Fraud is not isolated nor an anomaly in Minnesota, but part of a longstanding pattern, state lawmakers will tell a congressional panel Wednesday, as they detail interactions with whistleblowers. Members of the Minnesota House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy Committee will testify to the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The Daily Signal reviewed their prepared opening remarks.  The congressional hearing comes two days after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who was the 2024 Democrat vice presidential nominee, dropped his bid for a third term as governor, as he faced increased scrutiny over questions of widespread fraud in the state.  ?On Wednesday, the American people will hear directly from Minnesota state lawmakers who sounded the alarm on this massive fraud.Their warnings were ignored by Governor Tim Walz.Americans deserve answers, and they deserve them now. @BillMelugin_ @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/psua19otrn— Rep. James Comer (@RepJamesComer) January 5, 2026 Minnesota state Rep. Walter Hudson, a Republican, will cite the findings of the nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Auditor of a decades-long pattern of fraud, according to his prepared remarks. “The recent focus on childcare fraud is not an isolated scandal,” Hudson’s prepared remarks say. “It is the latest manifestation of a pattern that has repeated itself for decades across different programs, populations, and funding streams.” His remarks note that the multiple state programs–including Personal Care Assistance, Home and Community-Based Services, COVID-era programs, autism services, adult day care, housing stabilization services, and childcare assistance–all have the same structural features. Those common problems, according to Hudson, are rapid expansion of funding and provider participation; payment systems that prioritize access and speed; verification that occurs after funds are disbursed; and insufficient oversight and accountability. Federal prosecutors have estimated that welfare fraud in the state could have topped $9 billion. Amid the fraud arrests, the Trump administration has withheld funds for certain social programs. Minnesota state Rep. Kristin Robbins, a Republican and chair of the fraud prevention committee, plans to highlight the scale of the problem, outline the work her committee is doing to fight the fraud, and “provide a roadmap for other states” to detect and stop fraud.  House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer, R-Ky. asks in his opening remarks for the hearing, “How many children have gone hungry because fraudsters stole money that was intended to provide them with food?”  “Governor Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Minnesota’s Democratic leadership have either been asleep at the wheel or complicit in these crimes,” Comer’s prepared remarks say.  State Rep. Marion Rarick, a member of the fraud prevention committee, will also discuss her interactions with whistleblowers at the Minnesota Department of Human Services over the last year. Rarick reached a whistleblower by direct message on the social media platform X about a year ago, who replied to her about “potential movement of money to cover losses of federal grant dollars,” according to her prepared remarks.  The congressional panel is already investigating the fraud scandal that has exploded into a national story over the last month and led to federal criminal charges.  Comer requested the U.S. Department of the Treasury provide all relevant Suspicious Activity Reports to support the committee’s investigation into fraud in the state. Comer has also requested transcribed interviews with several Minnesota state officials. During a press conference on Tuesday, Walz said the buck stops with him on problems, but he stressed he had no role in the fraud. He accused Republicans of having a motivation to eliminate social programs.  “The Republicans’ goal is to have none of those programs, and I can guarantee you one way to ensure there’s no fraud, just don’t do the program, and then you will look like states who rank at the bottom in every single initiative,” Walz said.  Walz blamed the Trump administration for an “assault” on Minnesota. “We are under assault, like no other time in our state’s history, because of a petty, vile administration that doesn’t care about the well being of Minnesotans,” Walz said. “My job is to protect the well being of Minnesota.” The post ‘Asleep at the Wheel or Complicit’: House Oversight Delving Into Minnesota Fraud Scandal appeared first on The Daily Signal.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Vice President JD Vance told Salem Radio Network host Scott Jennings on Tuesday that the Trump administration was looking into the “entire network” of organizations that support left-wing violence. President Donald Trump declared Antifa a domestic terrorist organization in a Sept. 17 post on Truth Social, a week after Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated during an event at Utah Valley University. Vance told Jennings that the administration would not just stop at those who threw bricks at United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents or who attacked conservatives. “It’s not just the people who commit the violence, Scott, I mean, look for every person who throws a brick at an ICE agent or takes a shot at a conservative commentator, there’s an entire network behind it,” Vance told Jennings. “Who brought the brick? Who paid for it? Who are the networks, the violence that actually support this stuff, that ferment this stuff? How do people get radicalized, if not for the really crazy rhetoric we see coming from some corners of the far left?” “You know, Scott, even after Charlie was shot there were people who are celebrating, who said that he deserved it,” Vance continued. “All of that is part of a network of left-wing violence. It’s not just the person who pulls the trigger, it’s all the people who support them and make it possible for them to get radicalized in the first place.” During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump survived two attempts on his life one during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the other while he was playing a round of golf in Florida. Ryan Wesley Routh, who was charged with the September 15 attempted assassination, declared his intent for Trump’s death in a letter, according to legal filings. “We have a very aggressive task force right now to try to root out this left-wing political violence, try to find out who’s funding some of this crazy stuff, try to find out who’s buying the bricks that these people are throwing at ICE agents, and I think that’s going to bear some real fruit,” Vance said. “Obviously, that stuff takes time, but I do think the American people should expect that their government is going to respond to this stuff.” ICE facilities in Chicago and Portland, Oregon, have been the site of several riots as resistance to the agency’s efforts targeting undocumented immigrants has increased during President Donald Trump’s second term. During one ICE operation in Chicago, agents were assaulted by multiple attackers who used vehicles to ram cars used by the agency. Before those events, the Department of Homeland Security stated in a Sept. 26 post on X that there had been several violent assaults on an ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois. In Portland, Oregon, left-wing rioters have allegedly attacked conservative reporters covering the unrest and intended to use lasers against aircraft operated by federal law enforcement agencies. Two individuals were killed during a shooting at an ICE office in Dallas on Sept. 24, with the shooter taking his own life. In Texas, there were at least two earlier cases where gunfire was aimed at ICE or Border Patrol locations in July, with ten people being charged in connection with the event in Alvarado, Texas. ICE agents have also been shot at while carrying out enforcement operations in Illinois and California. Originally published by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The post JD Vance Breaks Down the Latest on the Trump Admin’s Crackdown on Left-Wing Violence appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In this episode of “The Tony Kinnett Cast,” Tony Kinnett speaks with Andres Martinez-Fernandez of The Heritage Foundation on what comes next for Venezuela after the greatest military strike in recent history. Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a segment from today’s episode of “The Tony Kinnett Cast.” Subscribe to The Daily Signal’s YouTube page to watch past episodes. TONY KINNETT: Let’s get into some of what this actually means for the rest of the country here in the United States and abroad. So, you’re going to need someone a little bit more learned on this than I am. I know very, very hard to believe. So, we’re going to bring on the one and the only Andres Martinez-Fernandez. He’s the senior policy analyst for Latin America at The Heritage Foundation. So, he reads this stuff all the time in English and in Spanish. Andres, busy weekend, huh? ANDRES MARTINEZ-FERNANDEZ: Definitely, quite an eventful start of the year. TONY KINNETT: So, let’s get right into it and not futz around anymore. There’s been the quibbling, the complaining from some isolated parts of the country that, “what does this have to do with America first?” Take it. ANDRES MARTINEZ-FERNANDEZ: Well, I think it has everything to do with America first. And that’s protecting the American people from live, active, and deadly threats in our own hemisphere. You know, people like to say that this is this is just like, you know, nation building in the Middle East and all the mistakes that we’ve made in the past with our foreign policy. TONY KINNETT: Right. Anyone I don’t like is a neo-con and other stories to tell yourself. ANDRES MARTINEZ-FERNANDEZ: Right, exactly, exactly. But you know what, the reality is that the Venezuelan narco-threats, and the narco-threats within our own hemisphere, which are by far the most dramatic and deadly for the American people. You know we’re talking about 100,000 overdose deaths a year from narcotics alone. TONY KINNETT: Right. ANDRES MARTINEZ-FERNANDEZ: And that’s not even getting into the weaponization of migration and instability that the American people and American cities have lived with for years. All of this has really been ignored by the Washington establishment for decades. You’ve never really seen a serious attention, as far as the foreign policy priorities of the United States to these issues, until President Trump decided that he’s going to break with that. Really what’s a noxious practice of ignoring these core security threats to the United States. And again, this is what affects middle America far more than what happens in parts of the Middle East, in Europe. You know, this is our hemisphere. This is where we live. And ignoring that in a prioritization of issues that some of the establishment prefers to focus on has had deadly consequences for the American people. TONY KINNETT: And there’s definitely no denying that. I do want to ask, of course, we could talk about the ladies on “The View” and their opposition to this. Oh, it’s piracy. Oh, it’s kidnapping. But we are adults in the room. We’ll let the toddlers run off and yell at each other. So, in all seriousness, there was a lot of Russia outposting, a lot of Xi Jinping’s China outposting in Venezuela. This was a launching point for a lot of the precursor chemicals that we saw going sky high in a lot of those MQ-9 and naval strikes happening on those narco boats, something that I just can’t stop watching. It’s too enjoyable to watch narco and human traffickers going sky high! But with that particular foreign intervention in the region, China and Russia got out the sabers and they started shaking them. We’re talking shaking them like skeletons at a Spirit Halloween. So, what in the world does this actually mean for us? Are we actually going see any intervention at all or any diplomatic snub nosing that’s going to be worth anything? Or is the U.N. going to yell for 30 seconds and it’d be over? ANDRES MARTINEZ-FERNANDEZ: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of posturing that we’re seeing and going to continue to see from entities like the U.N. and certainly our adversaries. Russia and China, Iran, have used Venezuela as an outpost in our hemisphere to undermine our interests and undermine our security. So they’re very upset to lose that outpost, which which I think they’re very much on the way to doing. You know, Nicolas Maduro had opened up not only his oil industry and essentially handed that over to Havana, China, Russia, and Iran. But he’s also opened up Venezuela’s national territory, which again, the distance between Venezuela and the U.S. mainland is equivalent to the distance between New York and Texas. This is right in our neighborhood, and there’s nothing between us except for open waters. So that’s left us vulnerable. And it means we need to address that, when particularly when hostile foreign powers and like China and Russia are operating there. TONY KINNETT: One of the benefits about actually talking to someone who studies these things in detail, up close rather than just your broad 30,000-foot influence is you can tell me when someone says they’re manufacturing arm for foreign terrorist organizations or foreign powers have happened in Venezuela. What kind of things was Venezuela putting together? You know, not just, well, crude oil and jerry cans, because obviously they couldn’t refine it. What kind of weapons was Venezuela participating in manufacturing? ANDRES MARTINEZ-FERNANDEZ: Yeah. Well, there was a lot of weapons that were transferred, certainly to the narco-trafficking groups in our hemisphere. Venezuela and the Venezuelan regime made itself a proactive partner of these groups. And, as a result, saw a significant amount of Venezuelan military weaponry making its way into their hands. And they used that to ensure that they could produce and traffic drugs to the United States and elsewhere. So, that was, again, a key aspect of that relationship. And it’s not just the weapons. There was actually public resources, including institutions like the public oil utility, even state-owned aircraft, that were used in furtherance of narco-trafficking activity.So, it’s a been a broad cooperation that you saw there. TONY KINNETT: They did in manufacturing suicide drones and Hezbollah equipment, didn’t they? Or is that Columbia? ANDRES MARTINEZ-FERNANDEZ: Yeah, there was quite a bit of partnership, particularly with Iran, on the development of that capacity. Much of this was really looking at trying to pretend that Venezuela’s regime is still powerful enough to hold off the United States military, which it absolutely wasn’t, as we saw proven. TONY KINNETT: Oh, gotcha. ANDRES MARTINEZ-FERNANDEZ: You know, this was this was a regime that was not even a paper tiger. It just folded immediately when faced with the strength of the U.S. military. And that’s, you know, that calls the bluff of what the Venezuelan regime has been doing for years, which is saying that they can thumb their nose and attack and undermine the United States and stability in our region. And we can’t do anything about it because they’re so powerful. That’s just not the case. TONY KINNETT: Sure. I mean, obviously, when you have you know the Cuba Praetorian Guard who’s walking you around and you have Chinese officials caught in the crossfire. I mean, it’s pathetic. I’ve seen subprime military contracting agencies on their last leg that were better suited than these goofballs. But that’s not a fair comparison. Maybe the French. I’ve seen better French troops than what’s been going on there. No, and in all seriousness, one of the core issues on a lot of Americans’ minds is how much this is going to cost the American over a period of time. Obviously, there are some who aren’t serious, who are suggesting this is going to cause a second migration wave to the United States, which I don’t necessarily see that. Maybe they’re seeing something that I’m not. But a lot of people also have the concern that we’re now going to be giving a bunch of aid to propping up a new regime in Venezuela. What does the future look like? As much as you can gaze into your crystal ball of studies here, what are we seeing in the next couple of months that we should be keeping an eye out for? ANDRES MARTINEZ-FERNANDEZ: Yeah, no, I definitely don’t think that that’s going to be the case as far as a massive bill to the American taxpayer for reconstructing Venezuela. First of all, you know, it’s important to note that right now we don’t have anything like an occupying force in Venezuela. What we have done is very specifically targeted the ringleader of a transnational narco-terrorist group, which was Nicolas Maduro, and taking him off the table. And now we can use the pressure tools that we have, including sanctions, including the threat of further action, and political pressure to make sure that the remnants of that regime don’t fall in back into that practice of undermining U.S. national security. And that instead they halt narco-trafficking, that they halt hosting the most dangerous adversaries of the United States with a base in our hemisphere. And that they go on a path to a transition, which is going to also restore stability and democracy in Venezuela. We can do those things through lower-cost tools than we saw in Iraq. And I think a lot of that is external pressure. But there’s also a lot of resources that can be brought to bear that don’t have to come directly from the American taxpayer. First of all, Venezuela is the country with the largest oil reserves in the world.Venezuela hasn’t been able to tap into that because this regime, socialist regime, is so incompetent and corrupt that they haven’t been able to even maintain an operating oil industry. “Cuba is Abou to COLLAPSE” – Andres Martinez-Fernandez on What’s Next After Trump’s Maduro Arrest – YouTube The post What’s Next After Trump’s Maduro Arrest appeared first on The Daily Signal.

House Republicans enter 2026 with the challenge of securing conservative legislative wins despite narrow margins. On Tuesday, House Republicans formulated a plan for the second year of the 119th Congress in a retreat with President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. The meeting was overshadowed by the death of 65-year-old Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif. “Congress is devastated to learn this morning about the passing of our dear friend and colleague, Doug LaMalfa,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., said in a statement Tuesday. “Doug was a lifelong resident of northern California and deeply loved its people.” Razor-Thin Margins LaMalfa’s death further weakens the Republican House majority just a day after Marjorie Taylor Greene’s retirement from the House due to a feud with Trump.  The GOP currently holds a slim 218 to 213 majority in the chamber, with four vacancies. This means that House leadership can only afford to lose two Republican votes while passing a bill.  Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia has scheduled a March 10 election to fill Greene’s seat, and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California has 14 days to call a special election for LaMalfa’s seat. Congress is devastated to learn this morning about the passing of our dear friend and colleague, Doug LaMalfa. Doug was a lifelong resident of northern California and deeply loved its people. He was as fierce of a fighter for his state’s vast natural resources and beauty as we… pic.twitter.com/xYJdwcpp8W— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) January 6, 2026 Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., acknowledged the difficulty of the situation in a statement to The Daily Signal, but suggested the way out of partisan gridlock could be picking up Democratic support for Republican-crafted legislation. “House Republicans are committed to commonsense proposals that make a meaningful difference in the lives of the American people,” Murphy told The Daily Signal. “These should be bipartisan issues. Slim margins are difficult to work with in Congress but preserving the American Dream should not be a partisan exercise.” Speaker Johnson had some success dealing with slim margins in 2025, uniting the conference’s often unruly factions behind ambitious legislation such as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Time’s Running Out In less than a year, voters will determine which party controls the House of Representatives. The odds have been stacked against Republicans from the very beginning, as only four midterm elections in the last 164 years have resulted in a net gain of House seats for the party in the White House. Democrat control of the House would likely lead to subpoenas of administration officials, an increased likelihood of impeaching Trump, and two years of gridlock for conservative legislation. Rep. Mark Harris, R-N.C., a member of the House Freedom Caucus, is urging aggressive action to enact Trump’s agenda. “The American people expect a Republican-led Congress to deliver results. Alongside President Trump, we must leverage our House and Senate majorities to advance a bold agenda fulfilling more of our promises,” Harris told The Daily Signal. The freedom caucus came into the retreat with a list of legislative goals, including requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship, preventing spending increases in the appropriations process, codifying Trump’s border policies, freezing all immigration, and prohibiting federal tax dollars from funding abortions. When the @HouseGOP meets tomorrow to plan our agenda for 2026, the Freedom Caucus Board has a simple plan… Let's do what we promised:??Secure elections by forcing the Senate to pass the SAVE Act, and go even further by requiring voter ID, returning to paper ballots, limiting…— House Freedom Caucus (@freedomcaucus) January 6, 2026 Harris added that the Senate must be involved in this push as well. “We must act urgently in the first quarter of 2026, using every tool available to compel the Senate to deliver now. The stakes extend beyond the next election—America’s future depends on it,” Harris told The Daily Signal. The House has passed a number of conservative bills which have yet to receive a vote in the Senate, where bills typically require 60 votes for consideration. The bills include the SAVE Act, the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, and the No Tax Dollars for Terrorists Act. Affordability The issue of affordability was credited as a key part of the message which helped Democrat Zohran Mamdani get elected as mayor of New York City in November. Johnson Teases Another Potential Big, Beautiful Bill in 2026@SpeakerJohnson tells The Daily Signal's @GCaldwell_news that setting up ?health savings accounts as an alternative to the Obamacare premium tax credit is "very much on the table," and that change could be implemented… pic.twitter.com/HeacKMy9w4— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) December 16, 2025 A spokesperson for Rep. Jeff Crank, R-Colo., told The Daily Signal during the retreat that the congressman “believes that affordability should be a top priority of Congress this year.” Part of this push will likely be include the issues of health care and insurance costs. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., told The Daily Signal in December to expect the House to pass “a long list of things that we know will reduce premiums” and that a party-line budget reconciliation bill could be the vehicle for these provisions. The post House Republicans Navigate Slim Majority, Affordability Concerns at Retreat appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos. This content was recorded by Victor Davis Hanson prior to his Dec. 30 medical operation. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. In the past, I’ve characterized as, Walter Russell Mead, most famously [said], that Trump’s foreign policy is neither interventionist, surely not nation building, nor is it isolationist, as the Left accuses. It was something called Jacksonian. That is, “no better friend, no worse enemy.” “Don’t tread on me.” At various times if people took advantage of the United States’ desire to live in peace, and they started to push their luck, then we would hit them, overwhelmingly. Sort of what we saw with the two Americans that were tragically killed in Syria. Then there was an overwhelming retaliation. But I think there’s a quirk to Jacksonianism, a subset. And I would call the Trump Foreign Policy, the Vise Policy. V-I-S-E. Like a vise, that you clamp down on something. By that, I mean, rather than intervene or even use kinetic force, he has another alternative when he sees a renegade country. Most famously, we saw Iran, that when he came into office, the first thing he did was get back out of the Iran Deal, put back the sanctions, support Israel’s effort to retaliate against Iran. Although he did take out the nuclear facilities, that was an act that he felt he had no choice, because Iran was reaching a point where they’d have a nuclear weapon. But up until then, he had almost bankrupt, again, by squeezing the Iran economy at no cost to the United States. We see that much better with Venezuela and the rogue Maduro government. The illegitimate government, that throughout the last elections, in which [Nicolas] Maduro lost, and has been sending shiploads of narcotics to the United States. It’s using embargoed oil tankers to sell sanctioned oil to Cuba, to China, and, more or less, opened up its jails and mental institutions and sent thousands of people, in spite, to the United States. So, Trump is now reestablishing the Monroe Doctrine. Remember, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the Monroe Doctrine was pretty much ossified, calcified. Trump has reinstated it. But with a vise policy. So, sanctions on Maduro. He’s not going to have any income through narco sales. We’re blowing up narco terrorist shipments on the high seas. He uses that money to bribe officers, bribe the media, bribe the opposition, to stay in power illegitimately. And then, in addition to that, he’ll have no oil income. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. So, he has a limitless supply of credit and cash. But not if he can’t get it to somewhere. And, in the Western hemisphere, Trump is showing the world that he just almost automatically reestablished the Monroe Doctrine. What is China going to do? They may say they have a blue-water Navy. They may say they’re catching up. But they’re not there yet. And they have no ability to transmit power, in the Western hemisphere, among our shores. So, Maduro is in a vise. And we’re squeezing it down, at no cost to us. Is Trump going to invade? I doubt it. Is he going to bomb? I doubt it. I think he’s just slowly going to intimidate Maduro so people within the Venezuelan hierarchy, both legitimate opponents and opportunistic supporters, who feel that he’s a bad investment. And they will throw him out. EDITOR’S NOTE: Since this commentary was recorded, President Donald Trump did launch a military operation to seize Nicolas Maduro so he could face criminal charges in the United States. What assistance the U.S. had from “legitimate opponents and opportunistic supporters” within Venezuela has not been made known. The same thing is true of Cuba. We didn’t really know how to deal with Cuba. Since 1959, we’ve had embargoes. Sometimes they’re liquid. Sometimes they’re fluid. They don’t really work. But, more or less, the Castro-ite government in Cuba is an existential enemy of the United States. We have a lot of people who go there and visit. But the country has never worked. It’s impoverished. And it’s dependent wholly on the legacy of Hugo Chavez and now Maduro, to give them cheap oil. If they don’t get cheap oil, and what do I mean by that? If Maduro cannot put embargoed oil on sanctioned tankers and get to Cuba, then Cuba’s going to have no ability to distill gasoline, nor will it have energy. And that’s exactly what is happening. The Cuban economy is in a Trump vise. Are we going to bomb Cuba? No. Are we going to have a Bay of Pigs standoff or invasion? No. Are we going to have a Cuban missile crisis with China? No. We’re going to have a Trump vise. And it’s going to squeeze. Does this work all the time? No. I mean, it doesn’t work in the case of a full-fledged war, like the Ukraine War or the Middle East, sometimes. But with other powers in our vicinity or that we have leverage over, we’re going to start to squeeze them, to bring back legitimate government, pro-American governments, and stability for the entire Western hemisphere. And most importantly, a chance for their citizenry to have a normal life. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Victor Davis Hanson: Trump’s Jacksonian Foreign Policy (With a Twist) appeared first on The Daily Signal.