USDA suspends federal financial awards to Minnesota and Minneapolis

I just figured out the back story, the state has a pending court decision in a lawsuit vs. the USDA. This announcement is clearly a political stunt in light of that:

https://www.minnpost.com/national/washington/2026/01/snap-mi...

These are insane responses to what is admittedly a bad case of Medicare fraud.

But let’s put this in context. The fraud occurred over a few years and is estimated to have been for about $9Bn dollars by the prosecutors. A number that is considered inflated by most independent analysts, but even if it’s like $5bn that’s pretty large, so let’s stick to the $9Bn and in fact round it up to $10Bn.

The fraud in Medicare and Medicaid alone is estimated at over $100Bn every year (irs probably higher). So even if this fraud occurred over 2 years, we’re talking about something that’s at most 5% of the total Medicare/medicaid fraud in the US over that period.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/09/how-medicare-and-medicaid-fr...

But this isn’t news to the current administration. In fact, to their credit, the justice department busted a $14Bn scheme about 6 months ago, which is already 50% greater than the size of the most inflated estimates of this scheme.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/national-health-care-fraud-ta...

And yet all the people defending cutting food to children (and not just in MN, but in other Democratic run states that have nothing to do with MN) have likely never even heard of that much larger scheme that was busted and led to absolutely no policy changes.

USDA or some specific czar, pasha or chief of staff in the Trump admin? Or perhaps Trump himself? It would be good practice to start assigning responsibilities directly to those acting by executive fiat. Credit where credit is due, if these are correct actions.

I'm not sure where to look for current figures (Wikipedia [0] is a decade out of date) - is Minnesota a net contributor or a net drain on the US federal budget?

It remains an odd strategy where money needs to be skimmed before it can be given farmers. Looking at the per capita numbers from 2015 and the raw tax take in 2024 it looks like Minnesota actually has enough money to sort itself out without relying on other states. It certainly seems like a strategic error to centralise significant influence over the food supply to people like Trump.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_tax_revenue_by_state#F...

> "Enough is enough! The Trump administration has uncovered massive fraud in Minnesota and Minneapolis -- billions siphoned off by fraudsters.

Is that true? Seems like a lot of money to just suddenly notice.

I feel like the headline "suspends federal financial awards" doesn't really convey that this is intended to end SNAP benefits and leave many people without food.

This type of overly broad collective punishment would be considered a war crime under international law. Potentially hundreds of thousands of families will go hungry as a result. All for fraud that is ALLEGED to be $9B without much evidence.

Meanwhile the administration added 4 trillion in new unnecessary spending, including $170 billion in additional funding for DHS and ICE. Those contracts probably go to companies with some tie to the Trump family. That’s the real fraud. All this “Somalian fraud”, could be true, but is insignificant compared to the corruption in the Trump administration. And let’s not forget the Epstein files that they’re using Venezuelans and Somalians and immigrants to distract from.