The staggering Somali fraud scandal in Minnesota has rightly seized national attention, with billions in taxpayer dollars allegedly siphoned off through abuse of federal and state nutrition, healthcare, and even transportation programs. But while Minnesota’s corruption has dominated headlines, the real elephant in the room is California.
Many watchdogs have long warned that fraud in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Golden State operates on a scale that makes Minnesota look small by comparison — and now the Trump administration is signaling that the free ride is over.
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On Tuesday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr drew attention to an Inspector General advisory that has already exposed widespread abuse tied to California-based schemes. The corruption wasn’t confined to a single state, but the findings were unmistakable: California stood out as the worst offender, a case study in what happens when progressive governance prioritizes ideology over accountability:
If the government is going to spend your hard earned dollars, it must ensure that they go only to living and lawful Americans.
Seems obvious, but …
1. A new Inspector General advisory found that providers took nearly $5 million in federal dollars to provide phone and Internet service to over 116,000 dead people. And this IG advisory looked at just three states.
2. Gavin Newsom’s California was by far the worst offender of these opt-out states. On Governor Newsom’s watch, California allowed over 94,000 dead people to be used to obtain federal dollars for phone and Internet service. The FCC recently revoked California’s authority to run its own verification process.
3. The FCC’s federal Lifeline program, which spends nearly $1 billion every year, does not have adequate checks in place to ensure that only lawful beneficiaries obtain those subsidies. There has been a recent rise in non-citizens fraudulently obtaining social security numbers. And the current verification process does not do a good enough job at preventing duplicative subscriptions and similar abuse.
So today I circulated to my FCC colleagues a proposal to strengthen the integrity of the federal Lifeline program.
The Commission will be voting on this proposal in 3 weeks.
If the government is going to spend your hard earned dollars, it must ensure that they go only to living and lawful Americans.
Seems obvious, but …
1. A new Inspector General advisory found that providers took nearly $5 million in federal dollars to provide phone and… pic.twitter.com/GUTe7hjrA4
— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) January 27, 2026
He added:
?New Inspector General Advisory shows millions of dollars approved by California to provide phone and Internet service to more than 94,000 dead people. pic.twitter.com/Jn3m40VBGC
— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) January 27, 2026
Color me shocked: Another deep blue state with [an alleged] massive fraud problem. And I feel like this is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg in Newsom’s left-wing ‘paradise.’
It’s good that the Trump administration seems genuinely interested in rooting out and ending all this fraud, but that’s only half the battle. The people responsible need to be identified, charged under the appropriate statutes of law, prosecuted, and sent to jail because that’s the only language a Democrat understands.
And that’s the only way this fraud stops.
