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Tim Walz Lashes Out Blaming “White Supremacy” After Massive Minnesota Somali Fraud Exposed

A viral investigation into alleged misuse of Minnesota state funds has ignited a fierce public feud between Governor Tim Walz and independent journalist Nick Shirley, culminating in a heated exchange of accusations over the weekend.

Shirley’s 42-minute video report, which garnered over 100 million views on X, purportedly showed multiple state-funded daycare centers — receiving millions in taxpayer dollars — appearing closed or inactive during business hours.

In the wake of the report’s release, Governor Walz faced intense backlash after appearing to dismiss the findings on X, writing, “This is what happens when they scapegoat and this is what happens when they no longer hide the idea of white supremacy.”

Critics immediately seized on the Governor’s comment, accusing him of using racially charged language to deflect from legitimate questions regarding the stewardship of public funds.

On Sunday, Shirley appeared on Fox News to directly address the Governor’s characterization, rejecting the “white supremacist” label as a political tactic used to silence dissent.

“If you have 100,000 people that will vote for you because you’re going to enable this stuff… and you’re going to call a white person racist for calling out facts, this is what’s going to happen,” Shirley told the host.

He further ridiculed the state’s oversight during the segment, remarking that the alleged fraud was “so obvious a kindergartner could figure it out.”

Meanwhile, Governor Walz’s office issued a formal statement responding to the allegations, asserting that his administration has “worked for years to crack down on fraud” and has already launched investigations into the specific facilities highlighted in the video.

The spokesperson emphasized that the administration has strengthened oversight mechanisms and previously closed one of the centers featured in Shirley’s report.

Despite the administration’s defense, the controversy continues to escalate, with federal authorities now signaling they are deploying additional resources to investigate the scope of the alleged fraud.

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Burma Election Phase 1: No Hope for Federal Democracy With Opposition Banned

The Burma (Myanmar) election leaves observers asking whether it can truly be called a legitimate election when opposition parties and much of the population are prohibited from participating.

Burma’s military junta held the first round of its 2025 election on December 28, marking the first vote since overthrowing the country’s democratically elected government in 2021. Participation was sharply limited, with only about one-third of eligible voters casting ballots. Voting took place only in areas under military control, effectively disenfranchising large segments of the population living in conflict zones that comprise roughly 70 percent of the country’s territory.

As voting began, the Union Election Commission announced that nine additional townships had been added to the list where voting could not take place due to ongoing armed conflict. The newly excluded areas included three townships in Chin State, two in Sagaing Division, and four in Rakhine State, bringing the total number of townships entirely excluded from elections to 65, up from 56.

The UEC also confirmed that Phases 1 and 2 could not be held in 51 village tracts in Karenni State, and that Phase 3 elections scheduled for January 25 would not take place in 10 village tracts in Pekhon Township. In total, 134 townships are now affected either fully or partially, setting a record for the highest number of areas where elections could not be conducted in Burma’s history.

The election is being held in three phases across 265 of 330 townships, with the second round on January 11 and third round on January 25. Final results are expected to be announced by the end of January 2026.

One Yangon polling station recorded turnout of just under 37 percent, well below participation levels in the 2020 election won by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. In Karenni State and other areas controlled by revolutionary forces, residents rejected the process, saying the election is neither free nor fair and excludes large portions of the population displaced by war.

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Recognizing Media Malfunctions With the Heckler Awards – Part 1: The Industry Technical Trophies

With the year coming to a close, it is time to haul the news from the media to the curb, but we first need to dig through the pile and sort the refuse. We need to separate the worst from getting into the recycling bins, because the last thing we need to see is some of this behavior circulating once again. So, in the futile effort of improving the journalism landscape, we need to highlight the lowlights of 2025.

Here at “Riffed From the Headlines,” it has been another year of compiling the worst and misbegotten in the media landscape. We began the year with the hope that improvements would be experienced. Our hopes were, not surprisingly, dashed. Thus, we are left with the task of delivering notice of the worst from the journalism industry, and for that, we have developed The Heckler Awards.

This will be a four-part series in which we will (dis)honor the events reported in the press this year, based on the evidence compiled in our daily column. We begin with technical awards, and that will then give way to specific honors in the various categories we use to organize the lapses in journalism ethics. Part One will honor industry-wide activity, while Part Two will recognize achievements by individuals and specific outlets, and then Parts Three and Four will entail the category “winners.”

Now, with that pageantry aside, let us delve into the recognition and begin handing out the recognition of the news industry foibles for 2025, in this, the first round of The Hecklers!

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China’s Military AI and Biotechnology Directed at the United States

Soldiers in a brigade attached to the 83rd Group Army of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army conduct virtual reality exercises. Photo: Screenshot from China Central Television

According to a congressional report, the People’s Liberation Army continues to exploit military-civil fusion to integrate commercial and academic research into military systems. Military-Civil Fusion is China’s national strategy to merge civilian technology, research institutions, and industry with the defense sector in order to build a world-class military.

The strategy aligns commercial innovation with military requirements across fields ranging from artificial intelligence to semiconductors, pooling state and private resources to accelerate military development. Chinese authorities describe military-civil fusion as a core component of comprehensive national power and a central driver of long-term military modernization.

Through state laboratories, funding programs, conferences, and industrial parks, China has ensured sustained private-sector participation in this effort. As a result, it has made significant advances in artificial intelligence and large language models that underpin many emerging PLA technologies. AI reasoning systems support cyber operations, command decision-making, and influence campaigns, while also enabling autonomous and unmanned platforms, drone swarms, and loyal wingman UAVs.

These capabilities increasingly intersect with developments in quantum computing, quantum sensing, and quantum communications, which China has identified as priorities for national security and future warfare.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has described quantum technologies as drivers of industrial transformation, and Beijing is investing in post-quantum cryptography, military applications of quantum sensing, and ground- and space-based infrastructure for a global quantum communications network with both civilian and military uses.

Quantum communications support nuclear command, control, and communications by enabling hardened and interception-resistant links, while quantum sensing has potential applications in anti-submarine warfare by enabling detection methods that do not rely on active sonar.

Semiconductor self-sufficiency remains a parallel strategic objective. In 2024, firms including Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp and Huawei Technologies received substantial local government funding to accelerate chip indigenization. Although China continues to lag the West in the most advanced GPUs, it is pursuing alternative pathways through nontraditional microchip technologies, including photonic components developed by state research institutes.

Domestic chip production underpins military resilience by enabling continued weapons manufacturing under sanctions and securing supply chains for missiles, drones, and radar systems. Alternative chip architectures support AI processing and reduce reliance on advanced Western GPUs, sustaining production capacity during conflict.

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Fulton County’s 315,000 Admission Goes Well Beyond Just “Unsigned Poll Tapes” – Including Illegal Tabulation, Rule Violations and Open Records Deception

During a December 9 hearing before the State Election Board (SEB), the attorney for Fulton County’s Board of Registration and Elections (BRE), Ann Brumbaugh, “did not dispute” the fact that over 315,000 ballots in Fulton County were missing signatures on the poll tapes, as required by Ga. Comp. R & Regs. 183-1-14-.02(15) and O.C.G.A. § 21-2-483(h).

This was in response to a complaint submitted to the SEB in March 2022, 33 months prior to the SEB hearing.

In addition to the poll tapes being unsigned, another egregious and concerning discovery was made: the poll tapes were altered to make it appear as if the machines they came from were the ones from the precincts where the ballots were scanned at.

Concerning Response to Open Records Requests

Prior to the December 9th, 2025 admission, and even the March 2022 complaint, Fulton County had a different response.

In an Open Records Request submitted by the Election Oversight Group for the poll tape records that were subject to the March 2022 complaint, Fulton County Attorney Steve Rosenberg responded in writing so there was “a record of our response.”

In the response, Rosenberg states that “the zero tapes are printed on paper that resembles old-style receipts” and that “they fade and they fade even more when handled.”

He then states that they’ve received “a number of requests for these and other poll tapes” and that “over time, the zero tapes have become almost completely faded” and then says that he provided what they maintain and can locate “that still has some printing on it.”

Then he claims that the “consolation is that the Secretary of State’s office maintains the originals” and says that a request should be sent to their office.

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‘Hatecrimed five times in one night’ – here are the 31 campus hoaxes uncovered in 2025

Hate crimes, or hateful incidents, do occur. For example, when a Democratic Party donor yells “Go back to Haiti” at a black (Jamaican) Republican politician, it should be condemned.

Hate crime hoaxes must also be condemned as a violation of justice — saying “Trump supporters” or “University of Illinois fans” are racist without evidence violates those group’s rights to their reputation. It is even worse when a specific individual is falsely maligned as racist.

While campus race hustlers have once again been busy spreading hate hoaxes, The College Fix has been even busier, staying on top of their claims as much as possible. While many news outlets are quick to rush out stories about how a hate crime occurred, few are willing to do the follow up work to see what really happened.

The College Fix exclusively covered a hateful incident hoax involving a Purdue University basketball player Trey Kaufman-Renn. He claimed in March that his teenage brother, mom, and girlfriend were all subjected to racist language during a game against the University of Illinois. Only problem? It never happened, according to reports obtained by The Fix.

“There was no mention of racial discrimination, just general obnoxiousness,” a University of Illinois official stated. The university never made any statement about this to clear its own name.

Then of course there are the obvious hoaxes, like the student at University of Tennessee who claimed he was “hatecrimed five times in one night.”

Student Jaden Clark told the late Charlie Kirk that “freshman year I was hatecrimed five times in one night. Three of them by Trump supporters.”

Yet Mr. Clark (pictured) was slow to take Kirk up on his effort to use his vast contacts in the Trump administration to ensure the crimes were investigated. The University of Tennessee has also never responded to a Fix inquiry about any reports filed by Clark.

The Fix uncovered other alleged hateful incidents simply by reading documents and filing public records requests.

Four anti-Muslim incidents at Indiana University turn out to be untrue

Muslim students claimed a driver tried to run them over for wearing a hijab. He said he just did not see them in the crosswalk. But the damage was done – an Indiana University report noted many students said they had heard this story.

There are also no corresponding police reports for this claim: “A student reported that a group of students wearing Israeli flags and a Trump flag hit them on the back of their head with a water bottle.”

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Surveillance Footage Reveals Somali Daycare Fraud Playbook — Scheme Dates Back to 2013!

Newly resurfaced surveillance footage and investigative reporting confirm that the now-exploding Somali daycare fraud scandal in Minnesota follows a well-documented playbook that state officials were warned about as early as 2013, and repeatedly thereafter.

Yet year after year, the fraud was allowed to metastasize, draining hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars from programs meant to help poor children, while far-left Governor Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and radical Rep. Ilhan Omar looked the other way.

The scandal exploded into the national spotlight this week after a viral video by YouTuber Nick Shirley went mega-viral, accusing Somali-owned daycare centers of blatant fraud.

Shirley knocked on doors, demanding answers, and what he uncovered has prompted the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to “surge” into Minnesota for a massive investigation.

Let’s rewind to 2013, when a team of Ramsey County forensic auditors uncovered the scam’s early roots. A KSTP 5 Eyewitness News report from October 2025 reveals a whistleblower from Ramsey County who, in 2013, uncovered four daycare centers exploiting CCAP, with dozens more suspicious cases totaling over $100 million in fraud.

The whistleblower alerted the Department of Human Services (DHS) and lawmakers, but nothing happened for years.

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Is The Gloom And Doom About An AI Dystopia Justified?

“Artificial intelligence does the work of many minds at once. Will human creativity flourish or fail?”

“Artificial intelligence will make us useless slaves. We must stop these abuses before they start!”

“AI will create killer robots! We’re doomed!”

I have heard various versions of the above concerns regarding the rise of robots, the growth of artificial intelligence, and the broader concerns about the moral and ethical dilemmas facing humanity as technological innovation advances—and then accelerates.

The gloom around AI is understandable but incorrect.

Technological innovation has always served as a winnowing process. Old jobs fall away, but new jobs take their place. Some career paths may disappear, but new opportunities take over.

No matter how sophisticated, artificial intelligence cannot replace human intelligence, wisdom, ingenuity, and entrepreneurship. AI can hone specialized skills for those who want to retain or maintain specific fields of craftsmanship, but craftsmen are not going away.

With special thanks to Canadian commentator JJ McCullough, AI makes it easier to create templates and ideas, but the quality and the taste of the pictures, objects, and ideas created are, on the surface, still cringeworthy. A machine cannot inspire, nor can it replicate the inspiration of the human spirit. Whatever stories, poems, or other forms of art that can come out of a ChatGPT prompt, the style and substance will never suffice or suffuse the human mind. Furthermore, the compact creations of Grok or Meta AI programs can’t reflect the inner tensions of man’s search for place or meaning in his world, including the scenes that he depicts. While AI can generate pictures or formulate ideas into pictures, it cannot create or enhance the contrasts, shades, and shadows that transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Of course, there is a growing number of artists and intellectuals ruggedly opposed to AI. They think that all creative works deserve assessment and praise based on the amount of effort put into the creation. Here’s the fundamental failure of the marketplace for leftists. Value is not determined by labor but by the interest or value of the consumer. No creation, no good, and no service has value in and of itself, but rather its value is based on what it produces. There you have the Austrian economics’ subjective theory of value.

Animators fear that AI will take their jobs away. AI might make it easier to produce films, but the fundamental characters and templates of individual actors, processions, and ideas will have to come from the people. The stunning beauty of Walt Disney’s “Snow White” still rivals the computer animation of DreamWorks.

Instead of limiting or bankrupting artists, AI will induce the general public to discern quality, and artists will strive to reflect that. The general public will have a greater appreciation for the abstract and avant-garde. That’s a win-win for artists.

We cannot predict how broad and commanding man’s ingenuity will be going forward. AI has provided a means for man to be more creative more quickly, but it cannot predict or anticipate the future wants and needs of the general public, either.

Man and his search for competence, recognition, and meaning will not disappear, but our lives will improve in the search for answers.

Another fear about rapid mechanization and advancement of AI was that there would be such widespread unemployment that governments and peoples would have to invest in universal basic incomes.

Industries that promoted the upkeep and well-being of horses fell into decline with the arrival of the automobile. Animal enthusiasts, performers, and general-interest equestrians still own horses, ride them, and enjoy their company. The horse-riding industry was limited, but it became more specialized.

But specialized careers employ fewer people. Where’s the comfort, then? Consider the moment when banks switched to automatic in the 1970s. There was widespread fear that automated teller machines, ATMs, would put thousands of people out of work. The opposite happened. Banks shifted their services to more customer-related features. With the increased savings, these financial firms opened up more branches, and they ended up having to hire more people! Free enterprise does entail creative destruction, but there always follows a creative proliferation!

Furthermore, it’s rather arrogant for labor leaders and liberal pundits to claim that “There will be no jobs left.” Human wants and needs are constantly changing. Steve Jobs created the portable phone with Internet before there was a thought, let alone a want, for the phone. Once he invented the nifty device, everyone had to have one. The innovations often create the need because of the facility and agility they provide to the consumer.

Even now, reports are listing the jobs that AI cannot replace. Human beings will always have employment opportunities.

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Innocent Man Sues for Over $60,000 After Police Blew Up His Business. A Court Says He’s Entitled to Nothing.

The Takings Clause of the 5th Amendment “was designed to bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens,” the Supreme Court said in Armstrong v. United States, “which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole.” That was just over 65 years ago.

It is, unfortunately, not living up to that promise.

For the latest example, we can look to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which ruled last month that an innocent man whose business was destroyed by Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers in pursuit of a fugitive is not entitled to compensation for damages under the Takings Clause. This is despite the law’s pledge that the government provide “just compensation” when it usurps private property for a public use.

In August of 2022, an armed fugitive threw Carlos Pena out of his North Hollywood printing shop and barricaded himself inside it. Over the course of 13 hours, a SWAT team with the LAPD launched more than 30 rounds of tear gas canisters through the walls, door, roof, and windows. After the standoff, police discovered the suspect had managed to escape. But Pena was left with a husk of what his store once was, the inside ravaged and equipment ruined, saddling him with over $60,000 in damages, according to his lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles.

It’s a suit Pena did not want to file, having repeatedly reached out to the government to recoup his losses before going to court. The city ignored him. Pena, meanwhile, was hemorrhaging income, resigned to working out of his garage at a much-reduced capacity with a single printer he purchased after the raid.

The recent ruling on Pena’s claim joins a burgeoning pile of case law wading through this exact scenario. Each decision ultimately grapples with a version of a core question: Does the Takings Clause cease to apply in some sense when property is destroyed via “police power”?

Different circuits have come to varying conclusions. The 9th Circuit, for its part, declined to answer if a categorical exception exists. But the court did conclude that there is no taking “when law enforcement officers destroy private property while acting reasonably in the necessary defense of public safety” (emphasis mine). The judges said that doomed Pena’s claim.

Their decision references a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which in 2023 considered a similar case: Police mutilated a woman’s Texas house in pursuit of a fugitive who had locked himself inside her attic. Because law enforcement destroyed Vicki Baker’s home “by necessity during an active emergency,” the court ruled, it did not constitute a taking under the U.S. Constitution.

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Here Are 5 Wars Trump Started or Expanded in 2025

President Donald Trump came into office presenting himself as a peace president. “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into,” he said in his inaugural address.

By those standards, his presidency has been a failure. Trump launched nearly as many airstrikes in five months as former President Joe Biden did in his entire term, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, a nonprofit that monitors wars around the world. And those airstrikes have hit places where the U.S. military was not fighting during Biden’s term, from the Caribbean to Iran.

Of course, Biden himself was guilty of the same sort of double-talk. He bragged that “the United States is not at war anywhere in the world” less than an hour after U.S. Central Command announced a new air raid on Yemen. Like death and taxes, it seems a certainty of life that American presidents will talk peace while continuing—and expanding—war.

Here are four countries where Trump has done that:

Venezuela

On the campaign trail, Trump signalled that he wanted a full-on war against drug cartels in Latin America. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Steven Miller originally wanted to target Mexican cartels, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio steered Trump toward a regime change campaign in Venezuela, arguing that the Venezuelan government was itself a drug smuggling gang.

The campaign began by bombing alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean. At least 104 people have been killed in these attacks so far. In one instance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the military to bomb survivors clinging to a shipwrecked boat. The White House reportedly hoped that the military buildup and show of force would convince Venezuelan ruler Nicolas Maduro to “cry uncle,” in the words of White House Chief of Staff Susan Wiles.

Meanwhile, Trump and Miller’s stated goals have shifted from a war on drugs to a naked resource grab. They both demanded that Venezuela compensate the U.S. for nationalizing oil businesses several decades ago as Trump declared a “TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE” of oil tankers from the country. The U.S. military has seized at least two oil tankers leaving Venezuela, and Maduro has ordered his navy to escort oil shipments.

The American people are not enthusiastic about this military campaign. Recent polling shows that 53 percent of Americans oppose the boat attacks and 63 percent oppose attacking Venezuelan soil. But the Trump administration is eager to show that it can do things without permission from Congress or the public, and the Caribbean is apparently full of easy targets.

Yemen

In Yemen, Trump turned a frozen conflict back into a hot war. The Houthi movement in Sanaa, one of the two rival Yemeni governments, had been harassing international shipping in the Red Sea as a tactic to pressure Israel to pull out of Gaza. After Trump secured a ceasefire in Gaza in January 2025, the Houthis stopped their attacks.

Without warning, Trump attacked Yemen in March 2025. He presented this as a prelude to attacking Iran, declaring that any “shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN.” Then, after two months of inconclusive bombing and the loss of two American fighter jets, Trump ended the campaign.

It was in the Yemen war that former National Security Adviser Mike Waltz accidentally added a journalist to a group chat for planning air raids. (In the process, Hegseth revealed that the military deliberately killed one or more civilian bystanders.)

Only a few months before relaunching this war, Trump had criticized the logic behind it. “It’s crazy. You can solve problems over the telephone. Instead, they start dropping bombs. I see, recently, they’re dropping bombs all over Yemen,” then-candidate Trump said in May 2024. “You don’t have to do that. You can talk in such a way where they respect you and they listen to you.”

Iran

The Islamic Republic is the Middle Eastern grand prize for neoconservatives, who have been pushing for a regime change war there since the early 2000s. Trump edged toward that outcome in his first term, with military buildups, an economic embargo, and the assassination of an Iranian general. Every time, he stopped just short of an attack on Iranian soil.

That changed in his second term. Publicly, Trump was negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program. Those talks were actually a U.S.-Israeli ruse to prepare for war, PBS and The Washington Post reported last week. Israel attacked without warning on June 13, 2025, killing Iranian commanders and disabling Iranian air defenses.

After 12 days of back-and-forth air raids between Iran and Israel, the U.S. launched a stealth bomber raid on Iranian nuclear enrichment sites, then declared victory. Although Trump didn’t go as far as some neoconservatives wanted, experience suggests that if you give war hawks an inch, they’ll take a mile. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is headed to the White House on December 29 to make the case for another attack on Iran.

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