Kerby Anderson

As 2025 was winding down, one of the biggest stories was the fraud scandal in Minnesota. First was the investigative piece by Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Rufo. Then there were several stories, including the YouTube videos by Nick Shirley who discovered most of the childcare centers had no children, and one even misspelled the word “learning.”

Soon outraged taxpayers produced videos complaining that their hard-earned taxes were being spent on fraud, as well as on military actions and questionable government expenditures. Why pay taxes, they argued, if our tax dollars are being misspent?

The outrage continued from both sides of the political spectrum. Batya Ungar-Sargon has become more critical of her fellow liberals. In her program on NewsNation, she noted this irony. “You are wondering whether you can afford to have another child because childcare is so expensive. Meanwhile, a group of Somali in Minnesota got $110 million for childcare centers that don't exist.”

Carl Higbie is a Newsmax reporter and commentator. He notes that “real Americans are so fed up with this type of fraud by Somali because we feel that there’s no mechanism for you and me to stop it. We watched the Pentagon fail like eight audits in a row. $300 billion dollars to Ukraine and no receipts for that.” His solution was for the president to pardon American citizens from paying their federal taxes in 2026 until Congress is serious about cutting waste and fraud.

This won’t happen, but these few examples (and many others) illustrate the level of anger voters are feeling about the latest stories of fraud. It is likely that the anger will be felt at the ballot box in both the primary elections and the general election in November.