Saturday night’s all right for tabbing …
So uh, the NY Times did a journalism. https://t.co/KTjAVVL8S3 pic.twitter.com/XVOS4bYNFX
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) November 29, 2025
Ed: Indeed they did … more than a few days late and tens of millions of dollars late. And even then, the Gray Lady reveals what the paper sees as the real problem at the end of the sixth paragraph.
===
NY Times: Over the last five years, law enforcement officials say, fraud took root in pockets of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora as scores of individuals made small fortunes by setting up companies that billed state agencies for millions of dollars’ worth of social services that were never provided.
Federal prosecutors say that 59 people have been convicted in those schemes so far, and that more than $1 billion in taxpayers’ money has been stolen in three plots they are investigating. That is more than Minnesota spends annually to run its Department of Corrections. Minnesota’s fraud scandal stood out even in the context of rampant theft during the pandemic, when Americans stole tens of billions through unemployment benefits, business loans and other forms of aid, according to federal auditors.
Outrage has swelled among Minnesotans, and fraud has turned into a potent political issue in a competitive campaign season. Gov. Tim Walz and fellow Democrats are being asked to explain how so much money was stolen on their watch, providing Republicans, who hope to take back the governor’s office in 2026, with a powerful line of attack.
Ed: I’ll give the NYT this much credit: it took them six whole paragraphs before they got to the “Republicans pounce!™” narrative. It takes a few more paragraphs before the Times gets to the real issue. “We’re losing our way of life in Minnesota in a very real way,” warns the federal prosecutor who is unwinding the massive fraud and incompetence that enabled it. I’d argue that was pretty [expletive] obvious from the moment the Walz administration replaced the state flag with one modeled on the Somalian flag.
===
Are you kidding me, @nytimes? pic.twitter.com/TCQpFCicPA
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 29, 2025
Ed: Well, the truth-telling era at the NYT didn’t last long, eh? Back to our normally programmed Progressive-Elite Narratives!
===
Power Line: They first drew President Trump’s attention in a big way. Now comes the New York Times in Ernest Londoño’s long story “How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch” (“Prosecutors say members of the Somali diaspora, a group with growing political power, were largely responsible. President Trump has drawn national attention to the scandal amid his crackdown on immigration”). The story has clearly been in the works for a while, but Trump’s attention has intensified its newsworthiness.
I don’t think any of this will come as news to Power Line readers. …
JOHN adds: I confess to a certain bemusement over the Minnesota fraud scandal suddenly becoming national news. It’s not as though it has ever been a secret. We have written about the multiple fraud scandals many times here at Power Line. Bill Glahn has been driving coverage of the Feeding Our Future story for years at AmericanExperiment.org. Long ago, Bill created a Scandal Tracker that includes but is not limited to Feeding Our Future. Using conservative estimates ($300 million for FoF), it now stands at over $661 million, all during the Tim Walz administration. And over the last two years, Bill and I have done four webinars on the Feeding Our Future scandal.
Ed: We’ve covered it at Hot Air as developments emerged, but those developments largely emerged because of the hard work by Bill, John, and Scott at Power Line. Read it all and make sure to follow all of the links.
===
Ed: Trump clearly wants Maduro out, and is now increasing financial and strategic pressure to push Maduro into fleeing Venezuela. Both Maduro and Trump suggested that talks could take place, but it doesn’t sound like Trump is in much of a chatty mood. Whether Trump can make this stick is another question, but just the announcement will likely convince most commercial airlines to avoid Venezuelan airspace. And that will make drug flights a lot easier to track, too.
===
WSJ: President Trump said Friday he was revoking all executive orders former President Joe Biden signed with an autopen, escalating his battle with his predecessor over the use of the signature proxy device.
“I am hereby canceling all Executive Orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally,” Trump wrote on social media on Friday. “Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury,” Trump added without providing evidence of his claim. …
Presidents are legally allowed to undo executive orders signed by their predecessors.
Ed: We saw a burst of outrage after Friday’s announcement, blessedly brief, as people began to realize the truth of this last statement. EOs don’t have any status for permanence except for the desire of presidents who follow those who issue them. New presidents routinely revoke EOs for whatever reason they desire. Trump made an issue of these EOs over the autopen signatures to emphasize the corrupt nature of the Biden Regency. The perjury threat is just performative, since Biden can say whatever he wants as long as he doesn’t say it under oath. And there’s no point in fighting the cancellation of EOs by a succeeding president who has plenary authority to do so for any reason at all.
===
FIFY Ames. pic.twitter.com/Ah3xOdpMTT
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) November 26, 2025
Ed: This is a couple of days old, but still worth highlighting. Apparently, Democrats are too stupid to understand their own graphs.
===
Jonathan Turley: In academia, one of the greatest concerns with statistical studies is the danger of “confirmation bias” or “myside bias.” A desire to prove a point can lead to a blindness to opposing data or information. This week, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) repeatedly demonstrated the scourge of statistical studies with spectacular and embarrassing success.
Klobuchar released a chart before Thanksgiving to blame President Donald Trump for rising consumer costs. The only problem is that the chart showed that the skyrocketing costs occurred under former President Joe Biden. Klobuchar focused on the short period on the chart representing Trump’s second presidency, while ignoring the soaring costs under his predecessor.
What is most notable is that just the week before, Klobuchar committed the same error, associating rising energy costs with Trump, who saw energy costs soar under Biden.
Ed: She did it TWICE. In the same week. Absolutely insane, idiotic, or both.
===
I agree with other conservative legal commentators that the video by Dem. Lawmakers is not an act of “sedition” as that term has been used at common law, or as it is used in the “seditious conspiracy” statute — 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2384. As someone who has defended against that…
— Shipwreckedcrew (@shipwreckedcrew) November 29, 2025
As someone who has defended against that charge, and litigated it’s meaning, it requires the use or planned use of force.
But, Section 2387 does not require the use of force. It is in the same sequence of statutes, it applies in peacetime — passed in 1948 — and it has never been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Just the opposite in fact.
Ed: Read this all the way through. I hope Ship extends these thoughts on his Substack at some point. He’s not sure that the DoJ would get a conviction on this basis, but he’s pretty clear that they can try – and that the Supreme Court has precedent supporting it.
===
Associated Press: Northwestern University has agreed to pay $75 million to the U.S. government in a deal with the Trump administration to end a series of investigations and restore hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research funding.
President Donald Trump’s administration had cut off $790 million in grants in a standoff that contributed to university layoffs and the resignation in September of Northwestern president Michael Schill. The administration argued the school had not done enough to fight antisemitism.
Under the agreement announced Friday night, Northwestern will make the payment to the U.S. Treasury over the next three years. Among other commitments it also requires the university to revoke the so-called Deering Meadow agreement, which it signed in April 2024 in exchange for pro-Palestinian protesters ending their tent encampment on campus.
Ed: They got off cheaply. One key agreement: NU will have to abide by the Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IX. No more males in the women’s locker rooms, bathrooms, or sports teams.
===
“Terminate the 2024 Deering Meadow agreement.” Good. What a disaster the previous, ousted NU regime was. https://t.co/1iJTADgZ79
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) November 29, 2025
===
Bret Weinstein just said something that won’t leave my head:
For the first time in 300,000 years of human evolution, we removed the cost from the single biggest reward nature ever invented — sex and pair-bonding.Reliable birth control + abortion = you can now cash the… pic.twitter.com/sS729STZdK
— Camus (@newstart_2024) November 27, 2025
Reliable birth control + abortion = you can now cash the evolutionary lottery ticket without paying the 20-year mortgage of pregnancy, diapers, sleepless nights, and college funds.
Result? An entire generation of 18–35-year-olds walking around with the energy, libido, hormones, and protective instincts that evolution spent millions of years calibrating for child-rearing… but with zero actual children. That energy didn’t disappear. It got redirected.
Heather Heying’s observation is brutal: young women especially began treating ideologies the exact way evolution wired them to treat babies. Climate change, social justice, whatever the cause of the month is — it gets defended with literal mama-bear ferocity, the same neurochemistry that once guarded a toddler from predators now guards an abstract idea from wrong think.
And now Elon is promising the second shoe is about to drop …
Ed: This is almost as depressing as reading the real Camus. (I got traumatized by it in high school.) Click through and read it all. I’m not sure I buy all of the pessimism in the prediction for the future, but Weinstein certainly nailed the present well enough.
===
Ed: Maybe these two guys were onto something here …
===
My favorite genre of liberal punditry is “Every one of my friends is an unnamed Trump voter and boy are they mad!” https://t.co/mEofBM5vR4
— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) November 29, 2025
Ed: My favorite is the “Republicans Pounce!™” genre, and it is bountiful indeed. This might be my second favorite, however.
Editor’s note: If we thought our job in pushing back against the Academia/media/Democrat censorship complex was over with the election, think again. This is going to be a long fight. If you’re digging these Final Word posts and want to join the conversation in the comments — and support independent platforms — why not join our VIP Membership program? Choose VIP to support Hot Air and access our premium content, VIP Gold to extend your access to all Townhall Media platforms and participate in this show, or VIP Platinum to get access to even more content and discounts on merchandise. Use the promo code FIGHT to join or to upgrade your existing membership level today, and get 60% off!
Right now, if you join HotAir VIP Platinum during our Black Friday Sale period, you will be entered for a chance to win one of five Lifetime Platinum memberships. That’s right – five lucky winners will receive VIP Platinum access FOR LIFE.
