Somali pirates. Dead people “billing” taxpayers. Foreign terror networks thriving on Medicaid scams. Hackers stealing identities to collect benefits.

That lineup sounds like an over-the-top Hollywood heist movie. Americans now read versions of it on the front page.

Americans should treat this caper as a wake-up call. Elected leaders should treat it as an emergency.

Federal prosecutors charged 78 Somali immigrants with allegedly stealing more than $1 billion from taxpayers. National outlets noticed, including the see-no-immigrant-evil New York Times. Prosecutors also say suspected Medicaid fraud in Minnesota may top $9 billion, with new allegations and evidence surfacing by the day.

Hollywood can’t compete with numbers like that. In “Die Hard,” the crooks chased $640 million. Danny Ocean’s crew in “Ocean’s 11” made off with a mere $160 million. Minnesota’s real-life scammers allegedly went after far more, and they exploited programs meant to help the vulnerable.

Americans should treat this caper as a wake-up call. Elected leaders should treat it as an emergency: Prosecute the thieves, close the loopholes, and change the incentives that let fraudsters treat public benefits like an ATM.

For perspective, the fraud under investigation approaches the size of Somalia’s entire government budget and equals roughly 12% of Somalia’s economy, based on recent estimates. Minnesota’s Somali population equals about 0.5% of Somalia’s population and about 2.5% of the Twin Cities metro. Yet prosecutors say a small number of people allegedly moved sums that rival major industries back home.

Worse, investigators say some stolen money went overseas. In the Feeding Our Future case and related investigations, federal prosecutors have alleged that some proceeds flowed to al-Shabaab, a terrorist group the United States has targeted for years. If those allegations hold, taxpayers didn’t just fund fraud. They helped bankroll an enemy.

Minnesota’s scandal also exposes a national contradiction. Washington wages war abroad, welcomes refugees at home, and writes checks through the same federal programs that criminals can exploit — while the national debt nears $39 trillion.

Minnesota’s political class added its own layer of absurdity. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D) built a profitable career calling America racist. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) delivered his re-election victory speech in Somali just days before the scope of these cases made headlines. Symbolic gestures came easy. Basic oversight did not.

Gov. Tim Walz (D) still owes voters answers. Did incompetence drive this disaster, or did indifference do the work? Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem argues both played a role. Reports now suggest state employees blew the whistle years ago about lax controls and sloppy management. Voters heard little of it when elections still hung in the balance.

RELATED: Trump has the chance to end the welfare free-for-all Minnesota exposed

Photo by: Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Walz reportedly knew about major fraud risks as early as 2020. His administration later resumed funding after recipients sued, accusing the state of racism. The Walz administration also handed an “outstanding refugee award” in 2021 to a woman now charged in connection with fraud — facts that undercut today’s alibis.

Federal investigators deserve credit. The Departments of Justice and Treasury have pursued these cases aggressively. House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has opened another congressional probe. Prosecutions matter, but prevention matters more.

A new law President Trump signed this summer aims to make fraud more difficult to pull off. It requires states to recheck eligibility for able-bodied adults on Medicaid every six months instead of annually. For the first time, it also forces states to absorb more of the cost when they let fraud run rampant.

Those reforms should move quickly from paper to practice. States, red and blue, should implement them immediately. Fraudsters thrive on delay, confusion, and political excuses.

Taxpayer fraud deserves full prosecution. Political leaders who enable it deserve accountability too — whether they turned a blind eye, ignored whistleblowers, or refused to enforce the law. Every state in the Union should move now, or Minnesota’s scandal will spread.

​Opinion & analysis, Minnesota fraud, Somali fraud, Tim walz, Jacob frey, Ilhan omar, Somalia, Feeding our future, Al-shabaab, Racism accusation, Hollywood, Die hard, Ocean’s 11, New york times, Corruption, Welfare, Medicaid, Scam, Kristi noem, Refugees 

If you want to see where contemporary speech regulation leads, look to Britain.

My country, the birthplace of the common law tradition and parliamentary liberty, now arrests thousands of its citizens each year for “offensive” speech. Much of what Americans still debate as hypothetical has already hardened into policy here.

While commentators work to enforce elite consensus, perceptions of two-tier policing have fueled public anger.

This did not happen overnight, nor did it require a dramatic constitutional rupture. It emerged gradually, through well-intentioned laws, bureaucratic definitions, and institutional habits that now govern what may be said, by whom and about whom. For Americans who assume such restrictions could never survive contact with the First Amendment, Britain offers a sobering corrective.

Catalog of grievance

The roots of this crisis can be traced to the Equality Act 2010, which laid the groundwork for today’s restrictions on speech. The act provides a legal definition of “protected characteristics,” making it unlawful to discriminate against individuals on the basis of attributes such as sex or race.

The act outlines core areas — race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, and gender reassignment — which form the foundation of modern hate-crime legislation. Crimes deemed to be motivated by prejudice or hostility toward individuals with these characteristics can result in longer prison sentences. Yet because prejudice and discrimination are inherently subjective and difficult to quantify, hate-crime legislation erodes the principle of equality before the law.

In total, there are nine protected characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. Although not all meet the legal threshold for hate crime, these categories are embedded across workplace training, education, and public services.

Institutionalizing them frames certain groups as uniquely vulnerable to harm, encouraging institutions to treat speech as a risk to be managed rather than a liberty to be protected, and confers a durable victim identity. Through the lens of identity politics, victimhood becomes a proxy for moral authority. Unsurprisingly this logic expands rather than contracts. Campaigns to add further protected traits — such as menopause, misogyny, or afro hair — reflect a constantly growing catalog of grievance.

12,000 arrests a year

This mindset has enabled some of the most restrictive internet-speech enforcement in the Western world. Each year, roughly 12,000 Britons are arrested for online communications deemed “offensive.” In widely reported cases, individuals have received custodial sentences for social-media posts seen by only a handful of people, or have been arrested for deliberately provocative but nonviolent acts. In another case, a man received a lengthy prison sentence for possessing music classified by authorities as “right-wing.” The cumulative effect has been chilling: Free expression now exists largely at the discretion of the state.

Even when not explicitly codified, the logic of victimhood drives these censorious impulses. Nowhere is this clearer than in the evolving concept of Islamophobia — a concept that Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, has pledged to “reform.”

With opinion polls faltering, Starmer finds himself electorally dependent on a sizable Muslim voting bloc. He must reassure the public that Britain remains a liberal democracy — one in which citizens are free to criticize, offend, and mock religion. The state’s response has been semantic rather than substantive. Islamophobia is now being reframed as “anti-Muslim hatred,” defined in draft guidance as:

Engaging in or encouraging criminal acts, including violence, vandalism, harassment, or intimidation — whether physical, verbal, written, or electronic — directed at Muslims or those perceived to be Muslim because of their religion, ethnicity, or appearance.

Although this definition is non-statutory and not legally binding, it is likely to encourage further self-censorship around legitimate discussion of Islam. A similar effect followed the adoption of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims’ definition of Islamophobia. The Labour Party and numerous public bodies — including more than 50 local councils, some governing Muslim-majority areas such as Bradford, Birmingham, Rochdale, and Leicester — have adopted it.

RELATED: Pakistani cousin marriage has no place in UK

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Hiding behind ‘Islamophobia’

These same regions have long faced serious criminal scandals, including the sexual abuse of young girls by grooming gangs disproportionately composed of men of Pakistani origin. Official inquiries have documented how institutional reluctance to address these crimes — often citing fear of being perceived as “Islamophobic” — contributed to prolonged failures of safeguarding.

As someone who has written extensively about the cultural practice of cousin marriage, I must ask: Does pointing out the well-documented link between consanguinity and elevated risk of congenital disorders now qualify as “hostility”?

Rather than encouraging honest debate, further definitional expansion risks reinforcing institutional silence. In recent years, National Health Service materials have presented first-cousin marriage in notably neutral or positive terms, while academic journals have warned that criticism of female genital mutilation can shade into racism — sometimes proposing euphemistic language in place of the word “mutilation” itself.

This kind of top-down enforcement rarely sits well with voters. Public frustration grows when large numbers of young male asylum seekers are housed in already strained cities, while criticism of immigration policy is constrained by speech codes. No amount of central planning can engineer a harmonious multicultural society. Rebranding Islamophobia as “anti-Muslim hostility” will not resolve these tensions. It instead grants the state wider discretion to interpret — and restrict — speech.

Expansion of civil claims

The revised guidance goes further, characterizing anti-Muslim hostility as “the prejudicial stereotyping and racialization of Muslims as a collective group with set characteristics.” Like all attempts to police expression, the language is subjective and elastic. What happens if one agrees with MI5 that Islamist terrorism represents the most significant national-security threat? Or if one cites court data showing disproportionate Muslim representation in grooming-gang convictions?

The guidance also gestures toward institutional liability, warning against the “creation or use of practices and biases within institutions.” This invites an expansion of HR enforcement and civil claims based on indirect discrimination. Recent employment-tribunal cases — some involving substantial settlements for “injury to feelings” — illustrate how these standards already operate in practice.

Britain already restricts expression where Islam is concerned. Although blasphemy laws were formally repealed in England and Wales in 2008, they continue to function de facto. In one recent case, a man who burned a Quran was charged with “offending the religious institution of Islam” — an offense unknown to statute. (He later won on appeal.) When prosecution proceeds on improvised grounds, it is not difficult to imagine future cases brought under the banner of “anti-Muslim hostility.”

This is the endpoint of multiculturalism: ad hoc speech regulations shaped by cultural sensitivities and sustained by mass immigration. While commentators work to enforce elite consensus, perceptions of two-tier policing have fueled public anger.

There should be no such thing as a hate crime — only crime. Conditions are likely to worsen before they improve. Open borders and cultural relativism have become default assumptions across much of the West, yet they sit uneasily with the rule of law and freedom of expression.

If you want to see where contemporary speech regulation leads, look to Britain. Americans would be wise to do so while these questions are still debated in theory — rather than enforced in practice.

​Uk, Great britain, Free speech, Kier starmer, Lifestyle, Islam, Letter from the uk