Cuba and weaken U.S. policy there.

Herbert W. Armstrong explained in The United States and Britain in Prophecy that the Anglo-Saxon peoples who settled the U.S. and Britain descended from the ancient Israelites. This means that end-time Bible prophecies about Israel are about American and Britain.

• God likens Israel to a hedged vineyard. It has been protected to the north, south, east and west. But because of the people’s sins, God warns, “… I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down” (Isaiah 5:5). This description of a hedged vineyard fits no nation better than the U.S.

President Trump is trying to protect America’s borders, but America’s enemies in the Cuban Communist Party, the Mexican drug cartels and the morena movement are fighting back.

IN OTHER NEWS

France held a “top secret” meeting with Hamas—the first European nation to do so since the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023—Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Aswat reported on Monday.

Vladimir Putin could attend a United Nations peace conference without threat of arrest, the Moscow Times reported yesterday, based on a June 8 announcement by the International Criminal Court.

Romania’s parliament rejected prime minister-designate Adrian Vestea’s proposed government on Monday, prolonging political instability in yet another European government.

In New York City’s recent primaries, mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed socialist candidates over more moderate, establishment Democrats. His preferred candidates won. This outcome reflects a broader shift among a significant part of America further to the left, embracing socialist policies and figures.