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Notes -
It looks like the recent expose on child care center fraud has led to actual action in response: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/12/30/hhs-freezes-childcare-payments-minnesota/87965467007/
My question is: If a 23 year old guerilla journalist (who was not particularly rigorous in his methods) was able to blow this up, then why didn't legacy media go after this low hanging fruit? I have my own ideas (mostly ideological capture of the media) but I'd like to consider alternative explanations so I'd be interested in hearing your ideas about the failures of traditional journalism here and/or the decision by HHS to cut off funding generally.
Additionally, given that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and Defense are the lion's share of the federal budget, and much of the recent fraud has been Medicare/Medicaid fraud to the tune of billions, how much will this affect attempts at welfare reform? From both sides, both the people pushing UBI and the people trying to eliminate or reduce welfare generally.
Did the 23-year-old’s videos actually provide enough proof of fraud that it led to this defunding, or did they provide just plausible enough evidence to give the administration an excuse to do what they already wanted to do anyway?
It seems to me that Trump and his administration have a few goals that this defunding meets: 1) shrink government spending (at least in some areas), 2) emphasize criminal actions by immigrants, and 3) hurt Trump’s enemies. This nicely does all three. It decreases welfare spending, shows Somalian immigrants in a very negative light, and makes Tim Walz look like an enabler of massive fraud. I think it’s probable that at least one of the daycare centers in those videos will turn out to be completely legitimate when all the facts come to light, and it’s possible that the same will hold true for all of them.
Yes he did provide enough proof provided your prior beliefs are well-calibrated. If you are "anti-racist" then he didn't nearly provide enough proof. If your priors are well-adjusted he provided enough proof for systematic, mass fraud to a high enough confidence for this reaction and subsequent investigations.
The people complaining he wasn't rigorous enough won't even care that his methods were effective in bringing public attention and reform to an important issue.
Whether the evidence is sufficient is entirely dependent on whether you think Somalis are Bad People and deserve to have the Feds descend on them and investigate all their wheelings and dealings with an eye towards making heads roll. Of someone goes out next week and produces a similar video involving church based daycares in suburban Dallas, I'm skeptical that the Trump administration would respond with similar vigor, and I suspect we'd hear about how Christians were being railroaded for political purposes.
I'm not sure how to define "Bad People," but here's an analogy: In the United States, driving at 75 miles per hour on the highway is against the law, but normally it's not thought of as an immoral act. If you get away with it, none of your neighbors will think any less of you over it.
For people from certain subcultures, engaging in massive fraud against the government is perceived the same way. It sucks if you get caught, but otherwise it's nothing to be ashamed of.
If "Bad People" includes "people who don't see anything fundamentally wrong with engaging in massive fraud against the government," then yeah, generally speaking Somali-Americans are Bad People. (Hopefully the next generation will see things differently, and prosecutions and jail time will hopefully change their views.)
Pretty clearly someone in this situation is a brazen fraudster -- either this Youtuber Nick Shirley or the Somalis he was investigating. Given my prior probability assessment that Somalis are "Bad People" as you put it, I am pretty sure it's the Somali day care center operators.
There exists no shortage of 75mph speed limit signs in my neck of the woods. Not usually inside cities, but plenty on interstates in rural areas. Texas even has a few spots with 85mph signs.
This seems like an East/West divide. Having lived in Montana during the reasonable and prudent era, my reaction was well you are kind of an ass for only going 75, bit it's legal, just stay in the right lane please.
Yeah, most Western interstates are 75, but I felt a bit concerned about some of the undivided county roads in Texas that were also 75.
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