“It’s OVER!” Trump Targets Fraud by Somali Immigrants

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

President Trump is ending the gravy train of fraud in Minnesota, much of it perpetrated by Somalis relocated here and some of the money funding terrorism back in Africa. Trump vows to end the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somalis, which has lasted many years longer than intended.

Trump’s acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota, Joseph H. Thompson, recently indicted six from Somalia and two others for wire fraud. They allegedly defrauded Minnesota’s Medicaid-funded housing stabilization program.

This comes after 56 people, mostly from Somalia, pled guilty in connection with a federal investigation into a Minnesota nonprofit organization called Feeding Our Future. Even the Washington Post Editorial Board expressed its outrage at the vast extent of fraud in this state run by Governor Tim Walz, who was the Democrats’ Vice Presidential nominee last November.

Trump observes that “Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of dollars are missing. Send them back where they came from.”

A total of 78 defendants associated with Feeding Our Future have been charged with crimes. In just two years, the organization increased its take of government funding from $3 million in 2019 to nearly $200 million in 2021. Meanwhile, Medicaid payments on autism claims increased by $200 million in Minnesota between 2020 and 2024, and federal charges have been filed based on alleged kickbacks to the Somali community.

Minnesota has the largest Somali population in the U.S., who were settled here under the TPS program and among whom many have become American citizens. Earlier Trump terminated the TPS program for 600,000 Venezuelans and 500,000 Haitians.

It was over 30 years ago that an ill-advised President George H.W. Bush brought Somalis into our country under this temporary program, beginning in 1991. No “temporary” program should last more than three decades as this one has.

Acting U.S. Attorney John Thompson is an experienced career prosecutor, and he sounds just like the Trump appointees as he uproots fraud by immigrants that is bleeding our scarce government resources. He estimates that the defrauding of government programs in Minnesota exceeds $1 billion.

“It’s an extraordinary problem, the fraud that’s pervasive in this state,” Thompson told a news station in an interview in July. A Somali American former investigator confirmed this problem in an article published in the Minnesota Reformer.

“Minnesota’s public programs don’t adequately guard against organization fraud,” the Somali American said. He added that many Somalis are “skilled professionals whose experience and education credentials are not recognized in the U.S.”

“Somalis inherently trust one another. This creates a vast opening for fraudsters,” he continued.

Decades ago Phyllis Schlafly criticized the lack of assimilation by refugees and other immigrants in our country. The fraudulent conduct worsens because tribal behavior dominates in these non-assimilated communities, rather than a competitive market that helps keep participants honest.

Many millions of these dollars stolen from the government in Minnesota are funneled to Al-Shabaab back in Somalia. Al-Shabaab seeks to impose strict Sharia Law in Somalia, and is affiliated with the notorious al-Qaeda.

The City Journal quotes a former official who worked on the Minneapolis Joint Terrorism Task Force to say, “Every scrap of economic activity, in the Twin Cities [Minneapolis-St. Paul], in America, throughout Western Europe, anywhere Somalis are concentrated, every cent that is sent back to Somalia benefits Al-Shabaab in some way.”

“The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer,” observed another expert on terrorism quoted by the City Journal.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who is a Republican congressman from Minnesota, demanded on Monday that there be an investigation into this. “Minnesota has become the land of 10,000 frauds under Tim Walz,” declared Rep. Emmer in a play on its “10,000 lakes” nickname.

News that stolen taxpayer dollars are funding Al-Shabaab terrorists “is not only a grave national security concern, it’s a slap in the face to the hardworking, law-abiding people of Minnesota,” Rep. Emmer said.

Located in East Africa on the equator, Somalian temperatures commonly exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and its capital, Mogadishu, has been called the world’s most dangerous city. It was senseless for Somalis ever to be relocated to the cold climate and different culture of Minnesota in the first place.

But so many Somalis have resettled now in Minnesota that they have oversized political clout in elections there. “If you don’t win the Somali community, you can’t win Minneapolis,” observed former Minnesota state senator David Gaither. “And if you don’t win Minneapolis, you can’t win the state,” he added.

Amid all this fraud, Gov. Tim Walz seeks reelection to a third term as governor of Minnesota. Republicans are campaigning against him on this issue of rampant fraud under Walz’s watch.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

GOP Should Focus on Young Voters’ Hard Times

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Hard times have hit young Americans, who are a pivotal voting bloc. Jobs are scarce, housing is unaffordable, student debt is suffocating, and foreign labor has taken away opportunities from American workers.

A downturn in the hiring of college graduates leaves the class of 2026 victims facing the weakest job market in five years. A National Association of Colleges and Employers survey found that 51% of employers rate the job market for college grads as “poor” or merely “fair,” and only 2% said it is “excellent.”

This does not bode well on Election Day for the GOP. The landslide victory by socialist Zohran Mamdani for Mayor of New York City was propelled by young voters, despite warnings that electing him would be a big mistake.

Polling indicates that 75% of young voters in New York City cast their ballots for Mamdani, and there was a surge in youth turnout. The blowout victories by Democrats in New Jersey and Virginia were also propelled by sharp increases in turnout by young voters.

The redistricting ballot initiative in California to send more Democrats to Congress was enacted with 80% support by young voters, and a large turnout by them. While some of this is due to a superior get-out-the-vote operation by Leftist groups, young people are struggling financially today.

Young adults should not face astronomical costs for health insurance, as they are mostly healthy and typically need coverage against only catastrophic losses. They should be able to purchase low-cost health insurance that is not dependent on their employer, so that they do not lose it when they are laid off or switch jobs.

Young adults are vastly overpaying for health insurance, as they are required to fund costly care they typically never need. The current system of tying tax breaks to employer-based health insurance no longer works, as the record 14.8% of American-born, working-age men who lack a job has increased from 4.2% in 1960.

Young men today are additionally burdened by gambling debts, due to the explosion in sports gambling that is heavily promoted with advertising. One out of every four of these men is unable to pay a bill because of his gambling losses.

Only 44% of young voters aged 18-29 have any investments in the stock market, so news of Wall Street records does not help with that demographic. Most of those voters are in debt.

In an interview with Tucker Carlson weeks before he was assassinated, Charlie Kirk explained how debt has radicalized the young generation. Kirk explained that in the 1970s and 1980s, the price of a home was about three times the average income.

Today, the price of a home is as high as seven times the average income. The average age of a first-time homeowner has increased by ten years, from 30 to 40, and people are marrying later, perhaps likewise due to economic difficulties.

“Gen Z owes the most money in any generation in history,” warned Charlie Kirk in the interview. He added that young adults are not living beyond their means, but “most are actually doing this to meet their means.”

Verizon just announced its biggest layoff ever, cutting loose a breathtaking 15,000 jobs. Layoffs by large, typically profitable corporations just reached their highest level for an October in 22 years.

Ending the racket of allowing hundreds of thousands of foreigners to continue to take jobs away from American college graduates would help. For fiscal year 2025, the four highest exploiters of H-1B visas for foreigners are Amazon, Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, and Google.

Private equity is a culprit in increasing costs and eliminating jobs, and Republicans are allowing Democrats like Mamdani to take the lead in scrutinizing predatory practices. Mamdani picked as co-chair of his transition team Lina Khan, the former Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair who investigated private equity tactics.

Toys “R” Us was a well-liked retailer employing 31,000 people, until private equity acquired it in a leveraged buyout. Private equity typically loads its target with debt, and a company acquired in this way is 10 times more likely to go bankrupt as Toys “R” Us then did.

Other companies that spiraled downward into bankruptcy after being acquired by private equity include Red Lobster restaurants, Payless shoes, Party City, Sears, Envision Healthcare, and the multi-state hospital system Steward Health Care. Each time this happens, jobs and healthy competition are lost, and prices increase.

An estimated 40% of emergency rooms in our country are controlled by private equity firms, and deaths increased as a result. Billed charges for visiting an emergency room are far higher, even after adjusting for inflation, than a generation ago.

Republicans should address the economic hardship of young voters as a high priority to have any chance of electoral success.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

“Full, Complete” Pardons for 2020 Presidential Electors

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Fake news was working overtime on Monday by declaring, without authority, that the “full, complete” presidential pardons related to the 2020 presidential election cannot protect against bogus state charges arising from that election. The liberal media wrongly insisted that the Pardon Clause in the U.S. Constitution applies only to charges brought by federal prosecutors.

Not so. The Pardon Clause states that the President “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Every attempt in court to narrow the scope of the Pardon Clause has failed.

Our system of dual sovereigns, federal and state, is subject to the Supremacy Clause, which means that state sovereignty cannot limit the scope of the Pardon Clause. It was modeled on the vast, nearly unlimited pardon power of the King of England.

The newly pardoned 77 alternate electors, federal officials, attorneys and activists who objected to voter fraud in 2020 were acting in defense of the integrity of a presidential election, and thus in defense of the United States. Their conduct is fully pardonable by the President, which Trump has appropriately done.

Yet naysayers argue that the term “United States” in the Pardon Clause means only crimes prosecuted by the federal government. If that were true, then the Supreme Court would not have upheld in Ex parte Wells (1856) the last-minute commutation of a death penalty by President Millard Fillmore of a man convicted of murder in a District of Columbia court, as there were no federal common law crimes.

Federal law never denied women the right to vote, but New York prosecuted Susan B. Anthony for voting illegally in the 1872 presidential election, and prosecuted local officials for allowing her to vote. After his reelection as our 18th President, U.S. Grant pardoned the state officials for their violation of state law, and in 2020 President Trump pardoned Susan B. Anthony for casting an illegal vote.

Just last week an all-Democrat panel of the Second Circuit ruled in favor of Trump’s argument that the charges against him in the so-called hush money case that resulted in 34 felonies should have been heard in a federal court. The charges brought by the New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg accused Trump of violating campaign finance laws during his 2016 campaign for President of the United States.

If a case can be heard in federal court, as all Trump-related cases can be, then the charges are pardonable by the president. No one credibly doubted that President Ford’s pardon of President Nixon protected him against all potential charges relating to the Watergate scandal, including non-federal ones.

The tradition of complete pardons by the president, which began with President George Washington, has always precluded prosecution of the underlying conduct in state court. Those who doubt this broad scope of the pardon power cannot cite any example of a beneficiary of a presidential pardon being prosecuted in state court for the same conduct.

Even Democrat-dominated New York courts shut down an attempted prosecution of Paul Manafort after President Trump granted him a pardon. While the rationale for that decision was based on New York’s strong rule against double jeopardy, the result was to prohibit a first-of-its-kind state prosecution of conduct excused by a presidential pardon.

The ban on slavery in the 13th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits its use “within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” This is not a reference to the federal government but to all of the States and territories, as demonstrated by the plural pronoun for jurisdiction.

The U.S. Supreme Court emphatically held after the Civil War, in Ex parte Garland (1867), that the presidential pardon “is unlimited, with the exception” for cases of impeachment. “It extends to every offence known to the law,” not merely to federal crimes.

Alexander Hamilton, a Framer of our Constitution, wrote favorably of a broad pardon power in The Federalist No. 74. Hamilton explained, “The criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity that without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel.”

The use of the term “United States” to mean only the federal government and only federal laws is a modern distortion of the elite in Washington, D.C., to puff themselves up. The national liberal media distorts this further by obsessively reporting on D.C. as if that enclave represented the entire United States.

As the Supreme Court recognized in Schick v. Reed (1974), the Framers of the Pardon Clause stated that this power is a “prerogative” of the President, which ought not be “fettered or embarrassed.” The presidential pardon power would be impermissibly undermined if federal charges could be refiled as state charges by an unscrupulous local prosecutor like Alvin Bragg.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

National Review on Phyllis Schlafly

Rachel Lu published The Rise of a Populist Influencer in the Age of Print Media, archived here, in National Review.

There are responses by Mark Hemingway and Anne Schlafly, archived here.

Lu wrote a brief rejoinder.

Lu takes some unnecessary and unfounded cheap shots.

Update: Another response is National Review Smears Schlafly.