The video was designed to seize consideration.
Posted the day after Christmas, it reveals right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley exposing what he says are a sequence of fraudulent day care facilities in Minnesota. He rings doorbells, pulls on doorways, and typically claims to be a dad or mum hoping to register his little one, “Little Joey.” When he’s not admitted, he claims the facilities are faux, with no kids inside. All of the whereas, a ticker on the backside of the display tallies up thousands and thousands of {dollars} in alleged graft.
“After I have a look at the world as a complete, and I have a look at fraud, the Twin Cities is floor zero,” certainly one of Shirley’s associates mentioned at one level. “The fraud is worse right here than wherever else ever in historical past.”
The video doesn’t really present direct proof of fraud. State investigators visited the facilities Shirley highlighted and located kids in any respect however one, which was not but open for households. However Shirley’s purported exposé, considered over 3 million occasions, has began a wave of shock amongst right-wing lawmakers already centered on allegations of social companies fraud in Somali immigrant communities in Minnesota.
Now, the Trump administration has introduced a freeze on federal little one care funding to 5 blue states, together with Minnesota, together with elevated reporting necessities for all states. Suppliers across the nation concern they could should shut their doorways and lay off employees, and oldsters are nervous about how their lives may be upended in the event that they lose little one care.
“Having disruptions like that is actually counterproductive for youngsters, for folks who’re attempting to go to work, and for the actually underpaid, and pressured, and strained little one care workforce,” mentioned Amy Matsui, vp of kid care and revenue safety on the Nationwide Ladies’s Legislation Middle.
How did unsubstantiated claims of kid care fraud go from a YouTube video to influencing federal coverage in a matter of days? The reply lies on the intersection of precise pandemic-era fraud instances, a right-wing media ecosystem longing for anti-immigrant content material, and a longstanding conservative antipathy towards backed day care. However the politics of early childhood in America are additionally altering, and the White Home response to Shirley’s video might create blowback that the Trump administration didn’t anticipate.
Minnesota’s welfare fraud scandal, defined
The present controversy over little one care facilities in Minnesota has its roots in 2022, when federal prosecutors charged 47 folks with fraudulently siphoning funds from a state program meant to feed hungry kids throughout the pandemic. The scandal quickly expanded to incorporate suppliers charged with fraudulently billing the state for housing help and autism remedy companies. Prosecutors say fraudsters might have stolen as a lot as $9 billion, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz dropped his reelection bid this week amid the scandal.
Most of these charged with fraud are a part of Minnesota’s Somali neighborhood, the biggest within the nation. Most are additionally US residents. The fees, filed throughout the Biden administration, have been re-amplified by conservative activist Chris Rufo and others in current weeks and used to stoke racism and xenophobia towards all Somali immigrants. “I don’t need them in our nation,” President Donald Trump mentioned in December.
The current federal fraud investigations which have garnered nationwide consideration didn’t should do with little one care facilities. However now, due to Shirley’s video, the nationwide highlight is educated squarely on day cares.
Within the video, Shirley and an affiliate recognized solely as David claimed that day care facilities run by members of the Somali neighborhood have “stolen” thousands and thousands of {dollars} from the state of Minnesota. State governments, supported partially by the federal Baby Care and Improvement Block Grant program, subsidize suppliers for caring for youngsters from low-income households. It’s presumably these subsidies that Shirley believes are being stolen.
The video, nonetheless, doesn’t present any direct proof of theft. Baby care facilities typically preserve doorways locked, permitting solely households and employees to enter, for security causes. “I’ve a really exhausting time imagining why or how little one care employees could be prepared to let a random stranger right into a location,” Matsui mentioned. “I’d not need my little one care supplier to be letting random YouTubers into an area the place my kids had been.”
Not one of the folks recognized in public paperwork as proudly owning the facilities have been charged with fraud, in line with an investigation by the Minneapolis Star Tribune following up on Shirley’s video. Whereas state investigations are ongoing, state officers who visited the facilities after the video launched mentioned they had been working usually. Shirley has not responded to a request for remark from Vox.
There isn’t any nationwide database monitoring little one care fraud, however “as in any program, it’s not nonexistent,” mentioned Daniel Hains, chief coverage {and professional} development officer on the Nationwide Affiliation for the Training of Younger Youngsters, a nonprofit that helps little one care and early studying suppliers. Minnesota state auditors beforehand investigated claims of fraud in its little one care packages and recognized some potential vulnerabilities in 2019, resulting in elevated federal oversight and renewed focus from state lawmakers. Nationally, the federal authorities has additionally devoted consideration to the subject. A 2020 report by the federal Authorities Accountability Workplace outlined 9 suggestions for stopping fraud within the disbursement of kid care subsidies, lots of which states have adopted, Hains mentioned.
“There may be enormous public help for having larger public funding in little one care. That is one thing that households need and want for his or her financial safety.”
— Amy Matsui, vp of kid care and revenue safety on the Nationwide Ladies’s Legislation Middle
However the Trump administration has responded to Shirley’s video with a sequence of blanket funding freezes. In a December 30 assertion praising Shirley’s “glorious work,” Deputy Well being and Human Companies Secretary Jim O’Neill introduced, “We’ve frozen all little one care funds to the state of Minnesota.”
Then, on Monday, HHS officers instructed reporters that the company would freeze $10 billion in little one care and meals help funds for 5 blue states: California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York. “Democrat-led states and governors have been complicit in permitting large quantities of fraud to happen underneath their watch,” HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon mentioned in a press release, though there isn’t a proof of main fraud within the different 4 states past Minnesota. The company additionally says that little one care funds to all states will now be topic to extra scrutiny.
HHS describes the freeze as essential so as to root out wrongdoing within the little one care system. “These necessities assist make sure the integrity of this system and shield each households and suppliers,” a spokesperson instructed me in an e-mail.
Even for consultants within the little one care house, the rollout of overlapping freeze bulletins has been complicated. It’s not clear precisely what data might be required to restart funds or how necessities will differ by state.
However states are more likely to face delays in getting their federal funding, which might result in delays in cash paid to particular person suppliers. Baby care facilities, which are sometimes extraordinarily small companies, are ill-placed to climate such cash-flow disruptions. “As a result of suppliers are engaged on such small margins, it’s solely potential that they could have to shut, whether or not briefly or completely,” Matsui mentioned.
Such closures put mother and father’ jobs in danger, Hains mentioned. In addition they create dangers for youngsters if households have to show to less-safe choices, like leaving kids house alone or with a sibling. In the meantime, sudden disruptions in care will be dangerous in themselves, Hains mentioned. The connection between kids and their caregivers “is basically formative and foundational, and it’s vital for younger kids’s wholesome improvement to retain these sustained, nurturing relationships.”
Baby care facilities across the nation are going through fallout even past the funding freezes. HHS can be rescinding a Biden-era rule that inspired states to pay little one care suppliers up entrance based mostly on enrollment, slightly than after the actual fact based mostly on recorded attendance. Baby care consultants say a return to after-the-fact funds will make it tougher for suppliers to plan and pay their payments.
In the meantime, a Minnesota day care heart not featured within the video skilled a break-in and theft of enrollment information and different paperwork, and different day cares run by Somali Individuals within the space have reported threats and harassment. Copycat YouTubers have been recording their very own movies at day cares in states like Washington and Ohio.
“It truly is destabilizing and terrifying and by no means furthering the objective of enabling extra households to have the kid care they want,” Matsui mentioned.
The politics of kid care in 2026
The episode has offered a gap for conservative lawmakers and others to query the very premise of backed little one care. “When did it turn into the federal authorities’s position to supply day care?” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), recognized for his libertarian views, requested on X in December.
Efforts to increase public help for little one care have additionally future up towards social conservatives’ issues that extra moms ought to keep house with kids, a really perfect that’s been embraced implicitly and explicitly by members of the Trump administration and the bigger MAGA coalition. The truth that a excessive proportion of kid care staff are immigrants additionally makes the sector extremely weak to an administration that’s more and more comfy with sweepingly anti-immigrant rhetoric and coverage. The administration this week introduced a deployment of two,000 federal brokers to Minnesota in an immigration operation apparently aimed on the Somali neighborhood.
There’s nothing the Trump administration wish to discuss greater than a crackdown on fraud tied to immigrant communities. However the pivot to disrupting little one care on a doubtlessly large scale additionally comes at a time when there’s public momentum behind lowering prices for households with younger kids — a extra politically delicate matter for the White Home.
Publicly funded little one care is on an upswing in America, with New Mexico just lately changing into the primary state to supply common little one care. In New York Metropolis, common little one care was a part of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s affordability pitch to voters — one each events try to emulate. Polling additionally reveals voters are keen on Washington doing extra to assist these efforts; one AP-NORC survey final 12 months discovered 64 % of US adults favored federal assist for offering low-cost or free day care, together with 51 % of Republicans.
“There may be enormous public help for having larger public funding in little one care,” Matsui mentioned. “That is one thing that households need and want for his or her financial safety.”
There was a time when freezing public funding for day care facilities might need been a straightforward political win for Trump. However at the moment, a transfer that drives up the price of dwelling for households across the nation could also be much less common than the administration imagines.
