https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/25/jd-vance-minnesota-medicaidJD Vance announced on Wednesday that the Trump administration would “temporarily halt” more than a quarter-billion dollars in Medicaid reimbursements to the state of Minnesota, escalating Donald Trump’s newly announced “war on fraud”.Vance said the action was to ensure Minnesota was “a good steward of the American people’s tax money”, part of its crackdown on the state following a fraud scandal linked to residents of the Somali community in Minneapolis, which prompted the administration to send thousands of federal immigration agents into Minneapolis and that resulted in the deaths of two US citizens and widespread protests.“We are stopping the federal payments that will go to the state government until the state government takes its obligations seriously to stop the fraud that’s being perpetrated against the American taxpayer,” the vice-president said at a press conference in Washington, where he was joined by Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid.Oz said it was the first time the government had taken such an action against a state. “It’s unponderable that you would take advantage of these precious programs,” he said, adding that while Minnesota was first, other states would be next.Oz also announced that the administration was imposing a six-month national moratorium on federal funding for people who need durable medical equipment, including prostheses and orthotics. New enrollments for federal funds for such devices would be halted due to concerns about benefit fraud, he said.Medicaid, the nation’s healthcare safety net for low-income Americans, serves more than 70 million people, including children, pregnant women, older adults and people with disabilities. Minnesota’s Medicaid and MinnesotaCare programs provide healthcare coverage for nearly 1.3 million people in the state, or roughly one in four Minnesotans.
The Trump administration has aggressively targeted Minnesota after a sprawling fraud scandal involving the state’s social service programs. Federal prosecutors estimate as much as $9bn has been stolen across schemes linked to the state’s Somali population. Dozens of people were charged with fraud in 2022, during the Biden administration, by a team of federal prosecutors in Minnesota led by Joseph Thompson and Harry Jacobs.Thompson and Jacobs were among the federal prosecutors who resigned in January after senior justice department officials pressed them to open a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Good, the Minneapolis woman shot and killed by an ICE officer.Vance suggested that if the state was worried about the impact on services and low-income residents, it needed to cooperate with the federal government.“The main reason that we’re doing this is that we want to make sure that the people of Minnesota have access to the services that they’re entitled to,” he said.The Republican vice-president, who is likely to run for president in two years, also made it clear that he hopes residents of the state will blame the state’s Democratic leaders for the withheld funding.“What I would say to the people of Minnesota is: we want to do right by you; we think you deserve better public services; we think you deserve to have the benefits that you’re actually entitled to,” Vance said. “And we encourage everybody in Minnesota, whatever their political affiliation, to work on the state government a little bit, because if we had some better cooperation we could have commonsense immigration enforcement. We could also have less money going to fraudsters.”During the State of the Union address on Tuesday, Trump singled out Minnesota as a “stunning example” of the fraud he claimed was rampant in blue states and placed Vance in charge of what he branded the administration’s “war on fraud”.
>>1492326I'm so fucking tired of their projection. I know that's by design, but jesus christ.
>>1492330Somalia thanks you
>>1492326NO! THINK OF THE INSURANCE COMPANIES!!
Who even needs the fed? Just raise taxes.BOOM!You're welcome!
>>1492330Yes, it is Republicans who are massively immigrating Somalis into America. They are just projecting it onto Democrats. Democrats want to build the wall and keep out illegals Trump is just projecting
>>1492326Funny how they never, EVER try to run up red states for this sort of thing. Nah, they recruit the frauds in those places.
>>1492365I know. It's like Dems are corrupt specifically or something.
>>1492368>rent free seethingenabling an elite global pedophile ring must be infuriatinggood thing for the pedophiles they have you programmed to defend them at all costs
On the evil scale, 1 = arrival average used car salesman, 9 = Net & Ya-Hoo, 10 =Hitler and StalinTrump - ignorant, stupid, greedy, rapist, sociopathic, and charismatic = 7/10 Vance = knowledgeable, intelligent, educated, opportunistic, sociopathic, uncharismatic = 8/10
>>1492370>rent freeFucking commie scum. /news has always been a libertarian board.
>>1492337>>1492364>b-but racism!Shut the fuck up.
>>1492368Rick Scott, Republican Senator, was responsible for a medicare fraud case to the tune of 1.7 BILLION dollars back in the nineties when he was CEO of a major private hospital corporation. It was the largest medical fraud case in American history.Republicans rewarded him with a senate seat.
