President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance signed an executive order Monday creating a national task force to combat fraud in federally funded programs, and Trump used the occasion to unload on Minnesota's political leadership by name.
The target list: Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Rep. Ilhan Omar. Trump called all three complicit in what he described as billions of dollars in fraud schemes running through the state.
The executive order establishes what the administration calls the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud. Vance will chair it. The task force will develop a national strategy to root out abuse in programs that provide housing, food, medical, and financial assistance administered through state and local governments. Minnesota sits at the center of the effort, but the administration flagged California, Illinois, New York, Maine, and Colorado as states with similar vulnerabilities, the New York Post reported.
Minnesota has been at the epicenter of fraud investigations involving Feeding our Future, Somali-run child care centers, autism therapy billing, and housing stabilization program schemes. Hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud cases have already been investigated in court. Former U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson said at a December 2025 news conference that the state may have lost up to $9 billion.
Trump put the number even higher. As FOX 9 reported, the president said Minnesota taxpayers have lost as much as $19 billion.
During the signing, Trump singled out the Minneapolis Somali population and the fraud rings discovered there:
"When you look at the Minnesota scam, a lot of it has to do with Somalia. Nobody is calling out anybody, but a lot of it is Somalia. I believe the governor is complicit, I believe Ilhan Omar is complicit, I believe your attorney general is complicit. If they are, you're going to hopefully find out about it and do what you have to do."
He didn't stop there.
"These are crooked people. They basically said everybody in the state had autism."
The president aimed his sharpest fire at Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has held Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District seat since 2019. Trump repeated the long-circulating claim that Omar married her brother, a claim FOX 9 noted it investigated but was never able to verify.
Trump told the room:
"Ilhan Omar, I hope this is part of it, but she married her brother supposedly. That means she's here illegally, and she's a Congresswoman. I hope you're going to be looking at that. She's one of the ring leaders, she's bad news. She's so bad for our country."
Omar and Trump clashed last month during the State of the Union address. Omar's guest was arrested during the speech for "unlawful conduct" and removed from the chambers but was never charged.
Trump painted a vivid picture of the alleged fraud pipeline:
"People come over from Somalia, they have no money, and now they're buying Mercedes-Benz cars. More cash goes out of the Minnesota airport than any other place in the world. We're going to find it. Minnesota is really bad. The governor is corrupt, the attorney general is totally corrupt. They're all corrupt, and we've got too many of them in our country, and we have to expose them."
Vance, now formally chairing the task force, framed the initiative as sweeping. Just The News reported that Vance called it "a very important whole of government approach."
Trump made clear the effort won't be limited to red or blue territory, but left no doubt about where he thinks the worst offenders sit. He said:
"If we found half the fraud that's taking place in this country, we would have much more than a balanced budget. The theft is incredible."
He also took a shot at the previous administration's approach to task forces, saying: "This will not be like a Kamala where she was put in charge of the border and she never went there. JD, right, you promise?"
Key details remain unclear:
The gap between the $9 billion Thompson cited and Trump's $19 billion claim is large, and unexplained.
Minnesota taxpayers deserve answers. The fraud documented so far, Feeding our Future alone, ranks among the largest pandemic-era theft cases in the country. If state leaders looked the other way while billions vanished from programs meant for children, the disabled, and the hungry, that isn't a policy disagreement. It's a betrayal of public trust.
When the money is gone and the officials who were supposed to guard it face no consequences, taxpayers learn a brutal lesson: the system protects itself first.
A task force is only as good as its follow-through. If this one delivers indictments where others delivered excuses, it will have earned its existence.
