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CORPORATE MEDIA ADVANCES CONSERVATIVE NARRATIVE ABOUT MINNESOTA FRAUD
 
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Matthew Cunningham-Cook
December 29, 2025
The American Prospect
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*
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_ As Trump makes racist attacks on Somali immigrants, media giants
CBS, Fox, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times parrot claims
from a weaponized DOJ and self-interested players. _

The "Minnesota Welcomes You" sign sits at the state border. , Credit:
Wikimedia Commons

 

On Friday, November 21, as most Americans were prepping for
Thanksgiving, President Trump went on a tirade on his Truth Social
platform. Egged on by unsubstantiated claims
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by noted right-wing pugilist
[[link removed]] Chris
Rufo
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he posted [[link removed]]: “Minnesota, under Governor
Waltz [_sic_]_, _is a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity….
Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and
BILLIONS of Dollars are missing. Send them back where they came from.
It’s OVER!” 

Less than two weeks later, on December 3, Trump announced
[[link removed]] an ICE operation
targeting the Somali population in the Twin Cities, while referring to
Somalis as “garbage.” This crackdown continued through Christmas,
with arbitrary arrests
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of Somali immigrants with no criminal record and fear spreading
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throughout the state’s Somali community.

n recent months, there has been ever greater attention paid to a spate
of fraudulent activity in Minnesota, with most of those implicated
being Somali. (The ringleader of the largest fraud, Feeding Our
Future, is a white American
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and nearly all of those indicted are naturalized or natural-born
American citizens.)

CBS—under its new owners, the Ellison family
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Murdoch trinity
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of Fox News, the _New York Post _and _Wall Street Journal,_ have
covered the story aggressively, at times picking up unconfirmed
accounts from conservative influencers
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that have spun into wild charges about vote-buying and cover-ups
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The _New York Times _provided front-page coverage
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to a Sunday news story echoing key arguments made in Trump
administration talking points: that a Nordic-style welfare state in
Minnesota, combined with criminal tendencies inherent to the state’s
Somali population, created an environment ripe for fraud. The _Times
_also focuses on the defendants’ claims that they were being
persecuted for racial reasons.

But a Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) review has found that the
administration’s preferred narrative has been advanced in widespread
coverage by corporate media outlets. 

CHANGING ESTIMATES

Prosecutors with the Department of Justice (DOJ) began filing charges
in the fraud ring in 2022
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during the Biden administration. At the time it was estimated at $250
million. Feeding Our Future and other groups were accused of filing
false claims to the government for services under the Federal Child
Nutrition Program, which provides free meals to children, despite
having never provided the meals.

More indictments were filed this year, extending the alleged fraud
scheme to a housing stabilization program
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and a health care program
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CBS
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Fox
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the _Wall Street Journal_
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and the _New York Post_
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have all repeated DOJ claims that the frauds now exceed $1 billion.
Joseph Thompson, the federal prosecutor leading the case, did not
respond to repeated requests for comment from CMD asking for
clarification on DOJ’s monetary estimates.

The only citations supporting the $1-billion claim in those stories
come from a department that has been weaponized
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against its political enemies and is prone to “unprecedented errors
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that seriously undermine its credibility.  

Based on what the DOJ has actually filed in court, the _Minneapolis
Star-Tribune_ [[link removed]] calculated the cost of the
alleged fraud schemes to be $217.7 million over multiple years, while
noting that the number was likely to grow. 

The above-mentioned mainstream national news outlets did not respond
to requests from CMD asking about the basis for reporting the $1
billion fraud claim. Meanwhile, the DOJ has since increased its
estimate to as high as $9 billion
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“At the very least, newsrooms should be transparent [about] not
fact-checking the president’s statistics and [admit] that he has a
habit of gross overstatement,” Kelly McBride, a senior vice
president at the Poynter Institute, told CMD. “But ideally, yes,
they should do their own reporting, or cite another reputable news
organization like the _Minnesota Star-Tribune_ that has done the
math.”

Compared to the _Star-Tribune_’s $217.7 million fraud estimate, the
Department of Defense reported more than 10 times that amount—$2.4
billion—in confirmed fraud in military contracts in 2024 alone,
which the legislative branch watchdogs at the Government
Accountability Office notes
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small fraction of DOD’s potential fraud exposure.” 

COMPLEX SOMALI POLITICS

Additionally, key aspects of the November 30, 2025, _New York Times
_article
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titled “How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on
Tim Walz’s Watch,” raise questions about the paper’s approach to
reporting on the fraudulent activity in the state. 

For example, the _Times _quoted Ahmed Samatar, a Somali-American
professor at Macalester College, who advanced claims reinforcing the
idea that the fraudulent behavior in Minnesota emerged from a
particular aspect of Somali culture blended with the concept of
“Minnesota nice.” The _Times_ reported that Samatar said that
“Somali refugees who came to the United States after their
country’s civil war were raised in a culture in which stealing from
the country’s dysfunctional and corrupt government was
widespread.” The story also quoted Samatar as speculating that
Minnesota proved susceptible to rampant fraud because it is “so
tolerant, so open, and so geared toward keeping an eye on the weak.”

Samatar’s comments deserve closer examination. The _Times _failed to
mention that the professor is very active
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in the Somaliland political scene, chairing
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a political movement in the breakaway region of Somalia.
Somaliland’s independence has been championed
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by U.S. Representative Scott Perry
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significant role
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in Trump’s efforts to overthrow the 2020 election, including helping
to plan congressional obstruction of the certification on January 6,
2021. The Somaliland independence cause received a huge boost
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part of the Project 2025
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platform. On December 27, Israel recognized Somaliland’s
independence, in a widely condemned
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move.

In September, the Feeding Our Future scandal resulted in the
indictment of the wife
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of the foreign minister of Somaliland, Muna Waceys Fidhin
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who is also a politician in her own right and chair
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of a Somaliland political party’s U.S. branch. Samatar backed a
rival party in Somaliland’s 2024 elections and has implied
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that Fidhin’s party took advantage of a “rotten” political
system. 

In an interview with CMD and in follow-up questions, Samatar did not
clarify these points, stating: “That topic is not something I want
to talk about in this context. All Somalis in this state are related
as a community… Small fish, big fish, whatever they are, it’s not
worthwhile to explore whether or not they are from this town or that
town. I would like to leave the analysis at that level.” 

Representative Ilhan Omar (D–MN), the most prominent Somali
politician in the country, has taken a different tack than Samatar,
contending that in the U.S. people generally “do not blame the
lawlessness of an individual on a whole community.” She has also
been a critic [[link removed]] of
Somaliland independence. The BBC reported
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excitement related to the possibility of U.S. recognition of
Somaliland independence had increased Trump’s popularity in the
breakaway region.

Bill Fletcher, Jr., a former education director of the AFL-CIO who has
written, organized, and lobbied on issues related to the Horn of
Africa, told CMD that Samatar’s decision to avoid commenting on the
nature of Somali dynamics was likely due to the complex internal
politics and history of Somalia. 

Fletcher made the case that the Somali-American community likely
exhibits the same problems as any immigrant community—but that the
way the Trump administration and the media have framed these problems
is wrong. “Somali refugees start coming to the U.S. and get settled
in Minnesota,” he said. “Nobody seems to object to that.
Overwhelmingly, they [choose to] become U.S. citizens and part of the
larger community.”

Fletcher argued that the characterization of fraudulent activity as
inherent to the Somali community demonstrates a failure to understand
how organized criminal activity typically works. 

“The idea that criminal activity is a product of Nordic social
services is absurd. It’s as absurd as saying that Lucky Luciano was
a product of the New Deal,” Fletcher said, arguing that organized
crime becomes parasitic within an ethnic community, and then expands
outwards. “The kind of blame being put on the Somali community is
very analogous to how Italians and Sicilians in particular were being
characterized in the middle of the [20th] century.”

In a statement to CMD, a _Times_ spokesperson maintains that “This
reporting by _The Times _drew on a wide range of interviews, sources,
documents and court records to show how fraudulent activity had spread
within Minnesota social safety-net programs.” The spokesperson noted
that the _Times _had spoken to the prosecutor handling the cases and
Gov. Tim Walz, and reviewed all available evidence. “We are
confident in the accuracy and fairness of this article.” 

Media organizations have an obligation to report in such a way that
“the audience walks away from your work with a clear understanding
of the facts,” McBride of the Poynter Institute reminds us. “That
means that when you use direct quotes that distort or misinform, you
have to tell the audience what the truth is.”

 

_[MATTHEW CUNNINGHAM-COOk is a writer and researcher with expertise in
health care, retirement policy, and capital markets. He has written
for The Intercept, The Lever, The New York Times, The Nation, Al
Jazeera, and In These Times.]_

_Published in partnership with the __Center for Media and Democracy_
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_Read the original article at __Prospect.org_
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_Used with the permission. © __The American Prospect_
[[link removed]]_, __Prospect.org, 2025_
[[link removed]]_. All rights reserved.  _

_Support the American Prospect_ [[link removed]]_._

_Click here_ [[link removed]]_ to support the Prospect's
brand of independent impact journalism._

* Minnesota
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* Somalia
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* Somali immigrants
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* Somali workers
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* fraud
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* media
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* Race & Ethnicity
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* Tim Walz
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* Ilhan Omar
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* Donald Trump
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* Racism
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* Immigrants
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* Center for Media and Democracy
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