Fraud and Waste

Fraud and Waste

Fraud and waste steal money from taxpayers and deprive genuinely needy people of help they deserve. Rooting it out should be a universal priority, and prosecuting the guilty to the fullest extent of the law is not just justified — it's obligatory.

Conservatives have made fighting fraud a centerpiece issue. DOGE — a Republican creation — was ostensibly built to eliminate government waste. Unfortunately, it overreached and became a political weapon used to target agencies and employees that Republicans found objectionable, undermining its own credibility.

At the state level, however, fraud enforcement has produced real results. Investigations are multiplying, violators are going to jail, and taxpayers are being protected. That is exactly how it should work — and it should work that way regardless of who is committing the fraud.

Minnesota is a case in point. Nick Shirley is a private citizen who took it upon himself to expose a large-scale government fraud scheme. When he identified the groups responsible — Somali and Nepalese participants — he ran headlong into what can only be described as the liberal identity-protection code: the unwritten rule that naming a non-white group as perpetrators of wrongdoing is itself a form of racism. Had the same fraud been committed by white men,

Shirley would have been celebrated. Instead, he was attacked.

CNN's Natalie Smith produced what can fairly be called one of the most slanted, sloppy hit pieces in recent memory, framing Shirley as a monster attacking children — a transparent slander with no evidentiary basis. Liberal politicians in Minnesota, who knew perfectly well what was happening, deliberately looked the other way because enforcing the code gets you elected, and violating it ends careers. They even deployed the code's most powerful weapon — the charge of racism — to try to cancel Shirley entirely. That charge is increasingly weaponized today, invoked as a guaranteed win even when there is no supporting evidence.

In California, legislators went so far as to attempt passage of what amounted to a "Stop Nick Shirley Act" — legislation that would obstruct private citizens from investigating fraud, all to protect the code from further violations.

The centrist position is straightforward: fraud must be stopped wherever it is found, full stop. Eliminating waste and prosecuting fraud is more important than any code of political etiquette. Shirley stepped on no one's toes illegitimately — he followed the money. He deserves recognition across the political spectrum. Even those who dislike his politics should be able to acknowledge, if grudgingly, that he identified real crimes that were costing taxpayers real money.

And in this particular case, the ethnic dimension was not incidental — it was structural. The fraud scheme worked precisely because the ringleaders could rely on a tight-knit community of willing participants. Hundreds of Somali parents agreed to take small payments to falsely certify that their children were being fed or treated for autism. Without that network of cooperation, the scheme could not have functioned — and its proceeds could not have been funneled to the overseas terrorist organizations the ringleaders supported.

Mr. Shirley has set off a wave of fraud investigations that will save taxpayers billions. That is a public service by any honest measure.