Why MAGA lies work

I said my "thank you" to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and support him in making the decision to not seek reelection - especially given that his daughter Hope has affirmed that his family's safety was a factor in that decision.  

But from a purely political standpoint, I disagree with Ed Kilgore, who wrote that it was a wise move by Walz.

[A] burgeoning scandal involving fraud in pandemic-era child care and Medicaid initiatives in Minnesota had become a huge national GOP talking point, reinforcing MAGA narratives of criminal immigrants entering the U.S. to rip off taxpayers and prey on law-abiding citizens. It guaranteed a 2026 gubernatorial campaign fought on exactly the wrong grounds for Walz and his party, offering a big blue-state upset opportunity for Republicans.

Kilgore is right that this story became a huge national talking point. As I wrote previously, it gave MAGA an opportunity to attack Walz, demonize immigrants, and go after this country's social safety net. The Democratic Party should never back down from those fights. 

A former associate of mine, Nekima Levy Armstrong, articulated the issue very well.

Watching Democrats repeatedly step aside under political and media pressure has become deeply dispiriting. Not because controversy doesn’t matter, but because the party continues to treat it as fatal rather than something to confront and survive. In a political climate where attacks are constant and often deliberately manufactured, this reflex doesn’t signal integrity. It signals vulnerability...

When Democrats respond to bad-faith attacks by retreating, they don’t just lose candidates. They legitimize the tactic. They teach voters that propaganda works, that cruelty carries no cost, and that marginalized communities can be used as political weapons without consequence. Whatever the intentions, the cumulative effect is strategic capitulation.

In case you doubt what she's saying, just take a look at that screenshot of Nick Shirley's latest video up above. The lying racists are claiming victory. And if you think that's the end of it, take a look at how the right is ramping up the same claims in Maine against Gov. Janet Mills. Or the fact that MAGA influencer Benny Johnson just announced that "Next week our team is traveling to the fraud capital of the world: California. The fraud uncovered in Minnesota was very bad and led to the destruction of Tim Walz’ career. But Gavin Newsom’s California is far worse."

This isn't about blaming Walz for his decision. But where were Democrats and major media outlets in calling out the racism/lies. All some intrepid journalist would have to do is actually watch the video represented by that screenshot up above and they'd hear a constant stream of hateful Islamophobia and outright lies. And yet most media outlets stood by and let these assholes take down one of the most accomplished governors in the country - while liberal pundits claim that retreating from our core values was a wise move. 

 I felt the same frustration when President Biden stepped aside. I'll now re-write what I said previously:

The truth is that Tim Walz's governorship was a tremendous success. There is a reason why that poses a big threat to Trump and Republicans.

Republicans want Democrats on their heels apologizing for Tim Walz because, as the Trump administration focuses on undoing everything Democrats have accomplished, they want to ensure that no governor in the future tries to replicate it.

I, for one, will not capitulate to that nonsense and I'll call out any Democrat who does. What Tim Walz accomplished in office was a huge step forward for this state. I'm not only grateful to him personally, I proudly embrace his vision of making the government work for ordinary Americans.

Democrats should NOT adopt the same smear campaigns as Republicans. But what we CAN do is stand up and fight for each other when one of our own is under attack. That's what teamwork is all about. I really don't understand why Democrats (not just elected officials and party leaders, but pundits and voters too) are so bad at that.

Thank you Gov. Walz

I am both angry and sad to learn that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will not run for re-election. 

The anger I feel is because the firehose of lies about Walz and my home state seem to have worked. I don't fault Walz for getting out - he and his family have been dealing with this sh*t for years now. They deserve a break. I blame every MAGA who jumped on the bandwagon - regardless of whether they were motivated by Walz himself, their hatred of immigrants, their desire to dismantle our social safety net, or all three.

But there is a sadness about all of this as well. That's because, over the years, I've come to respect Tim Walz and his family. The Minnesota Indivisible Alliance captured a lot of the reasons why.

Tim Walz didn’t enter politics chasing power. He came in because the kids he taught forced him to think that he— a teacher, a Guardsman, a coach —owed the country something. He won a deep-red congressional district by showing up and listening.

When he ran for governor, he ran on steadiness, competence, and “One Minnesota” on the promise that there was no we/them but one us. ..

In 2022, reelection and a Democratic trifecta allowed him to get stuff done. Allied with Melissa Hortman and Kari Dzic they got: abortion rights codified into law, expanded paid family and medical leave, universal free school meals, and gun safety measures. Hard, quiet work that improved lives.

Then Kamala Harris picked Walz to be her running mate in 2024, bringing us moments like this:

That election will go down in history as one of the biggest mistakes this country has ever made. I didn't know that this happened after that loss:

After the [VP] run, Tim Walz had been thinking about stepping away. In private conversations with Melissa Hortman, he confided he was considering not running again in 2026 and urged her to consider doing so. After her sudden death, he carried on.

That makes this moment at a vigil for Hortman even more poignant.

I join MN Indivisible in this:

So we close this chapter of his life by saying, while the country may remember the politician, we’ll remember the neighbors..

The guy walking his dog in the neighborhood.
The wife shopping in local stores.
The daughter working at a homeless shelter.
The son playing volleyball with joy.

The man cheering on marathoners, reading to kids, stopping for a Juicy Lucy — moments that remind us behind every public image are real people living real lives.

So this is a thank you.
For serving our country
For carrying a job that changed underneath him and not walking away.

From me, this one goes out to the Walz family today:

 

Remembering Obama's legacy in Central and South America, now trashed by Trump

Trump's invasion of Venezuela has reminded me that I came of age during the Cold War - with stories of Korea, Vietnam, and Central/South America dominating our foreign policy. Here's what I wrote about that back in 2016:

I haven’t forgotten what this country has gotten wrong in the past. There was a legitimate clash of ideologies between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. And the specter of nuclear war was terrifying. But in many ways those threats became tangled with global corporate interests and a lack of awareness about the impending death of colonialism. In the process, millions of people all over the planet had their lives upended and damaged by our interventions.

Having lived in Peru for the first six years of my life, I was particularly attuned to the atrocities this country perpetrated in Central and South America. That is why, in the spring of 2011, this photo grabbed my attention: 

On a trip to El Salvador, the President of the United States visited the grave of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who spoke out against repression by the U.S.-backed Salvadoran army during the 12-year civil war that killed at least 75,000 people. Romero was fatally shot in the heart March 24, 1980, as he celebrated Mass in a hospital chapel. 

During that same trip, Obama visited then-Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. 

After a U.S. backed coup in 1964, Rousseff was imprisoned and tortured by a military that had been trained at the infamous School of the Americas.

During one of his last foreign trips as president, Obama visited Argentina - creating this powerful moment:

That photo was taken on Argentina's “Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice” on the 40th anniversary of the 1976 coup that led to the brutal massacre of approximately 20,000 people. The U.S. backed junta that came into power organized death camps with methods that were reminiscent of the Nazi’s. One of the most common came to be known as “death flights,” where prisoners were injected with sedatives before being dropped from airplanes, still alive, into the Rio de la Plata. President Obama and then-Argentine President Mauricio Macri threw flowers into the river that became the watery grave for so many.

Even more significant, on that same trip, Obama became the first U.S. President to visit Cuba in nearly 90 years. 

That visit came on the heels of this:

The Cold War died Wednesday.

Its death was foretold, yet somehow it still came as a shock.

It didn’t expire on a bayside battlefield in the Caribbean or with a mushroom cloud or even with an exploding cigar. It perished at a White House podium.

The prisoner swap that set Alan Gross free — and the sweeping changes to U.S. policy on Cuba that went with it — won’t heal all wounds, nor will it vanquish the powerful cold warriors in the U.S. Congress. But it did fundamentally alter a curio of American foreign policy that deeply influenced popular culture and played an outsize role in U.S. presidential politics for more than half a century.

Here's some of what Obama said during his 2016 speech to the people of Cuba:

I know these issues are sensitive, especially coming from an American President. Before 1959, some Americans saw Cuba as something to exploit, ignored poverty, enabled corruption. And since 1959, we’ve been shadow-boxers in this battle of geopolitics and personalities. I know the history, but I refuse to be trapped by it...

So here’s my message to the Cuban government and the Cuban people: The ideals that are the starting point for every revolution – America’s revolution, Cuba’s revolution, the liberation movements around the world – those ideals find their truest expression, I believe, in democracy. Not because American democracy is perfect, but precisely because we’re not. And we – like every country – need the space that democracy gives us to change. It gives individuals the capacity to be catalysts to think in new ways, and to reimagine how our society should be, and to make them better.

A lot has happened in Central and South America over the last decade - not all of it good. But President Obama repaired much of the trust that had been justifiably lost over the atrocities we were involved with during the Cold War. 

Now the narcissistic felon is taking a sledge hammer to all of that - declaring U.S. dominance in the Western hemisphere. May he rot in hell for that. 

Foreign corporations are the ones that stole Venezuela's oil

During a press conference to announce the U.S. invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Maduro, Trump said that the country had seized and stolen "American oil, American assets, and American platforms, costing us billions and billions of dollars."  This echos things he's said in the past, demonstrating that the invasion had nothing to do with narco-trafficking and everything to do with taking over the world's largest known oil reserves.

As a country, we must now face the fact that, during the Cold War, U.S. proxy battles all over the globe (but especially in Central and South America) were framed as "good U.S. vs. bad USSR." As a result, many people are ignorant of the actual history.

When it comes to Venezuela, significant oil discoveries began in the 1920s. By the 1930s right-wing strongman Juan Vicente Gómez granted concessions (including generous kickbacks to himself and his cronies) that left three foreign oil companies - Shell, Gulf (Chevron), and Standard Oil - in control of 98% of the Venezuelan market. In other words, three companies (two of them American), seized 98% of Venezuela oil. 

By the 1940s, Venezuela began attempts to claw back these oil profits. For example, under President Isaías Medina Angarita, authorities approved a law in 1943 that required foreign oil companies to relinquish half their profits to the government.

Then, in 1975, President Carlos Andrés Pérez, a democratic socialist, signed a bill that nationalized Venezuela's oil industry. Here's what the New York Times reported a year later:

A year after nationalization of Venezuela's $5 billion petroleum industry, the foreign concerns that built and controlled it—principally ExXon, Royal Dutch/Shell, Mobil and Gulf—are receiving approximately $1 billion in compensation and continue to provide marketing outlets and technological aid under contract.

Although the industry accounted for one of the world's largest pools of foreign investment, the takeover, in contrast to the abrupt Chilean nationalization of American copper companies in the early 1970's, has been peaceful and orderly, following months of negotiations between the Government and the 22 foreign concessionaries.

These kinds of changes were happening all over the globe. 

[Venezuela] followed Mexico, Brazil and Saudi Arabia in a wave of resource nationalism aimed at trying to wrest control of energy resources, primarily from the United States, to achieve economic sovereignty.

Since the 1970s, Venezuela has had times when they extended partnerships with foreign oil companies and times when they pulled back. It is not necessary to support or condemn the actions of any one leader to understand that the critical change Trump is referring to happened 50 years ago when Venezuela took back what foreign oil companies had stolen from them.

What MAGA wants from the Minnesota fraud story

In January 2009, a headline in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel read: "Child-care scams rake in thousands." 

The newspaper spent four months investigating the $340 million taxpayer-financed child-care system known as Wisconsin Shares and uncovered a trail of phony companies, fake reports and shoddy oversight.

In response to the investigations that followed, the Minnesota legislature passed a law in 2013 that required the Department of Human Services to “investigate alleged or suspected financial misconduct by providers and errors related to payments issued by the child care assistance program.” In 2014, DHS created the CCAP Investigations Unit - named after the program that funds childcare services. 

An audit conducted by the state in 2019 showed that, over the course of the next five years, state a local prosecutors concluded at least 13 cases of fraud against childcare providers. That work is ongoing, as the local ABC affiliate reported a year ago. 

Minnesota Republicans were late to this story, forming a Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee in January 2025. Of course, that didn't stop the chair of that committee - Rep. Kristin Robbins (who is also running for governor against Tim Walz) - from going on Fox News to suggest that Walz has been derelict in his duty for seven years.

From House Speaker Lisa Demuth (also running against Walz) we've now learned that it was Republican staff from that state fraud prevention committee that fed information about day care centers to Nick Shirley via his partner David. 

So the picture is clear. Democrats under Governors Mark Dayton and Tim Walz have been proactive with investigations and prosecutions of fraud in state childcare centers. Meanwhile, Republicans used those investigations to claim non-existent fraud in an attempt to undermine Walz.

But Trump and his MAGA influencers aren't stopping there. They've tied this story to the three-year old one about fraud in the Feeding Our Future Program and Medicaid services. The end result is a demonization of Somali immigrants and claims that government safety net programs are all simply fraud magnets. As a threefer (undermine Walz, demonize immigrants, and trash safety net programs), perhaps you can see why they're so obsessed with this story. 

So let's debunk one other claim that is floating around. Last July, U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson was in the midst of investigating what turned out to be charges against eight individuals for alleged fraud of $10 million in Medicaid services. At the time, he speculated that "the scope of fraud in Minnesota government programs could exceed $1 billion." 

Five months later, Thompson announced charges against another six people alleging $11.6 million in Medicaid fraud. He went on to speculate that the total amount of fraud could be $9 billion. So from July to December, Thompson's claims jumped $8 billion.

As the Minnesota Star Tribune reported, "Thompson has not offered evidence to support the billion-dollar figure," so the news organization did their own tally based on court records, criminal charges and convictions. The figure they came up with so far is $218 million - recognizing that number will grow as investigations continue. 

I did a little calculation of my own: $218 million is 2.4% of $9 billion. So if I'm understanding the math right, charges and prosecutions would have to grow by 97.6% ($8.8 billion) over what has been uncovered in the last three years.

Gov. Tim Walz had it right when he responded by stating that there is no evidence for that number and that it is simply speculation for sensationalism. In other words, the point is to investigate and prosecute those responsible for committing crimes. The rest is nothing more than outrage clickbait (what MAGA does best).

The first Trump administration facilitated the biggest pandemic fraud in the country

One of the things I'm noticing in all the coverage of the "Minnesota fraud" issue is that it is common to hear reporters refer to it as the largest pandemic fraud in the country. Given that the Minnesota Star Tribune has documented $218 million of fraud currently being prosecuted, it's worth taking a moment to check that claim.

In March 2020, the CARES Act was passed and signed by President Trump. Included were loan programs (Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loans) administered by the Small Business Administration that would be forgiven if borrowers fulfilled the requirements of how the money was to be used. 

In June 2023, the SBA Inspector General issued a report that included the following (emphasis mine):

We estimate that SBA disbursed over $200 billion in potentially fraudulent COVID-19 EIDLs, EIDL Targeted Advances, Supplemental Targeted Advances, and PPP loans.

In a previous report, this is what they found:

SBA did not have an organizational structure with clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and processes to manage and handle potentially fraudulent PPP loans across the program. In addition, the agency did not establish a centralized entity to design, lead, and manage fraud risk. 

While it is important to note that the IG was reporting "potential fraud," it's clear that the actual number would dwarf anything we're currently seeing in Minnesota.

But it gets worse. According to the non-partisan watchdog Project on Government Oversight, as these loans were distributed, some were marked with red flags as being at high risk for fraud so that they could be more closely assessed before being forgiven. But here's what happened:

The data obtained by POGO appears to show mass close-outs of 2.7 million flags on two separate days near the end of the Trump administration. On a third day shortly before President Joe Biden’s inauguration, the SBA cleared out 99.1% of “special review” flags, almost entirely assigned to the very largest PPP loans above $2 million.

On the infamous date of January 6, 2021, the Trump administration removed the red flag warnings on 99% of loans over $2 million - almost guaranteeing that they would be forgiven. In other words, Trump isn't just extorting fraudsters for pardons, his administration actually facilitated the largest pandemic fraud during his first term. 

All of that is why I was enraged when I saw that the current SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler wrote a letter to MN Gov. Tim Walz announcing that she was cutting off all SBA funding to Minnesota because the state "failed to safeguard taxpayer dollars." She actually had the gall to include in her letter that they had identified "13,600 PPP loans in Minnesota, totaling about $430 million, that were initially flagged by SBA as fraudulent."

These people are absolutely shameless.

MAGA hypocrisy is staggering

On December 18th, a top prosecutor in Trump's U.S. Attorney's Office claimed that "at least $9 billion across 14 Medicaid services in Minnesota may be fraudulent." That "may be" is carrying a lot of weight because the best this prosecutor can come up with is that he sees a lot of "red flags." In other words, this is an allegation - but that hasn't stopped MAGA influencers from running with it. 

The hypocrisy of these folks is staggering. Other than the 1,500 people convicted of storming the Capitol of January 6th, Trump has pardoned 89 individuals during his second term. Here are just a few who were convicted of fraud:

1. Philip Esformes - convicted of $1.3 billion in Medicaid fraud.
2. Lawrence Duran - pleaded guilty to $87 million in Medicare fraud.
3. David Gentile - convicted of defrauding 17,000 investors of $1.6 billion.
4. Paul Walczak - owner of Florida nursing homes that pleaded guilty to $7 million in tax fraud.

Again, that's just a few that stood out - and we're talking about more than $3 billion in fraud for defendants who either pleaded guilty or were found guilty by a jury of their peers. But Trump let them off the hook for both jail time and restitution to their victims. 

But it gets worse. According to the Wall Street Journal, the going rate for a Trump pardon is upwards of $1 million. 

So MAGA influencers are lighting their hair on fire over "alleged fraud" in Minnesota while their leader extorts criminal fraudsters to grant them a pardon.