USDA suspends federal financial awards to Minnesota and Minneapolis

https://turnto10.com/news/nation-world/enough-is-enough-usda-suspends-federal-financial-awards-to-minnesota-and-minneapolis-fraud-scheme-investigation-governor-tim-walz-mayor-jacob-frey-nick-shirley-feeding-our-children-food-programs

by blurbleblurble • 6 months ago

48 27 6 months ago

turnto10.com

SilverElfin2• 6 months ago

This type of overly broad collective punishment would be considered a war crime under international law. Potentially hundreds of thousands of families will go hungry as a result. All for fraud that is ALLEGED to be $9B without much evidence.

Meanwhile the administration added 4 trillion in new unnecessary spending, including $170 billion in additional funding for DHS and ICE. Those contracts probably go to companies with some tie to the Trump family. That’s the real fraud. All this “Somalian fraud”, could be true, but is insignificant compared to the corruption in the Trump administration. And let’s not forget the Epstein files that they’re using Venezuelans and Somalians and immigrants to distract from.

nomel2• 6 months ago

Potentially hundreds of thousands of families will go hungry as a result.

By what specific mechanism do you see this happening?

stonogo2• 6 months ago

USDA administers SNAP, which provides food aid to over four hundred thousand families in the state. That's one of the programs this announcement is talking about suspending.

https://dcyf.mn.gov/sites/default/files/2025-05/SNAP%20Fact%...

blurbleblurble3• 6 months ago

I just figured out the back story, the state has a pending court decision in a lawsuit vs. the USDA. This announcement is clearly a political stunt in light of that:

https://www.minnpost.com/national/washington/2026/01/snap-mi...

toomuchtodo2• 6 months ago

The federal government will lose in court, and we’ll continue on.

SilverElfin2• 6 months ago

But they can keep doing this and harm people while court cases play out right? It’s a tactic to abuse people, exhaust the resistance, and normalize their activities.

clanky3• 6 months ago

You are posting as though these sorts of rules and formalisms still matter when they clearly do not.

piva00• 6 months ago

At this point who is keeping the federal government in check? They are breaking the law blatantly, one very recent example being the release of the Epstein stuff. Nothing happens, nothing is holding them accountable.

It's only going to get worse, they lose in court and find another angle to keep breaking the law, over and over, there simply isn't enough institutional power in the USA to do anything against it.

bediger4000• 6 months ago

USDA or some specific czar, pasha or chief of staff in the Trump admin? Or perhaps Trump himself? It would be good practice to start assigning responsibilities directly to those acting by executive fiat. Credit where credit is due, if these are correct actions.

clanky3• 6 months ago

I feel like the headline "suspends federal financial awards" doesn't really convey that this is intended to end SNAP benefits and leave many people without food.

roenxi• 6 months ago

I'm not sure where to look for current figures (Wikipedia [0] is a decade out of date) - is Minnesota a net contributor or a net drain on the US federal budget?

It remains an odd strategy where money needs to be skimmed before it can be given farmers. Looking at the per capita numbers from 2015 and the raw tax take in 2024 it looks like Minnesota actually has enough money to sort itself out without relying on other states. It certainly seems like a strategic error to centralise significant influence over the food supply to people like Trump.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_tax_revenue_by_state#F...

stonogo2• 6 months ago

Minnesota is a fairly consistent donor state, but that's not really the point here.

SV_BubbleTime4• 6 months ago

"Enough is enough! The Trump administration has uncovered massive fraud in Minnesota and Minneapolis -- billions siphoned off by fraudsters.

Is that true? Seems like a lot of money to just suddenly notice.

delichon• 6 months ago

It was recently boosted by a youtuber, but the reporting on it goes back to 2013.

https://www.fox9.com/news/fox-9-investigating-fraud-uncoveri...

clanky3• 6 months ago

Ok so they clearly don't actually care and let it continue through the entire first Trump administration, and are doing this to punish the resistance in Minnesota.

SV_BubbleTime4• 6 months ago

Well, that’s pretty crazy. I saw the independent journalist video on daycares too after I posted. I mean… you can’t target a state but it does seem pretty bad and that payments should be limited until the fraud is sorted out.

hshdhdhj4444• 6 months ago

These are insane responses to what is admittedly a bad case of Medicare fraud.

But let’s put this in context. The fraud occurred over a few years and is estimated to have been for about $9Bn dollars by the prosecutors. A number that is considered inflated by most independent analysts, but even if it’s like $5bn that’s pretty large, so let’s stick to the $9Bn and in fact round it up to $10Bn.

The fraud in Medicare and Medicaid alone is estimated at over $100Bn every year (irs probably higher). So even if this fraud occurred over 2 years, we’re talking about something that’s at most 5% of the total Medicare/medicaid fraud in the US over that period.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/09/how-medicare-and-medicaid-fr...

But this isn’t news to the current administration. In fact, to their credit, the justice department busted a $14Bn scheme about 6 months ago, which is already 50% greater than the size of the most inflated estimates of this scheme.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/national-health-care-fraud-ta...

And yet all the people defending cutting food to children (and not just in MN, but in other Democratic run states that have nothing to do with MN) have likely never even heard of that much larger scheme that was busted and led to absolutely no policy changes.

tpurves• 6 months ago

Your comment above should make more clear that the large scale healcare fraud you mentioned was not about Minnesota. It was nationwide, involved mass identity theft and large corporate scale white collar crime.

USDA suspends federal financial awards to Minnesota and Minneapolis

Related Stories