Nutrition program’s lawsuit triggers MN Education Dept to ease oversight, opening door to more fraud
As the Trump administration steps up enforcement actions against Somali nationals in Minnesota, the state is facing renewed scrutiny for its oversight of a shuttered nonprofit accused of stealing hundreds...
By Fox News · Fox News
As the Trump administration steps up enforcement actions against Somali nationals in Minnesota, the state is facing renewed scrutiny for its oversight of a shuttered nonprofit accused of stealing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. Many of those charged in the alleged scheme are of Somali descent. The defunct nonprofit, called Feeding our Future, was run largely by Somalians, and it sued the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) in 2020, alleging discrimination. Critics have suggested that litigation could have made the MDE nervous and caused state officials to let up on its supervision of Feeding our Future, potentially letting more fraud occur. "Minnesota officials were accused of racism if they questioned the obviously fake claims," conservative commentator Jason Rantz wrote in an op-ed . "Feeding Our Future advocates figured that out early and used it as a shield, accusing officials of discrimination the moment anyone asked why the numbers didn’t add up." While state officials began questioning Feeding our Future prior to 2020, the nonprofit went on offense that year and sued the MDE in state court, claiming that the department’s lack of action on applications for new food distribution sites during the COVID-19 pandemic amounted to discrimination against Somalians. The lawsuit was settled after about one month and involved the MDE agreeing to respond to the applications. But the litigation did not stop there. Months later, the MDE stopped administering payments to Feeding our Future because of what it said were "serious deficiencies," leading Feeding our Future to bring another court challenge, and the MDE resumed the payments. Feeding our Future became the subject of a massive FBI investigation that uncovered allegedly more than $250 million in fraud and led to dozens of indictments. At the time of the initial wave of indictments, then-Attorney General Merrick Garland accused the nonprofit of committing the "largest pandemic relief fraud scheme charged…