The Trump administration is clamping down on federal funding for child care programs in Minnesota.
The announcement came from Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Jim O’Neill, who posted the specifics to X on Tuesday evening.
“We have frozen all child care payments to the state of Minnesota,” he wrote. “You have probably read the serious allegations that the state of Minnesota has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to fraudulent daycares across Minnesota over the past decade.”
As part of the crackdown, wrote O’Neill, all payments from the Administration of Children and Families “will require a justification and a receipt or photo evidence before we send money to a state,” and in Minnesota specifically, Gov. Tim Walz is being ordered to provide “a comprehensive audit” of day care centers. Additionally, a fraud-reporting hotline and email address have been established.
“Whether you are a parent, provider, or member of the general public, we want to hear from you,” O’Neill concluded. “We have turned off the money spigot and we are finding the fraud.”
The controversy began with a right-wing freakout over a New York Times deep dive into a criminal investigation that took place in 2022 into fraud in Minnesota pandemic relief programs, where some of the perpetrators were part of the Somali diaspora community in the Twin Cities. Even though the Biden administration already cracked down on this fraud, conservative influencers went looking for more examples, and YouTuber Nick Shirley purported to uncover day care centers in Minnesota Somali neighborhoods that were taking in millions in federal money while not actually having any kids enrolled in them.
So far, experts have reacted to this report with skepticism, and a CBS News fact-check indicated that a day care at the heart of the accusations, while it was investigated by the state for code violations, actually did have kids enrolled.
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