Bombshell Report: “Largest Funder Of Al-Shabaab Is Minnesota Taxpayer” 

Investigative journalists Ryan Thorpe and Christopher F. Rufo have published a bombshell report in City Journal detailing how massive welfare fraud in Democrat-run Minnesota, much of it carried out through networks in the state’s Somali community, funneled stolen taxpayer money back to Somalia, where some of those funds ultimately ended up in the hands of the terror group Al-Shabaab. 

An unprecedented wave of welfare fraud has surged under an unhinged leftist Governor Tim Walz, with billions in taxpayer funds stolen through Medicaid programs, childcare-meal reimbursements, and autism-services schemes by Minnesota’s Somali community. 

Multiple law enforcement officials explained to Thorpe and Rufo that portions of those remittances ended up supporting the al-Qaida-linked terror group Al-Shabaab.

“This is a third-rail conversation, but the largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer,” a source told the journalists, adding, “There is an issue here that is real, and if there is ever an event that is traceable back to these funds, or to people from this area, then this situation will take on a whole new set of optics.”

In recent months, the Minnesota US Attorney’s Office has uncovered multi-million dollar fraud involving the state’s federally funded autism services program for children and the Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program.

BREAKING – It has been revealed that Somalians in Minnesota have been using fraudulent autism Medicare claims to fund the Somali terror group Al-Shabaab, with claims rising from $3 million in 2018 to $399 million in 2023, effectively making Minnesota taxpayers the group’s largest… pic.twitter.com/SXOqi7VJ1m

— Right Angle News Network (@Rightanglenews) November 20, 2025

Here’s more color 

Much like with the HSS program, autism claims to Medicaid in Minnesota have skyrocketed in recent years—from $3 million in 2018 to $54 million in 2019, $77 million in 2020, $183 million 2021, $279 million in 2022, and $399 million in 2023. Meantime, the number of autism providers in the state spiked from 41 to 328 over the same period, with many in the Somali community establishing their own autism treatment centers, citing the need for “culturally appropriate programming.” By the time the fraud scheme was exposed, one in 16 Somali four-year-olds in the state had reportedly been diagnosed with autism—a rate more than triple the state average. “

“This is not an isolated scheme,” Joe Thompson, the US attorney, said in a press release. “From Feeding Our Future to Housing Stabilization Services and now Autism Services, these massive fraud schemes form a web that has stolen billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Each case we bring exposes another strand of this network.”

What Thompson arguably hinted at, but left unsaid, should be obvious: this “network” of “fraud schemes,” which “form a web” that has stolen “billions of dollars in taxpayer money,” involved many members of Minnesota’s Somali community. The Feeding Our Future, HSS, and autism-services cases are far from the only examples. 

At least 28 fraud scandals have emerged since Walz became governor in 2019. According to two former FBI officials who spoke with the journalists, most of the large-scale fraudsters involve Minnesota’s Somali community.

We suspect the subject of Medicare fraud will haunt Walz and his radical leftist regime in the state during the midterm election cycle. Democrats have allowed tens of thousands of Somalians to pour into the state since Walz took office.

What we’re staring at – that “the largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer” – is the direct result of the Democratic Party’s suicidal empathy. That globalist mindset has produced nation-killing policies that now pose flashing-red national security threats.