President Donald Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services is freezing federal child care funding nationwide after halting funds to Minnesota amid the Somali daycare scandal.
ABC News reported Wednesday on the nationwide pause, quoting an HHS official who said that federal funds would be released ‘only when states prove they are being spent legitimately.’
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon told the network that recipients of federal tax dollars – even those ‘not suspected of fraudulent activity’ – would be required to send HHS ‘administrative data’ for review.
Daycare facilities in Minnesota, including those ‘suspected of fraudulent activity,’ would have to provide HHS with receipts, Nixon said, which include ‘attendance records, licensing, inspection and monitoring reports, complaints and investigations.’
‘It’s the onus of the state to make sure that these funds, these federal dollars, taxpayer dollars, are being used for legitimate purposes,’ Nixon told ABC News.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, has come under fire for the scandal, which has also put the state’s Somali community in the crosshairs of Trump’s hardline immigration policies.
Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar, a member of that community and a top political nemesis of the president, has also taken heat, as she’s pushed back, saying the actions of a few shouldn’t tarnish the reputation of the entire group.
Somali-owned daycare centers are the center of a scandal involving federal funds
Federal prosecutors were already investigating Minnesota fraud cases that cost the state’s taxpayers $1 billion when conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley released a video over the weekend that has since gone viral, which purported to show more fraud.
Shirley found empty daycare centers that were recipients of federal funding.
His video report prompted the Department of Homeland Security to launch door-to-door investigations of the facilities and the Justice Department to launch a probe.
In an interview Wednesday morning on Fox News Channel, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt applauded Shirley’s effort, saying, ‘He epitomizes what new media looks like.’
Leavitt said the White House was deploying a ‘whole-of-government effort’ to find and punish those guilty of fraud, saying that Trump would ‘absolutely’ support revoking the citizenship of any Somali immigrants convicted.
‘People will be in handcuffs as a result of the fraud that Governor Walz has allowed to occur for the – for many, many years,’ she said.
Walz has defended his administration by saying that Minnesota officials ‘have spent years cracking down on fraudsters.’
The Democratic governor charged that it was ‘Trump’s long game’ to politicize the issue and dismantle liberal Minnesota’s safety net.
Walz is up for reelection this year, with Trump ally, My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, among the Republican candidates.
