As a Californian, when it comes to fraud at the state level, whether it's disappearing federal money, state money, or local money, we stand at the summit. No matter which way you look, not one of the other 49 states in the Union comes close our eye level in wasting money in fraudulant fashion the way we do here in the Golden State.
Let me give you just one example. In 1996, by way of a state initiative, the California Scam Tram, the Little Train That Couldn't, the Train From Nowhere To Nowhere got underway. Except it didn't. Originally plotted to be a high-speed rail that would take passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco by 2020, at a cost of $10 billion dollars, the train still doesn't exist. Nor does the track, the electrical lines, nor the infrastructure. After thirty years, all that can be said for it in the way of progress is a regular train track that's meant to be a supply line to the high-speed track that isn't there.
In short, this project alone, (and mind you, California's various fraudulant programs are as ubiquitous as sunlight), has not laid a single mile of track to date, has spent well north of $15 billion dollars to not lay that track, now boasts a future cost of $128 billion when it's completed sometime in the mid 2030's, (which it won't), and it's ambitious L.A.-S.F. termination cities has been scaled back. You will ultimately, so long as the money and Democrats don't run out, be whisked away from Bakersfield, 113 miles north of the City of Angels, to Merced, which is 130 miles to the south of the City on the Bay.
Keep in mind, it's only 383 miles if you drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and after four decades and $130 billion dollars, the high-speed rail will only get you a little over halfway. You're on your own for the rest of the distance.
Whenever I see reports surface of fraud going on in another state, I typically scoff. But over the last couple of weeks, seeing the reports of the breadth and depth of fraud the Somali community has perpetrated on the state of Minnesota, and by extension the federal taxpayers, it's enough to make this cynical Californian stand up and applaud.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, allegedly vetted at one time by former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder as the best choice for Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party's emergency vice-presidential nominee in 2024, has been absolutely John Belushi-esque in delivering excuses for the fraud rampant in the Gopher State. In regards to the fraudulant Medicaid food, housing, autism support, a story that our friends Scott Johnson and John Hinderaker have owned from the beginning at Powerline Blog, totaling close to $9 billion dollars across 14 different programs thus far, Walz has had no shortage of people to blame.
I mean, the only thing missing is Carrie Fisher standing over him in the sewer with a shotgun, right?
In January, 1996, then-First Lady Hillary Clinton released her book, It Takes A Village, and began an odyssey about how your kids aren't really your kids, and that it takes all of us to raise them properly. She repeated that mantra later in the year at the Democratic National Convention when the party renominated William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, who for all intents and purposes had by then bedded the village.
According to some pretty terrific reporting from Nick Shirley over the Christmas holiday, it appears that to Minnesotan Somalis, it takes a lot of the village's money to raise their kids. Except in taking this fraud to the chef's kiss level, there's not even any kids involved. It's just taking the money to run empty buildings. Shifting from one movie reference to another, Belushi and Fisher in The Blues Brothers to 1974's Blazing Saddles, the Somalis have essentially built, with your tax dollars, a whole bunch of fake Rock Ridge daycare centers, which have no children in them for which to provide care.
🚨 Here is the full 42 minutes of my crew and I exposing Minnesota fraud, this might be my most important work yet. We uncovered over $110,000,000 in ONE day. Like it and share it around like wildfire! Its time to hold these corrupt politicians and fraudsters accountable
— Nick shirley (@nickshirleyy) December 26, 2025
We ALL… pic.twitter.com/E3Penx2o7a
Three-quarters of an hour of wall-to-wall fraud. Somalis are buying homes, in some cases, using federal and state assistance to get the mortgages, then filing immediately as daycare centers, getting subsidies monthly to pay for the mortgages. Are there kids? Nope. Is anyone from the state checking? Seemingly not. Again, looking at this as a Californian, it's fantastic in scale.
California's current budget is somewhere in the neighborhood of $325 billion dollars, servicing 39.5 million people, legal and illegal combined. God only knows how much of that is spent fraudulantly. Actually, there are some Republicans who know, and put the number north of $70 billion. Perhaps Nick could take a swing out west when he's finished burying Tim Walz and the Democrats In the Minnesota first.
By comparison, the Gopher state's current budget is only $66 billion, which handles 5.8 million people. That's about $11,300 per person in spending versus California's $9,240 per capita. Minnesota is rapidly rising in the spending per capita list, sitting currently in 13th place among the other states. Calfornia ranks dead last.
If you're curious whether this is just a blip and they'll eventually fall back in line with the rest of the states, guess again. Governor Walz yesterday, in the face of evidence of fraud wherever you find Minnesotan Somalis congregated, doubled down. He wants to give them more money in a new way.
🚨 INFURIATING: Despite the MASSIVE Somali fraud scandal, Tim Walz announces a NEW welfare program for Somalis and other illegals
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) December 27, 2025
The taxpayer-funded family and medical leave program gives Somalis up to 20 PAID WEEKS OFF PER YEAR to “bond” with a child
CUT OFF FEDERAL FUNDS!… pic.twitter.com/s1EQ1SFT7d
Who needs a fake Somali learing center when you can just claim to have a kid, not have to actually prove it, and get 5 months of paid vacation time on taxpayers? (I'll bet you think I didn't catch that typo. I did. The Somalis receiving millions to set up a learning center didn't, however.)
Hey Tim go check up on the quality of the learing of these children https://t.co/q9ed2K94q5 pic.twitter.com/GuYwEvIry3
— Nick shirley (@nickshirleyy) December 28, 2025
You've got to hand it to Walz. Instead of stopping the digging when his social welfare programs have proven to be the laughing stock of the country, he holds a press conference to introduce a brand-new shovel.
Now I know what you're saying. Media isn't covering this new scandal. In fact, the Star-Tribune and Pioneer Press, the two papers of the Twin Cities, haven't spent so much as a column inch on the story. The glorious thing about 2025, and a trend that shows it will accelerate going into 2026, is that people are not getting their news from old leftist media anymore. That 42-minute Nick Shirley video I showed you earlier? 90 million views in two days. 90 million! Not bad for a 23-year-old kid doing the unthinkable - reporting and journalism.
Alphabet networks and Minnesota local stations will continue to ignore the story into oblivion, like they did with Powerline's Medicaid fraud scandal. But the truth has this funny way of getting out. As white hot as the internet is with Nick Shirley's reporting, Fox News jumped in over the weekend, and by the time they interviewed him about the Somali daycare scandal, another 10 million had seen his video on YouTube.
🚨 BREAKING: Nick Shirley was just put on NATIONAL TELEVISION as his Minnesota Somali fraud video blows up to nearly 100 MILLION views
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) December 28, 2025
Nick is giving a HUGE shoutout to David - the man in the video who helped find $110 MILLION in fraud in one day
"A KINDERGARTENER could've… pic.twitter.com/nPZQDL5tPK
Walz' problem, and the Democrat Farm Labor party in Minnesota's as well, is that they cannot put a ring around this fire. I'm sure they figured once the Medicaid scandal broke, they'd deploy pundits, obfuscate, have Walz lie and spin away in press conferences, and that would be the end of it. Now, another huge front in the Somali fire has opened up, and it's totally uncontained. What do you want to wager that this isn't the only fraud being committed by elements in the Somali community?
To date, there's four different sets of scandals relating to Somali fraud of federal and state welfare dollars. Besides the fake daycare and autism/Medicaid fraud, there are a bunch of programs dealing with COVID relief and public benefits that Somalis seem to have taken advantage of to the tune of several hundred million dollars. And the fourth, so far, is a ton of money illegally obtained through the auspices of children's hunger relief. Your gut should tell you by now this won't be the last set of programs Somalis have apparently figured out how to game.
All this makes what Walz did yesterday, announcing the new 20-week paid family leave for Somalis plan, just wild. Typically, as a practical matter, when you have four active wildfires consuming everything in their path in your state, the recommended solution is not usually to go out and start fire number 5 on camera as a distraction from the damage caused by the other four.
You know who's been eerily quiet about Walz' problems the last couple of weeks? Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom, for two very different reasons. Harris, who aspires, according to Axios a couple weeks ago, to run for the presidency again in 2028, would seemingly have to begin a new campaign by having to answer questions about the wisdom of her first major decision as a candidate in 2024 - the selection of Walz as her VP nominee. Not a great position for her now, so she's very quietly going on lefty podcasts in order to sell a couple books a week, hoping this story, and if necessary, Walz, just goes away.
In Newsom's case, as I said at the beginning, he's no stranger to fraud and corruption. Upon seeing Walz and the Democrats inch closer to the tens of billions mark, Republicans in my state are telling any outlet that will listen, including Newsmax, to hold my beer. Newsom has surpassed $70 billion in fraud.
Gavin Newsom has now SURPASSED Tim Walz as the biggest fraud..
— American AF 🇺🇸 (@iAnonPatriot) December 26, 2025
An estimated $70 BILLION has gone missing.. 👀 pic.twitter.com/UzOTDi3vng
The bottom line is that Somalis are the opportunists here. The fraud is being made possible by Democrats. And it will continue in blue states until those states run out of money or get voted out in disgrace. I'm not optimistic about the latter, because if there's one thing Democrats keep figuring out how to do is convince enough voters nationally to give Democrats a try again at the White House and Congress for no other reason than to restart the gravy train of grift.
We are about to turn the page on the calendar to a year leading up to Midterm elections, contests that will decide which party controls the Legislative Branch for the next two years. If all the fraud being exposed now makes you nauseous, imagine what two years of stalemates and continuing resolutions locking in current levels of spending that made all this fraud possible will do.
I don't know about you, but I believe strongly that the village, and the country, can certainly stand to have a lot fewer Democrats running parts of it. Vote them all out.
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