Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison told participants in the Feeding Our Future fraud scandal, “I’m here to help.” He also said of state officials, “Let’s just go fight these people,” according to a 2021 audio recording now receiving renewed scrutiny after more than 50 guilty pleas in the scandal. The audio, which Ellison has not denied, reveals fraudsters complaining that Minnesota agencies refused to reimburse them for money they claimed to have spent feeding children—claims found false in court. The fraudsters accused agencies of racism, and Ellison seemed to take these claims seriously, saying he would forward them to his staff. Ellison’s press secretary, Brian Evans, flatly denied that the AG took any action to fulfill the implied promise to “fight” state agencies. “During the meeting, Attorney General Ellison very clearly asked attendees to share examples of the discriminatory or unfair conduct they claim to have faced,” Evans told The Daily Signal. “They did not do so, and no action was taken in support of them.” After the meeting, during which fraudsters suggested they would support Ellison’s reelection campaign, donors connected to the fraud ponied up cash. “AG Ellison returned every contribution from the handful of people associated with Feeding Our Future as soon as he was made aware of those connections,” Evans told The Daily Signal. In an April op-ed, Ellison wrote that these “professional scammers” tried “using outrageous claims of discrimination as a pretense to cover for their scheme to defraud the federal government.” Bill Glahn, a policy fellow with the conservative-leaning Center of the American Experiment, first published the audio recording. “Yeah, I have an ax to grind, sure, but the facts are the facts,” Glahn told The Daily Signal in a phone call Thursday. He noted that meeting attendees mentioned a Feeding Our Future lawsuit. “Attorneys working for Keith Ellison were representing the Department of Education in this lawsuit filed by the people in the room, and he’s pledging his support to the plaintiffs while he’s representing the defendants,” Glahn said. Glahn called this “highly unethical.” Rather than just saying, “I’ll look into this,” Ellison gave “pledges of support” and added “his own anecdotes about how state government is racist,” Glahn explained. He also noted that Ellison didn’t have time to act on his pledge “because the FBI raided [Feeding Our Future] offices five weeks later.” The Timeline Federal authorities charged 78 defendants connected to the $250 million Feeding Our Future scheme, 56 of whom have pleaded guilty. Authorities say Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock launched the fraud scheme in April 2020. Feeding Our Future sued the state’s Department of Education for racism in November 2020, but the department settled one month later. The department suspended payments to the nonprofit on March 30, 2021, and the nonprofit again sued, leading to more payments three months later. Ellison met with the fraudsters on Dec. 11, 2021, and some Feeding Our Future associates gave thousands to his campaign shortly afterward. Federal agents executed search warrants on Jan. 20, 2022, leading to the first indictments in September 2022. Glahn said he acquired the audio from Kenneth Udoibok, the defense attorney for Bock, who was convicted in March. Udoibok did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment. What Did Ellison Say? The recording reveals Ellison echoing racism complaints. “Every time East African business owners enter a market segment, these various departments and counties come in arbitrary fashions, create unnecessary roadblocks and hurdles, and at times conduct business in a very racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic manner,” complains Abshir Omar, a consultant for Feeding Our Future who has not been charged with any wrongdoing. Ikram Mohammed, another Feeding Our Future consultant who faces fraud and bribery charges, describes the denial of funds as “a form of violence against our community under the color of law.” Ellison says of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, “he knows that there’s a lot of unfair discriminatory stuff going on with East African businesses, I know it.” He notes he does not trust Jodi Harpstead, then commissioner of the Department of Human Services, to stop discrimination. Harpstead stepped down in February. Ellison’s press secretary told The Daily Signal that the AG had no role in her departure. “We are in the middle of a battle with the agencies now,” Ellison says in the recording. Ellison’s press secretary, speaking to The Daily Signal, noted that the AG asks for evidence of alleged discrimination. In one case, Ellison notes, “That’s super unfortunate, but it may not be malicious.” The press secretary also pointed out that when the fraudsters warn Ellison he might suffer politically for supporting them, the AG replies, “I’m not here because I think it’s going to help my reelection.” “The attorney general very clearly rejects their implicit offer of campaign support,” Evans said. “Instead, he affirms that he took the meeting to do the work of the office and stand up to injustice.” Yet, immediately after that statement, Ellison says, “So, let’s just go fight these people. The question is figuring out exactly how to put a stop to it, right? The how is the real question for me, here.” “I’m telling you, sue, sue, sue,” he later advises. The AG repeatedly says he is forwarding attendees’ concerns to his team. “I already got my team digging into this,” he says. “When should we come together again to discuss this?” Returning Donations Many of those connected to Feeding Our Future contributed $2,500 to Ellison’s campaign on Dec. 20, 2021. Gandi Mohamed, who faces fraud and money-laundering charges, did so, as did other business partners who have not been indicted—Mahad Hassan, Jamal Hashi, and Khadija Ali. Liban Alishire, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering, contributed $2,500 on May 27, 2022. Ellison returned Alishire’s contribution on Sept. 20, 2022. Ellison’s press secretary suggested the contributions from the other four individuals had been returned. If so, that should show up on the next round of campaign finance disclosures, Glahn said. ?FAILURE OF ASSIMILATIONMost of the Minnesota fraudsters are of Somali descent—to a degree that raises questions about the community.That said, some of the best whistleblowers opposing this fraud are of Somali heritage, too.Here's what I told @JesseKellyDC about it. pic.twitter.com/LMgII86ozz— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) December 7, 2025 The post Minnesota AG Said, ‘Let’s Just Go Fight’ State Officials on Behalf of Feeding Our Future Fraudsters, Audio Reveals appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Religion plays a larger part in the lives of Republican voters than in the lives of their Democrat counterparts, according to a new survey. A report from the Pew Research Center released late last month found that two-thirds (66%) of Republicans believe “with absolute certainty” in God, compared to only 41% of Democrats who said the same—a 25-point difference. Roughly half of Republicans also said that religion is “very important” in their lives (48%) and that they pray daily (52%), while only 28% of Democrats described religion as “very important” and just over one third (35%) said that they pray daily. Regular church attendance (at least once a month) scored lower among both groups: 41% among Republicans and only 24% among Democrats. In comments to The Washington Stand, Joseph Backholm, senior fellow for Biblical Worldview at Family Research Council, shared his insights on the data. “I think there are a couple things happening here that are related. First, modern progressivism is inherently secular,” he explained. “It is based on the idea that personal fulfillment is the greatest good, feelings determine truth, and the satisfaction of personal desires is the only path to happiness. It stands in opposition to the idea that we are ultimately to submit to the will of a power greater than ours.” Backholm continued, “So the more progressive you are, the less you will see the idea of God as true or helpful, so the more likely you are to be secular. Of course, there are people who try to be both religious and progressive, but they end up worshipping a God that requires nothing of them and agrees with them about everything, so it’s the same as not having a God at all.” “There’s a chicken-and-egg component to the relationship between religion and politics,” Backholm said, addressing whether Republicans are more religious than Democrats because their political views foster faith or whether the more religiously-devout tend towards Republican politics because they align more nearly with their faith. “There’s no doubt that political beliefs shape religious beliefs. In fact, in recent years, we’ve seen people’s journey to Christianity begin with a realization that leftism doesn’t work and wanting to understand why. So, politics can influence religion,” the Biblical Worldview scholar explained. “But sometimes our politics becomes our religion. If we don’t believe truth exists outside of us, once we make up our mind politically, we create a community and even a religion that affirms our political convictions,” he continued. “In this sense,” he explained, “our politics becomes our religion because it is the North Star around which we orient everything else. This can happen on the Right and the Left, but it’s more common on the Left, because the Left is philosophically opposed to the idea of fixed truth,” Backholm posited. “Conservativism, at least in the sense that I understand it, requires us to acknowledge an authority above us and encourages us to submit to that authority. Secularism denies an ultimate higher power.” The Pew Research study also discovered that while Republicans tended to maintain similar religious trends when examined by racial demographic—for example, 48% of white Republicans and 49% of both black and Hispanic Republicans say that religion is “very important” to them—Democrats differ more widely on religious matters depending on their race or ethnicity. Among white Democrats, 29% said that they believe in God, 24% said that they pray daily, and only 17% described religion as “very important” or said that they attend church services regularly. Among black Democrats, however, 75% said that they believe in God, 65% reported that they pray daily, 60% classified religion as “very important,” and 42% said that they attend church services regularly. Hispanic Democrats fell in between the two demographics but were still almost twice as likely to believe in God, pray daily, describe religion as “very important,” and attend church services regularly as white Democrats. Backholm suggested that “cultural realities partially explain the ethnic difference. Being a Democrat was not always so closely related to hostility to God in the way it is today.” He explained, “Black and Hispanic communities were Democrats for different reasons than white communities, and that relationship became personal and emotional as much as anything else. So, while the Democratic Party is hostile to the religious values many of them still hold, they find it difficult to leave the party for some of the same reasons it would be hard to leave your family and say you’ll never see them on Christmas again.” “White secular people and religious black and brown people end up in the same place, but it’s often for different reasons,” Backholm expounded. “Those reasons are not reconcilable, which is why we’re seeing a fracture of the traditional Democratic base. The rich white secularists are moving over the Democratic party while poor and middle class black and brown people are finding their beliefs increasingly incompatible with the Democratic Party and leaving as a result.” In the 2016 presidential election, for example, 82% of black men voted for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. By 2020, only 79% of black men voted for the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, and only 77% voted for Biden’s deputy, Kamal Harris, in 2024. “These kinds of cultural shifts don’t happen all at once, but they are happening because they must happen,” Backholm postulated. “Biblical Christianity is incompatible with modern progressivism. Of course, that doesn’t mean the Republican Party is a paragon of virtue, but its principles are not antagonistic to God and the creation order.” According to the Pew Research Center, 78% of white Republicans, 61% of black Republicans, 70% of Hispanic Republicans, and 41% of Asian Republicans identified as Christian, as did 42% of white Democrats, 76% of black Democrats, 63% of Hispanic Democrats, and 28% of Asian Democrats. In total, 74% of surveyed Republicans identified as Christian and 20% as “religiously unaffiliated,” while 50% of Democrats identified as Christian and 40% identified as religiously unaffiliated. Originally published by The Washington Times. The post Data: Republicans Two Times More Likely to Be Religious Than Democrats appeared first on The Daily Signal.

With the 2026 midterms in sight, one major question on Capitol Hill is if Republicans will vote on the Chloe Cole Act, a bill that seeks to end the chemical or surgical mutilation of children. The legislation was introduced by Rep. Bob Onder, R-Mo., in September and is currently cosponsored by more than 30 Republicans in the House, and supported by Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Mont. in the Senate.  Onder’s office referred The Daily Signal to the congressman’s September statement on the legislation. “As a member of Congress, a doctor, a parent, and an American, I am committed to protecting our nation’s children. That’s why I am proud to introduce the Chloe Cole Act, a landmark bill that will put a permanent stop to one of the most dangerous and barbaric medical procedures in modern history,” Onder said. “This is a massive issue that played a huge role in the last election cycle,” Mary Frances Devlin of the American Principles Project told The Daily Signal. “It’s something that Republicans should act on so that they can run on it again in the midterm cycle.” The legislation is named in honor of Chloe Cole, a former trans-identifying child who was put on puberty blockers and testosterone when she was just 13 and had a double mastectomy when she was 15. Now an adult, Cole publicly advocates against the practices that mutilated her as a child.  The bill comes as other legislative efforts to codify the Trump administration’s efforts to end these so-called treatments that harm minors. While President Donald Trump has sought to end transgender procedures being used on minors through Executive Order 14187, an executive order signed in the first few weeks of his presidency, his executive action on the issue could be undone by a future president. The act aims to enshrine the Trump administration’s policy into federal law, and it was transmitted to Congress by the Department of Justice. According to the bill, the legislation’s purpose is to “prohibit health care professionals, hospitals, or clinics from participating in the chemical or surgical mutilation of a child and to provide a private right of action for children and the parents of children whose healthy body parts have been damaged by medical professionals practicing chemical and surgical mutilation.” The legislative proposal does provide exemptions to the prohibition for issues like the treatment of infections and traumatic bodily injuries. Notably, the private right of action would apply to procedures that occurred before the enactment of the act. Putting the legislation up for a vote would test the Democratic Party’s commitment to protecting “transgender Americans’ access to health care and coverage, including medically necessary gender-affirming care,” as the 2024 Democratic Party platform positively framed the Biden administration’s policies. “I think this would be a really good opportunity to see how [Democrats are] going to approach social issues as they look towards 2028 and kind of see where the base is, where they’re more extreme members, where they’re more moderates are in this issue,” Devlin said. “But also, it’s really important to be able to use this issue as an election issue in those Senate races.” She compared the vote to the one taken on protecting females in women’s sports at the beginning of this Congress. “Obviously, it’s the right thing to do, but it also is incredibly useful to be able to target Democrats in narrow races for taking votes that the American people just absolutely are not on board with,” Devlin concluded. The proposed legislation comes after prominent western European countries have reassessed and restricted their medical interventions on trans-identifying minors after review of the treatments. That list includes Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The German Medical Association, which is one of the highest-ranking medical bodies in Germany, has also called for the restricted use of medical interventions for minors with gender dysphoria. The post Will House Vote on Chloe Cole Act to Ban Trans ‘Treatments’? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

New Venture Fund, a hub of the Left’s dark money network, bankrolls both sides of climate lawfare: the lawyers who file lawsuits against energy companies and a nonprofit training judges to view such cases favorably. The fund, however, claims these projects are “unrelated.” In its 2024 tax filing, New Venture Fund reported sending $2.3 million to Sher Edling, L.L.P., a law firm that represents Democratic prosecutors when they file climate litigation against tax filings. The fund also gave $1.25 million to the Environmental Law Institute, a nonprofit that trains judges how to approach their work to “make environmental, economic, and social progress.” “New Venture Fund works with numerous projects and institutional funders to advance their missions on a variety of issues, including education, health care, and the environment,” a spokesperson for the nonprofit told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday. “Our grants to Sher Edling and the Environmental Law Institute were made on behalf of two separate fiscally sponsored projects. These grants are unrelated and have no connection to each other.” New Venture Fund does direct money from donors to fiscally sponsored projects, a model that critics say allows donors to cloak which projects their funding supports. Even so, Sher Edling has represented lawsuits that arise before judges who have worked with the Environmental Law Institute. As The Washington Free Beacon previously reported, Sher Edling has taken up lawsuits against the oil industry on behalf of at least nine Democrat-run states and more than a dozen Democrat-run cities. The lawsuits accuse oil companies of causing climate change and deceiving the public about the alleged harms of burning fossil fuels. Sher Edling represented the city and county of Honolulu in a 2020 lawsuit seeking to force Sunoco, ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevon, BP, and others to compensate them for coastal erosion, tropical storms, and flooding. Hawaii Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Recktenwald allowed the case to proceed in late 2023. In December 2022, Recktenwald spoke at an Environmental Law Institute event on “Hurricanes in a Changing Climate and Related Litigation.” ELI’s Climate Judiciary Project aims “to provide neutral, objective information to the judiciary about the science of climate change as understood by the expert scientific community and relevant to current and future litigation,” according to its website. Since its creation in 2018, the project estimates that it has hosted more than 50 events and trained more than 2,000 judges. “The Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project isn’t education; it’s a backdoor lobbying effort targeting judges with materials crafted by climate activists and litigation insiders,” Jason Isaac, founder and CEO of the American Energy Institute, previously told The Daily Signal. He called it a “scheme to rig the courts against American energy.” ELI says it does not advise judges how they should rule on any issue. “The Climate Judiciary Project does not participate in litigation, support or coordinate with any parties related to any litigation, or advise judges on how they should rule on any issue or in any case,” ELI Communications Director Nick Collins told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday. The Environmental Protection Agency canceled two grants to the Environmental Law Institute, which had sought to integrate “environmental justice in restoration and protection programs” and build “capacity to incorporate climate change in compensatory mitigation projects.” “Since day one, the Trump EPA has been crystal clear that the Biden-Harris administration shouldn’t have forced their radical agenda of wasteful DEI programs and ‘environmental justice’ preferencing on the EPA’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment,” an agency spokesperson told The Daily Signal. The ELI defended its relationship with the Biden EPA. “Through every administration, the Environmental Law Institute has worked closely with the EPA to ensure Americans have access to clean air and water,” the spokesperson told The Daily Signal. “To do its work ELI receives support from a wide range of sources, including energy companies, private philanthropy, and individual donors, but no funder dictates our work. Nor does shared philanthropic support create partiality or a conflict of interest, and the assertion that they do is false and ridiculous.” Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, who led a group of state litigators in urging the EPA to defund ELI, condemned the Climate Judiciary Project’s efforts as “lawfare.” “This is the Left not being able to get their agenda passed through the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Senate, so what do they do? They shift their tactics and they run to their buddies on the judiciary,” Knudsen previously told The Daily Signal. The post PLAYING BOTH ENDS OF THE COURT? Leftist Dark Money Group Defends Funding Climate Litigators and NGO That Trains Judges appeared first on The Daily Signal.

All week long, I have tried to cry for the narco-terrorists who survived a U.S. military strike on their drug-laden boat, only to be snuffed in a second attack. Somehow, my eyes have stayed totally dry. The only thing wrong with the Venezuelan Two-Step is that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth did not hold a press conference and take full credit for this operation. Critics from left to right have clutched their pearls so hard over this episode that their hands are smothered in pearl dust. The sane and thoughtful Chris Whiton is among the detractors. Writing in Tuesday’s Substack, the Trump 45 foreign-affairs advisor complained: “It is a federal crime for a U.S. national or servicemember to willfully kill wounded, sick, or shipwrecked combatants who are protected by the Geneva Conventions.” Whiton would be correct, if an overhead MS-9 Reaper drone detonated a Venezuelan Navy vessel and then circled back to slam a second Hellfire missile onto the surviving sailors who bobbed beside their flaming ship. Caracas’ sailors are combatants, subject to the Geneva Convention, which Venezuela signed in 1956. However, the bad hombres in those narcotics-stuffed boats are not Venezuelan sailors. They are private-sector criminals, namely drug cartel thugs. President Trump designated the Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua a terrorist group. Thus, these vessels carry terrorists or, at least, terror-linked criminals. Tren de Aragua and their lawless associates did not sign the Geneva Convention. As non-state actors, they are not entitled to its protections. The one-two punch on this criminal/terrorist boat was no less legal than bombing an ISIS safehouse and then hitting it again, if survivors of the first blast crawled from the wreckage, to fight another day. The right thing to do: Hammer them anew, so they no longer menace society. If the U.S. armed forces no longer may kill narco-terrorists who survive single-tap strikes, then these individuals suddenly have grown a right to life that must be respected. If so, leaving them clinging to flaming flotsam on the high seas is a de facto death penalty. Those lucky enough to escape death from above might get scooped up by a yacht sailing toward the Dutch Antilles. More likely, however, any such survivors would succumb to exposure, sharks, or their injuries. Since neglect probably would kill these survivors, one could argue that the U.S. military has a moral obligation to deploy an expeditionary force to fish these cartelistos from the water and whisk them to the nearest hospital. If Hegseth’s foes are to be believed, anything less would be the ethical equivalent of a Santa Monica lifeguard spotting a beachgoer floundering in the water and then leaving his tower for lunch.  So, imagine that Navy Seals aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford swoop in to save these survivors. Surprise! An enraged narco-terrorists opens fire on the incoming Gringos. Three Seals tumble into the Caribbean, dead. What would those bashing Hegseth say then? Meanwhile, a Trump-hostile news agency reports that those who were blown apart by that second bomb were not model citizens. “According to a source familiar with the incident, the two survivors climbed back onto the boat after the initial strike,” ABC’s Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz said on Wednesday’s “World News Tonight.” “They were believed to be potentially in communication with others and salvaging some of the drugs. Because of that, it was determined they were still in the fight and valid targets. A JAG officer was also giving legal advice.” There is a simple solution to all of this: Those who prefer not to get obliterated in narcotics boats or wind up clutching the wreckage after military assaults should spend their days in more worthwhile ways. In short, if you want to stay alive and well, do not smuggle fentanyl and other deadly drugs into the United States of America. Secretary Pete Hegseth’s response to this entire controversy should be two words:  “You’re welcome.” We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Three Cheers for the Pentagon’s Two-Step Boat Attack appeared first on The Daily Signal.