Minnesotans who lost years of access to state-administered social services amid a series of fraud scandals under Gov. Tim Walz’s watch are now facing federal cuts to many of those same services by the Trump administration.
Trump has made Walz the face of Minnesota’s fraud, boosting unsubstantiated conspiracy theories on Truth Social—one which accuses Walz of being behind the murders of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, last summer.
While the conspiracies are false, Minnesota is being investigated for real fraud. The first case was over Feeding Our Future, a Minnesota nonprofit that claimed to be distributing meals to schoolchildren during the Covid pandemic. Instead, a federal investigation found that the group defrauded the government out of hundreds of millions of dollars, spending money that was meant for children on cars, houses, and real estate projects outside of Kenya and Turkey.
The investigation also uncovered fraud in programs assisting people at risk of homelessness and therapy for children with autism.
According to prosecutors, 78 of the 86 people charged in those three fraud cases are of Somali ancestry. The New York Times reported that most were American citizens. Over 60 people have been convicted, with federal prosecutors finding over $1 billion in public money stolen in the three cases.
The Minnesota Department of Education, which oversaw the food distribution program, did not stop funding after Feeding Our Future threatened it with lawsuits, alleging racism against the state’s Somali American community. The program did not shut down until federal indictments were issued in 2022. Kayesh Magan, a Somali American who was a former fraud investigator for the state’s attorney general’s office, suggested to the Times that the state wanted to avoid controversy since Somali Americans are a “core voting bloc” for Democrats.
Many on the right have used Minnesota’s fraud scandals to fuel racist rhetoric against immigrants and attack Gov. Walz’s administration.
In November, President Trump called Minnesota on Truth Social “a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity” and singled out Somali culprits, who should be sent “back to where they came from.” In the same post, the president announced that he would revoke the Temporary Protected Status of Somali residents in Minnesota with the justification that “Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State.”
In July 2024, Magan, the former fraud investigator, wrote in the Minnesota Reformer that the state’s public programs do not effectively protect against organized fraud because they are designed to catch offenses made by recipients. Fraud among providers who collaborate with recipients is much more difficult to find and is the “most pervasive in the Somali community.”
Although that doesn’t excuse engagement in fraud, Magan wrote, many Somalis are also the victims of these cases as they are often targeted by Somali providers “based on clan ties and familial relations.”
“This relationship, which blurs the traditional boundaries between a recipient and a provider, can enable fraud,” Magan wrote.
Conservatives added further pressure on Walz following a video posted last month on X by independent journalist and YouTuber Nick Shirley that alleged fraud at Somali-run child care centers in Minnesota. Shirley’s video has received 138 million views as of Monday and led the United States Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to launch a fraud investigation into the state’s child care late last month.
And the pressure has worked: Gov. Tim Walz announced Monday that he would drop his bid for reelection this year.
“Every minute that I spend defending my own political interests would be a minute I can’t spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity and the cynics who prey on our differences,” Walz said in a Monday press conference discussing the decision.
Walz said the right “want to poison our people against each other by attacking our neighbors” and that their “political gamesmanship” is making the state’s attempts to actually combat fraud more difficult.
The Trump administration has frozen federal funding for child care in all states, and the US Department of Health and Human Services announced Monday that it is rescinding rules from the Biden administration that “required states to pay providers before verifying any attendance and before care was delivered.” The announcement explicitly refers to the investigation in Minnesota.
“Loopholes and fraud diverted that money to bad actors instead,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said in the announcement. “Today, we are correcting that failure and returning these funds to the working families they were meant to serve.”
On Friday, Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families said that investigators found that child care centers were operating normally.
Minnesota officials have until January 9 to provide the Trump administration with information about providers and parents who receive federal funds for child care, according to an email sent Friday by the state Department of Children, Youth, and Families to child care providers and shared with multiple news organizations.
This post has been syndicated from Mother Jones, where it was published under this address.