Here's Where It Gets Interesting - The War on Drugs, and the Truth Behind the Viral Claims of Fraud at Minnesota Daycares

Episode Date: January 19, 2026

The War on Drugs is being used to justify U.S. military actions, including a covert operation in Venezuela, but is that going to have an effect on the opioid crisis? Sharon is joined by Beth Macy, author of the bestselling book Dopesick, for a powerful conversation about her new release, Paper Girl, and the addiction, poverty, and deep political divides plaguing communities. Plus, Sharon breaks down the viral video claiming daycare fraud in Minneapolis, walking through what the video alleges, and what investigators have actually found.  Since the recording of this episode, the Minnesota Attorney General has charged health care owner Mohamed Abdirashid Omarxeyd with 8 felonies for allegedly using his Health Services agency to steal $3.2 million from the Minnesota Medical Assistance (Medicaid) program. If you’d like to submit a question, head to thepreamble.com/podcast – we’d love to hear from you there. And be sure to read our weekly magazine at ThePreamble.com – it’s free! Join hundreds of thousands of readers who still believe understanding is an act of hope. Credits: Host and Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon Supervising Producer: Melanie Buck Parks Audio Producer: Craig Thompson (00:00:00) The U.S. War on Drugs and Interview with Beth Macy (00:22:29) Viral Claims of Fraud at Minnesota Daycares (00:30:47) What Fraud Has Been Found In Minnesota To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the preamble podcast. This week, we are diving into several topics that are top of mind for you. From the war on drugs that President Trump says is the reason behind the U.S. removing Venezuela's president in a covert military raid, to the ICE agent's killing of a woman in Minnesota and the fallout from it. I'm joined today by Beth Macy, the acclaimed author of Doapsick and Paper Girl, to talk more about the war on drugs. And I dig into that viral video that so many of you have. asked me about that claims to show fraud at daycares in Minneapolis. I'm Sharon McMahon, and this is the preamble podcast. We start today with the U.S. War on Drugs, which the Trump

administration says is the reason it is bombing boats in the Caribbean and why it removed Venezuela's president who now sits in a U.S. jail awaiting trial. Days ago, we learned the Pentagon disguised a military plane to look like a civilian plane when it struck suspected drug smugglers last September. The reason? To sneak up on the people in the boat so they wouldn't be tipped off that they were being attacked. Eleven people were killed. Legal experts say doing that could be a war crime because it's illegal to make a military plane appear to be a civilian one in order to gain the confidence of the enemy. But the Trump administration says it's in armed conflict with drug cartels, which makes the attacks lawful. President Trump says he's doing it to help

end the opioid epidemic in the U.S. In fact, he claims each boat bombing has saved tens of thousands of American lives. Every boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 American lives. So every time you see a boat and you feel badly, you say, wow, that's rough. It is rough. But if you lose three people and save 25,000 people. Experts say there's no way to actually determine how many lives would be saved, and the Trump administration has not provided proof that these boats were carrying drugs. Drug abuse, especially opioids is a serious problem in the United States, but in 2024, the number of overdose deaths dropped more than 25% from the year before. Still, drug abuse affects families across the country, and there's perhaps nobody better to talk about it than Beth Macy. She wrote the incredible book, Dope Sick, which was turned into a television series, and she's out with a brand new book, Paper Girl, where she goes back to her hometown in Ohio to see how it's changed over the last 40 years.

she talks about poverty, drug abuse, and the political polarization she witnessed, even in her own family. I am very excited to be chatting with Beth Macy today. Thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. I, too, was a paper girl. And I want to hear a little bit more about your experiences with newspapers. This idea fascinates me. Well, first I started helping my really cute names. boys doing their route. And then when they got too cool to do a paper route, I took over one of their routes. And yeah, I secretly had crushes on them. And I grew up really poor. And it was a way for me to

be able to buy my own clothes and afford the school field trip to Washington, D.C. And I always say, it really prepped me for being a reporter because, as you know, a lot of people don't want to pay you. You have to be kind of wily about negotiating with people and showing up when they're not expecting you. And then when I went to college, I majored in journalism and I've never looked back. I was a newspaper writer for 30 years. And then at around age 50, I started writing books. To great acclaim, Beth, you've written some really important books. This is not just like a little sad hustle where you're like, oh yeah, maybe.

Maybe. Yeah, yeah. I love that. But, you know, one of the things that I was really interested to read about in your book is about your experiences embedding yourself in your hometown in Urbana, Ohio. You said it right. I've noticed that fancy people from the cities say Urbana. Really? But it's O'Pena.

Yeah. Like a good Midwestern woman would say it. That's right. Urbana, no. No way. They think it's Nirvana. That's what they think it is. No.

It is not Urbana. No. No. You know, throughout your career is, you know, a paper girl, delivering papers and then writing for papers, writing books, working as a reporter. What was it that led you to think, I want to go back and I want to spend a long time investigating these sort of divides that have taken hold in places like Ohio that used to be quite different politically than they are now? What was the turning point for you that made this project so important? It was sort of a slow simmer at the start during Trump's first administration. I would notice that some of my relatives when I go, hi, John, how you doing?

They go deplorable and want to like get in a debate when like I'm just here to play cards and have dinner. And then in 2017, my brother unfriended me on Facebook suddenly and I didn't even notice it. And I only noticed it when he didn't show up for our. youngest kids high school senior play. And he had always come to the plays before. And when I asked, you know, where were you? He goes, oh, I didn't see the invitation because I unfriended you on Facebook because of all the liberal crap you post. And I was like, what? What friended me? Your sister? And P.S. I don't post that many political things. I post fact-checked articles, mostly from the New York Times and Washington Post. And I realize now that a lot of the country doesn't believe what those

papers say, but I didn't quite realize that yet. And what was so offensive was some of those articles I wrote. And I was like, let me tell you how fact check those articles are. When you write even an opinion piece for the New York Times, they will send a young fact checker to work on it for three days. It's like a colonoscopy for your brain. If you say your mom's name is Sarah, they're going to want to see your birth certificate. Practically, that's an exaggeration. But they really do check everything. And so I was living in this reality. that wasn't the same news ecosystem that they were living in. And then the pinnacle moment came at her mother's deathbed in 2020.

She had a stroke and she was in dementia ward. And it was the Saturday after the 2020 election. And the hospice nurse says, oh, they're calling it for Biden. And it was a Saturday when they were recounting the votes in Georgia, right when they announced that Biden had won. And my evangelical sister, Cookie, who had previously never really talked about politics,

at least with me or in front of me even, shouts out, it's fraudulent, you wait, he won't win. And I just thought, wow, what's happening to my family, my hometown, which was once a heralded stop on the Underground Railroad and now flies Confederate flags? And what's happened to my country? And maybe I can write about what's happened to the country by honing in really closely on my small town

and writing about the changes that have happened there since I left 40 years ago. Yeah, you describe it as a schism. And that's just a really useful word for what has happened to America over the past 10 years. It's really been a relatively short decade. I think historians of the future

are going to look back on this as a period of incredibly rapid change and be able to say, look at what happened in 10 years. Some of it driven by political figures, some of it driven by a global pandemic, some of it driven by the rise of social media. there are many, of course, factors that go into this.

But what a period of incredibly rapid change in which you observed a schism opening, not just in the country, but in your hometown and in your family. Yeah. Class reunions hijacked because of politics, death threats because of politics. I mean, I would go back for about a week a month for two years. Sometimes I would leave on day four because it was so hard. The interview is worked. just exhausting. For somebody who's not read paper girl yet, which is absolutely fascinating, thank you. Tell us your approach to examining this schism. I had this idea early on that I wanted to profile a young me to write about how much harder it's gotten to get out of poverty. I grew up very poor in a family with generations of addiction and going to college very much saved my life. I don't say it got me out because it wasn't necessarily a place I wanted to live. leave because I thought I was better than it or whatever. It was just a traumatic environment at times

that made me a healthier person by going to college and then leaving and marrying somebody whose family didn't have a lot of trauma to deal with. So I knew that gradually over time, beginning in the 1980s, that we had defunded higher education in such a way that I got to go to a four-year college basically for free because I was so poor. I got a Pell Grant that covered the entirety of the very small state tuition at the time. And I even bought my books. I got work-study jobs. I worked three jobs at a time for beer and pizza money, basically.

And, you know, got a couple little student loans, but I didn't come out with a ton of debt. And today, that Pell Grant would only cover about 30% of a poor kid's tuition. So that just knocks them out of even going. So I find this kid, I interview a lot of people and everybody says, it's this kid. Silas James, he happens to be the drum major of the high school band. And he's from a family of addiction, but, you know, it's not just alcoholism like my dad experience. It's opioid crisis. His dad is overdosed and died. His mother's in and out of prison. He is with a family caregiver who molests him for three years, the amount of trauma that this kid has experienced. And yet he's the drum major. And he's homeless, his junior and senior years, cows surfing. And so if there's anyone person, he's whose story reflects the changes in my hometown. It's this kid. And then we had this, you know, mutual love of our band directors who kind of like kept us

out of jail, right? Kept an eye on us when maybe our parents were paying attention. And so I followed him. I would check in with him every time I was home. He was starting out at a community college because that's all he could afford. It was very difficult. He's rural. And like most rural people, I'm sure you know this, there's not public transportation.

to get to his classes where he was learning welding at a community college. It was an hour away. He went through five clunker cars in the course of one year, four full-time jobs. I didn't have to work full-time. And so he was able to be my modern-day thread. So the book, if you will, is like a third of my story, a third of Silas' story, and then it's a third about the town itself. And so I'm just trained to weave not just Silas' story and my story,

but I try to give readers the spinach in the way that, if you'd like to bake, you would make a spinach case. You wouldn't want it to be all one glom, right? You want it to be really delicious, so that's like the personal stories. But then you want to put the data in that underscores. And the data actually totally underscored Silas's story because once I dug into Urbana, you know, it was a place where foster care had tripled. He had been in and out of foster care just in the last 10 years. years. Mental health calls, since I left 40 years ago, had increased by a factor of nine. It was a mental

health crisis that I was absorbing. This is just hard data I'm getting from the police chief and the fire chief. The graduation rate had dropped 12 points that comes straight from the mouth of the superintendent. So you see all these kids not showing up to school. And none of this is in the newspaper because the newspaper's gone from a fairly high circulation to nobody gets it. And it's because there's no news in it. There's one reporter. And, you know, I witnessed that in my places where I reported from as well here in Roanoke. When I came to work at the Roanoke Times, there were 65 reporters. Now there are five. So it's possible for all these changes to occur in a distressed community and to have the people in the professional class not even really see it. Great. You know, a lot of policies are based on

population centers. So we're going to make policies that make sense for say Minnesota's Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul, because that's just where the critical mass of individuals are. But when we're talking nationally about making these kinds of policies that impacts the well-being, the economic well-being, the mental health well-being, the opportunities, the educational opportunities of people in small towns and rural areas, the policies simply do not often translate. It's easy to be like, just get a job. But there's no. where to work. We think that there's 40 McDonald's in a two-mile radius. They're simply not. There simply is not. And the places that do have jobs in Urbana, what I discovered was every single

employer was hard up for employees who would show up on time every day. Right now, we're cutting Medicaid. It's going to be a huge sock to the working class population because it's going to set Addiction care back 20 years. Expenses are going up. If our workforce isn't mentally well enough to show up to work every day, the answer isn't to cut Medicaid or to be blowing up people in the waters outside of Venezuela when they're not even bringing fentanyl into our country. We know it's coming from Mexico, not Venezuela. I mean, that's just crazy to me. So we really need to build back, first of all, our education systems to give people a shot at a life better than when they were born into. And we need universal health care more than anything. In a democracy, everybody

should have a right to try to be the best that they can be. And that's what I was given in 1982 when I went to college. It had saved my life. We've taken it away. You've written extensively about the opioid crisis in the United States. You wrote a really acclaimed book called Dobsick, which they made into a TV series. How much of the ills of small towns like Urbana do you attribute to things like the opioid crisis and addiction? Yeah, I mean, probably 80%. Because if you look at that data I went over just a minute ago, foster care tripling, that's totally the opioid crisis. mental health calls, that's the opioid crisis. And again, it's not something that the average

person in the professional class in Urbana has even noticed unless they've experienced it themselves. Somebody near the end of Papergirl says, what we have is the country cub class and what he called the ghetto class, and neither one knows anything about the other. And that goes back to misinformation. And I think you mentioned social media and the tech bros owning us. of our government. You didn't quite say it like that, but that's how I've come to think of it. And we know that Trump won in 24, 91% of the counties that lack professional sources of news. And I think if we would have gotten out ahead in terms of regulating things like Facebook and meta, and, you know, we know that lies spread on social media six times faster than the truth. That's data out of MIT.

this is really why in the nation we are living in these two polar opposite epistemological world. And a lot of people have pointed out this like two Americas, or even the concept of you having a different algorithm than me and our algorithm creating these information silos, which you also reference in the book where you just are surrounded by information you already agree with, because that feels really great in your brain to just like be constantly reaffirmed, like, you're doing it right, you're so smart. I mean, yeah.

Yes, little like, wow, you nailed it, you know, like, just like over and over and over all day. But I do think people are sort of finally beginning to wake up to this idea that it's really not us versus them in terms of, you know, like, it's this immigrant community versus me or it's this racial group versus mine. More, perhaps not enough, but more and more people are beginning to realize that it really really is this sort of ruling class, the billionaire class, the top 1% versus everyone else. And as much as I don't like to paint the world in a picture of us versus them, the facts really are undeniable when it comes to the amount of control over the economy, the information

that people are able to acquire. it really has become the ruling class versus everyone else. It sounds like you're describing that exact thing with sort of this professional class versus this ghetto class in your hometown. Exactly. I mean, three individuals in America own as much wealth as 50% of the United States. Yes, that's insane. And we're just giving them a huge tax break. They have all their stuff in offshore accounts. And that's who's writing checks that are controlling our government now. And, I mean, the people have got to take it back. I know that sounds like, you know, my manifesto, but I'm just so, like, stunned by what I've seen that I'm like, look, we have to get out in the streets.

We have to support people who are being cut by these policies. We have to elect better people. We have to engage with real people in real time in our communities. That's the answer is always community. I say that over and over, I say it in doapsick, I say it in Raising Lazarus, I say it in this book.

And, you know, we're all addicted to our devices, frankly. And those three individuals, they don't care about the fact that one in five families is estranged because of politics now, because of platforms

that they have pushed in order to get richer and to sell us more stuff we don't need. They don't care that my brother unfriended me on Facebook. So part of the message is we have to learn

how to communicate across the divide. And so you see me struggling in the book over and over, having a tough conversation with my sister about my queer kids, having a tough conversation with my brother, talking to my oldest friend who did my mom's funeral. She's a Christian lay minister and believes these conspiracy theories now. And she says the best quote of the book, which is, how do we love beyond what we can't understand or agree with? And that's the question I'm still wrestling with. You bring up a really good point that political unrest is always downstream of economic unrest. That rarely do you have political unrest and extraordinary economic prosperity for a large percentage of the individuals. And it's a very sobering but important realization that if we want better communities politically,

if we want better relationships with our families politically, we don't want to unfriend everybody on Facebook, that one factor of that has to be considering the economic impact opportunities, system, structure for not just the ruling class, who makes record profits and lines their own pockets, but for the ordinary Americans. And that's a tall order. But we've done it before. We don't have to reinvent the wheel, whole cloth.

We've done it before. Yes. As we sort of wrap up, I would love to hear talk a little bit more about what are the takeaways of reading paper girl? What do you hope the reader tucks into their pocket and shares with their friends? The very first time my editor showed it to the sales team at Penguin Press, for instance, and you know, these are objective readers. They've got to go out and sell the book and they're going to say if they don't like it.

And what I heard then and what I hear now as I'm out on book tour is I feel seeing. I can't go home and talk to my crazy uncle either. And I just tried to be really honest about both my wins. You know, I got my relationship back with my brother, with my sister, wasn't so great. My friend Joy, I told you about earlier, who has fallen into conspiracy theories and was my first friend in kindergarten. She's not happy with the book. So that makes me sad. I was very transparent about what I was doing.

I recorded our interviews. So some things you're going to win and some things you're not. I think the fact that we're still trying, I'm still in touch with all of my siblings. There are some lessons you can take from reading the book about how we go forward at a time when 64% of Americans think our divisions is our biggest issue that we're facing. Beth, thank you so much for being here. It was really, really great to meet you, really great to read Paper Girl. And I've read multiple other books of yours, so it was really lovely to meet you. And I appreciate your work. I appreciate your willingness to dive into

really challenging, tricky topics and face them head on, with honesty as a curious person instead of as a prognosticator from on high being like, here's my assessment of what's wrong with you. The way that you approach your work, I think so many people find incredibly useful and important. And so I'm just really grateful for your time and also for your work. Oh, ah. Thank you so much. It was just a delight to speak with you.

Thank you. You can find Paper Girl at your local bookstore or head to bookshop.org. When we come back, I look into the viral video claiming several daycare facilities in Minnesota are shams and don't even have children in them. What's true? I'll tell you next. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. The new year doesn't require a completely new you. It can simply be an opportunity to feel less burdened.

Therapy provides an unbiased perspective that helps identify what may be holding you back, whether it's stress, self-doubt, or challenges in relationships. understanding these patterns can make it easier to move forward with clarity and intention. BetterHelp makes starting therapy simple. All therapists are fully licensed in the U.S. and follow a strict code of conduct. A short questionnaire identifies your needs and preferences, and with over 12 years of experience and an industry-leading matched fulfillment rate, BetterHelp usually connects you with the right therapist on the first try. If the fit isn't perfect, switching to another therapist is easy, with over 30,000 therapists and millions of sessions completed? BetterHelp has become one of the world's largest online therapy platforms,

consistently earning excellent client reviews. BetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash Sharon. That's betterh-elp.com slash Sharon. What's up guys? I'm Cannais Dillard Bassett, and you may know me from my time on The Real Housewives of Potomac or as a part of the latest cast of The Traders. And I'm Michael Arsino, author of the New York Times bestseller, I Can't Date Jesus. On our podcast, Undomesticated, we don't just say the quiet parents out loud. We're putting it all on the kitchen table and inviting you into the chaos. If you're ready for bold takes, real talk, and a little fun, come join us.

Listen to and follow Undomesticated and Odyssey Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts. The killing of Renee Goodby and ICE officer in Minneapolis has unleashed a wave of protests across the country. but the ice presence has only grown in Minnesota over the last week. CNN says as many as 1,000 more ICE agents have been deployed into Minneapolis on top of the 2000 already there. We're hearing stories of American citizens being detained, like a real estate agent who said he was following ice in his car and was then surrounded by five agents,

dragged from his vehicle, tossed to the ground, and then held in a detention facility for more than nine hours. We've seen videos of people being pepper sprayed by ice agents, agents and windows of cars being smashed. The initial ice operation started in early December specifically to target Somalis living in Minnesota. At the time, President Trump said he didn't want Somalis living in the U.S. at all. I don't want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks, and we don't want them in our country. Last week, the Trump administration also quietly ended

the temporary protected status for Somalis. TPS provides protection from deportation. to nationals of countries the U.S. deems unsafe. Somalis were given TPS in the 1990s due to ongoing violent uprisings, famine, and environmental disasters, and the protection has been renewed several times. But Department of Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem said, temporary means temporary, and the protection will end on March 17th. Adding to this situation is the video you might have seen or heard about claiming daycares in many Minneapolis are operating sham businesses with no kids actually inside the buildings. It's gotten millions of views, with J.D. Vance suggesting the creator of the video, Nick Shirley, is doing better work than Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters. Nick Shirley is a 23-year-old who claims to be an

independent YouTube journalist. In the 43-minute YouTube video, Nick is recorded with another man only identified as David. They have a pile of documents that David claims prove fraud at daycare centers in Minnesota run by the Somali community. The two of them and a camera crew arrive at child care centers, one after another, demanding to be led inside. When they aren't allowed in, they claim there are no children at the facilities. According to Nick and David, these centers are receiving government funding for children that aren't even there. In the second half of the video, they do the same with health care centers. David claims those companies are receiving funds from the state, but they aren't actually providing any services.

Here's a little bit from the video. Hello, we'd like to ask where the money's going. What was this money spent out? 1.26 million. What was that money spent? Asked it. Asked about. Do you run any kids? Answer the question. Are there children? There's no children inside this building. Potentially the largest fraud scandal in U.S. history is taking place in Minnesota, as literally billions of dollars have been funneled through

Somali ran fraudulent businesses. I'm going to dig into the allegations made by Nick in a moment, but first let me tell you who Nick Shirley and the other man in the video are. Nick Shirley has been making social media videos for years. He started as a teenager and made mostly prank and stunt videos like the one where he rides his bike over a ramp lit on fire. Sometimes I would do videos where I light a bike jump on fires and jump off. There's more like him sneaking into a major influencer's wedding and tricking people

into auditioning for a music video. I was able to trick one of the biggest managers in the L.A. to seeking that their client is auditioning for a just-to-beer music video. He even flew to New York City by himself when he was 16 without telling his parents. He was in the crowd outside the Capitol on January 6th. More recently, he's been attempting to make a name for himself as a journalist. Nick claims he's known about this alleged fraud for months, but he couldn't prove it until he got a DM from a man named David, who Nick said,

quote, had all the proof. The Twin Cities is ground zero. The fraud is worse here than anywhere else ever in history, anywhere. That's David Hoke. He's 65 years old and has run for both governor and Minnesota State Attorney General. He has a job in construction, but spends a lot of his time trying to expose what he sees as corruption, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune. They point to comments he's made on social media like an old Facebook post,

where he claims he's been filing complaints. for years against state agencies that he said haven't done enough to fight flagrant violations of the law. David says in Nick's YouTube video that he got some of his research from his contacts at the state capital. Minnesota House speaker Lisa Dumuth said her staff helped Nick Shirley find some of these daycare centers. According to the Intercept, David Hoke has made disparaging comments about the Somali community, posting in a now deleted Instagram post that, quote, every Somali in Minnesota is engaged in fraud, all of them, and saying, quote, even the blacks have had enough of the demon Muslims. Okay, back to the video itself.

In the video, David explains to Nick that he's been surveilling daycare centers that are licensed for dozens of children, but according to him, there aren't any kids. Zero children. I've come by this place 100 times. I've never seen a child here, ever. The other thing I've ever seen is someone standing outside smoking. We then see Nick and David knocking on doors and asking questions like this. Are there children here? Please sleep. Where are the children? $2.6 million for a daycare center.

Let me talk about what Nick and his team look like as they knocked on these doors. A person recorded their team at one of the health care companies I mentioned earlier. The video shows Nick and David with several men whose faces are covered by masks wearing black coats. Daycare facilities generally have safety protocols in place and wouldn't let masks. men in with people demanding to know where the children are. At one facility, a woman says they're ice agents and they won't be let in. In the video, David and Nick complain about windows being blacked out, which is also relatively standard for places with children inside as a safety precaution. The Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families has investigated the daycare centers

in Nick's video and said, quote, children were present at all sites except for one. That site was not yet open for families for the day when inspectors arrived. State investigators have also visited each of the daycares over the last six months unannounced as part of their licensing and auditing process. So let's look at some of the claims directly. Here's Nick outside the ABC Learning Center. And here's what he says. All the windows are blacked out. Let's see if anybody is here. This door is locked. Local news channel, WCCO, visited that center and showed this. Hassan showed a security footage from the same day Shirley was here.

According to the timestamps in the videos, this woman takes a young child into the center at around 9 a.m. that day. About three hours before Shirley arrives at the door closer to the street. Within the hour, after Shirley leaves, a woman arrives at the other door with a stroller. A larger family heads inside a few hours later. Tuesday afternoon, WCCO found at least a dozen children at ABC Learning Center. The Star Tribune also visited and posted photos showing children inside. Nick also shows up at Quality Learning Center. Here's what he said there.

There's supposed to be 99 children here at this building, but there's no one here. A woman who owns the building that Quality Learning Center is in said the daycare was closed when Nick arrived. They opened 2 p.m. So when Nick Shirley was here, it was before that. Local news posted videos of children entering Quality Learning Center. I take my kids here, 2 o'clock to 10.

Yeah, there's a lot of kids inside. The Star Tribune visited Minnesota Child Care Center, where Nick also went, and they were allowed inside, and they posted photos from that facility as well, showing children present. But we should note that Quality Learning Center has now closed in the wake of this video. We need to get in a quick break, but ahead I'm going to walk you through the fraud that has been found in Minnesota. It's true that Minnesota has been plagued by fraud allegations, some of which have led to charges and convictions. During COVID, there was a massive meal fraud scheme spearheaded by a woman named Amy Bach.

She ran an organization called Feeding Our Future, which was a nonprofit that provided meals for children in need, often through daycare centers. The federal government changed the rules during COVID, allowing taxpayer money that had been allocated to daycare and after school programs for meals to be given to for-profit restaurants for distribution. That's when Amy Bach conspired with dozens of people to submit fake reimbursement requests for millions of meals that they never actually served to people. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars.

This fraud has been investigated, and close to 100 people have been charged over the last several years. According to the House Oversight Committee, 85 of those charged are of Somali descent. Amy Bach and several others were found guilty last year, and dozens more have pleaded guilty to the charges. There are also fraud investigations into another government program, the Child Care Assistance Program known as CCAP. This is the program Nick Shirley has zeroed in on in this video.

In 2016, a child care center, Children's Choice Center, was charged because it was billing CCAP for more children than were attending its program. The center pleaded guilty and paid a fine. A 2019 state investigation found several million dollars worth of fraud happening through the program. So yes, there has been fraud discovered in the past. The state is also currently investigated,

55 child care centers receiving state funding, including four of the centers Nick visited. Officials have not identified which daycare centers it's investigating but said, quote, investigations can range from a one-time compliance check, observing classrooms and reviewing attendance against billing, to longer in-depth reviews comparing children present with billing records. The Star Tribune also says seven out of eight of the facilities that had public records available to review have been cited by the state for violations over the past four years. Some of the violations include safety violations, like failing to properly supervised children,

to failure to report a death, serious injury, fire, or emergency as required. There were other violations, too, like failing to properly do background checks on employees, improper training, and cleanliness issues, but none of the facilities have been charged with fraud, which is something different. Nick Shirley himself was asked in an issue. interview with Andrew Callahan about the response to his video. Here's that exchange. I mean, it seems like that Learning Center has had a serious history of violations going. Quality Learing Center, yes. Yeah, yeah, going back to 2020. Yeah, it's literally not a daycare.

But how could they have violations related to child care if there was no kids there? Yeah, the way they're operating inside of there, they had the violations. Those people are not, they were operating fraudulently inside of that daycare. But fraud would mean there's no kids, but the violations relate to like poor safety conditions that put the kids in danger. And so why would they be operating and why would Minnesota continue to be giving them millions of dollars if they're receiving all these violations? You mentioned the ABC Learning Center in particular. Yes. And I mentioned that they did, I'm not sure if this is real or not, but they did release footage of kids entering and exiting the building during operating hours on the same day that you guys were there. And their capacity

is for 40 children. In that video, there was 12 children. And that place receives a million dollars. But you do admit there was kids. Yes, and I don't doubt that there are kids inside of these daycares. It'd be very stupid of a business receiving millions of dollars and not to show face with a few kids. It'd be very stupid. Do you see also how some people could say that you pull up with a couple dudes in cameras and they would get suspicious and not want to let you guys inside? I can understand that, but they should be able to say, and when I ask a question, how do I enroll my son and little Joe in the daycare? Well, there's not probably not that many Somali kids I'm Joey in Minneapolis.

Okay, so then why is it only for Somalians inside these daycares? Where's the white little kids inside these daycares? Maybe they don't go to, like, federally funded daycares. Since Nick's video was released, the Trump administration has frozen $10 billion worth of funds to five states, California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York. These funds are specifically for child care and assistance for low-income families. An Office of Management and Budget Officials says the funds are frozen because of fraud. and because states have been giving money to illegal immigrants. According to Axios, many of the claims of fraud cited by the OMB official have already been prosecuted or charged.

J.D. Vance also announced that Trump administration is creating a new assistant attorney general position to investigate fraud. The role will have nationwide jurisdiction. And we also know that Tim Walz has decided not to run for re-election as governor of Minnesota. He explained it by saying, quote, every minute I spend defense. my own political interests, would be a minute I can't spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity and the cynics who prey on our differences. Here's the bottom line. Yes, it is true that there has been fraud in Minnesota, including with daycare funding. State investigators and prosecutors have been working for years to find the fraud and prosecuted.

But did Nick Shirley's video prove that there is millions of dollars worth of fraud happening at these particular daycares? no. And if someone is truly concerned about saving taxpayers money, why not turn your evidence over to the government, where people can actually be charged with crimes and not simply tried in the court of public opinion? If you'd like to submit a question for me to answer on a future episode, head to the preamble.com slash podcast. We'd love to hear from you there. And be sure to read our weekly magazine at the preamble.com. It's free. Join hundreds of thousands of readers who still believe understanding is an act of hope. I'm your host and executive producer Sharon McMahon. If you enjoyed this show,

please like, share, and subscribe. These things help podcasters out so much. Our supervising producer is Melanie Buck Parks, and our audio producer is Craig Thompson. I'll see you again soon.