Trump slams 'crooks', Ihan Omar in alleged Minnesota welfare scam
President Donald Trump tears into Minnesota politicians amid the state's alleged welfare scam during a speech in Pennsylvania.
The Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis is divorced from the downtown area by a tangle of highway overpasses, and as it turns out, it’s the perfect place for Somali immigrants in Minnesota to create an enclave that is much more Somali than American.
On the main drag, you can see the skeletal remains of shuttered non-Somali businesses, such as the aptly named Midwest Mountaineering, an outerwear supplier that had stood in the location since 1970. Every newly opened business is Somali.
Block by block, under the steady gaze of the 1970s brutalist Riverside towers, now populated mostly by Somalis, the neighborhood is losing its old identity and transforming into something that looks more like Africa than Minnesota, aside from the snow, of course.
This is not new in America. Immigrant groups have long come to our nation and chosen to live in isolation with their own customs. The difference here is that the Somali community in Minnesota is also seeking, and gaining, political power — not just in their neighborhood, but also across the state and even the federal government.
A view of a high-rise building in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis on December 9, 2025. Block by block, under the steady gaze of the 1970s brutalist Riverside towers, now populated mostly by Somalis, the neighborhood is losing its old identity and transforming into something that looks more like Africa than Minnesota, aside from the snow, of course. (Fox News)
In the wake of a massive fraud scandal in which perhaps as much as a billion dollars intended to feed hungry kids was allegedly stolen by organizations with very close ties to the Somali community, local residents are starting to feel mounting frustration.
One man who agreed to go on video told Fox News Digital, "I mean, I'm concerned, obviously, because there's no real accounting for any of this, and taxes continue to rise. Our bills go up on a regular basis, and yet there's no accountability for where any of this money goes."
The fact that a vast majority of those implicated in this public money scandal are Somali speaks to the level of political power the community has amassed on every level while barely assimilating at all to the broader culture.
One woman I spoke to, named Jane, in her late 30s and very sympathetic to immigrants, did admit, "They kind of have their own thing going on."
Lius, a restaurant owner, also told Fox News Digital on video, "With the Somali community, what bothers me is that I learned that they get all the benefits from the government. They don't even pay, like, full rent. They get a rent credit. They get all types of credit. And a lot of them don't even like to work."
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Recently, the mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, Abdullah Hammoud, got in hot water for suggesting that America should not be a melting pot but rather a salad — basically, that every individual immigrant group should retain its cultural norms.
Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud condemned the "hate" at the protests, saying it was not reflective of the city's values, in comments during the Nov. 18, 2025 city council meeting. (Dearborn City Council Meeting via YouTube)
In fact, it has always been possible in America for groups to live separately from the rest of society, obeying their own rules, but these groups, such as the Amish and Hasidic Jews, don’t seek state and federal political power.
Assimilation has long been the prerequisite for political power for the very reason that in politics, our elected officials must serve everyone’s interests, not just their own isolated communities.
Even when Somali voters cast ballots for a candidate such as Mayor Jacob Frey — who is not one of them — in November’s Minneapolis election, they were still the electorate that Frey had to pander to most.
This explains in large part why this alleged theft of so much money by Somali organizations went unnoticed and uninvestigated for so long. Not only did the Somali political machine view any such investigation as inherently racist, but it also had the political muscle to make Democrats such as Gov. Tim Walz look the other way.
The point here is not that there are people in the world who are not capable of assimilating into American society, the point is that they have to want to.
One almost has to admire the lengths to which the Somali community goes to remain isolated. On many stores can be seen a green sign that reads "Ramadpay," which is a Minneapolis-based money wire service that sends cash to several Muslim countries.
A sign advertising Ramad Pay is seen in the Minneapolis neighborhood of Cedar-Riverside in Minnesota on December 9, 2025. (Fox News Digital)
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So even in sending money home, the Somali community has managed to circumvent American banking systems and keep all the fees in the community.
The Somali community and its leaders, such as Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., have a choice to make: either they can assimilate as so many other groups have before them — and take their place in state and federal politics — or they can stay isolated.
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What cannot be allowed to continue is for this community to exert political pressure on the rest of the country while simultaneously claiming any oversight of that influence is bigoted. That game must be well and truly over.
In Cedar-Riverside, Midwest Mountaineering is not just an out-of-business clothing store, it's a symbol of growing tension between Minnesota nice and Somali-based graft. As more and more corruption emerges, this tension will only continue to grow.
Nikolas Lanum is a Video Editor at Fox News Digital.
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