Trump Administration Puts Mississippi On Notice About Welfare Fraud Penalty | EUROtoday

President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday warned the state of Mississippi that it might nonetheless face stiff penalties for misspending thousands and thousands of welfare {dollars}.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services final yr rescinded the $100 million penalty, which was initially imposed by former President Joe Biden’s administration, after the state mentioned it might justify a few of the allegedly fraudulent spending within the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.

In a letter despatched Tuesday, the Administration for Children and Families at HHS, which administers this system, serves as a reminder that Mississippi might nonetheless face a considerable penalty. It’s doubtless additionally an effort to indicate the administration isn’t giving favorable remedy to a Republican-led state whereas it cracks down on alleged fraud in blue states.

“As noted previously, the misuse of federal TANF funds is a very serious concern to ACF and the federal government in general,” ACF’s Deborah List wrote to the Mississippi Department of Human Services within the letter, which was obtained by HuffPost. “Although the December 2024 penalty notice was rescinded for the limited purposes described above, MDHS will be subject to a future penalty based on ACF’s assessment of the amount of TANF funds that were misused.”

As HuffPost reported earlier this monththe Trump administration had seemingly left Mississippi off the hook for an enormous welfare fraud scandal because it cracked down aggressively on Democratic states. The administration has flooded Minnesota with militarized immigration brokers and introduced an unprecedented suspension of TANF and different federal applications in Minnesota, plus 4 different Democratic-led states, in response to fraud in Minnesota.

Nick Gwyn, an professional on the federal authorities’s social security internet applications with the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, mentioned the back-and-forth between Mississippi and the administration continues to be a lot friendlier than the method taken with Democratic states.

“The ACF letter highlights the existing regulatory process to address fraud in the TANF program — which the Trump Administration ignored and violated in their five-state funding freeze,” Gwyn mentioned in an electronic mail. “The result is allowing one state more than a year to contest a penalty based on documented fraud, while five states were threatened with immediate withholding of their TANF funds, without any evidence of misspending.”

The HHS letter asks Mississippi for an replace on its efforts to substantiate the almost $100 million in funds to nonprofit organizations that then funneled the cash to not-so-needy people, together with former NFL quarterback Brett Favre. (Favre has mentioned he had no concept the funds he obtained, which he has paid again to the state, have been supposed assist low-income households.)

Federal prosecutors in Minnesota have filed fees in opposition to almost 100 folks, most of them of Somali descent, for embezzling $250 million in federal diet funds with out offering meals to low-income people since 2022. The Trump administration surged immigration brokers to the state this month in response to a viral YouTube video purporting to indicate fraudulent day cares with no kids inside.

In a lawsuit looking for to cease the federal authorities’s surge of federal legislation enforcement in Minnesota, which has terrorized residents and resulted within the deaths of two American residents, the state authorities argued fraud was a mere pretext for an assault on Democrats.

“Defendants claim this unprecedented surge of immigration agents is necessary to fight fraud,” the state mentioned in a court docket submitting this month. “In reality, the massive deployment of armed agents to Minnesota bears no connection to that stated objective and instead reflects an alarming escalation of the Trump Administration’s retaliatory actions towards the state.”