President Trump is calling attention to another possible area of fraud in Minnesota. The state is under heightened scrutiny after a report on alleged daycare fraud within the state received widespread national attention. On Wednesday, the president wrote a Truth Social post calling out potential fraud with Minnesota food stamp benefits.
“Does anybody believe that in Minneapolis, these are the Food Stamp Businesses?” President Trump said. “There’s no Food, there’s no cleanliness, there’s no service, there’s no nothing, except FRAUD.”
President Trump’s post was accompanied by photos of several storefronts in states of disrepair. The criticism from the president comes amid a legal battle between his administration and the state of Minnesota over the continued issuance of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding in the state.
Last month, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins called for verification of over 100,000 households receiving SNAP benefits. Sec. Rollins ordered a freeze of $129 million in benefits when the state of Minnesota refused to comply with the request from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The demand for verification of data came after Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) reportedly submitted incorrect information on SNAP recipients and the amount of potential fraud committed within the program.
Attorneys for the state of Minnesota characterized the freeze of funds as a retaliatory action. In response, the USDA argued that the state had not made a good-faith attempt to root out fraud and pointed to a federal anti-fraud grant given to Minnesota in September 2024. The state had made minimal use of the resource, spending only $302 out of $749,000 in grant funds to identify fraud.
The effort led by Sec. Rollins is part of her stated objective to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, and to ensure that taxpayer-funded benefits are not allocated to illegal aliens. On Wednesday, a U.S. District Court Judge sided with the state of Minnesota in the case against the USDA, ruling that the agency could not withhold funding for SNAP benefits in response to Minnesota’s failure to meet the deadline proposed by Sec. Rollins.
President Trump called for the deportation of foreign nationals who abuse public assistance programs and accused Democratic leadership in blue states of allowing fraudulent operations to continue. He emphasized that his administration is committed to identifying and stopping fraud within taxpayer-funded programs.
“These people should be sent back to Somalia, or any other Country from where they came,” President Trump said. “California, Illinois, New York, and so many other places are equally as bad. It’s all a giant Democrat SCAM, with protection from the Fake News Media but, it will end, as we, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!