What’s emerging from Minnesota is no longer being described as a series of isolated fraud cases or bureaucratic mishaps. According to senior officials in the Trump administration, it looks far more systemic — a durable political machine built on taxpayer money, protected by intimidation, and rewarded at the ballot box.
Jim O’Neill, the deputy secretary of Health and Human Services, did not mince words when he spoke to Alpha News’ Liz Collin earlier this month. What he described sounded less like regulatory failure and more like entrenched patronage. In his telling, Minnesota operates with a network of officials who either look the other way or fully understand what’s happening, communities that receive enormous public grants, and a political structure that keeps those same officials in power by delivering votes in return.
Even the far-left New York Times has admitted that Somalians are raised in a culture of widespread theft and graft in their country, as more and more massive Somali welfare fraud schemes come to light in Minnesota. pic.twitter.com/WBvqZhdBSv
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) December 1, 2025
That dynamic, O’Neill said, isn’t accidental. It’s enduring. It’s resilient. And it’s designed to maintain control.
Former television personality turned federal administrator Mehmet Oz, now heading the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, echoed that assessment. He described a culture of intimidation inside Minnesota agencies, where employees — including retirees — have quietly acknowledged wrongdoing but felt unable or unwilling to challenge it. Oz’s observation was blunt and unsettling: corruption doesn’t thrive because everyone is evil, but because too many people stay silent when they know something is wrong.
History offers an uncomfortable parallel. Immigrant-driven political machines are not new to American cities. From Boston’s Irish-dominated patronage system under James Curley to New York’s infamous Tammany Hall, these structures often blended social support, political loyalty, and corruption into a single apparatus. They elevated communities, but they also enriched insiders and punished dissent — until federal intervention or demographic shifts finally broke their grip.
EXCLUSIVE: ‘The mob mentality is stunning’—Dr. Oz and HHS Sec. O’Neill discuss fraud in Minnesota
Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and Jim O’Neill, deputy secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), met with Liz Collin for an… pic.twitter.com/YNxc98y0vy
— Alpha News (@AlphaNews) January 15, 2026
What makes Minnesota different, administration officials argue, is the scale. Oz cited one autism-related Medicaid program that ballooned from a projected $3 million to roughly $400 million. The consequence wasn’t just wasted money. It was the distortion of care itself, where falsely labeled cases crowded out children who genuinely needed services. Fraud, in this framing, isn’t victimless. It actively harms the most vulnerable.
The administration insists this is not about targeting Minnesota for political reasons. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has made clear that the approach is deliberate and methodical. No splashy arrests. No rushed headlines. Instead, investigators are building cases designed to hold up in court — cases strong enough to force plea deals and expose higher-level operators.
And Minnesota, Bessent says, is only the beginning.
