U.S. embezzlement. A billion for Somalis and a "retarded" governor
Somali migrants in the US state of Minnesota orchestrated a massive scheme to embezzle state funds intended to support children from minority communities. The Feeding Our Future programme was intended to provide food grants to families brought to the poverty line by the cowid pandemic.
The case was reported in late November by the New York Times, whose investigative sources explained that over the past five years, "dozens of people have gotten rich by setting up companies that billed state authorities millions of dollars for social services they never provided."
Federal investigators explained that they have indicted 59 people who have embezzled a total of nearly one billion dollars in public grants. By November 24, the federal Justice Department [which also functions as the attorney general's office, ed.] had already caught 78 people.
And although the Somali diaspora in the state on the border with Canada numbers just over 80 thousand people, it is they who have become the target of the harshest criticism, joined by the White House.
At a cabinet meeting on 3 December, US President Donald Trump harshly criticised Somali migrants. "I don't want them in our country. Their country is not doing well for a reason. Their country stinks. And we don't want them in our country," he declared.
Trump on Somalis: "I don't want them in our country. Their country's no good for a reason. Their country stinks. They're garbage."
- iamyesyouareno (@iamyesyouareno) December 3, 2025
No lies told, simply telling it as it is. pic.twitter.com/waftZaVHFo
The Republican has returned to his usual rhetoric after the wartime adventures, for which he was voted in by supporters of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement. America, he said, is at a crossroads, and may be heading in the wrong direction "if we keep letting waste into our country." He then used the word "garbage" four times in seven seconds.
"These are not people who would work. These are not people who would say 'let's go and turn this country into a beautiful place'. These are people who do nothing but complain. And they have nothing where they came from," Trump added. He concluded by suggesting that Somalis should return to their home country and "fix" it.
The man who almost became vice president
In addition to the Somalis themselves, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has also been at the centre of criticism. The Democrat, who was chosen by former Vice President Kamala Harris as the number two choice for her team, has a history of making concessions to the East African community.
Although the right-wing media knows him as "Tampon Tim" for his efforts to push female sanitary dispensers into boys' toilets in schools, he even modified his state's flag for Somalis on May 11, 2024.
In 2024, Tim Walz adopted a new Minnesota state flag.
- Christian Collins (@CollinsforTX) December 3, 2025
The flag resembles the national flag of Somalia.
First Walz changed the state's identity to appeal to Somalis, then he allowed Somalis to steal $1 billion from taxpayers. pic.twitter.com/WI7KbmcvKp
Trump dished out the scathing statements days after the scandal broke, whose schemes allegedly extend to funding the terrorist organization al-Shabab [Arabic for Youth, the Somali offshoot of al-Qaeda, ed.] Walz, whom the president - in a Thanksgiving Day message - described as "seriously retarded", also got away with it.
In addition to the usual criticism of the Democrats, he turned his attention to Minnesota, in particular to Walz and the media-famous congresswoman Ilhan Omar. "Somali gangs prowl the streets looking for 'prey' while our wonderful people remain locked in their apartments and homes, hoping - against all hope - to be left alone," the US president wrote.
- Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) November 28, 2025
"Seriously retarded Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is doing nothing, whether out of fear, incompetence, or both, while the worst congresswoman in our country, Ilhan Omar, always wrapped up inin her hijab, who presumably came to the U.S. illegally (in the sense that she is not allowed to marry her brother), does nothing but hatefully complain about our country and our Constitution."
Trump pointed to the unsubstantiated claim that Omar listed her brother in the "husband" box on her immigration documents.
The Minnesota Department of Personnel Services also attacked its own governor. "Tim Walz is one hundred percent responsible for the massive fraud in Minnesota," department employees wrote at the beginning of a rather lengthy status on the X network. They said the former vice presidential candidate attacked whistleblowers of corruption, using "stalking, threats, reprisals and other forms of discrediting."
"Agency heads appointed by Tim Walz deliberately ignored rules and laws to conceal reports of fraud - even to the point of threatening the families of whistleblowers," admitted the officials, who also added the information that Walz knowingly and purposefully undermined the powers of the state auditor's office.
On the first of December, the embezzlement investigation reached the federal level, when the House of Representatives Audit Committee and the Treasury Department announced a series of hearings and re-requested relevant documents.
"Retard!"
As is the way of the current political battle, Walz's opponents seized on the juiciest and most offensive word from Trump's Thanksgiving message. Recall that the word "retard" in American public discourse has a similarly offensive charge as the term "nigger" for blacks, although its effect is not racially circumscribed.
It is therefore no coincidence that opposition-minded Trumpists began circling the Governor's House shouting the word 'retard' in the direction of the house. Walz therefore responded with a press conference on 4 December at which he complained about the abusive bystanders.
"In all the time I've been dealing with this, I've never seen people walk past my house and use the 'R-word' in front of people. It's a disgrace," he said, refusing to openly say "retard".
🚨 TIM WALZ says that people are driving by his house and using the term 'retard.'
- Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 4, 2025
"This creates danger... we know how these things go, they start with taunts, they turn to violence." pic.twitter.com/KQe217MYyQ
The governor's daughter, Hope, also responded, with a social media video she posted on Dec. 6. However, in a sort of Mickey Mouse response to the fact that her family's house was surrounded by MAGA supporters and called retards, she used multiples more profanities, and eventually deleted the video.
Response from Little Somalia
On Monday, Congresswoman Omar responded to the accusation by saying that the criminals had also robbed the Somali community itself. "I want to say that this affects the Somali people as well because we are taxpayers in Minnesota," she said on CBS's Face The Nation.
"We too could have benefited from the program and the money that was stolen. So it's really frustrating that people don't acknowledge the fact that we, as Minnesotans and taxpayers, are also really upset and angry because of the fraud that happened," she continued.
In her own words, the congresswoman questioned "how it's possible that so much money has gone missing without an alarm going off somewhere." Apparently, however, she wanted to publicly clear herself of any association with the crooks. Just a few days earlier, the New York Post had carried an extraordinary report that Omar had regularly thrown parties at the Safari restaurant, which is at the centre of the investigation.
As early as 2021, the first suspicions of fraud were being raised, prompting Somali restaurant owners to contact the state's attorney general, Keith Ellison, with accusations of "racism." According to a leaked recording , he promised to help them - despite representing the robbed families in coordination with the Department of Education.
"I'm here to help," the black prosecutor said, presumably in response to the references to racism. "Let's go fight these people," he declared. He went on with his own anecdotes about "how racist the Minnesota state government is" - ironically, the one headed by Tim Walz.
He later distanced himself from the scammers and returned all the donations he had received from the Somali community, his spokesman told the conservative Daily Signal.
The extent to which Somalis are unpopular in the United States is evidenced by the fact that various other minorities distanced themselves from them almost immediately. In particular, a video of a Vietnamese man criticising East African migrants for refusing to learn English and funding piracy in the Indian Ocean went viral.
"Since when the f*** are we supposed to bow down to certain communities? Look, I'm Vietnamese. We have our own communities and they're thriving, we have our own businesses, and we've only been here for what, a little over 50 years? Since 1975. And our communities are thriving all over the United States," the Vietnamese man boasted in the video.
Vietnamese dude nails it: "There's only about 2 million of us here in the US... we never ask anyone to bow down or speak our language."pic.twitter.com/kn23xYUE9W
- Defiant L's (@DefiantLs) December 7, 2025
"Why the F does this mayor in Somalian Minnesota have to speak their language, and apologize for those crooked-a**...
"If you look at our numbers, there are only about two million of us here in the United States. And of the two million people we have here, most of us have businesses, they're scientists, engineers, doctors. Smart people who give more to this country than they take from it," he continued.
"And we've never asked anybody to bow down to us or speak our language. So why the hell does the stupid mayor of that stupid little pirate fucking country of Somalia, Minnesota have to speak their language and apologize for those fucking crooked pirates? Since when do we have to do that?"
The ranks of critics of Minnesota's governor were bolstered by Mehmet Oz, director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The Turkish-born physician and television personality is almost as much a public figure as his superior, Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy.
Oz warned on Fox News that Walz must "fix" his leaky state administration "within 60 days" or let him "start looking under the couch for stray change, since the Trump administration is not going to continue to fund his incompetence.
Indeed, the funds used by Minnesota for the Feeding Our Future program came from so-called "covid relief" federal aid packages.
European allowance
A similar scandal was uncovered late last month in Sweden, although the criminal gangs there were not funding internationally classified terrorist organisations. However, the royal police revealed that at least 4,000 people known to be linked to gangs had for years been drawing welfare or short-term sickness benefits, which were their "legal income".
In Sweden, citizens contribute to social welfare with their taxes, which means that working Swedes funded the safety net for criminals at a time when their income from crime was fluctuating, Samnytt explained, citing a report by the social insurance agency Forsäkringskassan.
The total value of the funds stolen in this way came to 3.6 billion Swedish kronor, which translates to about 327 million euros. The report indirectly shows that the selected cases have been followed up since 2017.
Samnytt pointed out that, according to the insurer's report, "a significant proportion of the people the police are keeping as gang members have some type of 'foreign origin'. This includes foreign-born people, but also people born in Sweden who have both foreign-born parents," and it is these social groups that have an order of magnitude higher representation in gangs.
"The proportion of second-generation immigrants - that is, people born in Sweden with both parents born abroad - is cited in the report as being particularly criminally active," the portal added.
While the share in the total population is around four percent, according to the social insurance office, "this proportion is significantly higher" in the criminal environment, as the office openly admitted.
In 2024, gangsters also acquired approximately 118 million Swedish kronor (about 10.7 million euros) in child support payments. At least 3,600 people with confirmed gang links have applied for insolvency assistance to pay child support, a support that has long led Sweden to be called a "socialist" country.
The scheme has been distanced from both Social Insurance Minister Anna Tenje, who called for the funding of criminals to be "weakened" in the Sydsvenskan newspaper, and the head of the labour ministry, Johan Britz, who referred to the fraudsters as "contribution pirates" on TV4.
Sweden's royal police estimate that some 67,500 people across the monarchy have links to criminal gangs, of whom some 17,500 are active. The gang situation is neither getting better nor worse, according to Police Commissioner Petra Lundh, and recruitment of new members "continues at a steady pace".
Recall that in September 2023, as a result of gangs operating on the streets of Swedish cities , Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson called in the army. The year before, at least 60 deaths were recorded as a result of shootings, and for 2023 the government was counting on a further increase.
This is a large-scale scandal, despite the fact that Swedish migrants do not support real pirates. But those from Minnesota did, according to investigators, and the Walz cover-up raises the question of how far the arrests and charges in the Somali scheme will go.