Senator John Kennedy (R-Louisiana). Photo courtesy of Senator John Kennedy.
In a December 3, 2025, Senate floor speech, Senator John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) said federal prosecutors uncovered roughly $1 billion in welfare fraud in Minnesota involving three major schemes tied to child nutrition, housing for the homeless, and autism services. He said the fraud was concentrated within Minnesota’s Somali community, while stressing that he was describing facts rather than attacking the community as a whole, noting that dozens of individuals have already been convicted or charged.
Kennedy opened by emphasizing that the United States is the most generous nation in the world, providing food, housing, and medical care to those in need at enormous taxpayer expense. That generosity, he said, makes large-scale abuse especially infuriating. What federal prosecutors uncovered in Minnesota, he told the Senate, was outright theft.
He said investigators identified three elaborate fraud schemes. The first involved Feeding Our Future, a nonprofit that claimed to be feeding hungry children in the Somali community. The organization received federal funds administered by Minnesota welfare authorities and distributed money to local businesses, many of them Somali-owned, that were supposed to operate meal sites. Kennedy said the program began with modest funding but rapidly expanded, eventually receiving about $100 million per year.
According to Kennedy, the children existed, but the meals did not. Instead of feeding hungry children, the businesses involved used the money for personal enrichment, including luxury purchases such as yachts, vacations, jewelry, and home furnishings.
The second scheme was presented as a program to house homeless people. Another nonprofit sought millions of dollars to provide housing, with funding requests escalating quickly from a few million dollars to more than $100 million per year. Kennedy said none of the money went to housing and that the funds were simply pocketed by those running the program.
The third scheme, which Kennedy described as the most disturbing, involved autism services. Providers sought funding to treat autistic children but could not identify enough qualifying cases. Kennedy said they then bribed parents in the Somali community, offering between $400 and $1,500 per child in exchange for falsely certifying children as autistic.
The scheme expanded rapidly, with annual funding requests eventually reaching hundreds of millions of dollars. Kennedy identified Asha Farhan Hassan as the leader of this operation and said she was also involved in the child nutrition fraud.
Across all three schemes, Kennedy said, approximately $1 billion in taxpayer funds was stolen.
Kennedy said state employees raised concerns and attempted to intervene but were blocked by political leadership. In the Feeding Our Future case, welfare officials who questioned rising claims were threatened with lawsuits and accusations of racism. He said the nonprofit warned that denying applications from minority-owned businesses would result in legal action and damaging media coverage.
According to Kennedy, those concerns were elevated to senior officials, but no action was taken. He cited Minnesota’s legislative auditor, who said threats of litigation and negative press influenced how politicians exercised regulatory authority. Kennedy also quoted a fraud investigator in the attorney general’s office, who said there was a perception that aggressive enforcement would trigger political backlash among the Somali community, described as a core Democratic voting bloc.
Kennedy further cited statements from Minnesota Department of Human Services employees, who publicly blamed Governor Tim Walz for allowing the fraud to continue. In a statement posted by employees, they said Walz was “100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota” and accused his administration of retaliating against whistleblowers through monitoring, threats, and repression.
Kennedy also referenced a City Journal report alleging that some of the stolen funds may have been sent to al-Shabaab, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization in Somalia. He said the claim had not been proven but confirmed that prosecutors were investigating the allegation.
Responding to accusations of racism, Kennedy said the issue had nothing to do with race and everything to do with criminal conduct. He said the facts showed that the schemes were organized by leaders within the Somali community, that most participating businesses were Somali-owned, and that kickbacks were paid to Somali parents. Those facts, he said, should not be ignored for political convenience.
Kennedy concluded that Minnesota politicians allowed the fraud to continue for political reasons, diverting taxpayer money away from people who were genuinely homeless, hungry, or autistic. He said refusing to confront the scandal out of fear of being labeled racist only enabled further abuse and undermined public trust.
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