I suspect that Somalis around the country – especially, but not exclusively, in Minneapolis – wish about now that they had spent more time studying the wit and wisdom of Gertrude Stein.
Stein, had she lived in our own day, might well have become commissioner of New York City’s Fire Department. She had the one qualification that Zohran Mamdani seems to deem essential to the post.
Sadly, that was not to be. But there is no denying that, on certain matters, Stein was a font of practical wisdom that remains as pertinent today as it was when she was pontificating in Paris a century ago. It is important, Stein warned those aspiring to be part of the avant garde, “to know how far to go when going too far.” This is true of all the arts. It is just as true of fraud as of painting, poetry, dance or music.
Go ahead: challenge convention; transgress some boundaries. But be discriminating and discreet in your transgressions. A modicum of fraud among friends often gets a pass. Overdo it, however, and the authorities get waspish. This is a truth that the Somalis and their Democrat enablers will doubtless have discovered by the time you read this. They went too far when going too far. Way too far.
I write at the very end of 2025. It’s been an eventful year. But it looks at this moment as if the headline of the year will circle around the eye-watering fraud perpetrated by Somalis in Minnesota, Maine, Washington, Idaho and Ohio. Those are the places we know about, for now.
The word of the year, said Elon Musk, was “learing.” There was a time when orthography could be dismissed as a white supremacist plot. But when a Minneapolis children’s center misspells “learning” on the sign identifying its premises, people take notice. When the public then discovers that there are seemingly no children in that “children’s learing center,” only Somali adults collecting various welfare payments, they get angry. And when a 23-year-old independent journalist named Nick Shirley traipses around Minnesota with his video camera and documents dozens of such operations, the world explodes.
As I write, the 42-minute video that Shirley posted on X has been viewed more than 116 million times. That makes it one of the most-viewed clips in history. “In one day,” Shirley says, “my crew and I uncovered over $110,000,000 in fraud.” And that, he stresses, “is just the tip of the iceberg.” So far, the total tab is estimated to be in excess of $9 billion. Just in Minnesota. But the fraud is ongoing not just in putative child centers that are childless. Any enterprise that can absorb federal funds is susceptible, like the restaurant that seats 35 but claims to serve 18,000 meals a day to hungry children, all at the taxpayers’ expense.
What made Shirley’s video the tipping point, the tocsin that finally shook the world awake? The legacy media has largely avoided covering the issue. Indeed, it has savaged reporters such as James O’Keefe who exposed elements of the fraud in 2020, and did the same to activist Christopher Rufo who has done so more recently.
But for reasons that are not entirely clear, those earlier exposés, while hard-hitting, failed to generate the near-universal outrage that Shirley’s matter-of-fact reporting has.
I say “near-universal” because there are dissenters. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, for example, pulled out the “white supremacist,” “racist” and “Islamophobic” cards in response to Shirley’s video. The accusations fell completely flat. Why? Egregious overuse. People are no longer frightened by those content-free, rhetorical boogeymen. Such accusations are merely epithets designed to end conversation, not acknowledge the truth.
Confronted with the fact that Somalis have systematically pilfered billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money in order to enrich themselves, bribe politicians and fund terrorist activities in Somalia, the public are outraged – and rightly. They see now how Democrats coddle illegal immigrants, lavish them with taxpayers’ money and then cultivate them as Democratic voters. And speaking of voters, did you know that Minnesota has same-day voter registration and that one registered voter can “vouch” for 8 others in his precinct who do not have ID?
A modicum of fraud among friends often gets a pass. Overdo it, however, and the authorities get waspish
Musk cut to the chase: “The Democrats are so upset about the situation because they’re losing – you know if we turn off this gigantic money magnet for illegal immigrants, then they will leave and they’ll lose voters.” Bingo. There are some 80,000-100,000 Somalis in Minneapolis alone. How is it that they live so well?
The canny chap who writes under the name Cynical Publius may well be correct that “in large swathes of humanity, there is no actual concept of ‘fraud,’ particularly fraud against the government.” Instead, there is a categorical imperative to get away with whatever you can “to help yourself and your tribe.” The problem is, notes Publius, that “introducing a fraud-based culture based on tribalism into America is like introducing some sort of lethal virus into a population that has no natural immunity. The virus will spread and grow, unchecked, because it is so alien to the host.”
The virus must be neutralized or it will destroy the host. How? Kash Patel tells us that the FBI is on the case. “To date,” he notes, “the FBI dismantled a $250 million fraud scheme that stole federal food aid meant for vulnerable children during Covid.” Donald Trump should stop all federal welfare funds to offending venues while a thorough audit – very thorough and very lengthy – is conducted. And as much of the “Somali community” as possible should be repatriated to where it belongs: Somalia. That is why God made Tom Homan.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s January 19, 2026 World edition.
Comments