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How did a YouTuber stop federal funding to Minnesota?
00:29:02
And can Zohran Mamdani keep up the momentum as New York mayor?
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We've known for some time that there is huge fraud in the state of Minnesota. People have been convicted, they've gone to jail, and that that fraud is centered much of it on the Somali community in the state of Minnesota. There is a new set of allegations from a right wing vlogger that Donald Trump and his administration have now cottoned onto and are hugely publicizing. It is a big headache for the governor of Minnesota and a big headache for those who say the Somali community is being unfairly targeted. Welcome to AmericasT.
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AmericasT AmericaT from BBC News.
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When Donald Trump calls, they say, yes sir, right away sir. Happy to lick your boot, sir. We are the sickest country in the world.
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Oh dear.
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Are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry? Of course the President supports peaceful protests. What a stupid question.
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Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?
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Hello, it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmericasT in London, England.
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And it's Anthony across the pond in Washington, dc.
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Happy New Year, Anthony. And to everyone listening as well.
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Happy New Year, Justin.
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We are going to talk later on about Zoran Mamdani, which is obviously of vital importance to the United States, not just to New York because he's taken over now as mayor and everyone is watching to see whether he succeeds or fails, to put it in very blunt terms, but also what his relationship is with Donald Trump and what kind of an example he sets for left parties and left individuals around the world. So Hugely important. We will get to that. We're going to start, though, with fraud in the state of Minnesota. And this is a particular story. It's been bubbling around for a bit. It's hugely important and interesting to people in Minnesota, of course, because the amounts being talked about are pretty large. But it's also important for the United States because it brings to a head all these various discussions that there are about the Trump administration, about race and politics, and about welfare spending as well, actually. So it kind of, it joins them all together and it does it in a way that is toxic for quite a few people, it seems to me, right across the board. So, Anthony, the latest twist in this.
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Is what, right, the Trump administration, Donald Trump himself has made this a national issue. And it just recently announced that the administration was freezing childcare payments to Minnesota. And this follows a conservative YouTuber who made allegations that some childcare centers run by Somali immigrants were taking public money, millions of dollars in public money, without providing any care whatsoever. Nick Shirley, who styles himself as an independent YouTube journalist, received millions of views for a video that he posted across multiple social media platforms, accusing nearly a dozen of these childc centers of not providing services or having any children present there when Shirley visited and knocked on the doors.
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And it's worth saying that this then harks back to an even bigger scandal that started actually some years ago, but has been reported during the latter part of last year, which, to use the words of the New York Times. So this is no friend of the Trump administration and certainly no friend of right wing bloggers or vloggers. The New York Times says the fraud scandal that rattled Minnesota was staggering in its scale and brazenness. And this is a fraud scandal that I suppose really came to light, didn't it, during COVID where there are all manner of things that were being handed out to people because it was felt that they needed them. And it seems that in Minnesota, quite a few of those things were handed out without too many checks. And particularly again, in the Somali community, there were large amounts of money taken, particularly by one organization called Feeding Our Future, which took a lot of money. And there have been prosecutions, successful prosecutions. So again, this isn't an allegation. This actually happened. The money was in quite a few occasions, on quite a few occasions stolen. And it's also true, isn't it? And this is what rather complicates it, is that when that organization, Feeding Our Future, was initially under suspicion, they then filed a lawsuit against the authorities alleging racism. In other words, the allegation is that the Trump administration is being racist in drawing attention to all of this. But actually it's interesting as well that the Somalis themselves protected themselves initially by their opponents would say racializing. A perfectly ordinary law and order investigation into fraud.
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Right. Which is one of the reasons why it's so difficult to separate this story and story of fraud and the story of abuse about all the money that was spent during COVID vast sums of money which would be forced into the economy to keep it afloat, separating it from issues of immigration and Donald Trump's immigration enforcement, which we have talked about over the past year, and also issues of racial tensions and the accommodation that the United States makes for new immigrants into this country. So it is a loaded issue. But obviously, as you said in the intro, one that really we need to tackle because it has political as well as cultural and social importance in this country.
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A
Yeah, we should listen to a bit of what he said, actually, because it is really interesting.
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Potentially the largest fraud scandal in US History is taking place in Minnesota as literally billions of dollars have been funneled through, through Somali ran fraudulent businesses. So much fraud it could actually almost replace the entire GDP of Somalia. These fraudsters have worked hand in hand with the Minnesota government as they enabled billions of dollars to be given to fraudulent businesses underneath welfare purposes. Some of this money eventually landed in the hands of terrorists.
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There's a lot there that isn't exactly evidence, isn't there? But you get the impression, don't you? More than the impression.
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Largest fraud scandal in US History. There have been a lot of big fraud scandals in American history. So. But this, you know, typical kind of social media bombast, but he goes on and he shows up at a daycare center which he says is a front for funneling millions of dollars into the pockets of criminals rather than actually providing the services for which they've contracted with. He's there with an older man who is identified only as David. Talking about what they're seeing. Well, this is actually two daycares are registered here.
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One of them is Mako, which you see on this sign. The other one is mini childcare center. And between the two of these child care centers, they're pulling in about $3 million a year. And there are no children. Every facility you go to, the windows will be blocked out, so you can't see in. There's nobody here. You won't see a single child at any of these facilities.
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There are indeed no windows. All the windows are blacked out right here. All right, let's go in and the childcare center is locked. Should we ring the doorbell? Try to get in. Rang the doorbell, nobody showed up. They're open seven days a week at.
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7:00Am to 10:00pm okay, right of reply time. Because the manager of the day center or one of the day centers that Shelley had gone to said he wasn't there in regular hours, so wasn't obviously going to find anyone. And there was a CNN camera crew as well, I think, who interviewed Nick Shirley outside a different center. And they actually, in the end filmed people dropping off their kids, real kids, in the background. And he dismissed that as showing face, but nonetheless there was, there was that. And CBS as well. CBS TV said they found no evidence of face fraud. When they looked at all the public records for the centers, though, there were plenty of things that were going wrong about safety, cleanliness, equipment, staff training, et cetera, but not on at least the ones they looked at in fraud. The problem is it's all very murky because there is one of the centres where it's not clear from the authorities whether it is closed or open. The whole thing is just as unclear or too unclear, I suppose, to present a picture where people can latch on and say, aha, this is or is not the case.
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Right. And the murkiness is why we rely on media that has standards that you can trust, that will investigate and present kind of the unvarnished truth rather than trying to advance an agenda. Why that is so important, not just for the public's understanding, but for democracy itself, itself. And so you see someone like Shirley out there, and we've seen with Project Veritas before, after the fact, after these videos have come through and they've become sensations, sometimes there's more to the story that's being presented because there is an agenda behind the stories. But then again, you'll see those allegations towards mainstream media outlets as well. But there has to be some evidence presented, There has to be some level of trust from the media reporting on this and being able to say, okay, this is the real story, this is what's happening. And the murkiness just allows anyone who's picking up and anyone who has a view to kind of feel like what they're seeing confirms what they believe and doesn't get to the bottom of the story at all.
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But what the conservative media outlets say, and I must say I have some sympathy with them in this, is that if you don't examine something, really rattle the cage, really get under the skin of what the issue is, then you won't know one way or the other. And what they would say is, if you look at the list of stories of news events, but also more importantly, of investigations that the mainstream media generally choose to cover, this is the allegation, isn't it, that actually those things will always be about, you know, things that the Trump administration has done wrong, things that happen to poor people that shouldn't happen. In other words, they've got an agenda. It's not to say the stories aren't true, but that they're always in one direction. When something like this happens, there isn't sufficient follow up.
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I think, you know what maybe this also highlights is the challenges that local media, local and regional media face. And one of the bigger stories over the past decades is local media. And the investigative journalism that local media supports has been hollowed out, that you don't have the kind of robust regional and daily newspapers in all of these towns to hold the powerful in state and local levels to account. I mean, if you go into a lot of these cities now, look at their local newspapers, their skeleton crews, and they rely on wire service copy, and they focus on big national stories because that's what the public cares about. They want to follow what's going on in Washington, D.C. and not necessarily want to read in depth reporting on their local government. There should have been, and I'll have to look, and maybe the Minneapolis paper did a good job of covering this. Maybe the local news in Minneapolis did a good job of covering this and it didn't break through. But I would be curious to see whether Tim Walt and the Minnesota government and the Somali community was really having their feet held to the fire by the local press, or if this was a shortcoming, whether because of their political agenda because they have a blind spot there, or just because there just aren't the resources anymore at that level to cover big stories. Because I certainly think that that is a trend that we've seen not just here, but elsewhere in American media over the past few decades.
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100%. And actually also interestingly, I mean, here's another thing before we get to the politics of it, or maybe this is the politics of it, Anthony. The other suggestion being that one of the damaging aspects of this, one of the reasons it matters so much, never mind Tim Walls and what happens to him and the election that's coming up and all the rest of it, but actually it damages potentially the kind of social cohesion and trust that you need in order to have the sort of welfare programs that Minnesota has. And that in a sense is an echo of things found in other countries, I think, particularly of Sweden, the people, the criticism is as soon as you don't have a high trust society, and often in people's minds at least, that is analogous with a homogenous society, a society with not that many recent immigrants, then once that trust goes, then you can't have these social programs because people say people are just stealing all the money. And I think the risk in Minnesota and the risk for other recent immigrants to the United States who need these social networks, who rely on them, is that actually it raises added suspicions about those social programs in a nation that is already kind of pretty keen on rugged individualism, et cetera.
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Right. And you have people wanting to raise those suspicions and people trying to undermine trust. And I don't know, we'll see how big and how broad the corruption and the fraud is in Minnesota. And certainly allegations are billions of dollars, which is not a drop in the bucket. I mean, obviously there's tons of money being spent on programs around the country, and this is a nation of 350 million people. So the numbers are going to be big for any kind of a social program. And it's impossible to do away with even small amounts of fraud because there's so much money. But when you also, the people, a lot of people who are criticizing this from the White House on down don't want these social services, and they will advance theories about corruption and paint the entire programs in a disparaging light because they would like to see these programs ended. So I think it's impossible, as you say, to separate out the politics from this. And you will have people on the left who will say, these are good programs, and yes, we have to do as much as we can to avoid corruption. You have people on the right who don't see these programs as useful exercise in government resources and time, whether or not there's fraud. I mean, they're opposed to a lot of these programs full stop, not just because they aren't being successfully implemented.
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Talking of spending, let's turn to a guy who, at least a day or two into his administration is still riding high because, of course, Zoran Mamdani becomes now the mayor of New York. He had the inauguration ceremony. It was pretty chilly by the look of it, at City Hall. And he was exactly as you'd expect, I thought, Anthony, inasmuch it, he'd really thought about what he wanted to say. And he actually, he went there. He's got this incredible ability, hasn't he, not to resile from anything that he says and Actually to double down on it and to excite people when he doubles down on it. Let's, let's listen to a bit of what he said at the inauguration.
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The only expectation I seek to reset is that of small expectations. Beginning today, we will govern expansively and audaciously. We may not always succeed, but never will we be accused of lacking the courage to try. To those who insist that the era of big government is over, hear me when I say no longer will City hall hesitate to use its power to improve New Yorkers lives. That's interesting. A riff on Bill Clinton's famous line in one of his State of the Union speeches of the 90s about the era of big government being over. Well, here is Mamdani serving as a counterpoint to that, that big government is hearing that the government will use its powers in good ways, he says, but not unlike Donald Trump who is willing to use the powers of big government to advance his agenda as well. I mean, he has a good speechwriter, Mamdani, whether it's himself or his speechwriters, it was an inspiring speech, I think for a lot of the New Yorkers who voted for him. Now we get to see whether he can turn that into reality.
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How is he gonna be judged? He wants free buses, doesn't he? And a couple of other things that I suppose he can probably deliver in reasonably short order. But if there's going to be a really, really visible, tangible, actual change, for instance, in the ability of people to get somewhere to live in New York, it just strikes me that that's a taller order. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's a taller order.
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Right? He can't do it all on his own. And there have been very few cities that have been able to tackle affordability and cost of living issues, barring some sort of a disaster economic collapse that makes people not want to live in those cities. I mean, the reason why New York is expensive, the reason why London is expensive, the reason why any major metropolitan area is expensive, is because there is demand to live there. And so he is going to be trying to find ways to address affordability while still keeping New York a place people want to live in. And he's not going to be able to do that just by fiat. I know he's had a couple of executive orders already, but there are executive orders on housing and affordability that mostly involve creating special commissions to try to cut red tape and to streamline approval processes for constructing new housing. That's, you know, committees are a first Step, I suppose, but it's going to take time to see if anything comes from that. And for funding the childcare that he has promised, for making buses, for reducing the cost of housing, he can't do that by himself. He is going to have to get the support from people like New York Governor Kathy Hochul. He's going to have to get support from independent housing commissions in Manhattan and in New York City. He's going to have to get support from local politicians and the city Council. And he's going to have to have a federal government, including Donald Trump, that does not meddle or put pressure on him in other ways or cuts off funding. So it is going to require not just the ability to motivate his supporters and give good speeches, it's going to require him to navigate very tricky kind of political currents and convince people who may not necessarily be willing to cooperate with him and actually may benefit from him stumbling and failing to get on board with the program.
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Ah, well, yes. Including of course, crucially, within his own party, where there are plenty of people who don't want to see democratic socialism or anything like it. I mean, one of the really eye catching, ear catching, whatever the phrase is, of phrases that he used, Anthony, was he wanted to replace rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism. The warmth of collectivism. That very phrase would make a lot of Democratic Party politicians, including those who aren't necessarily on the kind of extreme right of the party, if that exists anymore, really kind of blanch. Because the way word collectivism conjures up in the mind, doesn't it? Well, I remember that. I'm old enough to remember the Soviet Union that was a collectivist society. And it wasn't terribly pleasant and it wasn't terribly fair either. No, it just didn't work desperately well. And I think a lot of Democrats are thinking, oh my goodness, we don't want that kind of talk. But he is talking that talk. And they will be interested now to see if he delivers. Because if he doesn't deliver, it seems to me there'll be plenty of people on his own side, as it were, who will be queuing up to say, the guy's a failure. Let's go in a different direction.
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Yeah. And we're coming up on these big midterms in November and Democrats debating about what direction they want to take their party. And Mamdani's success or failure could really do a lot to shape the direction of that Democratic Party. If he comes in and shows you could campaign on an aggressive left wing Policy platform, and one, still win the election, but then two, when you get in power, translate that into programs and policies that people still support and people benefit from, then I think there's going to be a lot of pressure in the Democratic Party to adopt his model and run on it, whether the warmth of collectivism is the slogan or not. I'll leave that to the strategist, but it is, you know, it could prove to be a winning combination if it falls flat. If he falls flat, then I think Democrats are going to go back and the centrists in the party, and there still are plenty of them, the centrists in the party will say things more practical, things more appealing to bread and butter economic issues, but not with these kind of massive government programs. This is the correct path forward. And I think there's actually something interesting that I read about Mamdani in the run up to taking over on New Year's Day, and that is he was consulting and his people were consulting with Barack Obama's political team, because one of the things, one of the criticisms of Obama was that he ran and won in 2008 on Hope and change and built up this massive groundswell of popular support, a movement, an organic movement, kind of what Mamdani has generated in New York, and then let that all kind of wither on the vine and turn things over to the Democratic Party and did not keep that social movement going while he was president. I think what Mamdani's people want to do is, yes, he's going to have to negotiate with people like Kathy Hochul. He's going to have to get people who don't necessarily agree with him to find common ground and to sign off on his programs. But the way I think he wants to do that is to keep this coalition he built during this campaign intact and use that to go to Albany and pressure the state government there or show up in New York City to pressure the folks there who may oppose him. And if he can succeed in that, maybe that's a. That's a sign that Democrats can capitalize on this and use it as a governing force and not just as a way to win elections.
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Yeah. And not just Democrats, and not just America, but outside as well. It's really interesting. In fact, I think we can listen to a clip of him in a second. This man, he can't run for president because he wasn't born in the United States, but this man has proper ambitions to kind of reset everything for the left right across the world, in a sense. And he addressed that Crucial question about people looking at him and looking at other leaders like him and, well, asking this question.
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They want to know if the left can govern. They want to know if the struggles that afflict them can be solved. They want to know if it is right to hope again. So standing together with the wind of purpose at our backs, we will do something that New Yorkers do better than anyone else. We will set an example for the world.
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Not lacking in ambition.
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Yeah, exactly. I mean, that is typical New York bravado. Right. But I mean, I do think that what is happening in New York right now does have consequences and will have consequences beyond just the metropolitan borders, that New York does have outsized influence on American politics and American politics has an outside influence on the world. So you kind of heard an echo of what Joe Biden campaigned on even in 2000, which was that this was a kind of a generational defining conflict between democracies and authoritarianism. And we needed to show that democracies can work for the world. And obviously his prescriptions and his plan is definitely very different from Mamdani's democratic socialism, but both of them kind of had a view of what we need to do here is set an example for the world. And on the flip side, I mean, if you listen to Donald Trump and conservatives talk about it, they want to support kind of populist right wing movements around the world, whether it's in Europe or it's in South America. They are perfectly happy to, to stand up for what they view as Western culture and to advance it in this kind of a global conflict. So everyone seems to have really big ideas about what America can do.
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Tell you what, we mentioned the buses and a couple of other things he wants to do, the housing, etc. The thing that he is potentially going to be judged on, I suppose, is whether crime or perceptions of crime, and those are not necessarily always the same thing, are they? But is whether that gets worse or better on his watch and how he negotiates this terribly difficult relationship with the police who are going to be so important to his success or failure, but about whom in the past, he has been very rude. Although it's one of the few areas actually where he says, I've changed my mind.
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Yeah. I mean, when it comes down to it, he is still the mayor of a city. And when being the mayor of a city, the most, the thing that people care about most is, is crime low? Can you go about your daily business safely? Is the police there? If something goes wrong to protect you? Is the garbage picked up on time, which has been an issue in New York City in the past. Are the streets cleared when it snows again, something that has derailed mayors of New York City in the past? A blizzard hits, and if you can't get to work, you can't walk on the streets, you can't drive on the streets. That gets people upset. And then all of the affordability issues. Can you afford housing? Is the cost of groceries low enough for you to be able to live comfortably and happy in those cities? So it's. You could talk a lot about changing the world, but, you know, you have to pick up the trash, too.
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Do you think Donald Trump, I mean, they had that very pally meeting, didn't they, in the Oval Office where Trump says, yeah, you can call me a fascist if you want to. Go ahead. Doesn't matter. Mamdani appeared to be enjoying himself there, too. Do they spar a bit? Do they treat each other warily? Does Trump kind of launch full scale? Mamdani now represents the Democratic Party. As soon as Mamdani, as soon as something goes wrong, does he go down that road? I wonder what happens with that relationship.
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Gonna be kind of hard for him to turn and go back on the Mamdani as a socialist and he's ruining New York path. Although Donald Trump has made hairpin turns before politically, so I wouldn't put it past him. But there's going to be a lot of pressure on both sides for a conflict, which is why I think we were expecting a conflict going into that Oval Office meeting, why all of us were so shocked at the chumminess of it. There are going to be people on the right who really do want to paint Mamdani as a face of the Democratic Party and his warm collectivism as the defining slogan of the midterm elections. And there are going to be people on the left who want Mamdani to pick a fight with Donald Trump and to draw a very clear line, particularly the next time Donald Trump does something controversial if it affects New York City. So it seems like the two of them have rapport, which may keep the pot from boiling over. But there's going to be so many forces pushing them into direct conflict that I think it's going to be hard to totally avoid.
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Hey, ho. Watch this space. Plenty to talk about during the course of the year. We've kicked it off, though. Anthony, pleasure as always.
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C
Bye bye bye.
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Thank you for listening to another episode. It is you, the ameracaster that makes ameracast the community that it now is. If you like what you've heard. Please do subscribe to this podcast on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts. We always want to hear your feedback as well. We look at every single bit of correspondence that we get so you can send us an email americastbc.co.uk the WhatsApp is 443-301-239480 and you can get involved in the AmericasT Discord server. The link to that is in the description. Until next time.
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