The Department of Health and Human Services has froze child care payments to Minnesota following fraud at a child care center and tightened restrictions on other payments nationwide.
Jim O’Neill, deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said in a Tuesday, Dec. 30, post to
“We’re turning off the money and uncovering fraud,” said O’Neill, who is also acting director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The department froze all state payments to the Department of Children and Families and activated what O’Neill called a “spending defense system.”
“Starting today, all ACF payments across the country will require a valid reason and receipt or photographic evidence before being sent to the state,” he said.
Assistant Secretary of State Alex Adams said in an accompanying video that he spoke with the “Director of the Minnesota Department of Child Care” and claimed that he “could not say with confidence” whether the fraud allegations were “isolated or widespread across the state.”
Adams did not reveal the director’s name. USA TODAY contacted the Department of Health and Human Services to find out who Adams spoke with, and the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families to confirm whether the call was made.
Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s office said in a statement to USA TODAY that “while the president has released fraudsters from prison, the governor has been fighting fraud for years,” calling the move “a clear attempt to politicize the issue to the detriment of Minnesotans and defunding government programs.”
Report adds context to conservative influencer videos
O’Neill also pointed to a video of conservative influencer Nick Shirley claiming it was an abandoned daycare center and called for an investigation into it.
The video shows Shirley visiting multiple child care centers in Minnesota that the narrator says are abandoned despite being licensed to serve dozens of children and receiving public funding.
CBS News, citing state records, reported that all but two of the locations Shirley mentioned had valid licenses, and all active locations had been visited by state regulators within the past six months. One was visited by the state on Dec. 4, the network said.
The report cited the daycare’s safety, cleanliness, equipment, staff training and other violations, but said there was “no evidence of wrongdoing documented.”
Tikki Brown, secretary of the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families, told CBS News that the agency is “questioning some of the methods used in the video,” but said the agency “takes the fraud charges very seriously.”
Two of the Minneapolis centers featured in the video closed this year, Brown said at a news conference Monday, Dec. 29, but a department spokesperson later told the Minnesota Star Tribune that one of the centers “has decided to remain open.”
Zach Osman, the manager of the Minnesota Child Care Center where Shirley was last seen in the video, told the newspaper that the center’s doors are locked at all times for safety reasons, “walk-in appointments” are not allowed, and staff are on “high alert” following President Donald Trump’s anti-Somali comments.
The children were inside the center when Shirley was there, but “no one was visible from the outside,” Osman said, adding that state officials visited the center for the fifth time this year on Dec. 29, after the video was posted.
Shirley has been criticized for publishing false information. For example, Shirley’s recent viral video claimed that the Minnesota flag was altered to resemble the Somali flag. The flag’s designer and an expert adviser on the redesign told Reuters last year that the flag has nothing to do with Somalia.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Contributed by Christopher Cann, USA Today.
