The fraud cases in Minnesota are real. But they are not new, and they were not newly uncovered by right wing influencers. Federal prosecutors and the FBI began investigating large scale fraud tied to Minnesota state and federally funded programs years before the 2024 election. The largest case, Feeding Our Future, was publicly charged in September 2022, when the Department of Justice announced indictments alleging tens of millions of dollars in pandemic child nutrition funds were stolen. Since then, more than 50 defendants have pleaded guilty, with prosecutions continuing through 2023, 2024, and into 2025. By 2023, those investigations had already expanded beyond Feeding Our Future into Medicaid services, autism therapy providers, housing assistance, and childcare programs. Minnesota’s Legislative Auditor, federal investigators, and local outlets like the Minnesota Reformer, FOX 9, KSTP and others were reporting on systemic failures and active criminal probes well before the 2024 presidential campaign was underway. During the 2024 campaign, national media and political influencers increasingly reframed these cases around Governor Tim Walz. Outlets like CNN aired segments highlighting the fraud during an election year, often without clearly stating that the investigations, indictments, and guilty pleas all began long before Walz became a national political target and long before viral videos entered the picture. That framing also fueled targeted harassment of Minnesota’s Somali community, with entire neighborhoods, workers, and families painted as suspect despite the fact that fraud cases are individual criminal matters, not collective guilt. That context matters when influencers like @nickshirleyy present themselves as exposing something hidden. His video does not start a new investigation or reveal information unknown to law enforcement. It repackages an ongoing federal case that had already been charged, prosecuted, and widely reported, and presents it as a fresh discovery. Showing up with a camera at childcare centers, inserting himself into an active investigation, and driving harassment toward a specific community reflects a serious lack of journalistic ethics and basic moral responsibility. Fraud should be prosecuted and people who stole public money should go to prison. But accountability also requires honesty about timelines, sources, and impact. Turning an active criminal investigation involving childcare into viral content during an election year while ignoring years of prior reporting, and while entire communities face harassment as a result, is not journalism. It’s agitation propaganda.