"The Trump administration is threatening funding for the essential childcare services that countless families across Minnesota rely on — apparently all on the basis of one video on social media. To say I am outraged is an understatement.

Let me be clear: fraud is unacceptable and individuals responsible for it should be prosecuted. I’ve been holding fraudsters and scammers accountable for years and will continue to do so. Since I was first elected Attorney General, my office has prosecuted over 300 cases of Medicaid fraud and won over $80 million in judgments and restitution, and that’s not counting our success in going private-sector scammers who rip off Minnesota consumers.

Last year, I led a bipartisan push at the Minnesota legislature to expand the resources and tools available to my Medicaid fraud team, and I plan to do that again this year. What I will not do, if it is at all within my power, is let the Trump administration devastate funding for services that Minnesota families depend on to afford their lives.

We’ve seen this movie before. In mid-December, the Trump administration gave four counties in Minnesota one month to conduct in-person interviews with almost 100,000 households that receive SNAP benefits to re-verify their eligibility. This demand was both impossible to complete and unnecessary, as SNAP recipients are already re-verified roughly once a year. The Trump administration threatened to cut off food support for almost half a million Minnesotans, including over 150,000 kids, if Minnesota did not comply with that impossible demand. Just last week, I sued to stop that cruelty. And not for the first time: I filed this latest lawsuit just six weeks after I sued to stop the Trump Administration from taking food off the tables of low-income Minnesotans during Trump’s government shutdown. And I won. 

There are legal, appropriate ways for the federal and state government to ensure programs are being administered with integrity. As we have seen time and again this year, however, this administration seems to have little interest in following the law, including laws that are designed to help state and federal agencies work together. My team and I are exploring all our legal options to ensure that critical childcare services do not get abruptly slashed based on pretext and grandstanding. This hasty, scorched earth-attack is not just wrong, it may well be illegal, and my team and I remain committed to protecting the people of Minnesota to the fullest extent of the law.” 

The Official Website of Office of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison

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