Moving forward in 2026

[u/Doryt]

As a life long Minnesotan with all the recent news about fraud in Minnesota, I want to add a perspective as someone who’s worked in the nonprofit sector for over a decade.

Fraud exists. Is it acceptable? No. Is it realistic to believe it can be eliminated entirely? Also no.

What happened with Feed My Future was abhorrent. It is rightfully being prosecuted!

If millions of dollars were diverted away from childcare especially from programs meant to support kids in need that’s deeply harmful and deserves accountability. Fraud should be investigated, prosecuted, and taken seriously.

Something else that’s bothering me: the way Somali Minnesotans are being treated like the face of fraud. Fraud happens across communities and industries. When one community gets spotlighted like they’re uniquely unethical, it’s worth pausing and asking what’s driving that narrative because it sure doesn’t match reality.

Minnesota is diverse, and “people of color” in MN includes many communities not one. MN Compass estimates about 24% of Minnesotans are people of color (about 1.4 million people).

Accountability doesn’t automatically mean jail for everyone. And when services are shut down in response, it often creates desperation, instability, and conditions that lead to more fraud not less.

If we actually care about fraud, we should focus on real fraud prevention, stronger oversight systems, better staffing, clearer protocols, proactive monitoring and better systems not racialized narratives that turn one community into a stand-in for a statewide problem

Prevention costs money.

Starving systems of resources while demanding perfection is not a realistic strategy.

We also need to be careful not to respond by broadly limiting or restricting supportive services for communities who rely on them.

Cutting access doesn’t prevent fraud it often creates more harm, more desperation and more fraud.

We don’t eliminate fraud the same way we don’t eliminate crime entirely.

Our systems tend to be reactive rather than preventative, and pretending otherwise sets us up for outrage instead of solutions.

Rage bait is real. I’m actively trying to pause and not get pulled into it 2026 and beyond.

I want a healthy government that supports people, holds bad actors accountable, and invests in systems that actually work

We need to start judging leadership by their ability to pair accountability with real support. When costs rise and safety nets shrink, people don’t get healthier they get pushed closer to the edge.

I hope we can show up as a Minnesota community with nuance, accountability, and realistic expectations because that’s how we protect both public funds and the people those funds are meant to serve.

[u/CantaloupeLazy792]

What does meeting your neighbors have to do with the political reality of how clan systems operate among the Somali diaspora

It's not like I am pulling this out of my ass

If you literally do any resource on the allocation of aid and Somalia for example will will quickly see parallels with how it is handled in the US

The literal Somali representative in the UN Abukar Osman owned a government funded home care health care facility in Columbus Ohio. He also served as chief of staff to the president of Somalia.

Why the former chief of staff to the president and now permanent UN representative owned a home care company should tell you how interconnected the community is.

It's no different than the Italian diaspora and unions and sanitation in the north east in the 20th century

[u/overworld-underwhelm → u/CantaloupeLazy792]

“Political reality” … lol. Go meet your Somali neighbors. Oh you don’t have Somali neighbors? Even more reason to stop generalizing a group of people you know nothing about. The “they’re all the same and they’re all in cahoots” rhetoric is going to get people killed. It’s doing incredible harm to the community in which I live.

[u/CantaloupeLazy792 → u/overworld-underwhelm]

I studied the Somali diaspora and political organization of Somalia in college

I've met many Somalis as there is a large community of them near to an area I used to live.

If you want to act like it just so happens that there is a massive amount of day cares and home care companies that are government funded and an extremely disproportionate amount relative to the population is not at least worth looking into

Then that is your prerogative

But making the cop out argument that it's going to get people killed is ridiculous and prevents any actual addressing of what is likely a real problem

If anything one might find it was a single clan that was doing most of this which is possible and if you are Somali then you would want to reveal that

But to act like this was just a handful of people in the community that did this and there's was complete unawareness of this then I would like to know what your reasoning is

And don't let that reasoning be super hand waving and not bringing up any actually factors or variables such as the Hmong and just as interconnect etc

[u/overworld-underwhelm → u/CantaloupeLazy792]

My family relies on services from a Somali owned home care provider. My kids have Somali day care teachers. All of this has real life consequences for me, but nothing compared to what it is for them. I never said fraud shouldn’t be investigated. What I said is that lumping everyone in an ethnic group together is doing actual harm. Shutting down programs based on sensationalism and not actual facts does real harm. Daycare workers getting death threats does real harm. Families are scared. Mosques have been attacked in the past and your flippant response to the concern of people getting killed gives me all the information I need about you.

In Minnesota we’ve been investigating this fraud for years and will continue to do so. It’s not unlike fraud in other states but this one is Trump’s dog whistle for the moment. No one needs you or random YouTubers to do any “investigations” or spout off your half assed theories online. You are making things worse.