The Real Fraudsters

Earlier this month, Vice President J.D. Vance stood in front of a Milwaukee audience and did his best rendition of the “Welfare Queen” trope so many of his predecessors have relied on. In this version, Vance held up a large posterboard of two Black women, and excoriated them for fraudulently using public healthcare benefits. It did not matter that one of the women in the picture had no involvement in fraud. Nor did it matter that the amount of fraud committed pales in comparison to what Trump and his sycophants have stolen. Vance’s references to Louis Vuitton bags and his exhortation to “Look at this woman!” was more than enough, an ancient dog whistle used to distract from the administration’s unpopular cuts to public benefits and overt embrace of corruption.

Vance’s speech is not a one-off, but part of a “War on Fraud” campaign the administration unveiled in May. The goal of this war is clear: undermine the very concept of public benefits and attack those vulnerable enough to rely on them. The strategy takes a page out of a tried and true playbook: use right wing, racist rhetoric to demonize the poor and communities of color, while weaponizing the legal system against low-level fraud in order to build support for destroying our public safety net. The narrative conveniently distracts from the fact that Trump himself has engaged in a historic corruption spree–one that has not only enriched his family, but given cover to anyone else who throws a dollar his way, or offers their loyalty.

In today’s newsletter, we unpack the charged rhetoric, selective targets, and dubious methods of this “war on fraud”, a war designed to give cover to the administration’s unpopular policies, punish Trump’s political enemies, and otherize non-white citizens. As always, we highlight those unwilling to allow this administration’s looting and villainizing to go unchallenged.

Minnesota, the Perfect Scapegoat

What started as a legitimate federal fraud investigation in Minnesota ballooned into something else entirely. Amplified by a viral influencer video and racist presidential rhetoric, the scandal became the pretext for Operation Metro Surge, an immigration crackdown that terrorized Minneapolis’s Somali community and left two people dead. The White House made Minnesota the centerpiece of its self-declared “War on Fraud,” and a pretext for freezing billions in Medicaid and welfare funds across five states. Individual crimes became a collective indictment-a well worn template started by Goldwater, honed by Reagan and now cruelly elevated by Trump.

• The president called Somali immigrants “garbage” and “lowlifes” in the weeks the crackdown was building, and said “low IQ” Somali-Americans had not committed fraud but others had “worked it out” and done so. The President of the United States attributed fraud propensity to an ethnic group’s intelligence, and his DOJ then prosecuted them.

• Hopping on the bandwagon in January 2026, Sen. John Cornyn introduced the “Stop Fraud by SOMALIA Act,” with his office’s announcement claiming the bill was necessary due to fraud “primarily perpetrated by Somali fraudsters.”

• The five-state “systematic fraud” letters went exclusively to Democratic-led states and pointed without credible evidence or data to immigrants as the primary fraud drivers.

We Look the Other Way When You’re Wealthy, but Crackdown When You’re Poor

Over the past year, the Trump administration has fundamentally redirected the Justice Department’s fraud-fighting machinery to the bottom of the economic ladder. A National Fraud Enforcement Division, run under White House supervision through Vice President Vance’s task force, was given an explicit mandate to pursue “low levels of fraud,” backed by a prosecutor-led data-mining center generating leads against benefit recipients. The result is a Justice Department that prosecutes food assistance fraud while dismissing billion-dollar corporate cases. The burden has fallen hardest on immigrant communities.

• At his swearing-in, National Fraud Enforcement Division chief Colin McDonald declared the DOJ would “no longer be uninterested in low levels of fraud; we will be interested in all of it.”

• The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts created a dedicated “Benefit & Voter Fraud Team” and charged 15 individuals, 11 of them undocumented immigrants, for fraud amounts in the thousands.

• In December 2026, the Trump Administration ordered Colorado to participate in a USDA pilot that would require the state to conduct in person interviews of 100,000 households receiving SNAP benefits spread out over five counties within 30 days. Any recipients not confirmed as eligible would have lost SNAP benefits.

• USDA and Homeland Security Investigations agents executed criminal search warrants at multiple SNAP retail locations in the Twin Cities. The USDA described the targeted conduct as fraudulently trafficking SNAP benefits, “an act that can include allowing customers to use food stamps to buy items like tobacco or alcohol.”

Does Anyone Really Think this Guy Gives a Damn About Fraud?

If fraud itself were the concern, enforcement would rise across the board - yet it has collapsed when the perpetrators are wealthy, white, and/ or Trump supporters.

• White-collar prosecutions are at historic lows, decreasing by more than 10% since the fall of 2024.

• The Trump administration has dismantled the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, which was created after Watergate to investigate and prosecute public corruption and election crimes.

• Money-laundering fines and tax-fraud investigations have plummeted.

• 42 public enforcement actions have been dismissed or rolled back, typically “with zero public explanation.”

• FBI agents were ordered to spend a third of their time on immigration and thousands of HSI financial-crime agents were reassigned to deportations.

Consumers Are Suffering and Public Trust is Dwindling

The administration’s “war” could care less about fraud that harms everyday consumers or violations that continually erode public trust in government. Pardons of financial crimes alone have resulted in nearly $2 billion in penalties and victim restitution being wiped out.

• The Trump administration abandoned a lawsuit against Zelle’s operator and major banks for failing to protect consumers from $870 million in fraud.

• Michele Fiore, a former Las Vegas councilwoman, was convicted of pocketing some $70,000 in donations to build a memorial for police slain in duty-and spending it on herself, including rent and her daughter’s wedding. Trump came to the rescue shortly after Fiore’s sentencing, granting a full, unconditional pardon.

• Pardons were also extended to a Virginia sheriff who was convicted of accepting $75,000 in bribes in exchange for appointing businessmen as deputies, and the former speaker of the Tennessee state house, who was convicted of a kickback scheme involving taxpayer-funded mailer services.

• Trump’s DOJ has extended its protection of corporate malfeasance beyond insulating corporations when they harm Americans financially, to protecting businesses when they harm Americans physically. In Tennessee, Elon Musk has built a fleet of gas combustion turbines that can spew 5300 tons of nitrogen oxides and 430 tons of particulate pollution every year to support a massive data center. The NAACP sued to halt construction in order to protect the racially diverse residential community. Rather than protecting the community from exposure to known harmful pollutants, the EPA has intervened on behalf of Musk, moving to dismiss the NAACP’s lawsuit.

States Are Following Suit

As always, states inspired by Trump have followed suit:

• In the past few months, Florida and Iowa have created dedicated task forces that vow to crack down on public assistance fraud

• At least 26 states have established their own local versions of DOGE; in states like Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Louisiana, such entities exist primarily to vilify its poorer residents and justify gutting social programs

• And one Florida-based think tank is working to “pass legislation state by state, with the idea that the crush of new laws will increase pressure on the federal government” to whittle down, if not outright eliminate, social service benefits like SNAP and Medicaid.

• Without surprise, the policy contagion has extended to Ohio where a joint USDA and Ohio Public Safety Investigative Unit, targeting retailers with SNAP fraud for “exchanging benefits for cash, alcohol tobacco and other illegal purchases.” The USDA announcement noted fraud transactions that included exchanging SNAP benefits for beer, wine and a glass bong.

Attorneys General Are Fighting Back

Despite the federal onslaught, State Attorneys General and communities have mobilized to attempt to protect benefits.

• Within days of the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze funding for critical social safety net programs in 5 states, all 5 state attorneys general filed lawsuits against the administration and succeeded in blocking the funding freeze. Multiple groups have attempted to intervene to keep the pressure on the federal Government.

• A federal district court blocked the Trump administration’s cynical attempt to purge SNAP rolls in Colorado.

• A coalition of state attorneys general led by California’s Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit over proposed new Medicaid work requirements mandating that many adults with medicaid coverage prove they work, study or volunteer at least 80 hours a month to preserve their coverage.

Despite best efforts, there has been irrefutable and in many cases irreversible damage wreaked on America’s social service safety net, tied directly to the anti-fraud campaign.

• While TANF and other benefits have been restored by injunction, the case remains open and the White House policy has not changed.

• Medicaid remains a target of the administration with California and Minnesota being victimized by a recent move by the government to withhold an additional 1 billion in funding.

• While the pilot used to target blue state SNAP recipients has ended, low level fraud prosecutions targeting poor communities continue with over a 1,000 arrests this year and 4.3 million recipients disenrolled.

We have borne witness to a wholesale campaign against the poor and American safety net- cash assistance, food aid, childcare, health insurance-all simultaneously frozen and defunded under the guise of preventing fraud. The choice to target the poor while ignoring immense levels of graft perpetrated by the powerful and wealthy stands as a stark sign of the intentions of this administration. Federal agents raiding corner stores for benefit fraud of $14,000 while dismissing financial fraud cases worth billions of dollars telegraphs that this “war on fraud” is truly a war on the poor and the programs they rely on to survive. Fraud was never the target, it was a pretext to starve vital programs many Americans rely on and the families arbitrarily denied food or lifesaving healthcare are the true victims of this administration’s cruel cynicism.