Aimee Bock, the mastermind behind a $250 million child nutrition fraud scheme in Minnesota, has been sentenced to 500 months in prison, or 41.5 years. She’s also been ordered to pay more than $240 million in restitution. Bock was the executive director of the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, which, throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money to several existing and bogus nonprofits while falsely reporting the number of meals served to children and adults. Federal prosecutors had been asking for a 50-year sentence in the case, and Bock, under sentencing guidelines, could have gotten 100 years in prison. A jury found Bock guilty last year of seven criminal counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery, and federal programs bribery. The Scam Feeding Our Future utilized two federal programs designed to help feed children and adults in daycare and after-school programs: the Child and Adult Care Food Program and the Summer Food Service Program. The organization served as the gatekeeper between the two programs and hundreds of nonprofits. The nonprofits would submit meal counts to Feeding Our Future, which would then seek reimbursement from the federal government. However, some organizations padded the number of meals they said they were serving, and some didn’t serve any meals at all. The Justice Department has charged nearly 80 people connected to the fraud scheme. What Did Minnesota Political Leaders Know? The complete scope and details of the involvement of Minnesota elected leaders in the fraud scheme are still unknown. As the Daily Signal reported in February, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has been accused of helping leaders behind the scheme and profiting politically from the organization. He has said he did not help the leaders of the organization and did not profit from them. Sen. Josh Hawley claimed in a hearing on Minnesota fraud that Feeding Our Future leaders met with Ellison at the end of 2021 and asked the attorney general for “help in getting investigators off their backs.” “They complained to you for upwards of an hour about state investigators going after them, and they begged you to help them, and you agreed to it, amazingly, and we know you did because it’s all caught on tape,” Hawley said. Hawley also accused Ellison of taking $10,000 from Feeding Our Future, referring to reports that Ellison received $10,000 in contributions from members of the organization. Ellison called Hawley’s accusations “a lie.” NEW: Full, very heated exchange between Sen. @HawleyMO (R-MO) & Minnesota AG Keith Ellison about the Minnesota fraud scandal that ended with Hawley telling Ellison he should be in prison & Ellison responding by essentially saying good luck with that. pic.twitter.com/NO83rpJWqA— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) February 12, 2026 At that same hearing, Gov. Tim Walz was tongue-tied trying to explain why payments resumed to Feeding Our Future after the state’s Education Department stopped payments in 2021 over the alleged fraud. Walz had claimed a court determined the Education Department didn’t have the authority to stop payments. However, as Rep. Jim Jordan noted, the state court released a blunt statement declaring Walz’s statement was “false,” and that the agency “voluntarily resumed payments.” “So, the court is lying or you’re lying?” “I can’t tell you, congressman,” Walz said. “I just simply know what the attorneys at the department believe, which is that it was a misinterpretation.” Though one can question her credibility and motives for speaking out, Bock herself told Fox News in February, “Governor Tim Walz and AG Keith Ellison were fully aware of the $250 million child nutrition fraud and did nothing to stop it.” She also recently told the New York Post, “I struggle to believe” Rep. Ilhan Omar didn’t know. “Omar sponsored the legislation that was exploited to make the scam possible.” Dozens of members of the Somali community have been convicted of fraudulently billing the state for millions of meals never served. BOOM! The convicted mastermind behind Minnesota’s MASSIVE $250 MILLION pandemic fraud scheme is facing sentencing this week and prosecutors are demanding 50 YEARS behind bars! Before she went down, Aimee Bock straight-up told Fox News that Gov. Tim Walz and top state… pic.twitter.com/8DCPnogn3Z— Gunther Eagleman (@GuntherEagleman) May 19, 2026 Omar responded with a statement Wednesday to Newsweek, “Any claim that I had knowledge of this scheme is flat-out false.” Meanwhile, the Justice Department is planning to announce “significant law enforcement action involving fraud in Minnesota” later this morning. Ellison wrote in an op-ed for the Star Tribune published in April 2025, “I took a meeting in good faith with people I didn’t know and some turned out to have done bad things. I did nothing for them and took nothing from them.” The Daily Signal contacted Ellison’s office for a response to Hawley’s accusations. Brian Evans, Ellison’s press secretary, told the Daily Signal that Ellison already addressed the meeting Hawley referred to in an op-ed for the Star Tribune published in April 2025. In the op-ed, Ellison wrote that his “door is always open” to his constituents. The attorney general explained that in 2021, he “took a meeting in good faith with people I didn’t know and some turned out to have done bad things. I did nothing for them and took nothing from them.” This story is developing and may be updated.

In a step forward for President Donald Trump’s push to give an edge to the American artificial intelligence industry over foreign rivals, a major federal agency approved the new “ExportAI initiative” on Wednesday. The Export-Import Bank—a federal credit agency that seeks to support American export via financing tools—has launched the initiative which was approved by the bank’s board of directors in a vote Wednesday morning. The initiative aims to help American exporters and AI companies dominate the global market by updating the banks’ financing tools, according to documents seen by The Daily Signal. In July 2025, Trump signed an executive order entitled “Promoting The Export of the American AI Technology Stack” which seeks to “decrease international dependence on AI technologies developed by our adversaries” by updating financing tools. The ExportAI initiative seeks to fulfill that executive order with “Insurance and loan guarantees for the medium-term” as well as “direct loans and loan guarantees for the long-term” to support AI exports, per documents seen by The Daily Signal. The initiative would also expand financing eligibility for American exporters.  Additionally, the bank is seeking to cut down on paperwork by requiring “streamlined exporter statements” rather than “detailed certification processes.” Exporters are required to disclose information about their goods in order to comply with regulations and qualify for loans from the bank. The push comes as Trump is expected to sign an executive order setting up a government vetting process for AI models. Related PostsSCOOP: Trump AI Executive Order Will Likely Punt on Security ConcernsFIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on artificial intelligence safety later this week, but sources familiar with the draft say the directive won’t answer key questions about how to contain potential national security risks posed by new models.  Trump is slated to sign an executive order in…Voters Overwhelmingly Support White House Draft Executive Order to Protect Americans From Cyber ThreatsFIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The majority of Americans across both political parties would support President Donald Trump taking executive action to vet new artificial intelligence models for safety, a new poll from the Institute for Family Studies and YouGov shows.  The new poll of 1,000 Americans, obtained by The Daily Signal, shows that 82% of…How President Trump Can Ensure AI Serves Families and CommunitiesAnthropic’s Claude Mythos—a frontier artificial intelligence model believed to have uncovered thousands of security flaws in critical digital infrastructure—has prompted the White House to take a harder line on AI guardrails. Several reports indicate that the administration is considering safety testing for federal contractors to address the threats AI systems pose to national security and…

Fire season is ramping up across California, with the Sandy Fire in Ventura County and the Bain and Verona fires in Riverside County raising new concerns about wildfire preparedness and prevention. In Sacramento, the Daily Signal spoke with state Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil about whether California is doing enough to prepare for another dangerous wildfire season. “I know we’re not doing enough. … We know that fire risk is all year long, there’s no more wildfire season. It doesn’t matter whether you live in rural areas or urban areas, you’re at risk,” said Alvarado-Gil, whose district includes some of the most fire-prone communities in the state.  Despite her warnings, Alvarado-Gil’s wildfire mitigation legislation failed to make it out of the Senate Appropriations Committee, something the senator blames on Democrats in Sacramento.  “We’ve been ruled by a single-party state here in California for quite some time, so we know where to place the blame. … The Democratic supermajority consistently makes decisions on policy priorities and funding priorities that do not put wildfire management, or even risk reduction, at the top of that,” she said. The senator is calling for prescribed burns, a technique that fire agencies can use to clear dead brush and reduce the buildup of flammable vegetation. Critics argue the burns can harm native plants and wildlife. However, Alvarado-Gil says the burns are necessary and that avoiding them prioritizes animals over human life.  “Our forests are meant to endure prescribed burns, and what happens is it rejuvenates the flora and the fauna,” she said. “So, we’ve gone too far to the left in terms of prohibiting prescribed burns that we know work. Right now, the policies are more in favor of different animal species than human species.” In 2024, Alvarado-Gil left the Democratic Party and registered as a Republican. She said the Democrats’ policies are causing residents to flee the state.  “I’ve been able to see on both sides what is working and what is failing California,” she said. “For decades, the Democratic supermajority has been failing California. If you look at the cost of gas, insurance, home prices, you name it … the increase of unaffordability in California has driven people out of our state and has closed businesses.” Alvarado-Gil continued, “This is about overregulation, unfunded state mandates, and frankly, Californians who are just sick and tired of the same old programs squeezing our pockets with programs that don’t benefit us.”

The Supreme Court determined that a U.S.-based company—Havana Docks—can recover damages from four major cruise lines that used its docks previously confiscated by the Cuban government. Havana Docks, a U.S. company, built docks in Havana’s port before the Cuban Revolution. The Castro regime revoked the company’s legal right to the docks, and the company later sued cruise lines that used the docks, claiming they were liable for trafficking in confiscated property. The cruise lines argued that the company’s legal right to the docks would have expired by then, regardless of confiscation. In an 8-1 ruling issued on Thursday, Justice Clarence Thomas found that Havana Docks “did not have to prove that the cruise lines interfered with a property interest that would have existed in the counterfactual scenario in which the Cuban government did not confiscate it.” “The cruise lines’ use of the docks is sufficient to establish that they used ‘property which was confiscated by the Cuban Government’,” Thomas wrote. Justice Elena Kagan dissented. In 2019, the docks company sued four cruise companies that used the confiscated docks from 2016 through 2019. The companies were Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Norwegian Cruise Line, and MSC Cruises. The companies argued they followed the U.S. government’s lead on reopening travel to Cuba as part of the Obama administration’s overtures to the island nation. Thursday’s ruling reverses an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that determined the company could not recover damages. Before that, a lower court found the cruise companies liable for $440 million. The question before the court was whether a plaintiff must establish a present-day property interest if the assets in question were not monetized.

After Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez claimed that “despite the (U.S.) embargo, sanctions and threats of the use of force, Cuba continues on a path of sovereignty toward its socialist development,” several Republican lawmakers dismissed his remarks as disconnected from reality. “Ha, ha, ha,” Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., said sarcastically in response. “Ha, ha, ha.” Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., told The Daily Signal that Rodríguez should “keep going—that’s not going to go well.” Salazar and Rep. Carlos Giménez, R-Fla., argued that Cuba’s foreign minister lacks real authority in shaping the country’s policy, pointing instead to the influence of GAESA, a military-run economic conglomerate. “The foreign minister of Cuba is not part of the ruling establishment of Cuba,” Giménez said, referring to GAESA. He described Rodríguez as a “figurehead.” “A foreign minister can say whatever, the president can say whatever—it doesn’t matter,” Giménez added. “It only matters, really, what Raúl Castro and GAESA are saying.” Both lawmakers emphasized what they described as a contradiction in Cuba’s leadership, noting that GAESA reportedly controls billions in assets while ordinary Cubans struggle economically. They accused the institution of prioritizing investments in hotels and other profit-generating industries. “They are thieves, disguised as revolutionaries,” Giménez said, adding that Cuba’s leaders “don’t even believe in communism.” “Everybody suffers, and them and their children and relatives go off in a jet-set world, date Hollywood stars, while the people of Cuba are suffering,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what the foreign minister says—he really has nothing to say, because he doesn’t govern Cuba.” Salazar also contrasted Cuba’s leadership with that of Iran, arguing that the Castro regime lacks comparable resources. “The difference between the Castros and the ayatollahs is that the Castros do not have resources,” she said. She further contended that Cuba no longer enjoys the same level of support from allies such as Russia and Venezuela, and pointed to Mexico’s past involvement with Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., in providing oil to the island. “President [Donald] Trump sent a very clear message that [Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum] could not be helping these thieves any longer. We very much appreciate the fact that she stopped,” Salazar added. Cuban Military Action? Salazar argued that the Cuban military’s financial reserves could pose a potential concern for the United States, questioning how those funds might be used. “Let’s find out what they are going to do with that money,” she told The Daily Signal. “If they are going to indeed attack, or if they are going to create a military problem for the United States.” “We know exactly how we are going to respond, but that is up to the secretary,” Salazar added, without elaborating. Rep. Giménez nodded in agreement. Salazar also spoke about accountability for Cuba’s leadership, saying that many of her constituents want to see consequences for members of the Castro family. She said her constituents “would love” to see former leader Raúl Castro and his relatives face justice, adding that “I’m sure that my constituents would be OK with that.” On Wednesday, the Department of Justice unveiled criminal charges, including murder, against Castro and five others.