Anti-ICE aid fund in Minnesota shuts down — and you can probably guess the reason why
SEPTEMBER 18, 2026
Friday, September 18, 2026
Anti-ICE aid fund in Minnesota shuts down — and you can probably guess the reason why
Fraud continues to plague the state of Minnesota, extending even to a program created to offset the economic impact of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Hennepin County.
Back in March, Hennepin County commissioners approved $2 million for the program meant to help small businesses that had been affected by Operation Metro Surge, which began in December and ended in February.
'Clearly, fraud and people who want to commit it are still very active, as they do not fear the penalty.'
Three hundred applications were submitted to the Hennepin County relief program, each requesting a portion of the $2 million fund. However, after a "rigorous review," the county has now ended the program, Hennepin County chief public relations officer Carolyn Marinan said in a statement to Fox 9.
Only about 80 applications had been approved, receiving a total of about $500,000. More than 200 applications were flagged for possible fraud, Fox 9 reported.
Hennepin County Commissioner Jeffrey Lunde claimed that despite the flood of allegedly fraudulent applications, no money was actually lost to fraudsters. "We caught the fraud before we spent any money," he said, according to CBS Minnesota.
RELATED: Minnesota police crack down on anti-ICE protesters, multiple arrests outside hotel
Madison Thorn/Anadolu/Getty Images
It appears officials found many applications suspicious almost immediately, as the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office claimed it was asked to open an investigation into "potential criminal activity" back in June, according to CBS Minnesota. The sheriff's office said it requested "pertinent documents" related to the case a month later, and once it receives all of those documents, it will open an investigation.
"Clearly, fraud and people who want to commit it are still very active, as they do not fear the penalty. Thanks to county staff and our partner, we were able [to] thwart these efforts by devoting more time and effort to tighter oversight, in-person inspections, and increased scrutiny," Lunde said in a statement to FOX 9.
"As the fraudsters continue their efforts, we need to ramp up our game as well. This is the new normal for all levels of government in Minnesota."
CBS Minnesota reported that $1 million in unused funds is still available for area small businesses, while another $500,000 will be used "to provide consulting and promotional support for businesses."
County PR officer Marinan said, "We’ve moved beyond the urgent need for immediate grant relief and are focusing our efforts on strategies that support the long-term vitality and sustainability of businesses."
Of note, anti-ICE agitators also surged to Hennepin County during Operation Metro Surge. One hotel alone sustained thousands of dollars in damage during a violent anti-ICE riot in downtown Minneapolis in early January, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.
Hundreds of colleges where up to 80% of students fail to pay their loans — sticking taxpayers with the bill
Hundreds of colleges where up to 80% of students fail to pay their loans — sticking taxpayers with the bill
There are at least 500 colleges and universities across the country where at least 40% of students fail to pay their federal student loans, according to a new report — sticking US taxpayers with the bill while the schools cash out.
Some schools — like Construction Training Center in South Carolina, Legends Barber College in Texas — have nonpayment rates of 70-80%, a new analysis from NPR found.
And the taxpayer-backed cash is keeping the small schools afloat, accounting for more than two-thirds of the institutions’ entire revenue streams.
At Diversified Vocational College in Los Angeles, for example, 73% of students taking federal loans defaulted on payments for the 2024-2025 school year — while students’ $3.5 million in federal loans that year accounted for nearly 90% of the school’s revenue.
That means nearly three-quarters of Diversified Vocational College students paid tuition with federal money, who then went more than three months without paying the government back.
And the overwhelming majority of the schools with the worst nonpayment rates were similar to Diversified Vocational College — private, for-profit schools specializing in vocational training.
They accounted for 424 of the 500 schools with nonpayment rates over 40%, data from the US Education Department showed.
Public schools accounted for just 15 on the list, while 61 were private non-profits. The average federal loan non-repayment rate at all schools nationwide, meanwhile, was only about 15%.
Those shocking numbers mean many of the 500 schools on the list are depending on federal loans to keep the lights on — which has left education experts scratching their heads at why the government keeps handing out loans to students who say they’re headed for these schools.
“If a private lender were looking at a school that has a 40%, 50% delinquency rate on past loans, they would probably say, ‘We’re not going to lend to that school,'” said the American Enterprise Institute’s Preston Cooper, who studies the finances of higher education.
“Why does it make sense for the federal government and for taxpayers?” he added.
Part of what is driving the problem appeared to be what the schools teach — the vast majority of the 500 schools specialized in trades that tend to pull on lower-wealth demographics, and train them for industries that don’t often lead to high-paying jobs.
Barber and hairstylist schools dominated the list, as did trade schools for construction and healthcare aid jobs.
Confusion over the loan process — deepened during pandemic-era suspensions, and President Biden’s mass loan forgiveness promises — have also complicated the situation in recent years, according to NPR.
But the accountability largely lies on the federal government to not only enforce repayments from students — but also to be more strict with the schools they’re attending, according to experts.
“If the federal student loan program did not exist, these schools would not exist,” the Project on Predatory Student Lending’s executive director Eileen Connor told NPR. “Why would any bank give or lend money to someone to go to these schools when it’s a near certainty that they’re not going to be able to repay it?”
Connor called giving such student loans was “is the definition of predatory lending.”
The federal government has moved to crackdown on the situation, with President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill introducing measures to restrict federal funding from schools which can’t demonstrate that its students earn more than people in their industry without degrees.
“Institutions cannot benefit from taxpayer dollars while ignoring the fact that a significant share of their students are not well-prepared to repay their loans,” the Department of Education said in a statement. “It’s time for institutions to step up or risk losing access to federal student aid.”
Fearfull of CCP operatives?
AI protesters rally outside Dreamforce conference in San Francisco as tech bosses shrug off fears
DUI murder
California mom of three killed in horrific DUI hit-and-run: ‘I pray for her kids’
https://nypost.com/2026/09/17/us-news/california-mom-killed-in-fatal-tamarack-beach-dui-hit-and-run/
Bank robbers go to banks, pedophiles go into K-12 education
Teacher’s child sex abuse material uncovered, exposing his double life at California high school
The Black subculture of acceptable violence
Pennsylvania college students beaten unconscious, dragged by hair as mob invades off-campus house
Several female Pennsylvania college students were brutally assaulted by a mob of agitators who had invaded their off-campus house during an apparent illegal street takeover.
The unidentified coeds, who attend York College of Pennsylvania, were dragged by the hair, punched, kicked, maced and beaten unconscious in the attack as they were sitting on the front porch of their rental home Saturday morning, according to Fox 43.
“After the first punch was given, all these girls started to rush us, and that’s where it kind of gets blurry because I think people were coming at me… I turn and see my friend get dragged by her hair down our porch steps and disappear. My other friend got dragged by her hair,” one of the students told the outlet
The real cost of sanity
Holdout Lindsay Clancy juror Michael P. Desronvil believes being black Republican may have put target on his back
Time To File A RICO Case Against Teachers’ Unions...absolutely!
Time To File A RICO Case Against Teachers’ Unions
If you want evidence that teachers’ unions are nothing more than taxpayer-funded left-wing rackets, look no further than the evidence dug up by the Progressive Policy Institute — a group founded by centrist Democrats.
The stronger the union presence in a state, the worse students do on literacy instruction.
It’s no secret that, despite the fact that taxpayers fork over roughly $1 trillion every year to finance public K-12 schools, math and reading scores are in decline.
“Children have lost so much ground, they not only know less than their counterparts did a decade ago; older children know as little as they have this century,” notes the PPI’s Rachel Canter. A new Gallup poll finds that just 32% of adults are “completely” or “somewhat” satisfied with the U.S. school system, down from 51% in 2019.
But that broad brush obscures important differences. Namely, that some states are doing much better than others. And what do these states have in common? Teachers’ unions are weaker.
“When my colleagues and I compared the Fordham teachers’ union strength ranking to ExcelinEd’s early literacy tracker, we found a strong, negative correlation between the two — the more powerful the unions, the fewer literacy policy principles the state had adopted,” Canter wrote in the Wall Street Journal. (See the chart at right.)
Sure, there are some outliers, but even those prove the point that teachers’ unions are a racket. As Canter notes, needed reforms in New Mexico, Maryland and Massachusetts came “despite pushback from their unions.”
The Massachusetts literacy reform bill requiring “evidence-based literacy instruction” in public schools has been described as “the greatest legislative loss for the teachers’ union in a decade.”
It’s not as though there isn’t evidence that these reforms work. Mississippi embarked on a comprehensive, science-based literacy effort more than a decade ago, and saw its students go from the bottom of the barrel nationwide to at or near the top 10 in reading and math.
So let’s see if we have this right. Each year, teachers’ unions collect more than $700 million in dues, all paid by taxpayers, and promise to “champion high-quality public education” and “fulfill the purpose of public education,” according to the mission statements of the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association.
Yet they wage wars against reforms that they know will improve education outcomes. Not just literacy programs, but merit pay, school choice, and countless other common-sense reforms.
So, what are these unions doing with all that money they collect if not fighting to fulfill their stated missions?
Turns out, they are far more interested in getting Democrats elected and pushing far-left causes.
Earlier this year, a report from Defending Education found that national teachers’ unions “have directed roughly $669 million toward left-wing political groups, advocacy organizations and campaigns since 2015,” a number that tops $1 billion when you count state and local affiliates.
This includes more than $2.4 million to the far-left Center for American Progress, $7 million to the Democratic Governors Association, nearly $26 million to the Democrats’ House Majority PAC and $32 million to the Senate Majority PAC. And, maybe because they figure it will cut down on class sizes, more than $400,000 to pro-abortion groups.
In 2024, the NEA and AFT gave more than $6 million to Democrats and less than $60,000 to Republicans.
Add it all up, and you have organizations that extort money from taxpayers to finance a protection racket for themselves, their Democratic patrons, and various far-left causes (which few taxpayers would support), while engaging in fraud by pretending to be looking out for the interests of public-school students.
We’re not lawyers, but we’d say that classifies as a criminal racket under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
Normalizing mental illness and narcissism
Freedom of speech is still the law of the land in the United States, but on college campuses, that is apparently up for interpretation.
Look no further than the University of California and its sprawling system of 10 campuses across the state. One set of policies and standards governs all of its campuses, and with it comes a ban on "misgendering" and adhering to biological reality.
'UC's policy goes too far in restricting protected speech.'
Under UC's "Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment" policy — which is available in four different languages — sexual harassment is described as including conduct like "acts of verbal, nonverbal, or physical aggression, intimidation, or hostility based on gender, gender identity, gender expression, sex- or gender-stereotyping, or sexual orientation."
In its FAQ section of the same document, "intentional and repeated use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with the individual's gender identity (i.e., misgendering)" is also considered harassment. The policy even extends its harassment definition to include the use of a person's "dead name," which in many cases means one's legal name.
So long as the conduct is "unwelcome," students or faculty who violate the policy are subject to discipline, including dismissal, aka expulsion.
Fortunately, a federal judge has stepped in and entered a preliminary injunction that bars UC from enforcing its policy for the time being, following a lawsuit from Defending Education.
In court documents, the Central District of California Southern Division's decision included an example of what UC considers to be harassment.
The school said that harassment based on gender identity includes "when a transgender man is intentionally and repeatedly called by his dead name (i.e., refers to a name that a transgender person was given at birth but that they no longer use), or intentionally and repeatedly referred to by 'Miss' or 'Ms.,' by a professor in an intentionally mocking manner."
RELATED: CALIFORNIA IDLE: Iconic reality show ditches Hollywood after 24 seasons
Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing/Getty Images
The court also made its decision based on precedent, citing two recent cases that establish "UC's policy goes too far in restricting protected speech."
In Bates v. Pakseresht, the court noted that adoptive parents being forced into "affirming" a child's sexual orientation and gender identity (including preferred pronouns) "quite clearly restrict[ed] and compel[led] speech based on both content and viewpoint."
Furthermore, in Defending Education v. Olentangy, the court explained, a school district was prevented from enforcing a similar policy against Defending Education's members.
The court documents from the latest Defending Education lawsuit also pointed to training that "UC students must also complete," described as sexual violence and harassment, anti-discrimination, prevention, and education training, or SHAPE.
The lawsuit said the training formerly included the following scenario as an example of a hostile environment:
My name is Mona, and I am transgender. My classmate Jane continues to call me James, which was my name before I transitioned. Jane refers to me as a man and complains when I use the restroom. I asked her to stop, but she does not. I feel very disrespected and want this to stop.
The lawsuit notes, however, that "UC declares that this example is no longer included in the SHAPE training."
RELATED: Campus free speech is alive — barely
To the court, all of this evidence was sufficient enough to grant the injunction.
Nicole Neily, president and founder of Defending Education, told Blaze News in a statement that her organization is grateful for the district court's decision against "the University of California system's coercive speech policy against our members."
Neily also called it "unconstitutional" for public universities to compel student speech.
"We will continue to defend this principle in California and other schools across the country as needed," she added.
UC did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
