What did Donald Trump do today?
He used hungry Minnesota children as an excuse for a racist attack on Somali-Americans.
Trump has made the United States' Somali population a particular target in his second term, calling them "garbage" and launching into nativist, racist rants that wouldn't have been out of place at a Ku Klux Klan or Nazi Party rally. Many Americans of Somali descent live in Minnesota, including Rep. Ilhan Omar, who usually inspires particularly vicious reactions in Trump.
Today, in response to a supporter's YouTube video that purports (without evidence) to show "fraud" at daycare centers run by Somali immigrants, Trump froze the entire state's federal funding through the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services.
In other words, Trump is holding up funding meant to provide food, shelter, care, adoption assistance, child support enforcement, foster care subsidies, and child abuse prevention for all Minnesota children who need it, in order to score a political point against specific Americans he regards as enemies.
This and other government programs have been the target of fraud. Minnesota's state government, led by 2024 Vice-Presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz, has been cracking down on federal welfare fraud for years, although it's hardly unique to Minnesota.
As a rule, federal and state governments are easy to defraud in the short term: the trick is getting away with it. Trump knows something about this first-hand: he was caught defrauding New York State to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in a 2023 civil trial. Other fraudulent Trump enterprises that state governments eventually brought to heel include his scam "Trump University," and the Trump Foundation, his illegally operated "charity."
Trump has pardoned a number of convicted fraudsters during his second term. These include:
- Joseph Schwartz, the CEO of a nursing home chain who defrauded Medicaid and then paid Trump loyalists $960,000 to secure a pardon
- Ross Ulbricht, a cryptocurrency market drug kingpin who used fraudulent identity documents to maintain his criminal empire, and whose pardon also wiped out a nearly $200 million fine in restitution to the United States
- Devon Archer, whose $44 million restitution for securities fraud against the Oglala Sioux Nation was wiped out by Trump's pardon
- Trevor Milton, convicted of securities fraud, pardoned by Trump explicitly because of his political support for Trump, costing $660 million in restitution.
- at least two dozen others
Why does this matter?
- Hungry and homeless children shouldn't be used as political pawns.
- Presidents who cared about fraud wouldn't commit so much of it or excuse it when it was committed by wealthy donors.