{"id":383195,"date":"2025-12-31T19:30:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T19:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/383195\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T19:30:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T19:30:12","slug":"trump-administration-freezes-childcare-funding-to-minnesota-in-wake-of-fraud-scheme-allegations-minnesota","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/383195\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump administration freezes childcare funding to Minnesota in wake of fraud scheme allegations | Minnesota"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trump administration<\/a> announced on Tuesday that it is freezing federal funding for childcare programs in Minnesota after allegations of fraud \u2013 first exposed and prosecuted during the Biden administration \u2013 recently became the focus of conservative influencers and media outlets.<\/p>\n

Jim O\u2019Neill, the deputy secretary of health and human services, said in a video statement<\/a> that the funding freeze was in response to what he called \u201cblatant fraud that appears to be rampant in Minnesota and across the country \u2026 We have turned off the money spigot and we are finding the fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n

The announcement comes one day after homeland security officials followed the new wave of attention generated by a rightwing influencer\u2019s video dispatch from Minneapolis by going to businesses in the city to question workers over alleged fraud.<\/p>\n

Despite claims by conservatives on social media that the allegations of fraud were ignored until now, there have been years of fraud investigations that began with the indictments<\/a> in 2022 of 47 defendants for their alleged roles in a $250m scheme that exploited a federally funded child nutrition program during the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors eventually secured the conviction of 57 people who stole federal funds granted to the nonprofit Feeding Our Future.<\/p>\n

A federal prosecutor alleged earlier in December that half or more of the roughly $18bn in federal funds that supported 14 programs in Minnesota<\/a> since 2018 may have been stolen. Most of the defendants are Somali Americans, they said.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump has used the allegations against dozens of Somali Americans to promote his calls to ban refugees from Somalia, and to expand his long-running vendetta against that community\u2019s most visible member, Ilhan Omar<\/a>, the Minnesota Democrat who represents the state in Congress.<\/p>\n

Omar has urged people not to blame an entire community for the actions of a relative few.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neill also said in the social media post that nationwide payments through the Administration for Children and Families, an agency within the health department, will now require \u201cjustification and a receipt or photo evidence\u201d before money is sent. The department has also launched a fraud reporting hotline and email address, he said.<\/p>\n

The senior health official credited the rightwing influencer Nick Shirley, who posted video of himself confronting workers at day care centers operated by Somali Americans in Minneapolis last week. Shirley\u2019s video, which was widely viewed online, has been criticized<\/a> for falsely presenting as new revelations allegations of fraud schemes that were extensively reported on<\/a> in the local and national media during the Biden administration.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neill said he has demanded that Minnesota\u2019s governor, Tim Walz<\/a>, submit an audit of day care centers that includes attendance records, licenses, complaints, investigations and inspections.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is Trump\u2019s long game,\u201d Walz wrote<\/a> on social media in response to the announcement from O\u2019Neill, \u201cWe\u2019ve spent years cracking down on fraudsters. It\u2019s a serious issue \u2013 but this has been his plan all along. He\u2019s politicizing the issue to defund programs that help Minnesotans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice-presidential candidate, was pressed on the issue last year and has said fraud will not be tolerated and his administration \u201cwill continue to work with federal partners to ensure fraud is stopped and fraudsters are caught\u201d.<\/p>\n

Walz, who has long defended how his administration has responded, 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it is freezing federal funding for childcare programs in Minnesota after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-383195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}