Author: News Desk

This story about nonprofit fraud was originally published by The Conversation.

Nonprofit fraud is in the news a lot these days.

Federal investigators in Minnesota prosecuted one of the largest alleged COVID-19 pandemic fraud schemes, in which several nonprofits and individuals are accused of stealing about US$250 million from a federally funded child nutrition program. 

The defendants were found guilty in 2025, three years after the investigation began, of diverting funds by faking meal counts and submitting false reimbursement claims, then spending the money they got on luxury homes and cars. Other federal investigations of alleged fraud at nonprofits serving children in Minnesota are underway.

Related: Feeding Our Future fraud leader gets nearly 42-year prison sentence

In April 2026, the Department of Justice under the Trump administration indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights nonprofit, on fraud charges that the center denies. That indictment has raised concerns about increased federal involvement in policing nonprofits – especially those that take actions the government may find objectionable.

Beware of false claims

The Department of Justice says it reached more than $6.8 billion in settlements and judgments in 2025 tied to the False Claims Act, the highest on record.

The False Claims Act, enacted in 1863, allows the government to pursue individuals or organizations who intentionally submit a “false claim” – baseless requests for taxpayer funds through a government grant or as reimbursement for services provided through a contract.

The Internal Revenue Service defines nonprofit fraud as the misuse of an organization’s assets, including embezzlement and theft.

“Public money and tax-exempt status demand public accountability,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said in defense of the Trump administration’s nonprofit crackdown. The goal, he added, was to end “the days of hiding fraud, abuse and extremist activity behind complicated nonprofit arrangements.” 

As an accounting professor who studies nonprofit fraud, I see the SPLC indictment and similar actions as a broader shift toward more aggressive government oversight of nonprofits and the policing of charitable activities.

More training needed

Despite Bessent’s suggestion, there is no clear data about how common nonprofit fraud is or how prevalent it is compared to corporate fraud or acts of fraud by people employed by government agencies.

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimates that companies and nonprofits lose approximately 5% of their annualrevenue to fraud, according to a 2024 report.

The report found a typical loss from a reported nonprofit fraud incident is around $76,000. That’s just over half the average cost of $145,000 for all fraud cases, which also include incidents affecting private companies and government agencies.

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners also has found that nonprofits are less likely to be trained than their peers in other sectors to identify evidence of fraud risks. That can make their staff and leaders less prepared to spot and deal with fraud compared to private businesses and government agencies.

Only 52% of nonprofit staff members report receiving any training on fraud awareness and risk, versus 83% for the employees of publicly traded companies.

Internal vs. external fraud

Once charities, which must have a purpose the government accepts, such as education, religion, science or helping those in need, are established, they ask the IRS to grant them tax-exempt status. 

All U.S. charities, except for churches, must then file mandatory annual 990 forms with the IRS to maintain their tax-exempt status. One of their responsibilities when they complete those forms is to report what the IRS calls any “significant diversion of assets” detected since filing the previous form. 

Diversion of assets means that money has been taken from a nonprofit, decreasing the funds available for it to fulfill its mission.

The FBI has a more expansive definition of nonprofit fraud, which also includes the external kind. And it prosecutes people accused of committing them.

The most common kind of external nonprofit fraud is when people create or run fake charities – groups that solicit donations but in reality are either complete scams that spend little or no time and money on real charitable activities.

For example, a charity called “Providing Hope VA” raised over $9 million in 2023 to provide services to homeless veterans. Instead, the funds became a personal bank account for its president and sole board member, James Arehart. He was sentenced to 21 months in prison and ordered to repay the bilked funds in 2025.

Providing Hope VA shut down following Arehart’s fraud conviction.

The Donald J. Trump Foundation was another charity shuttered in the aftermath of fraud investigations. It ceased operations in 2019 after New York state authorities found that it had made illegal use of charitable contributions for political purposes.

State of nonprofit fraud policing

Nonprofits are typically created when their founders file paperwork with state authorities.

As a result, the responsibility for policing nonprofits generally falls to state attorneys general, rather than federal authorities. But state governments have historically devoted little staff time or money to policing nonprofits, limiting their oversight of the charitable sector.

Only about 355 people worked to monitor charities in 48 out of 56 U.S. states and territories, according to the most recent comprehensive survey of state regulators from the Urban Institute and Columbia Law School, published in 2016. Most state offices employed fewer than 10 full-time workers. 

About 1 in 3 states didn’t even employ one staffer whose full-time job was to ensure that nonprofit funds were properly managed and that people in their states who ran nonprofits were upholding their financial and ethical duties, according to the survey.

Some states are more engaged in watching out for and punishing nonprofit fraud. The New York attorney general’s office, for example, publishes an annual report analyzing hundreds of nonprofit fundraising campaigns. Called Pennies for Charity, it analyzes professional fundraising to calculate how much charities actually receive in funds after they pay fees to the hired professionals. 

Federal government’s role

The federal government plays a role, too.

The IRS oversees nonprofits, to a degree, through its requirement that charities file 990 forms. And in some cases, it audits nonprofits.

The IRS audited around 660 nonprofits that filed 990 forms in 2024 out of the nation’s estimated 1.9 million tax-exempt organizations. The IRS can also impose penalties or revoke a charity’s tax-exempt status for serious violations, such as failure to file a 990 form for three consecutive years, engaging in overtly political lobbying, or failing to use funds to support a public benefit. 

When the authorities encounter a large-scale case of suspected federal fraud, or a case that may have harmed people in several states, the federal government may step in. The Justice Department may investigate and prosecute in those instances. Federal investigations of suspected nonprofit fraud have been historically rare, making the SPLC indictment an unusual exception.

In this case, the FBI and IRS led an investigation into the charity and referred the case to the Justice Department for prosecution. Separately, the Alabama attorney general later opened a civil investigation into the SPLC for potentially violating state charity laws.

Donor precautions can be counterproductive

Several organizations rate nonprofits to help donors give wisely, including Charity Watch, Candid and Charity Navigator.

Many of these groups consider the percentage of their funds that charities spend on overhead costs to be a way to assess a charity’s quality. Overhead includes fundraising, accounting, advertising, media outreach and other expenses that are required to ensure that a charity can get its work done and increase what donors call its “impact.” The salary and benefits of some employees may count as well, depending on their roles.

This pressure to keep overhead spending low can lead U.S. charities to not make fraud prevention and detection a high priority.

Related: HCMC bailout, the bonding bill, and a last push to police the immigration police: What the Minnesota Legislature accomplished in its final hours

Nonprofits may also hesitate to report suspected fraud or theft because they worry that it could hurt their reputation among donors and by extension future funding.

A research team found that donations declined after charities reported cases of nonprofit fraud, and fell even more when the news media covered those incidents. The study, published in 2023, also found that donors were less likely to cut funding when fraud-afflicted nonprofits demonstrated transparency, recovered stolen funds and took steps to prevent future misconduct.

Likewise, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners stresses the importance of disclosure and corrective action after fraud occurs in any context.

The association also recommends that companies and nonprofits establish procedures to analyze their spending and set up whistleblower hotlines. Nonprofits would likely benefit from increased monitoring for fraud, but must weigh the benefit against spending funds to support their charitable mission.

The post Nonprofit fraud: Amid high‑profile prosecutions, an accountant explains what’s really going on appeared first on MinnPost.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A judge on Thursday handed down an extraordinary prison sentence — nearly 42 years — to the former leader of a Minnesota nonprofit who was convicted in a staggering $250 million fraud case that helped ignite an immigration crackdown by the Trump administration.

Aimee Bock ran Feeding Our Future, which had claimed it helped provide millions of meals to children in need during the pandemic. The U.S. Justice Department, however, said she was atop the “single largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the country.”

“I understand I failed. I failed the public, my family, everyone,” Bock said in federal court.

Related: Agents armed with search warrants keep focus on Minnesota in public fraud probe

After the hearing, authorities held a news conference to announce charges against 15 more people accused of fraud in receiving federal payments for a variety of social services administered through Minnesota’s state government.

“We will claw back every dollar you have stolen from the American people,” Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald declared.

President Donald Trump used the fraud cases against Bock and many others to initially justify a massive surge of federal officers to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area last winter, leading to pushback from residents and the deaths of two people.

Bock had long proclaimed her innocence but was convicted last year of conspiracy, fraud and bribery.

Her nonprofit was at the center of a fraud network that included a web of partner organizations, phony distribution sites, kickbacks and fake lists of children supposedly being fed, prosecutors say. Dozens of people, many from the state’s large Somali community, have been convicted in a series of overlapping food fraud cases that have spent years in the courts.

Bock and co-conspirators enriched themselves with international travel, real estate purchases, luxury vehicles and other lavish spending, the government said.

“This case has changed our state forever,” Joe Thompson, formerly the lead prosecutor in the case, said outside the courtroom. “Aimee Bock did everything she could to earn this long sentence.”

Bock’s lawyer, Kenneth Udoibok, argued for no more than three years in prison, saying she had provided key information to investigators. He argued that Bock had been unfairly painted as the mastermind and insisted that two co-defendants were responsible for running the scams.

Meanwhile, in a fresh batch of criminal cases filed in Minnesota, the government said the alleged fraud involved $90 million across seven state-managed Medicaid programs.

The targets include Fahima Mahamud, who was CEO of Future Leaders Early Learning Center, a childcare center in Minneapolis. Over three years, Mahamud’s organization was reimbursed approximately $4.6 million for services on behalf of people who didn’t make a required copayment, prosecutors allege.

A message seeking comment from her lawyer was not immediately returned Thursday. Mahamud was charged separately in February with fraud related to meals. She has pleaded not guilty.

Two other people were charged with conspiring to get $975,000 in Medicaid subsidies for housing services that were not provided. They’re expected to plead guilty in June, according to a court filing.

Two additional people were accused of receiving $21.1 million by billing Medicaid for autism therapy that was either unnecessary or not provided. Investigators said the two paid families as much as $1,500 per child per month to add their names to the program and get reimbursement.

“We will not allow criminals to treat children as billing opportunities as American taxpayers foot the bill,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Trump, who has long derided Somalis, last year blasted Minnesota as “a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity.” He also criticized the leadership of Gov. Tim Walz, the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee in the 2024 election.

Related: HCMC bailout, the bonding bill, and a last push to police the immigration police: What the Minnesota Legislature accomplished in its final hours

“Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing. Send them back to where they came from,” Trump wrote on social media.

Bock is white and the U.S. Attorney’s Office says the overwhelming majority of defendants in the cases are of Somali descent. Most are U.S. citizens.

The immigration surge led to repeated protests and confrontations between residents and federal officers and resulted in the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

___

AP reporters Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, and Ed White in Detroit contributed.

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This story about digital nudification tools was originally reported by Jasmine Mithani of The 19th. Meet Jasmine and read more of her reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Advances in generative AI have made it easier than ever to create sexually explicit images of nearly anyone without their permission — and so-called “nudification apps” can digitally undress anyone with the click of a button. There is an entire ecosystem that enables these deeply personal violations, from face-swap apps that promise to “undress her” to payment processors that collect profits from each transaction. 

Although deepfake abuse has repeatedly made headlines, state attorneys general, who are kicking off their semiannual meeting on Tuesday, do not list the topic as a discussion item.

A bipartisan coalition of 54 organizations, led by gender justice advocacy group UltraViolet, is drawing attention to this omission. They released a letter calling on state attorneys to take direct legal action against app stores that continue to host nudification apps on their respective marketplaces.

Related: Minnesota passes the nation’s first ban on ‘nudification’ apps

“In a few years, we hope this digital reality we live in, in which any person can be sexually deepfaked online without recourse, will seem unfathomable; we’re putting out this letter to make sure that vision becomes reality,” said Jenna Sherman, campaign director at UltraViolet.

Research has shown that image-based sexual abuse can impact survivors in the same way physical assaults do. 

“No matter how hard I tried to detach my reality from the digital absurdity before me, the visuals felt like a violation; an assault on my dignity, integrity, and very existence,” a survivor told UltraViolet in a survey they fielded. “The woman in the video was me, yet it wasn’t—I didn’t recognize that version of myself, stripped bare and exposed in a cruel twist of technology.”

Signatories include both state and national groups such as Equality Now, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Missing Murdered Indigenous Women Coalition of North Carolina, National Organization for Women and Reproaction.

The signatories are asking the National Association of Attorneys General, which is convening for the 2026 Spring Consumer Protection Conference, to hold app stores, particularly those run by Apple and Google, accountable for their roles in disseminating nudification tools. Advocates say state-level enforcement matters because there tends to be more capacity to pursue cases than at the federal level, and the process can move more quickly.

Google explicitly bans nudification apps, and Apple bans offensive apps and those with egregious sexual content. Both companies say they remove apps that violate their policies when they become aware of them.

But enforcement is not uniform. UltraViolet cites a January report from the Tech Transparency Project, a nonprofit focused on tech accountability, that found 55 nudification apps available on the Apple Store and 47 available on the Google Play Store. Apple told CNBC that it took down 28 of the identified apps, but didn’t explain why others remained up. 

A follow-up report in April from the same organization found many nudification apps still available for download. It also found that search bars autocompleted queries related to nonconsensual intimate imagery and “in many cases, they “recommended entirely new search queries that led to more nudify apps.”

The Tech Transparency Project conferred with an analytics firm to estimate that the nudification apps found through their searches “have been downloaded 483 million times and made more than $122 million in lifetime revenue.”

There has been a movement to pressure tech companies to take action on sexual exploitation on their platforms through framing abuse as a product safety issue. Nudification apps are the most accessible way to generate nonconsensual deepfakes, and are a particular problem in schools as students abuse each other. A high school teacher told UltraViolet they have seen deepfake abuse among teens: “It is appalling and deeply damaging to the victims, and can foment suicide.” 

That’s part of why organizers are timing the letter to the first day of the Spring Consumer Protection Conference, Sherman said. “In many ways, this conference is the ‘room where it happens:’ state attorneys general gather to discuss the most pressing issues facing consumers and how their offices can address them.” 

States play an important role in stopping deepfake abuse. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, signed the nation’s first ban on nudification technology on May 7. The federal Take It Down Act criminalized the distribution of nonconsensual intimate imagery last year, but it was years behind state laws addressing the problem.

State attorneys general are in charge of enforcing state-level tech regulations. Sherman said they are the “frontline defenders of consumer protection and data privacy.” 

“They have long played this firefighter role but have become especially critical over the last years with the worsening of federal consumer protection rollbacks, the exponential increase of Big Tech’s power, and AI development far outpacing the law,” she explained over email.

Advocates, lawmakers and prosecutors have coalesced around platform accountability over the past year, with a focus on curbing the availability of tools used to make deepfakes. 

Much of this is backlash to Grok, the chatbot integrated in the social media platform X. In late December 2025, X announced its users could use Grok to create AI-generated images. Elon Musk, the current owner of X and founder of xAI, the creator of Grok, boasted about how his AI tools would be free from “wokeness.” 

Insufficient guardrails on Grok quickly led to the proliferation of nonconsensual intimate images on X and across the web. Over 1.8 million sexualized images of women were generated and shared on X in a matter of days, per reporting from The New York Times and the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. Several lawsuits allege Grok and X did not adhere to industry standards on preventing explicit content.

The deluge prompted California Attorney General Rob Bonta to open an investigation into whether xAI broke any state laws, which includes a ban on nonconsensual intimate imagery passed last year. 

“As the top law enforcement official of California tasked with protecting our residents, I am deeply concerned with this development in AI and will use all the tools at my disposal to keep California’s residents safe,” Bonta said in the January 14 press release announcing the investigation. 

Last year, a group of 47 bipartisan state and territory attorneys general urged online payment platforms to “be more aggressive in identifying and removing payment authorization” for deepfake content.

Related: Minnesota House passes social media protections for minors, drawing opposition from tech industry group

State attorneys general have also pushed platforms to make changes: New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued Meta, alleging its social media products hurt the state’s youth and exposed them to sexual exploitation. A jury concurred, ruling Meta violated the state’s consumer protection laws and ordering the company to pay $375 million in fines. Now, the parties are in negotiations over additional penalties that could have wide-ranging impact beyond the Land of Enchantment. Torrez’s team asked the tech giant to fork over $3.7 billion for teen mental health care and awareness campaigns; but Meta is contesting it.

Sherman wants to see that energy brought to combat deepfake sexual abuse.

“We’re just incensed that we have just moved past the Grok-enabled deepfake epidemic of millions without any real accountability, changes, or reckoning,” she said. “We will keep using every possible opportunity to share that rage to evoke real change for every survivor and all of society.”

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WASHINGTON – While President Donald Trump made a high-level, high-stakes trip to China this week accompanied by 17 corporate CEOs — including Cargill chief executive Brian Sikes — Congress refocused its attention on the Iran war.

An eighth vote was held Wednesday in the U.S. Senate on a war powers resolution that would rein in Trump’s ability to continue to prosecute the war. That effort failed on a narrow 49-50 vote. But it gained a new supporter as Sen Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, voted with all Democrats except Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman to try to impose Congress’ authority over the war.

Murkowski joined fellow Republicans Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine in voting for the resolution, saying that the 60-day window during which the president can unilaterally take action without congressional approval had ended. Trump argues it has not because of the shaky cease fire he has established with Iran.

The U.S. House also tried to approve a war powers resolution late Thursday. The vote was tied, 212-212 and therefore the resolution was rejected. But as in the U.S. Senate, the effort in that chamber has had growing GOP support.

Trump says he does not need congressional approval to conduct the war.

Meanwhile, at a hearing this week, Rep. Betty McCollum, D-4^th District, questioned Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth this week over the cost of the Iran war and the budgetary needs of the nation’s military. 

The top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee with authority over the Pentagon’s budget, McCollum said the panel is still awaiting information about the Pentagon’s $1.5 trillion request to fund the Defense Department in fiscal year 2027 – a historically high budget for the nation’s military. She also said the panel needed details of a supplemental budget request, estimated to be more than $29 billion, to help pay for the Iran war.

“We are still waiting for that information,” McCollum said.

She told Hegseth that it took months for Congress to receive information about U.S. weapon shipments to Ukraine and that the Defense Department “must do better.”

She said Trump’s 2027 budget request increased defense spending by 44%, which the president proposed paying for with cuts to domestic programs, especially those concerning education.

She asked Hegseth for an accounting of munition levels, damage to war ships, military equipment that has been lost and additional fuel delivery cost as Iran’s lockdown of the Strait Hormuz has prevented oil tanker deliveries and resulted in a spike in the prices of gasoline and diesel.

She also said the panel needed details of the $1.5 trillion 2027 defense budget no later than June 11.

McCollum also asked Hegseth, if Congress is able to approve a war powers resolution that impacted U.S. military actions in Iran, “do you have a Plan B?”

“We have a plan for all of that. We have a plan to escalate if necessary. We have a plan to retrograde, if necessary. We have a plan to shift assets,” Hegseth said. “Certainly, in this setting we should not reveal what the next step would be considering the gravity of the situation.”

McCollum told Hegseth that lawmakers could be briefed in a secure location and said she also wanted that information by June 11.

“I will not support a blank check for the Pentagon,” McCollum told MinnPost. “The Trump administration’s budget request must be closely scrutinized. They have failed thus far to provide information to Congress to justify such an extraordinary budget request, and they have failed to provide a plan to pay for it in the long-term.” 

Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee also asked Hegseth to send Congress a final request for supplemental funding to cover the costs incurred by the war in Iran.

“It would be helpful to get the supplemental sooner than later so we could work on it,” he said.

That war supplement would not account for the damage Iran has caused to U.S. bases in the Middle East, Jules Hurst, the Pentagon’s acting comptroller, told lawmakers. 

An analysis published last week by the Washington Post showed that Iranian forces had damaged or destroyed at least 228 U.S. structures or pieces of equipment since the war began Feb. 28, including aircraft and hangars, barracks, fuel depots, radar and air defense equipment.

There was also bipartisan frustration about the conduct of the war at the hearing.

Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., said it had “confirmed what defense planners had long warned about: Iran doesn’t need a peer military to cause serious problems.”

In other news:

▪️ Reporters Matthew Blake, Brian Arola, and Maddie Robinson are among the MinnPost reporters following the flurry of activity as the state Legislature wraps up its session, including an agreement for a bailout of the financially distressed Hennepin County Medical Center and a $1.2 billion bonding bill, as well as unexpected tax relief. 

▪️ Metro reporter Trevor Mitchell also covered the state Legislature this week as it approved $40 million for emergency rental assistance and $100 million in bonds to support the maintenance and development of affordable homes. There’s also a little money in the bill to combat homelessness.  

▪️ Congress gave Midwestern farmers a big victory this week as the U.S. House voted to allow nationwide sales of E15 all year long. But opposition from small gasoline and diesel distillers may make it difficult for the E15 legislation to win approval in the U.S. Senate.

▪️ Michele Tafoya’s bid for retiring Sen. Tina Smith’s seat is strongly supported by the national Republican Party. But not all of the GOP activists in the state who will decide whether to endorse Tafoya or one several other Republicans running for the seat, are sold on the former broadcaster.  

The post D.C. Memo: McCollum has tough questions for Hegseth appeared first on MinnPost.

WASHINGTON – Farm-country congressional supporters of E15, a gasoline fuel blend that contains 15% ethanol, scored an important victory Wednesday as the U.S. House approved a bill that would allow year-round sales of the fuel.

Co-sponsored by Reps. Michelle Fischbach, R-7^th District; Brad Finstad, R-1^st District; and Angie Craig, D-2^nd District, the E15 bill was approved on a bipartisan 218-204 vote.

“This has been a long time coming,” said Craig, a long-time champion of year-round sales of E15.

Minnesota is the fourth-largest producer of ethanol in the nation with 18 plants, making E15 a major contributor to the Greater Minnesota economy and providing state and local governments with more than $30 million in tax revenues each year.  

The divide in Congress over E15 does not break along party lines but has pitted farm state lawmakers against those whose districts or states are home to small refineries.

The lobbying for and against E15 was fierce and the split among GOP lawmakers over the issue prevented the blended fuel from being considered in the farm bill last month.  

Opponents of year-round E15 sales said the bill approved by the House would make changes to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) that would disqualify a lot of small refineries who can now opt out of the program.

Unlike major refineries, small independent refiners often do not own their own ethanol blending facilities and must buy expensive biofuel credits to meet RFS obligations. A higher E-15 mandate would increase these costs.

The RFS is a government mandate established in 2005 that requires increasing volumes of biofuels to be blended into gasoline and diesel every year.

The E15 bill would phase out the exemption from annual ethanol blending requirements and phase out that process by 2028, replacing it with new reduced compliance requirements for small refineries.

“This bill puts them out of business,” Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., said of her state’s small refineries.

During House debate on the bill, its opponents also said E15 allows vehicles fewer miles per gallon and produces smog-producing emissions during the warm summer months. That’s why many states do not allow the sales of E15 in the summer, although Minnesota and 21 other states do not have this restriction.

Supporters of the legislation argued that allowing national year-round E15 was a boon for struggling American farmers and for consumers who are paying ever-higher prices at the pump as a result of the Iran war.

“For too long, the farmers of western Minnesota, along with families and farmers across the country, have been subjected to frustrating and outdated regulations,” Fischbach said during debate on the legislation. 

Craig called the bill “a win for consumers and a win for farmers.”

The National Corn Growers Association says that every year roughly 30% of field corn goes into fuel ethanol and that ethanol is “uniquely positioned to play a large role in the future of transportation fuels.”

The E-15 bill now goes to the U.S. Senate, where approval is not guaranteed.

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., a member of the House Agriculture Committee, on Wednesday questioned the move to remove the E15 measure from the farm bill, where he said it had a better chance of getting through the U.S. Senate.

“It will be dead on arrival in the Senate,” predicted McGovern.

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WASHINGTON – A dream candidate for the national Republican Party, former sportscaster Michele Tafoya is finding support from Washington to be a double-edged sword as she seeks to win retiring Sen. Tina Smith’s seat.

Tafoya, 61, is a skilled and media-savvy communicator whose name recognition and political smarts prompted the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) to call her “the only candidate with the common-sense leadership Minnesotans are desperately craving.”

Related: From the NFL sidelines to a US Senate race: Michele Tafoya’s new play

The endorsement by NRSC Chairman Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., made just after Tafoya announced her candidacy in January, has rankled some Minnesota Republicans.

Why? Because there were other Republicans vying for Smith’s seat, including Navy SEAL Adam Schwarze, former NBA player Royce White and Navy veteran Tom Weiler.

Another GOP candidate, former Minnesota Republican Party candidate David Hann, was also in the race at that time but dropped out last month. And Mark York, a seven-generation farmer from Lake Wilson is also running.

Yet the national Republican Party, which is battling to prevent a Democratic takeover of the U.S. Senate in November’s midterm election, placed its bet on Tafoya.

That has disgruntled some of the 2,500 Republican delegates who will vote to endorse the GOP Senate candidates in Duluth at the end of the month.

“You have people who would see (support from the national party) as a plus, and there also are people who would see it as meddling from Washington,” said Frank Long, a delegate and longtime party activist from Watertown Township who supports Schwarze.

Long said the state’s Republicans “are not a monolithic organization.” He said some delegates are concerned about Tafoya’s support for abortion – which she says now is limited to procedures in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. 

Tafoya has also expressed support for “red flag” laws — which allow law enforcement to temporarily remove weapons to individuals a court has assessed might be a danger to themselves or others — that are opposed by many gun-rights delegates.

Remarks Tafoya made about President Donald Trump in 2022 are another turnoff for some GOP delegates. She wrote an open letter to Trump in a now deleted post on Substack that said she hoped he would not run again, and even as she praised his accomplishments called his politics “messy.”

While Tafoya may not be the first choice of some delegates, “she has the right to run,” Long said.

Tafoya has since aligned herself closely with Trump’s platform and embroiled herself in the culture wars with her fierce opposition to transgender women in female sports.

But if she makes it to the general election, running against either Rep. Angie Craig, D-2^nd District, or Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who are locked in battle for the Democratic nomination, Tafoya will likely revert to the more moderate candidate she once considered herself to be.

“I think Minnesota is starving for a moderate Republican who doesn’t tell them that they’re going to ban abortion who is the antithesis of the Tim Walz regime,” Tafoya told WDAY Radio when Smith announced her retirement early last year.

After the February 2022 Super Bowl, Tafoya quit her broadcasting career, launched a political podcast and spent several years weighing whether to run for political office. She met with the NRSC in December and declared her candidacy about a month later.

Weiler, who ran unsuccessfully for the 3^rd Congressional District seat in 2022, said he contacted the NRSC last fall seeking support. But he said the people he spoke with seemed uninterested in him because he was “not rich or famous.”

He said he was surprised and disappointed that the NRSC backed Tafoya.

“It was clearly a decision made in Washington, D.C., without any input from Minnesotans,” Weiler said.

Tafoya raised more than $2 million in the two months after she announced her candidacy, with the help of the national GOP. That’s more money than all of her GOP rivals combined.

According to filings with the Federal Election Commission, the NRSC gave Tafoya’s campaign $62,000 and Senate Republican Leader John Thune’s leadership political action committee has held joint fundraisers with Tafoya’s campaign.

The national party’s endorsement also brings help in recruiting campaign staff and campaign consulting, a must-have for a candidate who has never before run for political office. 

‘A grass-roots state’ 

Tim Lindberg, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota-Morris, said the national Republican Party had to step into the race for Smith’s seat “to some extent because the state party has been in disarray.”

Shut out of holding a statewide seat for 20 years, the state party is low on cash and divided between the establishment Republicans, like Tafoya, and more conservative MAGA activists.  

So, while Tafoya’s campaign has had a boost from the NRSC and other GOP national organizations it is not guaranteed that she will win the votes of 60% of the GOP delegates needed to win an endorsement.

Tafoya’s campaign did not respond to requests for an interview and information. But the former sportscaster has said she will continue to run for the U.S. Senate and participate in the Aug. 11 primary even without an endorsement.

Historically, not all of Minnesota’s GOP candidates have abided by the endorsement. But the state’s political history also shows that Republican voters don’t reward non-endorsed candidates very often, especially in statewide elections, when the primary comes around.

Schwarze, another rival for the GOP endorsement, said Republicans “don’t reward people who take shortcuts.”

He called Tafoya a “D.C. out-of -the -box candidate” and is confident he will earn the endorsement, even if it takes several rounds of balloting.

“Minnesotans are not for sale,” Schwarze said. “This is a grass-roots state.”

The former Navy SEAL speaks in military terms about the U.S. Senate race.

“I’ve been preparing for this campaign run as if it were a ‘no-fail’ mission,” he said. After Tafoya, Schwarze, who reported raising more than $1 million as of March 31, has amassed the largest campaign chest among the GOP Senate candidates. Yet Democrats Craig and Flanagan have much larger war chests than Tafoya and Schwarze.

Both Schwarze and White — who won the GOP endorsement to run against Sen. Amy Klobuchar in 2024 — have vowed to abide by the endorsement and support the delegates’ candidate of choice.  

“The mission is going to get a Republican U.S. Senator,” Schwarze said.

But Weiler has a different attitude. He said he would continue his campaign unless he’s convinced the delegates have chosen a candidate “who can win and be an effective senator for Minnesota.”

Lindberg said Tafoya is well liked for her high profile in the world of sports.

Related: Eric Pratt shakes off GOP rivals but faces tough Democratic challengers in race for Angie Craig’s seat

She spent three decades covering the NBA, NFL, Olympics and college football. A Californian by birth, many Minnesotans got to know Tafoya when she worked as a sportscaster and reporter for sports radio KFAN in Minneapolis — covering the Vikings — the Midwest Sports Channel and WCCO-TV.

Lindberg said the NRSC is “banking” on her popularity and name recognition. But he said that strategy could “backfire” in an endorsement process that is dominated by party activists in both the Democratic and Republican state conventions.

“It’s not clear that the people at these conventions really care about electability,” he said.

The post Michele Tafoya has the support of the national GOP, but winning over state activists is a challenge appeared first on MinnPost.

WASHINGTON — About eight months ago, state Sen. Eric Pratt predicted that Republicans would win a big prize, the flipping of Democratic Rep. Angie Craig’s congressional district to the GOP.

Pratt, 62, told conservative podcaster Jack Tomczak that the families living in the 2^nd Congressional District “are conservative families” who “don’t identify with one party or the other.”

“But they’ve been voting for Democrats,” Pratt said, because they “are voting because of a specific issue, or they are voting because they like somebody.”

He also said he believed he is the right GOP candidate to put the seat back in the Republican column.

Related: Klein, Little and Berg hunt for DFL delegates as they wrestle for 2nd District seat

Pratt’s confidence was not unreasonable. The 2^nd District was represented by Republicans in Congress for nearly 20 years before Craig, who is now running for U.S. Senate, was first elected to the U.S. House in 2018.

But, when Pratt made his comments on Tomczak’s podcast, President Donald Trump’s approval ratings had not dropped sharply to where they are now. Sixty-two percent of the respondents to a recent Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll said they disapproved of how Trump has handled his job as president.

And when Pratt made his assessment of the race, Operation Metro Surge had not yet occurred, causing severe economic and social disruption in the 2^nd District’s urban area and swath of suburbs.

Yet, after winning the endorsement of the district’s Republican Party last weekend, Pratt continued to be bullish about his chances of flipping the 2^nd District seat.

He believes voters in the district who have voted for Democrats have buyer’s remorse. 

He said many are unhappy with the “trifecta” the Democrats had in 2023, when DFL majorities in the state Legislature and Gov. Tim Walz enacted wide-ranging Democratic policies, including legalizing recreational marijuana, strengthening abortion rights and expanding background checks for firearms.

Pratt said voters in the district have told him, “I didn’t vote for this.”

As a senior member of the state Senate Finance Committee and a former vice president of U.S. Bank, Pratt said he has the skills to combat fraud in state-run programs that receive federal funding. And he would do that from the U.S. Capitol.

“Everyone is pointing fingers at Tim Walz, and I think that might be justified,” Pratt said. “But the question is, who is watching fraud from Washington?”

Pratt’s focus on tax and spending issues is reflective of traditional Republican policy. He seems to have stayed out of the culture wars and is proud that legislation he pushed through the Legislature had bipartisan support.

The chance to run for an open seat was appealing to Pratt.

But it also drew three seasoned Democrats into the race, all current or former colleagues of Pratt in the Legislature.

State Sen. Matt Klein, former state Sen. Matt Little and state Rep. Kaela Berg are all seeking the endorsement of district Democrats to run for Craig’s seat at a convention at Burnsville High School on Saturday.

And Pratt faces other challenges, including a historical trend that midterm elections tend to favor the party out of power in the White House.

“It could be a competitive district in a good Republican year,” said Carleton College political science professor Ryan Dawkins. “But it’s really a bad Republican year.”

‘A pretty moderate, reasonable guy’

Pratt’s Republican rival, Tyler Kistner, withdrew from the race last month.

But that did not unite 2^nd District Republicans.

A new GOP opponent entered the race just eight days before the 2^nd District held its GOP convention May 2.   

So, Pratt won 65% of the votes of delegates at the convention and newcomer Jeremy Westby won 35%.

Kistner is a Marine reservist who had tried to oust Craig twice and said he had to abort his third try because he was called to active duty. He did not endorse Pratt after he quit the race.

But Westby, who had been challenging Rep. Kelly Morrison in the 3^rd Congressional District and switched over to run in the 2nd District after Kistner’s withdrawal, said he would drop out of the race and has endorsed Pratt.

The district’s GOP Party is grateful.

“We’re excited that both candidates have signed a pledge to abide by the endorsement so that we can avoid a costly primary in CD2,” said district Republican Party chair Joseph Ditto in an emailed statement.

The delegates who snubbed Pratt tend to be grassroot activists who reject fellow Republicans they consider establishmentarian and not MAGA enough.

“They’re frustrated and I get that,” Pratt said.

When Donald Trump first ran for president in 2016, Pratt said, “I wish someone else was the head of my party.”

Pratt now says that opinion, which was held at the time by GOP luminaries that include Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, has changed.

“There were a lot of people who held that belief (back then,) he said. “I think Donald Trump’s policies have helped a lot of people.”

When asked for specifics, Pratt mentioned the president’s tax cuts – which polls show are popular – and what he called Trump’s “pro-growth” economic agenda.

“He strikes me as a pretty moderate, reasonable guy,” Dawkins said of Pratt. “Which is probably the problem. There is not a lot of love for Pratt among base (GOP) voters.”

That moderation, however, could benefit Pratt in the general election, when unaffiliated voters and centrists from both parties weigh in.

A personal connection

Pratt was first elected to cover his Senate district, which includes most of Scott County, in 2012.

He was re-elected in 2016, 2020 and 2022 and is well-known in that part of the 2^nd District, which includes the south Twin Cities metro area and runs south nearly to Mankato, encompassing all of Scott, Dakota and Le Sueur Counties as well as parts of Rice and Washington Counties.

Pratt said he is now knocking on doors in other parts of the district and holding “Chat with Pratt” meetings at local coffee shops to connect with possible supporters.

He lives with his wife in Prior Lake, his hometown since the mid-1970s, and has two grown children.

Pratt says his interest in public policy began in the ninth grade when he wrote a paper on inflation after hearing his parents talk about the issue at the dinner table.

While he identifies as a “finance guy” and “numbers nerd,” Pratt said the legislation that he is most proud of sponsoring is one that revamped the licensing system for the state’s teachers.

“It had a personal connection,” he said.

His mother had taught out-of-state for 13 years before the family moved to Minnesota. But she was not qualified to teach in Minnesota because she was missing a couple of credentials and his mother nearly gave up her career, Pratt said.

Related: The race for Angie Craig’s US House seat is heating up

His mother attended classes to secure the credentials she needed. But her struggle motivated Pratt to push a law through the Legislature that would make the teacher accreditation system more flexible.

He realizes he faces a tough job in winning the support he needs to win the district, which the Cook Political Report rates as “likely Democratic.” 

“Anything worth doing is hard work,” Pratt said.

Greater Minnesota reporter Brian Arola contributed to this story.

The post Eric Pratt shakes off GOP rivals but faces tough Democratic challengers in race for Angie Craig’s seat appeared first on MinnPost.

WASHINGTON — Operation Metro Surge ended about two months ago, but Minnesota’s response to the massive immigration crackdown has had a lasting effect on U.S. politics — turning an issue that President Donald Trump considered a political asset into a liability — and on the views Americans have of the nation’s newcomers.

And it may have reshaped the way the state’s immigrants view their community.

Humberto Flores, who owns a residential and commercial cleaning company in the Twin Cities and came to the United States from Mexico in 2005, said that after the outpouring of help from Minnesotans, many of his immigrant neighbors looked at their adopted communities with clear eyes for the first time.

Related: Gauging the cost of Operation Metro Surge is a work in progress, but some numbers are emerging

He said he laughed when one of them told him he had never really noticed a beautiful park in the neighborhood before. Flores said his neighbor hadn’t noticed the park because he had lacked a full sense of belonging.

“We came to fully appreciate Minnesota and the neighborhoods we live in,” Flores said. “It was beautiful. Perspectives really changed.”

Like many immigrants, Flores’ life was upended by Operation Metro Surge. His employees were afraid to come to work. His children feared going to school. And his office became a staging area for food donated by churches and others for immigrants in need.

“Everyone looked out for everyone,” he said.

Flores said he was furious that he could not provide something basic — the protection of his children. But he said he was also touched when his U.S.-born customers and neighbors checked in on his family’s wellbeing.

“They called to ask, ‘Do you need anything?’” he said.

Flores also said that outpouring of support has engendered gratitude in the immigrant community for Minnesotans who stubbornly demonstrated in glacial temperatures against the 3,000 federal agents who poured into the state, using their cell phones to document their activities.

“It was marvelous,” he said, as was the help offered by thousands of others who took immigrant children to school and watched over them at bus stops, brought food to immigrant households and offered rental assistance and other types of aid.

“Everything changed in our community in a split second,” said Liliana Letran-Garcia, president of Communidades Latinas Unidas en Servicio (CLUES), a nonprofit that provides immigrant aid.

Letran-Garcia, who emigrated from Guatemala to Minnesota 21 years ago, teared up when discussing the state’s response to the surge. “We showed the entire country and the world that Minnesota is a place of care, dignity and collective responsibility,” Letran-Garcia said.

The Minnesota effect

Even before the surge, Minnesota’s immigrants were under stress. Most immigrants have to learn a new language as well as reestablish themselves in a new land and learn about new cultural norms. Many immigrants start at the lower end of the socio-economic scale and work jobs where they are often exploited.

But now they were also vilified as criminals by Trump and his administration, which was stripping legal protections from asylum seekers and others who lived and worked in the country under the Temporary Protected Status program, and which was threatening mass deportations.

Why did Minnesotans reject the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrants, so much so that it resulted in financial pain for many, the arrests of about 4,000 people and the deaths of two protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti?

Largely because of the videos of the deaths of Good and Pretti by Minnesotans who  had taken to the streets, the state’s response to the surge was noted around the globe. It also had an impact on American attitudes on immigration as polls showed plummeting support for mass deportations and Trump’s immigration policy, a cornerstone of the president’s domestic policy.

The change in American attitude appears long-lasting. An Emerson College survey released last week determined that 53% of the respondents approved of Trump’s immigration policies and 43% disapproved.

Related: Bill seeks $10 million for Minnesota cities to help with costs incurred during Operation Metro Surge

Those poll numbers shifted immigration policy. Tough-talking Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol official in charge of Operation Metro Surge who said protesters like Good and Pretti “had a choice” to put themselves in danger, was replaced by Tom Homan, who promptly wound down the operation.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was tossed, replaced with  Markwayne Mullin, who has said his goal is to keep DHS from being the lead story in the news every day.

During his confirmation hearing, Mullin expressed regret for calling Pretti “a deranged individual” and said he supports requiring immigration officers to obtain judicial warrants signed by a judge before entering a private home. DHS guidance had been that federal agents would enter a home with an administrative warrant approved by ICE officials.

Meanwhile, fearful of midterm election results, Republican congressional leaders advised GOP lawmakers to avoid the issue, and, in particular, not mention mass deportations.

Congressional Democrats seized on the impact the videos Minnesotans took of federal immigration officers had on public opinion, insisting on reforms of ICE and the Border Patrol and fighting to cut back money for immigration enforcement.

Christopher Uggen, a McKnight Professor in Sociology, Law and Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, said there were probably many reasons that converged to create that response.

One was the 2020 murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, which Uggen said created “muscle memory” that “left folks quite vigilant regarding law enforcement behavior.”

“But this sort of movement or response was not limited to the activists in the state,” Uggen added.

So other factors were also at play to create a unique “Minnesota effect” that forced the Trump administration to retreat somewhat when it comes to immigration enforcement and sparked congressional Democrats to successfully block new funding for ICE and the Border Patrol. 

The disruption to normal life by the mass deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents and other federal law enforcement officers angered Minnesotans of all political persuasions, Uggen said. And Minnesota’s unique civic culture also played a role.

“Minnesota is unusually high in some measures of civic life, like voting and volunteering,” he said.

Related: Latino-led nonprofit CLUES is ready to be part of the solution to post-Metro Surge housing crisis

Letran-Garcia, of CLUES, said the immigrant enforcement surge also created a surge in her organization, which has provided a behavioral health clinic, employment assistance and other resources to the immigrant community.

“Our needs grew over 150 percent,” she said.” We realized really quickly that  (Operation Metro Surge) was nothing that we had ever seen before.”

Letran-Garcia said a priority for CLUES was to provide what she said was accurate information about what was going on, “making sure it was based on facts” and informing immigrants about what documents they needed to have and “what to say and what not to say” to federal agents.

She said Minnesotans’ generosity during the surge, which included an influx of donations to CLUES that allowed the organization to provide $1.5 million in rental assistance to immigrants who had quit their jobs out of fear, “moved us to the core.”

Scaling up quickly

Lucy Olson, a psychologist who works as a consultant and lives in Minneapolis, is not an immigrant advocate or activist but became one of thousands of Minnesotans who helped create the Minnesota effect.

Olson said she met a woman named Nohemy from El Salvador about three years ago who had been trafficked and was homeless with two small children.

She offered Nohemy and her children lodging in her home for the weekend. But Nohemy and her children ended up living with Olson for about a year since establishing the Salvadoran family in a new life took a lot longer than Olson had estimated.

“I became very aware of the challenges that newcomers faced,” Olson said.

When the surge occurred last winter, Nohemy sought to help her neighbors. Learning of the need, Olson and a growing group of volunteers did, too, raising about $700,000, partly through a GoFundMe page, to help pay the rent and provide groceries for about 500 families who were sheltering in their homes.

After the first month, the volunteers realized they needed help and reached out to CLUES. 

“We were able to scale up very quickly,” Olson said. Eventually, Olson’s group of volunteers reached about 2,000 members.

Olson said the federal immigration enforcement surge forged new community ties. “Thousands and thousands of Minneapolis residents have gotten to know their Hispanic neighbors in a new way,” she said.

Uggen, as a sociologist, said it is perhaps too early to tell “how replicable or scalable” the pushback in Minnesota to aggressive immigration enforcement is and whether other cities or states would mobilize to protect immigrants in a similar way.

“Those questions are not yet answered,” he said.

The post MinnPost analysis: How Minnesota’s remarkable response to Operation Metro Surge changed politics — and the state appeared first on MinnPost.

This story about the upcoming midterm elections was originally published by ProPublica.

When President Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 election, the institutional guardrails of American democracy held — but just barely.

If faced with the same tests today, those guardrails and the people who held the line would largely be missing, a ProPublica examination found.

At least 75 career officials who once held roles at federal agencies related to election integrity and safety are gone. Two dozen appointees — including many who either actively worked to reverse the 2020 vote or are associates of such people — have been hired to replace them. And once-fringe actors now have access to vast powers.

As the midterms approach, current and former government officials and election security experts expressed concerns that Trump appointees who’ve espoused debunked conspiracy theories about balloting are now in positions to control the narrative around the vote’s soundness.

Related: Top elections official Steve Simon says SAVE America Act would create ‘chaos,’ disenfranchise voters in Minnesota

It’s hard to debunk false claims “coming with the seal of the federal government,” said Derek Tisler, counsel and manager with the Brennan Center for Justice’s elections and government program. “I certainly worry what damage that could do to voters’ confidence.”

Here are some of the key things you should know about the Trump administration’s efforts to, as the president said, “take over” the midterms. Read the full investigation here.

1. In 2020, institutional guardrails helped to prevent Trump from overturning the election.

Following his defeat in the 2020 election, Trump pushed for federal officials to uncover proof that he had, in fact, beaten Joe Biden at the polls. Election cybersecurity experts with the Department of Homeland Security relayed to Attorney General William Barr that the election fraud claims that they looked into were false. Barr then told the president what he didn’t want to hear: The election had not been hacked.

Barr was one of many federal officials — most of them Trump appointees — who refused to bend to the president’s demands, which only intensified in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, 2021. Despite the violent uprising at the Capitol on that day, the election results held firm.

2. Less than 18 months into his second term, Trump has dismantled many of those same guardrails.

Since the start of his second term, Trump and his appointees have made significant changes at federal agencies tasked with helping to safeguard elections. In all, at least 75 career officials who’d played important roles in elections work at DHS, the Department of Justice and other agencies have left, been fired or been reassigned, ProPublica found.

In their place are roughly two dozen people Trump has installed in positions that could affect elections. Ten of them actively worked to reverse the 2020 vote, and the rest are associates of those people. In some cases, ProPublica found, officials have been hired from activist groups that are pillars of the election-denial movement.

3. Among the first agencies Trump gutted after returning to office was one that had repeatedly disproved his stolen-election claims.

Officials at DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had provided research to the first Trump White House that disproved many theories claiming that the 2020 election had been hacked. CISA also played a crucial part in publicly countering these claims by producing a “Rumor Control” website to rebut them.

Then, only weeks into Trump’s second term, DHS leadership put employees focused on countering disinformation and helping safeguard elections on leave. They also froze CISA’s other election security work, which included assessing local election offices for physical and cybersecurity risks. Eventually, all CISA employees specializing in elections were fired or transferred.

A DHS spokesperson told ProPublica that the changes at CISA were in response to “a ballooning budget concealing a dangerous departure from its statutory mission,” which included “electioneering instead of defending America’s critical infrastructure.”

4. Trump and his appointees have gutted election-related teams at federal law enforcement agencies.

FBI Director Kash Patel dismantled the agency’s public corruption team, which had previously been deployed to help monitor possible criminal activity on Election Day. The Foreign Influence Task Force, which aimed to combat foreign influence in U.S. politics, was also disbanded.

(An FBI spokesperson said the bureau “remains committed to detecting and countering foreign influence efforts by adversarial nations.”)

The voting section of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division had enforced federal laws that protect voting rights, particularly those that combat racial discrimination. But now, nearly all of the section’s roughly 30 career lawyers have resigned or been moved. Trump then filled the section with conservative lawyers, including at least four who participated in challenging the 2020 vote or have worked with people who helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election.

5. Trump has replaced ousted career specialists with “Team America.”

In the summer of 2025, after the Trump administration had forced out most of the career specialists, a small group of political appointees — which once called itself “Team America,” according to sources familiar with the matter — began convening at DHS headquarters, looking for federal levers it could pull to realize a March 2025 executive order, in which Trump tried to exert greater federal control over aspects of voting.

Among the core members of the group was David Harvilicz, a DHS assistant secretary tasked with overseeing the security of election infrastructure, including voting machines, and three of his top staffers. As ProPublica has reported, Harvilicz co-founded an AI company with an architect of Trump’s claims about election hacking in Michigan.

Heather Honey, who serves under Harvilicz in a newly created position focused on elections, is a source of the false claim that more ballots were cast in Pennsylvania than there were voters in the 2020 presidential election — a claim Trump cited on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021.

At least 11 administration appointees, including Honey, have ties to the Election Integrity Network, a conservative grassroots organization led by Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. Since moving into government, Honey has maintained close ties to Mitchell’s organization, and she and at least two other federal officials have given its members private briefings.

6. Team America members are using a powerful Homeland Security Investigations tool to try to identify noncitizen voters.

The DOJ has been demanding that states turn over confidential voter roll information, and it has sued around 30 states for this data.

Meanwhile, DHS has urged states to upload their voter rolls to its tool, called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system.

The goal in both efforts has been to find noncitizens on the voter rolls. But the SAVE tool has come up short, often identifying citizens as noncitizens, as ProPublica has reported, and officials have faced other roadblocks with its use.

More recently, according to two people familiar with the matter, Team America has worked to harness a more powerful tool used by another branch of DHS, Homeland Security Investigations, to increase its ability to search for noncitizen voters and bring criminal charges against them.

In response to questions sent to DHS, Harvilicz and Honey, a DHS spokesperson disputed that they were seeking to use the department’s powers to advantage Trump. In response to questions about their ties to the election denial movement, the spokesperson wrote, “To meet the diverse and evolving challenges the Department faces, we hire experts with diverse backgrounds who go through a rigorous vetting process.”

7. Trump’s head of elections security is behind the FBI’s seizure of 2020 election ballots in Georgia.

Attorney Kurt Olsen once worked to try to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss in court and was later sanctioned by judges for making baseless allegations about Arizona elections. He is now Trump’s director of election security and integrity and is the driving force behind the January raid of the election center in Fulton County, Georgia.

Related: 2026 elections: ICE won’t be at polling places, Trump administration official says

Toward the end of 2025, Olsen flew to Georgia to meet with Paul Brown, the head of the FBI’s Atlanta field office, according to people familiar with the matter. Olsen wanted the FBI to seize ballots from the Democratic stronghold, and he gave Brown a report he claimed would justify the extraordinary action. Brown’s team submitted an affidavit to superiors at the DOJ that did not make a strong enough case to move forward with what Olsen wanted. Afterward, Brown was given a choice: retire or be moved to a new office. Brown retired. The raid went forward under his replacement, based on an affidavit that cited information from the report Olsen provided to Brown.

Olsen did not respond to requests for comment.

An FBI spokesperson said that Brown “elected to retire” and that its “work in the election security space is entirely consistent with the law.”

8. The DOJ’s Public Integrity Section could have tried to block the administration’s Georgia voting investigation.

In the months following Trump’s return to office, the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, which had been responsible for making sure the department’s inquiries weren’t improperly influenced by politics, was eviscerated. Resignations, firings and transfers reduced the 36-person section to two.

Multiple former lawyers for the section said they likely would have tried to block the Fulton County investigation because it lacked strong evidence, had a clear political slant and went against department directives that actions should not be taken “for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.”

John Keller was principal deputy chief of the section from 2020 to 2025 and was acting chief when he resigned in early 2025. He worries that allegations of irregularities in the upcoming election will be handled on a partisan basis.

“Without that review and without apolitical, objective, honest brokers involved in the process, there is a much greater risk for intentional manipulation or inadvertent interference,” Keller said.

The post 8 Things You Should Know About Trump’s Effort to “Take Over” the Midterm Elections appeared first on MinnPost.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Trump administration on Thursday notified Minnesota that it’s deferring an additional $91 million in Medicaid funding, due to fresh concerns about vulnerabilities to fraud in state-run but federally funded social service programs.

The announcement from Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, cited searches by federal agents on Tuesday at childcare and learning centers and other sites in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area that receive federal Medicaid funding.

“Minnesota state-run programs have raised serious red flags,” Oz said in a video statement on social media.

Gov. Tim Walz called the action part of the Trump administration’s retribution campaign against Minnesota.

Vice President JD Vance notified Walz in February that CMS was temporarily withholding $243 million because of fraud concerns that have dogged the Democratic governor’s administration. Minnesota sued in response, warning it may have to cut healthcare for low-income families. A judge declined to grant a restraining order.

The deferral of $91 million comes in addition to the funds Vance said were being withheld earlier this year.

Of the latest tranche, $76 million is tied to 14 service categories that are considered highly vulnerable to fraud, Oz said. Another $14 million involves program integrity concerns, such as payments for ineligible individuals, including those who might be in the country illegally, he said.

Related: Minnesota’s Office of Inspector General needs Trump’s approval to probe Medicaid

Right-wing influencer Nick Shirley posted a video in December that said members of Minnesota’s large Somali community were running fake childcare centers to collect federal subsidies. The video caught the eye of the administration and conservative activists, though state inspectors discounted the allegations. Oz cited the video Thursday.

Walz — the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2024 — dropped out of the governor’s race in January, promising to devote his energy to fighting fraud rather than seeking a third term.

“While Minnesota is working to stop fraud, the Trump Administration is working to exploit it,” Walz said in a statement. “This is a transparent effort to cut funding for the same working people and rural Minnesota hospitals they’ve had in their crosshairs for months. Minnesota will not stand for this continued campaign of retribution.”

But Oz said the action was about protecting taxpayer money.

“This isn’t about punishment, it’s about partnership and accountability,” Oz said. “We’re offering Minnesota the support they need to fix these problems. But at the same time, we cannot and will not pay claims that don’t meet federal standards. So we’re asking for additional documentation to verify these charges.”

The Minnesota Department of Human Services, which administers Medicaid in the state, defended its record, saying it has been taking “aggressive action” for more than a year to stop fraud and recoup improper payments.

“We have been reporting to our federal partners and the public about those efforts,” Commissioner Shireen Gandhi said in a statement. “We are disappointed to learn that CMS will extend deferrals of needed funds for another quarter. Nonetheless, the department will continue to fight against the criminals who target Medicaid programs.”

CMS approved the state’s corrective action plan in March but has yet to free up any of the $243 million it withheld earlier.

The announcement comes a week after Oz said CMS would require all states to explain their plans to revalidate some of their Medicaid providers in an escalation of the Trump administration’s anti-fraud campaign.

___

Associated Press reporter Ali Swenson in Washington, D.C., contributed.

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