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Showing posts with label somali immigrants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label somali immigrants. Show all posts

02 January 2026

THE APPLE DOESN'T FALL FAR FROM THE TREE & Eric Trump Revived This Story by running his big mouth: Eric Trump Foundation Told Donors Money Went To Kids With Cancer, Then Gave To Different Causes 29JUN17

                                       The piece of shit doesn't fall far from the asshole.


FASCIST fotze trunt eric drumpf / trump revived this story himself by joining the neo-nazi drumpf / trump-vance administration, their fascist administration, the gop / greed over people-republican party with the ignorant magat cultist in attacking the entire Somali diaspora for fraud of government child assistance programs and in attacking immigrants in general. Why isn't he in jail for his crimes??? From Forbes.....


ByDan Alexander,

Forbes Staff.

 Dan Alexander is a senior editor at Forbes

Dressed in a pinstriped suit and blue tie, with New York’s Plaza Hotel framed over his left shoulder and Central Park over his right, the president’s son Eric Trump touts his charity’s 2014 golf invitational in a Trump Organization video. “It’s really kind of the pinnacle for the Eric Trump Foundation,” he says. “We just raised an inordinate amount of money, and it all obviously goes to the children of St. Jude.”

The charity did in fact raise a serious amount of money at the golf event that year, some $1.8 million, according to federal tax filings, while maintaining an impressive expense ratio of just 14%. But not all of the money went to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a renowned pediatric cancer center in Memphis, where the Eric Trump Foundation had been telling its donors their money went for years. In fact, St. Jude received $1.2 million, $240,000 covered expenses and more than $200,000 went to other organizations, most of which had no programs to help kids with cancer but did have strong ties to Trump family members and interests.

Ten thousand dollars paid for tables at an event for another nonprofit, the Little Baby Face Foundation, which honored Eric at its annual gala one year. Some $37,000 went to the Staten Island Zoo, which at one point said the Eric Trump Foundation had helped to donate three arctic foxes. Another $15,000 went to a charity that supports at-risk Jewish children in a southern Ukrainian city.

And that was just in 2014. From 2011 to 2015, the Eric Trump Foundation donated more than $6 million to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, but it also doled out over $500,000 to about 40 other charities, while assuring donors on its website that all gifts supported St. Jude.

A spokesperson for the Eric Trump Foundation, which was recently rebranded Curetivity, said the charity had been transparent — at least with some people. “Relevant donors whose money was given to causes other than St. Jude were made aware the funds would be donated elsewhere,” the spokesperson wrote in an email to Forbes. “All donations made via the website were given to St. Jude.”

But in light of the charity’s public statements, nonprofit legal experts say any donations that did not go to St. Jude are likely to catch the eye of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. His office announced that it was launching an inquiry into the Eric Trump Foundation earlier this month, after Forbes revealed practices that appeared to violate state laws and federal tax rules. The attorney general, a Democrat who has publicly opposed the president’s policies, is also investigating the Donald J. Trump Foundation.

“If you are raising money for X, and you give it to Y, that is fraud, even if Y is a charity,” says James Fishman, a former assistant attorney general for the state of New York who now teaches at Pace University’s law school. “If I’m writing a check for somebody, and you give it to somebody else, I mean that is fraudulent.”

The Eric Trump Foundation wasn’t always this way. The president’s second son started the charity in 2007 with two friends and, by all accounts, good intentions. In its first four years, the organization sent almost all of its money to St. Jude. It made one major exception, in 2008, when it gave $65,000 to a charity that supports military families. The charity, Fisher House, was added to the Eric Trump Foundation website, signaling to donors that some money would go to an organization besides St. Jude.

But in 2010, the culture inside the Eric Trump Foundation began to change. Four of the original seven directors of the charity dropped off of the board, and three essentially full-time Trump Organization employees joined, marking the beginning of a power shift that ultimately left the organization controlled mostly by people who were financially dependent on Eric’s father, Donald Trump.

The future president insisted that his for-profit golf club begin billing his son’s charity for hosting its fundraiser at the course, according to former Trump golf employee Ian Gillule and former Eric Trump Foundation board member Katrina Kaupp. From 2012 to 2014, the Eric Trump Foundation also made gifts to at least four organizations, which spent an estimated $400,000 or more on events at Donald Trump-owned properties.

As the charity donated more and more to disparate causes, its website increasingly gave the impression that everything was going to the hospital. By 2011 a “donate now” page read “All donations go toward supporting the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.” Two years later, the messaging got more specific: “All donations solely benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.”

Yet more than $50,000 went to other charities who held various events. In 2013, the Eric Trump Foundation paid $833 for a golf outing benefitting the foundation of Miami Dolphins tight end Anthony Fasano, according to a representative for the athlete. Eric Trump attended a dinner for the Lubavitch Youth Organization, a Jewish charity in New York, and donated $10,000 to the group, according to the director of the organization. The Eric Trump Foundation paid $15,000 for tables at a gala for the Little Baby Face Foundation, which offers surgery to children with facial deformities, in 2013 and 2014, according to a Little Baby Face Foundation representative.

At least $200,000 went to causes that appear to be favorites of Trump family members. Eric’s wife Lara, who is passionate about animals, first appeared on the charity’s list of directors in 2013. That year, the organization shipped more than $60,000 from the kids-cancer charity to a zoo, animal shelter and horse rescue in New York. A favorite cause of Eric’s brother Don Jr., cleft-palate charity Operation Smile, received $20,000.

And then there were the auctions. In 2013, the Eric Trump Foundation spent $940 to buy an undisclosed item at an auction to support the American Heart Association, according to a spokesperson for the heart charity. The same year, $1,600 went to a wine industry organization, which the Eric Trump Foundation incorrectly identified as a charitable organization on its tax filings, in exchange for a copper wine still and an antique bottle washer purchased at auction, according to the wine organization.

When asked about the donation, Eric Trump responds, “I don’t know. I honestly don’t. What year would that have been? I mean $1,600 bucks doesn’t sound like a very big item.”

In 2012, the Eric Trump Foundation made a $25,000 donation to the foundation of a Louisiana artist. The artist, whose paintings sometimes sold for roughly $25,000, created a portrait of Donald Trump for the auction at an Eric Trump Foundation event. It is unclear what exactly happened next, but an identical painting showed up in a 2014 Eric Trump photo shoot, hanging above the couch in his house. A charity spokesperson did not respond to questions about the donation.

A close review of Eric Trump Foundation tax filings raises more questions. According to the documents, all revenue flowing into the Eric Trump Foundation from 2008 to 2014 came from the annual golf invitational. The charity helped to organize other events, like a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. But money from those events was sent directly to St. Jude without going through the financial statements of the Eric Trump Foundation, according to a 2015 state filing.

Two former board members, Katrina Kaupp and Doug Reinhardt, said they believed the proceeds from the golf invitational also went entirely to the children’s hospital. “From what I know, all of it went to St. Jude,” Reinhardt says. “I’m 99.9% positive all of it went to St. Jude.”

But not all of it did, according to the charity’s IRS filings.

Kaupp says that may be partially because members of the board of directors made additional donations specifically targeting other charities, which could have been lumped in as golf tournament revenue on the IRS documents. A spokesperson for the charity did not respond to a question about whether board members had donated to specific other organizations through the Eric Trump Foundation. But there is some evidence to support Kaupp’s theory. At Eric’s wedding, for instance, he and his wife Lara asked for donations in lieu of gifts. That money was then split, with some of it going to St. Jude and $55,000 going to a North Carolina animal shelter named Paws Place, which was a favorite charity of Lara’s, according to Peggy Durso, the operations director of the animal charity.

But Eric Trump and his fellow board members did not donate all of the money that went to other causes. State filings from 2012 show that all directors and their families gave just $72,600 of the total $2.3 million raised that year. Yet the foundation shelled out more than $110,000 to organizations other than St. Jude, according to IRS documents. That means that even if the directors had given no money to St. Jude, they still would not have donated enough to offset the payments to other organizations. In 2013 Eric Trump, the other board members, their families, and “companies of one of the family members” gave $65,000, while the charity donated more than $150,000 to organizations other than St. Jude, according to state and federal filings.

“If one represents that the funds are going to be used to benefit charity A and instead they go to charities B, C and D, that’s a misrepresentation,” says Sean Delany, a former assistant attorney general who oversaw the charities bureau in the state of New York. “A donor might choose to donate specifically because they care deeply about children’s cancer issues, or they care deeply about supporting St. Jude hospital in particular, and have no interest in supporting those other charities.”

Dan Alexander

01 January 2026

An Intense White House Response From a Single Viral Video 31DEZ25



 IT doesn't take much to get the neo-nazi drumpf / trump administration, the gop / greed over people-republican party and the voluntary ignorance of magat cult members fired up. Racism, hate, bigotry, fascism, xenophobia and the apostasy of "christian" nationalism blended in a campaign of fascist lies, misinformation, deception, manipulation and propaganda repeated over and over as being the truth is typical of this administration. As long as they are successful in keeping people distrustful of and opposed to each other they can impose rules and regulations and punishments that in short order eventually are applied to all. hitler's third reich used this technique on the German people in the 1930's until democracy was eliminated and his fascist authoritarian regime was in power. Fascist fotze arschlecker trunt nikki shirley is the newest voluntary pawn being used by NOT MY pres drumpf / trump, NOT MY vp vance, their authoritarian administration, and the fascist heritage foundation's project 2025's drive to impose their desired authoritarian theocratic oligarchy. nick nikki shirley has focused suspicion, distrust and hate on Somali immigrants, he will be so surprised when the administration turns on him. From the New York Times.....

An Intense White House Response From a Single Viral Video


A video purporting to expose extensive fraud at child care centers in Minnesota shows the relationship between the Trump administration and self-described citizen journalists.


A 43-minute video posted online in the past week, purporting to expose extensive fraud at Somali-run child care centers in Minnesota, has been viewed by millions of people. It has also set off a series of events that show the symbiotic relationship between the Trump administration and self-described citizen journalists.

It was posted to X and YouTube the day after Christmas by Nick Shirley, a 23-year-old who has made a name for himself in the past two years by producing viral content that aligns with MAGA policies. In the video, Mr. Shirley is accompanied by a man identified only as David, who claims to have uncovered fraud worse than “anywhere else ever in history.”

Specifically, the man says he has identified dozens of child care and autism centers receiving millions of dollars in state funding without caring for any children.

The New York Times could not verify the claims made in the video. Mainstream news sites have reported on cases of social services fraud in Minnesota for years, including a 2,200-word article in The Times last month. But Mr. Shirley’s video hit a nerve, generating attention from conservative media outlets like Fox News and praise from top Republican officials. “This dude has done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 @pulitzercenter prizes,” Vice President JD Vance posted on X on Saturday.

On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security launched an investigation into the centers. On Tuesday evening, Jim O’Neill, the deputy secretary of health and human services, said on X that the federal government had “frozen all child care payments to the state of Minnesota.”

The scale of the reaction to Mr. Shirley’s video has few precedents, but it highlights the way the White House seeds narratives about key issues, then rewards sympathetic creators who deliver viral content. That content need not be new, or even particularly revelatory, to succeed.

Equipped with little more than iPhones, Mr. Shirley and other right-wing YouTubers and livestreamers zigzag around the country — and overseas — in search of politically charged footage. In many cases, these digital activists pick up on themes that have circulated for months, or even years, but still generate online outrage and action from a government primed to jump into the fray.

“It’s mutual back-scratching,” said Darren L. Linvill of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University, who tracks how social media is used to disseminate propaganda. “They all have goals that align, and they’re all pointed in the same direction.”

Over the past two years, pro-Trump content creators have covered dozens of protests, political rallies and natural disasters; marched with anti-Muslim activists; and embedded with immigration officials on raids.

An example of the feedback loop in action: Days after President Trump announced on Truth Social in late September that he would deploy “all necessary Troops” to defend “War ravaged Portland,” Nick Sortor, a popular livestreamer, flew to Oregon to cover the protests.

After arriving, he was accused of disorderly conduct and briefly arrested. Attorney General Pam Bondi called him upon his release to say she had ordered a civil rights investigation of Portland’s police department for “viewpoint discrimination.” A few days later, he went on a ride-along in Portland with Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary.

The next week, Mr. Sortor was one of a dozen content creators invited to the White House for a discussion of the antifa movement attended by Mr. Trump; Ms. Bondi; Ms. Noem; Kash Patel, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff; and Stephen Miller, a deputy chief of staff. Mr. Trump called the attendees “very brave patriots,” adding that he would consider awarding them “some very important medals and honors.”

Mr. Shirley, who did not respond to requests for comment for this article, was also at that event.

His aspiration for YouTube fame dated back to high school in Utah, where he grew up outside Salt Lake City. He stopped posting on the platform four years ago, when he traveled to Chile as a young missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Until then, his videos were mostly goofy — sneaking into exclusive events, pranking friends and jumping off perilously tall objects.


But weeks after his return to the United States, in late 2023, Mr. Shirley pivoted to more political content, applying a distinctively low-key, nuance-free tone to hot-button issues like immigration, pro-Gaza demonstrations on college campuses and L.G.B.T.Q. issues. The videos took off. Within six months, he had surpassed 100,000 subscribers on YouTube.

He started with posts from the Mexican border and a few months later traveled to El Salvador, where he said he was the first American to film inside the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, a prison known as CECOT. He roamed the streets of Springfield, Ohio, amplifying false rumors, spread by Mr. Trump, that Haitian immigrants there had been eating dogs and cats.

Mr. Shirley has filmed immigration protests in Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago and embedded with the U.S. Marshals Service. In September, he confronted a group of men selling what appear to be counterfeit watches in Lower Manhattan, calling them “illegal scammers.” Less than a month later, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency arrested several of the same men in a targeted raid.

Little has proved as viral as his portrayal of Somalis in Minnesota. Mr. Shirley traveled to the state in July to cover what he called “the rise of Islam” with on-the-street interviews of Somali Americans. He returned soon after Mr. Trump, during a televised cabinet meeting early this month, called members of the diaspora “garbage” who had “ripped off” taxpayers.

Mr. Shirley’s latest video appears to have been filmed on Dec. 17 in and around Minneapolis, where he knocks on the doors of numerous child care and autism centers. In some cases, there is no answer. When someone does open up, Mr. Shirley demands to see whether there are children inside but is never shown any.

At each stop, Mr. Shirley, citing state billing records, announces that the operation is fraudulent because he does not see any children. All told, he claims to have personally uncovered $110 million in fraud.

“We don’t know if children were or were not present at the time the video was taken,” the Department of Children, Youth and Families said in a statement regarding the video. “When our licensers have conducted visits to the buildings,” it added, “there have been children present.”

At a news conference this week, the head of the department said regulators had conducted unannounced visits at all of the sites in the video this year and found no evidence of fraud. The businesses have not been mentioned in any of the recent criminal cases.

Mr. Shirley first posted a clip from a child care center on X on Dec. 23 and published the full video on Friday. It has racked up more than 128 million views, according to the platform’s statistics.

On Monday, Ms. Noem posted that Homeland Security Investigations agents were “on the ground in Minneapolis right now conducting a massive investigation on childcare and other rampant fraud.” Mr. Patel chimed in, announcing an F.B.I. surge in the state. “We will continue to follow the money and protect children,” he wrote on X.

In a statement, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said that “the country should be deeply appreciative to Shirley for shining a light on this issue — the legacy media should take notes.” (Among the news organizations that have covered the issue extensively are The Minnesota Star Tribune, The Minnesota Reformer, Sahan Journal, Minnesota Public Radio and local television stations.)

Mr. Trump had largely ignored the issue until last month, after City Journal, a publication affiliated with the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research group, made the jarring and unsubstantiated claim that money from the fraud schemes was a major funding source for Al Shabab, a terrorist group.

Renee DiResta, a social media researcher at Georgetown University, said Mr. Shirley’s story appeared to have all the elements embraced by the administration and sympathetic influencers: fraud, immigration, Islam and race, all wrapped up in a blue state run by the latest Democratic nominee for vice president, Gov. Tim Walz, who is running for re-election.

“They have the political goal of cultivating the energy from these things,” she said. “They seed the allegations; all it takes is for someone to go and try to find evidence to support it.”

Mr. Shirley has enjoyed a huge boost as a result of the attention, adding about 170,000 YouTube subscribers in the past week and pushing his total above 1.25 million, according to Social Blade, a tracking site. After Andrew Tate, a manosphere influencer, asked on social media how he could donate money, Mr. Shirley posted addresses for two crypto wallets. Mr. Shirley has in recent days posted multiple times calling for Mr. Walz to be prosecuted.

On Monday night, another Trump-supporting creator, Anthony Rubin, posted a video showing himself knocking on the door of a child care center in Columbus, Ohio, that he said was “associated with the Somali community.” Nobody answered.

“We’re just getting started,” he said.

Ken Bensinger covers media and politics for The Times.

Ernesto Londoño is a Times reporter based in Minnesota, covering news in the Midwest and drug use and counternarcotics policy.

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 1, 2026, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Conservative Social Influencers Give Trump’s Team an Amplifier. 

31 December 2025

VIDEO & TRANSCRIPTS: Federal agents probe fraud allegations targeting Somali child care providers in Minnesota & Trump administration says it's freezing child care funds to Minnesota 30DEZ25


THERE is so much misinformation, deception, manipulation as well as racism, bigotry xenophobia and flat out lying regarding the accusations of fraud of government funds by the Somali community that they have been declared guilty en masse before most investigations have even started and of those started are not yet completed. This on the latest anti-immigrant feeding frenzy encouraged by NOT MY pres drumpf / trump, fascist fotze trunt arschlecker nick shirley, Homeland Security fascist fotze trunt kkkristi noem , FBI director fascist fotze trunt kash patel ( who should soon be under investigation of misuse of govt funds benefiting his gurl fiend ) and Dep Sec of Health and Human Services fascist fotze trunt jimmy o'neil. Thank God they have Rep Ilhan Omar D-MN to stand up for and protect the innocent! From The PBS NewsHour and NPR.....

Federal agents probe fraud allegations targeting Somali child care providers in Minnesota

This week, the Trump administration dispatched federal officers to Minnesota amid concerns over fraud. The deployment comes after a right-wing influencer posted a video claiming, without proof, that daycare centers operated by Somali residents in Minneapolis had misappropriated more than $100 million. Nick Schifrin discussed more with Jeff Meitrodt of the Minnesota Star Tribune.

Read the Full Transcript

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Nick Schifrin:

This week, the Trump administration dispatched federal officers to Minnesota amid renewed concerns over fraud. The deployment comes after right-wing influencer Nick Shirley posted a video on YouTube last week claiming without proof that day care centers operated by Somali residents in Minneapolis had misappropriated more than $100 million.

In response, FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on X his agency was already investigating and that -- quote -- "This is just the tip of a very large iceberg." And Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted this video yesterday of agents on the ground in Minneapolis.

But state and city officials question Shirley's claims that come as the Somali community in Minneapolis was already facing the administration's immigration crackdown.

To break it all down, I'm joined by Jeff Meitrodt of The Minnesota Star Tribune, who's been covering this story.

Jeff Meitrodt, thanks very much. Welcome to the "News Hour."

Federal prosecutors said earlier this month they're investigating some $9 billion worth of fraud in more than a dozen Medicaid-funded programs in Minnesota. That is much broader, much larger than anything they have announced previously. So explain, what's new here?

Jeff Meitrodt, Investigative Reporter, The Minnesota Star Tribune:

What's new here is that a fraud problem that started with a COVID era really relief program to help kids get meals when the schools were all shut down has just spiraled into this sort of giant monster that just keeps spreading from one program to another.

It seems like there's a playbook that's been passed around out there, and dozens, if not hundreds, of criminals are figuring out how to rip out the state for -- it's certainly hundreds of millions of dollars. And I think, at the $9 billion, my God, that's a huge lift.

I guess it's possible, but there's been a little bit of skepticism about that number too.

Nick Schifrin:

In the video, Nick Shirley visits several day cares. Some appear closed and some turn him away when he asks to see children. And he seems to take this as proof that the centers are fraudulent. What is he claiming and how does it square with your reporting?

Jeff Meitrodt:

Well, it's not investigative reporting by any stretch of the imagination.

I can't imagine these day care facilities letting a stranger in the door. That seems like a violation of all kinds of rules, state and federal, but it does make good theater. And it does raise actually questions about the legitimacy of some of these sites.

Some of these do not look like your standard day cares, blacked-out windows, sites that are not that family-friendly. And so it looks damning. And it may very well be that some of these sites are not taking care of children. It looks like a couple of them actually have been closed for some period of time.

So did he cherry-pick a list for sort of maximum impact visually that ultimately is going to turn out to be nothing? We don't know yet. The state hasn't shared any of their results from what they saw on the streets this week when they went and they visited those day care centers.

Nick Schifrin:

Have any of the sites themselves responded?

Jeff Meitrodt:

Yes, we have heard from several of them. We visited some of them today and yesterday. They're pushing back and saying, it's business as usual here, we're still open.

My colleague was in one today that had 50 kids present, which certainly is not the narrative that we saw in the video. And it did not look like a staged situation, like they just suddenly put in a bunch of cots for kids.

But that said, we have visited all of them. And at least one of them had quite a history of problems, including a failure to report what looks like either the death of a child or some other kind of very serious incident. So these look like some facilities that may have some issues. Whether they're committing fraud, that's a different question.

Nick Schifrin:

As you know, Republicans have put the blame on Minnesota's Democratic governor, Tim Walz.

And here's what his office told us in part -- quote -- "Fraud is unacceptable and it is appropriate that the federal government is investigating problems in federal programs. The governor has been combating this for years, and before the viral video, the state had already referred these cases to law enforcement."

What has the state and federal response been even before the latest allegations?

Jeff Meitrodt:

Very robust at the federal level, somewhat tepid at the state level.

And so I think there's legitimate questions that have been raised about whether the state did what it needed to do at the beginning to shut this thing down. Now, there certainly has been a lot of action at the state level recently to try to crack down, create new guardrails, to create new processes that would catch fraud and prevent these kind of things from happening again.

But a lot of critics are saying this is a little bit too little too late.

Nick Schifrin:

And, finally, the Somali community in Minneapolis has been demonized by the president of the United States, who has called them -- quote -- "garbage." He said: "We don't want them in our country."

And here's what Ahmed Samatar told our Fred de Sam Lazaro these new allegations. He's a Somali professor at Macalester College in St. Paul. He's lived in Minnesota for over 30 years.

Ahmed Samatar, Macalester College:

The consequences could be frightening for many Somalis, especially young people who would think that they were born here, they're living the life of a normal citizen, going to school and getting along with life, and, therefore, should now have to watch their back all the time because they are targeted as an unwanted foreign group of people.

That's the danger.

Nick Schifrin:

How is this renewed attention affecting the Somali community?

Jeff Meitrodt:

Absolutely.

They have been under siege now for weeks with this crackdown by ICE. And I think the recent video, I mean, based on the hate mail that I'm getting for the stories that we have done that have raised some questions about both things that the state have done, statements that the feds have made, I can't imagine what it's like to be a Somali person in our community right now.

Minnesota is home to the largest Somali community in the United States. Over 100,000 folks are living here. They're police officers. They're teachers. A handful of them are criminals. But it's painting the entire community with a very broad brush.

Nick Schifrin:

Jeff Meitrodt is with The Minnesota Star Tribune.

Thank you very much.

Jeff Meitrodt:

Thank you.


Trump administration says it's freezing child care funds to Minnesota

President Trump's administration announced on Tuesday that it is freezing child care funds to Minnesota and demanding an audit of fraud schemes involving government programs.

Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Jim O'Neill said on the social platform X that the move is in response to "blatant fraud that appears to be rampant in Minnesota and across the country."

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pushed back on X, saying fraudsters are a serious issue that the state has spent years cracking down on but that this move is part of "Trump's long game."

"He's politicizing the issue to defund programs that help Minnesotans," Walz said.

O'Neill referenced a right-wing influencer who posted a video Friday claiming he found that day care centers operated by Somali residents in Minneapolis had committed up to $100 million in fraud. O'Neill said he has demanded Walz submit an audit of these centers that includes attendance records, licenses, complaints, investigations and inspections.

"We have turned off the money spigot and we are finding the fraud," O'Neill said.

The announcement comes one day after U.S. Homeland Security officials were in Minneapolis conducting a fraud investigation by going to unidentified businesses and questioning workers.

There have been years of investigations that included a $300 million pandemic food fraud scheme revolving around the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, for which 57 defendants in Minnesota have been convicted. Prosecutors said the organization was at the center of the country's largest COVID-19-related fraud scam, when defendants exploited a state-run, federally funded program meant to provide food for children.

A federal prosecutor alleged earlier this month that half or more of the roughly $18 billion in federal funds that supported 14 programs in Minnesota since 2018 may have been stolen. Most of the defendants in the child nutrition, housing services and autism program schemes are Somali Americans, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for Minnesota.

O'Neill, who is serving as acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also said in the social media post Tuesday that payments across the U.S. through the Administration for Children and Families, an agency within the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, will now require "justification and a receipt or photo evidence" before money is sent. They have also launched a fraud-reporting hotline and email address.

The Administration for Children and Families provides $185 million in child care funds annually to Minnesota, according to Assistant Secretary Alex Adams.

"That money should be helping 19,000 American children, including toddlers and infants," he said in a video posted on X. "Any dollar stolen by fraudsters is stolen from those children."

Adams said he spoke Monday with the director of Minnesota's child care services office and she wasn't able to say "with confidence whether those allegations of fraud are isolated or whether there's fraud stretching statewide."

Trump has criticized Walz's administration over the fraud cases, capitalizing on them to target the Somalia diaspora in the state, which has the largest Somali population in the U.S.

Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, has said an audit due by late January should give a better picture of the extent of the fraud. He said his administration is taking aggressive action to prevent additional fraud. He has long defended how his administration responded.

Minnesota's most prominent Somali American, Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, has urged people not to blame an entire community for the actions of a relative few.

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