The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it is freezing federal funding for childcare programs in Minnesota after allegations of fraud – first exposed and prosecuted during the Biden administration – recently became the focus of conservative influencers and media outlets.
Jim O’Neill, the deputy secretary of health and human services, said in a video statement that the funding freeze was in response to what he called “blatant fraud that appears to be rampant in Minnesota and across the country … We have turned off the money spigot and we are finding the fraud.”
The announcement comes one day after homeland security officials followed the new wave of attention generated by a rightwing influencer’s video dispatch from Minneapolis by going to businesses in the city to question workers over alleged fraud.
Despite claims by conservatives on social media that the allegations of fraud were ignored until now, there have been years of fraud investigations that began with the indictments in 2022 of 47 defendants for their alleged roles in a $250m scheme that exploited a federally funded child nutrition program during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Prosecutors eventually secured the conviction of 57 people who stole federal funds granted to the nonprofit Feeding Our Future.