They froze $129 million over fraud that’s already solved. Iran can tell you where this goes.
Fifty people are already in prison. The ringleader got convicted in March. The DOJ literally called it the largest pandemic fraud prosecution in the country.
And the USDA just froze $129 million to Minnesota anyway. For the fraud that’s already been solved.
I need you to understand how brazen this is.
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins – who, by the way, was running the America First Policy Institute before this, basically a Trump policy shop – sent a letter demanding that Governor Walz justify every single federal dollar Minnesota has spent since January 2025. The whole state. Every transaction. They get 30 days.
Thirty days to account for an entire state’s federal spending. That’s not a request. That’s a middle finger dressed up as paperwork.
The Feeding Our Future fraud was real. Aimee Bock and her crew stole nearly $250 million from child nutrition programs during COVID – fake meal counts for kids who didn’t exist. Absolutely worth prosecuting. And it was prosecuted. Over 50 people pled guilty or got convicted. The system worked exactly like it’s supposed to work.
So why punish the whole state now?
Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because Tim Walz was on the Democratic ticket eight months ago. Maybe because he almost became Vice President and Trump is still mad about it.
Walz announced this week he’s not running for re-election. Said the investigations are a “distraction.” The man got hounded out of his own political future over fraud he didn’t commit that was already being handled before any of this started.
Mission accomplished, I guess.
Here’s what actually gets cut when you freeze $129 million: SNAP benefits. School lunch programs. Rural agricultural funding. The people getting punished aren’t the fraudsters – those people are literally in prison. The people getting punished are families buying groceries and kids eating lunch.
The letter even pre-emptively accuses critics of playing the race card. Built right into the text. You don’t do that if you’re confident in your case. You do that if you know exactly how bad this looks and you’re getting your excuses ready.
This is collective punishment and everyone involved knows it.
But here’s the part that’s really going to cook your brain. The US government has been doing this exact thing to other countries for decades. We just call it sanctions.
Look at Iran right now. “Maximum pressure” has been the policy for years. Nuclear compliance, blah blah blah. You know what maximum pressure actually produced? Economic collapse. Food prices up 72 percent in one year. Currency worthless. Seven million people who can’t afford to eat.
Fifty-seven percent of the country is malnourished. The government is handing out food vouchers worth twelve dollars per family. Twelve dollars. That covers nothing.
Protests broke out in December. The country is kn the brink of collapse – right the fuck now. People in the streets because they’re hungry. Not because of nuclear policy. Because they can’t buy bread.
The sanctions didn’t get compliance. They got millions of desperate people who have nothing left to lose.
And now the same government that created that disaster is testing the playbook domestically. Cut the funding. Blame the locals. Make demands that can’t be met. Wait for them to break.
Hungry people don’t stay compliant forever. They get fed up. They get furious. They stop being afraid and start being dangerous.
The architects of this apparently think it’ll work differently here. That you can starve programs that feed children and call it accountability. That you can punish a state for its governor’s politics and no one will connect the dots.
Iran is showing us in real time what happens when you squeeze people until they can’t eat.
Someone should probably mention that to Brooke Rollins.
SOURCES
https://www.auditor.leg.state.mn.us/sreview/2024/mdefof.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeding_Our_Future
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-to-know-minnesota-fraud-scandal-more-charges-filed-trump-walz/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_economic_crisis https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601056582