Minnesota and its Somali population have been exposed in recent months for cleverly defrauding government-run programs meant to help the state’s poorest population. From getting rich from a feeding program for the poor, and collecting medical benefits by faking autism in children and home health care for elderly adults, those scandals and others have exposed rampant fraud that has reportedly climbed to more than $9 billion.
Piggybacking on those numerous scandals, YouTube-based journalist Nick Shirley is alleging Somali-run daycare centers have one looming problem: They are collecting tens of millions of dollars in government reimbursements, but many centers have no children.
In a 42-minute video published to X the day after Christmas, Shirley tells viewers he traveled across The North Star State with help from David, a Minneapolis business owner who said he is an eyewitness to years of daycare fraud. In the video, the two men jump in a car with a list of locations to expose the fraud and to confront the alleged fraudsters face to face.
“Where are the children?” Shirley asks daycare workers, again and again, across Minneapolis.
In the Shirley video, a “fraud counter” estimated $110 million in taxpayer-paid daycare funding by the end of a day’s journey.
One person who is praising Shirley and his investigation is Dustin Grage, a Minnesota-based political activist and Townhall.com columnist. He told AFN a 23-year-with an iPhone did the work of government agencies that failed their jobs.
“That should embarrass the people in charge,” Grage told AFN. “And it should wake up every taxpayer in Minnesota to just how out of control this has become.”
Despite being governor while fraudsters stole billions from his state, Gov. Tim Walz pivoted to a familiar talking point: Because the Somali fraudsters are black, the only motive for exposing them is racism.
“This is what happens when they no longer hide the idea of white supremacy,” Walz, reacting to the White House demanding answers, told supporters over the weekend.
Asked by AFN if the state of Minnesota is a victim of incompetent politicians or crooked ones, Grage dismissed any claim of blind incompetence. The state programs were created with weak oversight, he said, and the whistleblowers who did speak up were either ignored or threatened with punishment.
“This is an environment built to be abused,” he insisted. “Democrats’ fingerprints are everywhere on this stuff.”
Considering the state’s Democrats are being questioned, and Walz is seeking re-election in 2026, the left-wing news media is parroting the Governor’s racial angle. Over at CNN, show host Abby Phillips said the Somali population is “under attack” because of politics.
“Honestly, you knock on the door of a daycare center? Like, 'let me in, let me in!' What do you expect people to do?!” Phillips argued.
A more shocking liberal reaction to Shirley's door-knocking method came from a Politico legal affairs reporter, Josh Gerstein. He stated on social media that Shirley's "amateur effort to knock on doors of home daycares intersects with robust stand-your-ground laws."
Over on Fox News, liberal co-host Jessia Tarlov took another tactic: Dismissing the on-camera investigation by Shirley.
“There’s no way this kid walked around and uncovered $100 million in fraud on his own,” Tarlov, who credited a New York Times article on Somali fraud, insisted to her “The Five” co-hosts.
Tarlov’s criticism blew up social media. Numerous commenters pointed out Shirley credited David for his own detective work in Minneapolis, and other commenters said Tarlov would have known that fact if she had watched the video.
Gary Bauer, chairman of the Campaign for Working Families, said that many of the individuals not in elected offices have already been and will be convicted of fraud. In other cases, the immigration status of some could possibly be reversed resulting in people kicked out of the country.
Whether the governor or the attorney general pay any price, even at the ballot box, Bauer added, remains to be seen.
"It's sad but true that the ultimate check on this sort of thing, of course, is somebody like Gov. Walz being voted out of office. But then you get to this ironic situation that it's hard to defeat a Democrat in Minnesota these days. Why is that? Because of 100,000 Somalians that were brought into the state in the last decade or so, and many of them were registered to vote, and they vote as a bloc for the Democrat Party,” revealed Bauer.
On X, four days after it hit social media, Shirley’s video had topped 125 million views, 37,000 comments, and 616,000 likes.
Over at his self-named YouTube channel, Shirley’s same video with David had topped two million views, and 48,000 comments, by Tuesday.
