The Daily Signal’s Mehek Cooke sits down with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, for a wide-ranging conversation on the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Justice Department, the “Arctic Frost” investigation of Republicans by the administration of President Joe Biden, and the larger questions facing voters heading into the midterms. The discussion begins with a central question: Who gets to define hate and extremism in America, and what happens when powerful institutions use public trust as political cover? Chairman Jordan addresses concerns surrounding the Southern Poverty Law Center, questions about federal law enforcement’s use of outside organizations, the expanding Arctic Frost investigation, and whether Republicans have delivered what voters expected when they gave the GOP power in Washington. The conversation ends on the question voters are asking ahead of the midterms: Did Republicans keep their promise?

A grand jury indicted 15 people Thursday for an alleged health care scheme that illustrates a “culture of fraud” in Minnesota, the FBI and Justice Department announced. “It is a crisis in Minnesota,” claimed Collin McDonald, assistant attorney general for fraud enforcement, in a DOJ press conference. “A culture of fraud has taken root.” FBI Director Kash Patel posted to X that the FBI and Justice Department’s investigation revealed the defendants allegedly fraudulently obtained over $90 million from taxpayers, thereby preventing those funds from going toward legitimate Medicaid recipients. “These charges involve the two LARGEST Medicaid fraud cases ever charged in this district and first-of-their kind charges involving 7 additional Medicaid programs,” according to Patel. Among these programs, Patel cited examples such as the “Housing Stabilization Services, Child Care, Medicaid programs, Individualized Home Supports (IHS) and more.” One individual allegedly fraudulently obtained over $40 million from Early Intensive Development and Behavioral Intervention, a Minnesota Department of Human Services program intended to offer “medically necessary services and supports to people under the age of 21 with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or related conditions.” In this scheme, the defendants allegedly used autism centers to bill for services not actually provided. According to Patel, “This not only defrauded taxpayers, but robbed valuable resources from families truly in need.” Today – 15 individuals have been indicted for over $90 million in an alleged massive healthcare fraud scheme in Minnesota, after a sweeping FBI investigation with @TheJusticeDept and our Interagency Partners. These charges involve the two LARGEST Medicaid fraud cases ever…— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) May 21, 2026 McDonald also addressed the indictment. He said that some of these programs had to “completely shut down” because the money dedicated to them was fraudulently drained out, costing taxpayers 50 times more than the state allotted when creating these programs. These 15 indictments come after a series of fraud scandals in Minnesota often involving the Somali community. According to Former Attorney General Pam Bondi, these 15 indictments added to the 98 already charged as of December 2025. Among these 98, 60 have been found guilty thus far. MINNESOTA FRAUD: @NickShirleyyy’s work has helped show Americans the scale of fraud in Tim Walz’s Minnesota. @TheJusticeDept has been investigating this for months. So far, we have charged 98 individuals – 85 of Somali descent – and more than 60 have been found guilty in…— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) December 29, 2025 McDonald pledged to continue the work of the DOJ until every fraudster in Minnesota is charged. He said, “This is not the end of the beginning of our work in Minnesota. This is the beginning of our work in Minnesota.” McDonald then addressed the fraudsters directly. He said, “We will not rest until every fraudster knows that the cost of stealing from the American people is far higher than any scheme is worth.”

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. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.   There’s been a very strange story that was printed not long ago by the liberal opinion journalist Nicholas Kristof. Now, apparently he’s been retired. He’s written for decades at The New York Times.   He’s sort of a social activist. He does some good things sometimes, but he tries to draw attention of The New York Times readership to supposed crises of morality all over the globe, such as the so-called “genocide”. And it depends on who you talk to. In Darfur, he visited it very many times. But he’s had a checkered career.  During the anthrax scare near the millennium, he wrote a series of articles suggesting that a government scientist was responsible for sending that deadly anthrax bacillus in the mail to particular people.   There was no real evidence of that. The person was never formally charged. And there was litigation back and forth.  He also ran for governor of Oregon, where he moved as a young man, and his family has a farm. But he hadn’t lived there. He’d been, of course, living on the East Coast because he was working at The New York Times. The Democratic secretary of state disqualified him from trying to run for governor in 2022, arguing that his main residence was elsewhere, out of state.  She was a liberal Democrat like he is, and yet he got very angry and accused her of being politically biased and corrupt. The Oregon Supreme Court, very liberal, upheld that decision, so although he’d raised $1.6 million, he could not stay—he could not run for governor.  But here’s what he’s done recently. He’s written an article that alleges that prisoners following the Oct. 7 massacre of Jews in Israel by the Hamas terrorist organization and people of Gaza, who tagged along. Many of them were caught in jail, and some directly involved in the assault, some just in the subsequent operations in Gaza itself.   And he’s interviewed them. Many of them are anonymous. And he says that they have been systematically raped, molested, tortured.  But what got the sensational coverage for these allegations was that he said that in some cases, and one in particular, a former Hamas person said that he had been raped inside an Israeli jail by a canine, by a dog. And that this was a part of an Israeli policy to train canines to rape inmates and to abuse them.  There’s a lot of things wrong with that.   First of all, most of the sourcing for the article either came from the Euro-Med website, which is hard-Left, anti-Israeli, and founded by someone who’s closely connected with Hamas.   Second, most of the sources were anonymous. Third, the ones that were not, are affiliated in many cases with the Hamas terrorist group.  But most strange of all, there is no scientific proof that a trainer or an owner can prepare a dog to commit sexual intercourse against a human’s will or against a human at all.   Dogs don’t rape people. To the degree that there has been any recorded incidents of dog-human sexual content, it’s in the context of bestiality.  That is, an owner coaxing a dog in some fashion to have intercourse, but there’s no… Dog sexuality is so different from humans. You can’t just say to a dog, “Achieve sexual preparedness and go have intercourse in a forcible manner against that victim.”   It doesn’t happen. And yet, Nicholas Kristof doubled down and said there was scientific evidence that it happened, and it didn’t. That was a complete fabrication.  And when he said that it wasn’t necessarily the rule in Israeli jails, he said it was systematic. So the article is self-contradictory.   It’s based on either Left-wing, anti-Israeli sources or pro-Hamas informants. Most of them anonymous.   He has a history of not being reliable, even though his reputation is one of being a global humanitarian who tries to draw our attention to abuses.  There’s one final thing. It wasn’t just a sin of commission. There was a sin of omission. Let me define what I mean by that. He knew, as did The New York Times, that Israel had been conducting an exhaustive investigation, exhaustive, over almost two and a half years, to find out what actually happened on Oct. 7.  And they had all sorts of evidence. They had prisoners who confessed to what they did. And remember, these didn’t need to be coerced. In the Hamas mindset, they want to brag on what they did. They’re proud of it. They had instruction booklets telling them how to say, “Spread your legs,” and other commands in Hebrew.  They were greeted as heroes by Gazan civilians when they came back and heard the story. When they brought back over 240 hostages, the hostages were in danger of losing their lives from an angry mob.   So there was no reticence on the part of cooperating with the Israelis. Then they had people who survived the attack who had testimonies. Then they had extensive photographs of the bodies of the slain.   They had camera footage from the Hamas terrorists who were so exuberant and happy to kill Jews that they actually filmed it on their military helmets.   And they collated all of that evidence together, and the result was medieval. It was a story of people losing their limbs, of women being raped repeatedly, gang-raped, being shot, being mutilated, being sexually—in a sexually perverted manner tortured, children beheaded. It’s horrific beyond words.  That systematic report was coming out and has now appeared.  And so the supposition is that Nicholas Kristof, who’s very anti-Israel, cooked up an idea that he would pre-empt this story by an even cruder, weirder, surreal story that, well, whatever Hamas did to the Israelis that you’re going to read this week, that’s the implication—not explicit, but implicit.   It’s not going to be as bad as what I’m going to tell you, because the Israelis train dogs to rape people.  That is the biggest blood libel and slur against the Jewish people that I’ve ever heard. And yet, The New York Times, which always brags about fact-checking, didn’t fact-check it at all.   And the result is he is now being sued by the Israeli government and the Netanyahu administration. I don’t think that’s going to go anywhere. It’s very hard for a foreign country to sue an individual, especially when the prime minister is in the public realm. But it’s going to draw attention to The New York Times in general and Nicholas Kristof in particular.  He has skated on thin ice for a long time. And he’s not a reliable opinion journalist. And this confirms that he should not be writing for The New York Times.   It’s a free country. If they want to peddle these lies and these libels, they’re welcome to. But it’s going to destroy their reputation if he comes back again and pursues what he’s been doing for a long time.  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL — Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., on Thursday reintroduced legislation that would prohibit U.S.-based money services businesses from using central bank digital currencies issued by the Communist Party of China, including the digital yuan. If enacted, the “Chinese CBDC Prohibition Act” would prohibit money services businesses from engaging in any transaction that involves a central bank digital currency issued by the People’s Republic of China. The bill would apply to entities such as Venmo, Zelle, currency dealers, and the U.S. Postal Service, making it unlawful for them to process such transactions. “No money services business may engage in any transaction, directly or indirectly, that involves a central bank digital currency issued by the People’s Republic of China,” the bill shared with the Daily Signal states. In a statement to the Daily Signal, Scott argued that allowing U.S. businesses to transact in a Chinese digital currency could expose Americans to surveillance risks and weaken U.S. economic competitiveness. He has long opposed the development and adoption of central bank digital currencies, particularly those linked to foreign adversaries. “The dollar is the reserve currency of the world and the CCP wants to undermine our leadership with a digital currency they can track and manipulate,” Scott told the Daily Signal. “The digital yuan is just another tool used by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on its people and all those who use it. Americans deserve privacy when it comes to their financial transactions.” According to the senator, China’s digital currency allows its government to monitor financial activity and potentially restrict access to funds. His legislation seeks to block its use in the United States, citing concerns about privacy, national security, and economic stability. The bill would make transactions involving Chinese government-issued digital currency unlawful and, according to Scott’s office, is intended to protect American consumers, businesses, and the broader economy. Scott previously introduced the legislation in 2023, along with Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, upon the announcement of the Chinese digital yuan. “The digital yuan is just another tool used by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on its people and all those who use it. It is an obvious power grab and an attempt to increase communist-state-control over people’s personal finances,” Scott said at the time. “Secretary Xi and his thugs have no business playing big brother to American citizens and how they spend their money.” “That is why I am fighting to prevent this problem from ever becoming someone’s reality. We must stand up against the CCP’s obvious spy tactics and pass the Chinese CBDC Prohibition Act today,” Scott added.

The U.S. Court of the Southern District of Mississippi has signed off on a motion to drop a lawsuit alleging two Mississippi billionaires defrauded a pandemic-era program. The judge’s dismissal on Thursday came after plaintiffs entered a voluntary dismissal with prejudice on May 15. As reported by Mississippi Today, Judge Kristi H. Johnson signed off on the plaintiff’s motion to withdraw the lawsuit with prejudice after the federal government declined to litigate the case itself. After the California attorneys moved to withdraw the lawsuit, federal officials said the dismissal aligned with the government’s broader priorities. Baxter Kruger, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, said acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche consented to the dismissal, citing a determination that ending the case was “commensurate with the public interest” and that it did not justify continued use of government resources. Kruger—who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2025—also asked the court to keep all sealed documents in the case under seal, a request that U.S. District Judge Kristi H. Johnson granted. “Today, I’m pleased to announce that the California trial lawyers who recklessly sued Tommy and Jim Duff with respect to the PPP program have voluntarily dismissed their frivolous and unfounded case. This is a complete and total victory for the Duff brothers,” Matthew Miller, the attorney representing the defendant, told the Daily Signal after the court formally dismissed the case. “The voluntary dismissal comes just days after the Duffs asked the Court to dismiss the lawsuit for lack of merit,” Miller continued. “From the beginning of this baseless case, we have stated that the facts show that the Duffs, under the guidance of competent accounting and legal professionals, always followed the law in obtaining PPP loans during the COVID-19 pandemic to help protect their employees.” Relator LLC, the plaintiff, is a group formed by California attorneys Anoush Hakimi and Peter Shahriari, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. In a notice of voluntary dismissal, attorney Kristen Nelson—who represents the pair—cited the federal government’s decision not to litigate the case. The filing also stated that the lawsuit’s factual claims did not factor into the decision to dismiss. “The dismissal is not the result of any settlement or payment, and no party has paid or agreed to pay any consideration in connection with the dismissal,” Nelson wrote. “No claims have been adjudicated on the merits, and Relator has elected to dismiss its claims without further amendment.” The case was initially filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, but Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin later transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi after Miller argued in court that the case lacked ties to California. In his statement to the Daily Signal, Miller also rebutted the allegations of any wrongdoing from the companies when they applied for the loans. “This lawsuit was a purely meritless attempt by trial lawyers to extract an unwarranted settlement,” the attorney wrote. “The Duffs remained focused throughout COVID on supporting their 16,000 employees, many of whom were kept employed, even when many Duff businesses were forced to cut back.” Miller also told the Daily Signal that he will “continue to evaluate all legal remedies against the plaintiffs against the plaintiff, Relator LLC, and its California lawyers, due to the incredibly frivolous nature and outrageous false allegations set forth in the lawsuit.”” The lawsuit, filed Feb. 20, 2024, accused Thomas and James Duff and several of their companies—including Duff Capital Investors, Southern Tire Mart, Pine Belt Motors, and Pine Belt CDJR—of improperly obtaining Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. The complaint alleged the companies should not have applied for the loans because they underreported employee counts and had sufficient resources through their broader conglomerate. In a previous statement to the Mississippi Today, Miller added that the loans were “lawfully obtained, fully disclosed and reviewed by banks, the SBA and federal attorneys,” and described the case as “parasitic, web-scraped lawsuit that courts have repeatedly rejected.” “The allegations were also independently reviewed by the Department of Justice which, after this review, declined to intervene in this lawsuit,” Miller continued. Relator LLC, which filed the Qui Tam complaint, claimed Southern Tire Mart had roughly 1,300 employees and $600 million in annual revenue, while Duff Capital Investors allegedly employs more than 10,000 people. As stated by the Mississippi Today, the lawsuit claimed the companies reported having 496 employees to qualify for PPP loans, which were limited to businesses with 500 or fewer employees. The lawsuit was filed under the False Claims Act, which allows private individuals—known as relators—to bring qui tam actions on behalf of the federal government to recover funds obtained through alleged fraud. The plaintiffs behind the lawsuit in this case, Anoush Hakimi and Peter Shahriar, represented Relator LLC. A Qui Tam lawsuit is a lawsuit filed by an individual or entity that works on behalf of the federal government alleging the misuse or defrauding of federal loans. According to the complaint, the Duff companies secured three PPP loans totaling approximately $6.5 million. The now-dismissed lawsuit claimed that “two billionaire brothers, reported to be the wealthiest two individuals in Mississippi, used a handful of their many companies,” “to misappropriate millions of dollars from the US Federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program.” As seen in the court filings obtained by Mississippi Today, attorneys for the Duff brothers denied the allegations in court filings, arguing the loans were obtained lawfully and used to keep “hard-working people employed and paid.” Additionally, as seen in the court filings and in the attorney’s statement to the Daily Signal, the defendants believe Relator LLC leaned on inflammatory rhetoric instead of factual evidence. The defendants claimed that the complaint improperly treated franchisees as affiliated entities, even though federal law expressly allowed franchisees to qualify for PPP loans. According to the filings, Duff-affiliated franchisees identified themselves as such in their loan applications. Some entities cited in the complaint, including Pine Belt Chevrolet and Pine Belt CDJR, operate as franchised dealerships for major automobile manufacturers. “The result of section 636(a)(36)(D)(iv)(II) was that an entity with a franchise identifier code could get a PPP loan even if a parent company had thousands of employees spread across subsidiaries,” the defendants say in the filing. “Beneficiaries of this new rule commonly included car-dealership franchisees by auto manufacturers and franchisees of restaurant or hotel chains.” Furthermore, Miller also moved to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing the plaintiff failed to meet requirements under federal law mandating that whistleblowers possess independent knowledge of alleged violations prior to public disclosure. The Department of Justice notes the law was strengthened by Congress in 1986 to encourage such actions, allowing private citizens to act as “private attorneys general” in pursuing fraud claims. Relator LLC has filed similar cases in the past. In one such case, a federal court in California ordered Los Angeles businessman Yosef Y. Manela to pay more than $800,000 after finding he violated the False Claims Act in connection with PPP loans The Daily Signal contacted Grafton Bragg, one of Relator’s attorneys, the Department of Justice, and U.S. District Judge Kristi Johnson, but did not receive comment.