Minnesota Forecast: 40 More Miles of Fraud
This week's political weather brought to you by an intrepid 23-year-old YouTuber
I hope everyone had a blessed, joyous Christmas filled with dear family, close friends, delicious food, and an embarrassment of excess. Thanks for your patience while I enjoyed my favorite people under one roof and a desperately needed media fast. This week will be a short one also—apologies in advance—but for now I’m back, caffeinated, and at your service.
Over the weekend, while normal people were waiting in two-hour lines to return the Abercrombie & Fitch Christmas sweaters we they somehow accidentally bought twice after briefly blacking out during a “40% off ends tonight” shopping spree, the internet was very busy blowing up over a documentary by an independent YouTuber I’d never even heard of until my group chat exploded. In the 42-minute flick, Nick Shirley exposed the latest public-assistance fraud in Minnesota—this time, seemingly bottomless piles of taxpayer dollars that were paid out to Somali childcare centers that claimed to be operating at full capacity—but in reality, didn’t actually exist.
What the 23-year-old self-described “watchdog” found, according to publicly available data cross-referenced with his own footage, was a constellation of providers collecting tens of millions in public funds while appearing—on a random weekday during normal business hours—to be closed, vacant, unmarked, or operating at a level best described as theoretical.
(And while some readers may give nary a rat’s backside about the Land of 11,482 Lakes, bureaucratic malfeasance isn’t a tundra-specific problem—it’s a preview of what happens anywhere questionable politics meets unlimited funding.)
One supposed daycare center, listed as serving dozens of children, featured blacked-out windows and a sign with the word “learning” misspelled (the irony!). There was no staff, toys, noise, or—and you can’t put too fine a point on this part—children. Shirley visited dozens of Somali-run facilities, each a variation of the same kid-free theme.
In any sane universe, this would be considered a Major News Story. But this is Minnesota. And the man running Minnesota is not just any governor. He’s the dude Democrats decided represented the absolute ceiling of managerial competence available for second-in-command of the United States of America.
(I didn’t really think it was possible that Tampon Tim could disappoint me, but here we are.)
Naturally, the mainstream media response has been what you’d expect: a synchronized shrug, followed by a collective sprint toward Trump’s Latest Obvious Sign of Rapid Mental Decline™.
If the daycare footage feels familiar, it’s because Minnesota has been speed-running public assistance scandals for years like it’s trying to unlock an achievement.
Before the daycare thing, there was Feeding Our Future, a pandemic-era nutrition program that somehow turned into one of the largest food-aid fraud cases in U.S. history. We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars reportedly siphoned off while state officials argued in court that between federal reimbursement rules and a nonprofit actively suing them for discrimination, their safest legal option was to keep paying and hope the fraud sorted itself out later.
That’s not satire. That was their defense.
Next came the “industrial scale” Medicaid and autism services billing schemes, the majority clustered in Somali-led service networks, where providers were allegedly paid for services that either didn’t happen or were administered in a parallel universe where documentation is optional and oversight is the exclusive domain of the tooth fairy.
Then there were housing assistance violations, often tied to the same provider networks, grant money laundered through nonprofit intermediaries, and a general pattern of “we noticed something weird but we were going to wait until the money was completely gone before asking any questions.”
“What we see are schemes stacked upon schemes, draining resources meant for those in need,” Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said in a statement. “It feels never ending. I have spent my career as a fraud prosecutor and the depth of the fraud in Minnesota takes my breath away.”
And now, courtesy of a next-gen James O’Keefe, we have daycare centers raking in millions without even having to change an occasional diaper or dish out a single Cheerio.
Minnesota didn’t wake up one morning and accidentally become the epicenter of the Somali diaspora. When Somalia’s government collapsed in 1991, the U.S. generously rehomed tens of thousands of Somali refugees. Minnesota—with its low cost of living, abundant state support, and experience resettling earlier refugee populations—became a primary landing zone. Once a critical mass formed, family reunification did the rest.
Today, Minnesota is home to an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 Somali Americans. It’s the largest Somali population in the country, concentrated heavily in the Twin Cities—especially Cedar-Riverside, a neighborhood so Somali it’s nicknamed “Little Mogadishu.” That concentration matters because Minnesota also runs one of the most generous—and convoluted—public-assistance systems in the country. Programs like CCAP, the Child Care Assistance Program, blend federal and state money and then route it through layers of providers covering childcare, adult daycare, healthcare services, and even transportation. Over time, entire commercial buildings became paperwork beehives: one address was linked to more than twenty so-called healthcare companies, another to over a dozen, all billing the same systems.
It’s a structure where politicians have clearly decided that offending a six-figure voting bloc is more dangerous than ignoring blatant corruption.
As of this writing, you will be shocked to learn, Minnesota officials—including the governor’s office—have not addressed Shirley’s footage. (Rep. Ilhan Omar, whose own net worth coincidentally surged 3500% in just one year, could not be reached for comment.) Major national outlets haven’t touched the story either, which is fascinating given how quickly “democracy dies in darkness” becomes a full-scale media event every time Trump signs an executive order.
Apparently, daylight only counts when it’s brought to you by Pfizer. (Fox News did finally cover the scandal, I was pleased to note.)
What’s wild is that this isn’t some obscure accounting discrepancy buried six layers deep in federal spreadsheets. This is more like waking up, stepping over a dead body in your living room, and announcing you’re “monitoring the situation” while making coffee. At a certain point, not responding stops looking like caution and starts becoming complicity. You don’t need a task force, a blue-ribbon panel, or a five-year study to acknowledge video footage of systemic abuse—you just need a pulse and a press secretary. (And if you think this is exclusive to Minnesota, the check is in the mail and your childhood dog is still happily frolicking on a ranch in Montana. Really.)
Here’s what it boils down to, as I see it: You’re allowed to say “fraud.” You’re allowed to say “nonprofit.” You’re allowed to say “billions.” You just can never whisper the immigrant-refugee infrastructure that made this scale possible, because that’s the part everyone has spent a decade congratulating themselves for building. It’s the ribbon-cutting, grant-announcing, virtue-signaling ecosystem that lets politicians preen about compassion while quietly outsourcing accountability. Admitting it’s being exploited doesn’t just expose fraud; it unmasks the people who set it up, funded it, protected it, and used it for moral cover.
So no one touches it. Not because it’s irrelevant—because it’s inconvenient. Which is how we ended up relying on a kid with a camera and a spine to do the work our institutions refuse to do.
One of the best lines of 2025:
This is more like waking up, stepping over a dead body in your living room, and announcing you’re “monitoring the situation” while making coffee.
Thanks, Jenna!
Meanwhile, physicians are being investigated (for Medicaid and Medicare fraud) for improper "coding" and other nitpicky offenses. Another reason I left the system and refuse to take govt or insurance payment for my services. I experienced a Medicare fraud investigation when I worked for an addiction company that committed fraud by ordering too many urine drug screens on patients. I was ultimately cleared, but I believe the owners did some prison time. I do not condone what they did, as a standard $5 cup is usually sufficient and they were sending the $1000 version for Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement. (I saw none of that money, to be clear) Obviously, this "fraud" pales in comparison to the Minnesota assclownery.