Reading archive 2025-12-04

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. - "Feeding Our Future, the nonprofit group that was the largest provider in the pandemic program, responded with a warning. In an email, the group told the state agency that failing to promptly approve new applicants from 'minority-owned businesses' would result in a lawsuit featuring accusations of racism that would be 'sprawled across the news.'

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"As a trial in the meals fraud case was coming to a close last summer, an attempt to bribe a juror included an explicit insinuation about racism, prosecutors said. Several defendants in the trial were found to have arranged to send a bag containing $120,000 to a juror along with a note that read, 'Why, why, why is it always people of color and immigrants prosecuted for the fault of other people?'

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"Dr. Samatar said that Somali refugees who came to the United States after their country’s civil war were raised in a culture in which stealing from the country’s dysfunctional and corrupt government was widespread.

"Minnesota, he said, proved susceptible to rampant fraud because it is 'so tolerant, so open and so geared toward keeping an eye on the weak.'"

Ominous maps of a falling fortress city reveal a change in Ukraine war: Putting Russia’s campaign to capture Pokrovsk into perspective.

Trump’s attack on DEI may hurt college men, particularly White men: The Trump administration’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion also targets gender. The ban may impact gender balancing practices that often benefit college men. - "Columbia took 3 percent of women applicants last year and 4 percent of men. At the University of Chicago, 5.6 percent of male applicants were accepted last year, compared with 3.7 percent of female applicants. The ratio at the University of Miami was 22.5 percent to 16.5 percent; and at Vassar College, 20.4 percent to 17.6 percent. None of these universities would respond when asked whether they would continue to accept higher percentages of men than women, and neither would others that do it, including Yale, Baylor and Tulane universities and Pomona College."

FBI arrests Virginia man in Jan. 6 pipe bomb case: Federal officials arrested a Virginia man believed to have planted pipe bombs in D.C. the night before the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol, according to people familiar with the matter. - "Law enforcement officials are investigating a motive but two people familiar with the matter described Cole as an extremist in his political beliefs."