Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz hits again as Trump administration freezes state’s baby care funds amid fraud claims | EUROtoday

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has sharply criticized the Trump administration Tuesday over its choice to pause federal baby care funds to the state after an influencer’s video went viral alleging widespread fraud there in authorities applications.

“This is Trump’s long game,” Walz, who was on the Democratic ticket towards Trump in 2024, wrote on X. “We’ve spent years cracking down on fraudsters. It’s a serious issue – but this has been his plan all along. He’s politicizing the issue to defund programs that help Minnesotans.”

The feedback got here because the Department of Health and Human Services introduced that it was freezing baby care funds to the state.

In a put up on X, HHS credited the cease to allegations from a video by right-wing content material creator Nick Shirley, which claimed daycare facilities run by folks of Somali descent in Minnesota are accountable for “potentially the largest fraud scandal in U.S. history.”

In the video, which state Republican management mentioned they assisted in creating, Shirley travels to what he says are empty facilities the place he claims fraud is going down, although it’s unclear when within the week Shirley was visiting the amenities, and a few observers within the state say the video isn’t well-evidenced sufficient to be thought of correct factual reporting.

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State officers say all of the facilities within the video have been visited previously six months and fraud was not found.

The supervisor of one of many facilities within the video instructed the Minnesota StarTribune that whereas youngsters will not be seen from the skin, they had been the truth is current when Shirley visited, however that doorways to the middle are locked for security.

Despite these caveats, Republicans have rapidly latched onto the claims within the video, folding them into the president and the MAGA motion’s common demonization of Somali folks and immigrant communities at giant.

Vice President JD Vance claimed in an X put up final week that immigrants had been “stealing both money and political power from Minnesotans,” whereas GOP Majority Whip Tom Emmer has referred to as for the denaturalization of Somalis engaged in fraud.

Federal businesses together with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security have additionally begun investigating allegations tied to the video.

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State officers have been cracking down on authorities program fraud in Minnesota for years, and 57 folks have been convicted as a part of the $300 million Feeding Our Future fraud scheme, which got here to prominence in 2022.

In an op-ed earlier this month, Walz mentioned the state had applied “systematic changes” in recent times, together with changing state leaders, sending people to jail, hiring a former state police chief and FBI agent to supervise program integrity, and bringing in an out of doors agency to audit funds.

“What is not helpful is the president of the United States demonizing an entire community or pardoning someone single-handedly responsible for $1.6 billion in fraud,” Walz wrote within the StarTribune, a reference to Trump’s current commutation of personal fairness govt David Gentile’s jail sentence.

“If there were a silver bullet to solve this issue, we wouldn’t be seeing similar issues in these federal Medicaid programs in red and blue states across the country — including multi-million-dollar fraud schemes in Ohio, Arizona, Nebraska, Texas and Pennsylvania,” he added.

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In response to Walz’s feedback, a White House social media account referred to as Walz a slur for developmentally disabled folks.

Federal officers have mentioned there’s much more wide-ranging fraud afoot in Minnesota.

This month, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson, who’s main an ongoing sequence of fraud instances, urged that social companies fraud throughout 14 federally supported applications in Minnesota may high $9 billion. The governor’s workplace has referred to as this “speculating” and “sensationalism,” provided that the instances in query embody about $11.6 million in alleged fraud.

Prior to the Minnesota video going viral, the Trump administration has cracked down on Minnesota’s Somali inhabitants, the most important within the nation.

The Treasury Department is investigating enterprise folks use to wire cash to members of the family within the nation, after a report from a conservative information outlet alleged such funds assist militant teams.

Trump has referred to as for immigrants from Somalia — together with his longtime critic Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar — to “be thrown the hell out” of the U.S., alleging they’ve “destroyed our country.”