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Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s decision to deliver a lengthy portion of his victory speech in Somali was never going to sit well with voters who expect their elected officials to speak plainly to all constituents. Video of Frey switching to Somali and leading chants for his Somali supporters spread quickly across social media, prompting a chorus of conservative critics who called the move embarrassing and a sign of political pandering.
The timing of that multilingual flourish could not have been worse. Minnesota has been grappling with a string of fraud scandals tied to state welfare programs — from the Housing Stabilization Services rollout to the Feeding Our Future nutrition program — that federal and state officials warn could end up costing taxpayers in the hundreds of millions and, by some estimates, approach a billion dollars.
Federal prosecutors have already unsealed indictments in connection with the HSS program, and state lawmakers publicly flagged dozens of providers whose payments were terminated amid “credible allegations of fraud.” The initial rounds of criminal charges announced in September underscored that these were not simple billing errors but allegedly organized schemes involving fictitious companies and sham claims.
Some reporting has even raised alarms about portions of the misappropriated funds being routed through informal money-transfer networks overseas, with law enforcement and investigative journalists probing whether any of those transfers reached extremist groups — allegations the press has explored while noting that terrorism-financing charges have not been universally filed. This is exactly the kind of complexity that demands sober, transparent leadership in Minneapolis, not political theater.
Instead of standing squarely with hardworking taxpayers demanding answers and accountability, Frey opted for a display that reads like identity-politics theater: speaking in the language of one community while the rest of the city faces the scandal’s fallout. That decision has inflamed legitimate concerns that local leaders are more interested in electoral math and coalition-building than in defending the public purse and the rule of law.
Americans of every background want safe, honest government; they do not want their tax dollars siphoned off through clever phantoms and shell companies while elected officials offer perfunctory sympathy and symbolic gestures. Conservatives are right to demand that public servants prioritize oversight, prosecutions where appropriate, and clear communication in English when addressing the whole city, so every taxpayer can understand where their money is going.
To the mayor and to Democrats who reflexively defend these programs: stop treating enforcement as a political problem and start treating it as a policy failure. The Walz administration has at least moved toward a third-party audit of high-risk Medicaid billing to try to blunt the bleeding, but audits are not enough without real consequences for fraudsters and systemic reforms to prevent another wave of abuse.
This is about common-sense governance and respect for the American taxpayers who keep our communities running. If Minneapolis’ leadership insists on playing identity politics at the podium while serious criminal investigations and fiscal carnage unfold, voters should remember which officials stood with them and which chose spectacle over stewardship.
