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).