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Who Are The Biggest Fraudsters In Minnesota (And America)? They're Not Somali

It’s been seven weeks since the Department of Justice stepped up its investigation of fraud at Minnesota social service organizations run by citizens of Somali descent. The Department of Homeland Security simultaneously stepped up the Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) presence in the Twin Cities.

The results thus far? One dead, one wounded, and the entire Somali community living in fear after being demonized by President Trump with statements like “we don’t want them in our country” and “they should go back to where they come from.”

A horrified public has rightfully focused on the murderous tactics and egregious civil rights violations perpetrated by out-of-control ICE agents. Nightly newscasts are filled with scenes of masked, camouflaged, machine gun-toting men patrolling the streets of Minneapolis; making warrant-less stops of anyone with brown skin; arresting those not carrying proof of citizenship; and throwing tear gas canisters at peaceful demonstrators. They’ve even entered a hospital and shackled a severely injured patient to his bed. The 2,000-plus ICE agents now in the city is nearly four times the size of the local police force.

Why are they there? The Trump administration was given cover to step up its attacks on the Somali immigrant community by national media coverage of longstanding fraud investigations in the state. The Minnesota Attorney General has issued three indictments over the past two years, while the U.S. Attorney in Minnesota brought one, all begun during the Biden years.

In the wake of its latest incursion, the administration announced it would block all federal social service funding to five blue states including Minnesota, a move that was temporarily blocked in a New York federal court earlier this month.

Media attention drove events

The national media got the ball rolling in late November when a story in the New York Times reported on three fraud schemes at programs that feed the hungry and provide day care, allegedly costing taxpayers over $1 billion. The three cases mentioned totaled a third of that amount. A key paragraph near the top claimed “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.”

The link (which was included in the original Times story) leads to a Government Accountability Office report that estimated there was at least $100 billion in pandemic-era unemployment insurance fraud. The GAO blamed all 50 states for failing to police the program. That level of fraud would be 400 times greater than the largest fraud scheme so far confirmed in a Minnesota court room.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is paring back fraud enforcement in red states. Last October, it put on hold a Biden-era order that Mississippi repay $101 million for welfare embezzlement. Agency officials — not patients, not providers — had involved former professional football quarterback Brett Favre in a scheme to channel temporary assistance families money into a fund for building a volleyball stadium on the University of Southern Mississippi campus.

The Times followed up two weeks later with coverage of a press conference held by acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson, who was appointed by Trump last June. He announced a new probe of 14 Medicaid-funded programs for suspicious billing practices. Half of the $18 billion spent by those programs since 2018 was stolen, he said, although no specific allegations were included. “What we see in Minnesota is not a handful of bad actors committing crimes,” he said. “It is staggering industrial-scale fraud.”

Then, the day after Christmas, a conservative YouTube influencer named Nick Shirley posted a widely-seen video highlighting shuttered day care centers and Somali daycare workers refusing him entry. A few days later, Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, whose department has no jurisdiction over the allegedly defrauded programs, called for a “massive investigation of daycare and other rampant fraud” and unleashed ICE agents to begin investigating sites based on tips from the YouTube video, not FBI investigators, according to CBS News.

There is no doubt greedy operators ripped off Minnesota safety net programs. Several of the nearly 100 people under investigation have already pleaded guilty. Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, who dropped out of his re-election campaign in the wake of the scandals, clearly was slow to heed warnings from local and federal investigators about the large fraud schemes in the state’s programs.

Who’s the biggest alleged fraudster in Minnesota?

But if federal officials in Minnesota really want to go after industrial-scale fraud, they ought to step up their slow-motion investigation of UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest health insurer, whose headquarters just happens to be in Minneapolis.

They could start by taking a look at the UnitedHealth Group Abuse Tracker run by the American Economic Liberties Project, a anti-monopoly watchdog organization founded by Fordham Law School professor Zephyr Teachout. UHG, according to the tracker, has been accused of myriad wrongdoings in recent years, including:

Twelve reports and five lawsuits for upcoding and overbilling the federal government;
Three reports and one lawsuit for violating patient privacy;
Fifteen reports and five lawsuits for denying patient care based on cost instead of medical necessity;
Fourteen reports and seven lawsuits for steering patients and providers toward UHG owned subsidiaries in order to increase company profits; and
Eight reports of corrupt practices.

UHG, in its responses to news organizations and in court filings, denied every finding and claim, including those in last week’s report from Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office. After reviewing 50,000 internal documents subpoenaed by the Judiciary Committee, the report found UnitedHealthcare, UHG’s insurance arm, maintained a huge workforce dedicated to inflating risk-adjustment codes on its 8 million Medicare Advantage customers. This upcoding allegedly bilks the government of billions of dollars annually.

Outside analysts and the Medicare Payments Advisory Commission have repeatedly accused private insurers of overcharging the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)’ MA program, which now covers over half of all seniors. The most recent estimates suggest over-billing based on upcoding needlessly costs taxpayers $84 billion a year.

Yet federal prosecutors bungled the one whistleblower case that finally came to trial after a decade of legal maneuvering. A special master ruled last February that the Department of Justice had failed to prove the insurance giant deliberately exaggerated how sick its Medicare Advantage patients were to increase federal reimbursements.

But there are still numerous cases pending against UHG and other MA providers. Multiple investigations have been announced by the DOJ. Just last week, Kaiser Permanente, a leading Medicare Advantage insurer in California, agreed to pay $556 million to settle claims it bilked Medicare of $1 billion through upcoding between 2009 and 2018. The case took years to make its way through the courts.

Fraud is widespread

If one needs more evidence that the fraud uncovered in Minnesota is not out of line with typical health care and social service fraud schemes across the country, one need only look at the settlements in cases compiled by Bass, Berry & Sims, a law firm with an extensive practice defending corporate clients against False Claims Act suits. (The False Claims Act is a Civil War-era statute that allows whistleblowers and their lawyers to keep as much as a third of money recovered from firms convicted of defrauding the federal government.)

In just the first half of last year:

Walgreens agreed to pay at least $300 million to resolve allegations its stores illegally filled invalid prescriptions for opioids and other controlled substances that were reimbursed by federal health care programs.
Gilead Sciences agreed to pay $202 million to resolve allegations that it funneled kickbacks in the form of speaker fees, costly meals, and travel expenses to physicians to induce them to prescribe its HIV medications.
California-based Seoul Medical Group and an affiliated radiology practice agreed to pay $62 million to settle claims it fraudulently increased Medicare Advantage reimbursements by falsely claiming patients had a severe spinal condition.
A Pfizer subsidiary agreed to pay nearly $60 million to resolve allegations that it provided remuneration to physicians in the form of speaker honoraria and lavish meals in order to induce prescriptions of its migraine medication.
Fresno-based Community Health System agreed to pay $31.5 million to settle allegations that it paid bonuses to physicians and subsidies for electronic health record systems in exchange for referrals and subsidies. The alleged illegal inducements included providing referring physicians with expensive meals, alcohol, and cigars provided in a lounge on premises at the health system.

New York’s St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers agreed to pay $29 million to resolve allegations that it kept the money despite learning that it had overcharged the Department of Defense for health care provided retired military members and their families.
C.R. Bard Inc. and its affiliates agreed to pay $17 million to resolve allegations that they provided free samples and discounts to urology practitioners in a kickback scheme aimed at inducing use of the company’s catheters.

And, last June, in Minneapolis, NUWAY Alliance, a substance use disorder treatment provider, agreed to pay $18.5 million to resolve allegations that it double-billed for treatment services and paid Medicaid patients to seek outpatient care.

The last case, the only one settled in Minnesota in the first half of last year, involved a non-profit organization whose last federal tax filing showed $28 million in annual expenses. Its CEO, David Vennes, earned $619,000 in 2024. None of the 12 high-paid executives and 8 board members listed on the non-profit’s 990 form have Somali last names.

During last year’s second half, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Minnesota indicted eight Somali residents for stealing millions of dollars from the state’s housing stabilization fund. How much was siphoned from the $300 million in grants made to their organizations from that fund since 2000 was not specified in the press release, but it would probably fall within the lower range of thefts that make various organizations’ tracker lists.

It’s not the immigrants; it’s not the poor

So is Minnesota a hotbed of fraud compared to other states? Does it call into question, as other media accounts have suggested, the very idea that a more generous safety net like the one in that state invites fraud?

No, sadly, the problem of fraud is the same there as it is everywhere, even in redder-than-red places like Mississippi. It is as American as apple pie (it’s the government’s money, so it’s nobody’s money). It is inadequately policed by federal and state officials, Democrats and Republicans alike.

The nation’s tattered social safety net, under assault by the Trump administration and shrinking daily, remains prone to abuse by unscrupulous operators. Medicare and Medicaid are especially juicy targets. Most of the perpetrators are lodged within large corporations run by white executives with excellent and expensive legal representation.

A real crackdown on fraud would go after those big fish first.

Merrill Goozner, the former editor of Modern Healthcare, writes about health care and politics at GoozNews.substack.com, where this column first appeared. Please consider subscribing to support his work.

Reprinted with permission from Gooz News

In Minnesota, Political Repression And Prosecutorial Abuse Under Color Of Law

It is by now a familiar Trump pattern. He blows through what had long been understood as an inviolable boundary of law or institutional norms and then, rather than pausing to let the system respond, accelerates—compounding the original violation with still further abuses.

That pattern is now unfolding in Minnesota.

The federal government has announced that it has opened a criminal investigation into Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey on a pretext so thin as to be transparent. The move belongs in the same category as the reprisal prosecutions that have marked the first year of Trump’s second term. But it goes further, aggravating an already grave constitutional injury with a series of additional, compounding corrupt acts.

News reports indicate that grand jury subpoenas have been issued, though at least one major outlet reports uncertainty about whether they have actually been served. Either way, the signal is unmistakable. The machinery of federal criminal investigation is being turned on two political adversaries of the president who are not remotely culpable.

What follows reflects not a single abuse, but five distinct and reinforcing forms of corruption.

1. No Cognizable Crime

A federal criminal investigation requires, at a minimum, a cognizable offense—something to write on the folder in the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Here, the administration has settled on 18 U.S.C. § 372, the Reconstruction-era ban on conspiracies to interfere with the exercise of federal rights.

All indications—from public statements by senior administration officials to comments by Trump himself—are that the supposed “interference” with federal law enforcement consists entirely of public statements by Walz and Frey. There is no indication the grand jury is considering any nonpublic evidence.

Thus Border Czar Tom Homan proclaimed that “rhetoric from the mayor and the governor emboldens that small percentage who go beyond protesting to criminal activity” (a curious moral lecture from an official still unable to explain the $50,000 he carried off from an FBI sting in a CAVA takeout bag). Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem similarly complained that Walz and Frey “have been very clear that they’re going to continue their rhetoric.”

But the “rhetoric” in question consists entirely of statements urging peaceful protest against what Walz and Frey have described as unconstitutional federal immigration tactics. Those statements—again, all part of the public record—encouraged Minnesotans to exercise their constitutional rights, criticized ICE practices, and emphasized calm and lawful conduct.

That makes the invocation of § 372 not merely strained, but ridiculous.

To sustain a charge under § 372, the government would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Walz and Frey entered into an agreement to deploy force, intimidation, or threats to obstruct federal officers. Nothing remotely approaching such evidence has been suggested. One would have to imagine a governor or mayor openly directing citizens to physically attack or menace ICE agents. No honest federal prosecutor could plausibly believe the elements of § 372 are satisfied here.

To invoke the criminal process anyway is corrupt in precisely the same sense as the Comey and James reprisal prosecutions: it uses federal prosecutorial power to punish political enemies rather than to vindicate the law.

2. Criminalizing Protected Political Speech

The infirmity is not merely statutory. It is constitutional.

When the alleged crime consists of speech, additional constraints apply.The Constitution forbids criminalizing even heated political criticism except in the narrowest circumstances. Under long-settled First Amendment law, the canonical Brandenburg standard, rhetoric may be punished only if it is 1) directed to and 2) likely to produce 3) imminent unlawful action.

Indeed the court has made clear that the First Amendment protects even “advocacy of the use of force or of law violation “— exactly the line Walz and Frey have not crossed. That is necessary, the Court has emphasized, in order to “assure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people.”

Here, the Feds have not even suggested any covert maneuvering, back-channel coordination, or operational interference with federal agents. The alleged misconduct lies exclusively in Walz’s and Frey’s public comments. Those include objections to what they characterized as a federal “invasion” of Minnesota and assurances to citizens of their constitutional rights. The public record reflects restraint and legality, not exhortations to unlawful obstruction.

The contrast with Trump’s conduct on January 6 underscores the constitutional inversion at work. As Jack Smith testified, the Department was prepared—after a comprehensive investigation—to prove that Trump’s words were intended to incite unlawful action and satisfied the Brandenburg standard because they were directed to producing imminent lawlessness and were likely to do so. Even in that setting, prosecutors moved with painstaking caution, acutely aware of the dangers of criminalizing political speech. Here, the Justice Department jettisons that caution and treats speech urging lawful protest as suspect while recasting criticism of federal enforcement tactics as criminal intimidation.

3. Using Criminal Process to Gain Leverage in a Losing Political Battle

The Comey and James prosecutions, ugly as they were, at least fit a familiar pattern of personal vendetta. This episode is worse.

The subpoenas aimed at Walz and Frey are not merely about punishment. They are about pressure—about coercing Minnesota’s elected leadership in the midst of an ongoing political confrontation that the Trump administration is losing badly. Rather than defend its policies through political persuasion or litigation—Minnesota has now sued the federal government in a broad-gauged action alleging multiple constitutional violations—the administration has reached for the criminal law to change the balance of power.

Even if, as seems likely, no case ever eventuates—because prosecutors decline to proceed, a grand jury balks, or a court throws it out—the investigation itself exacts a toll. It imposes anxiety, drains time and resources, and inflicts reputational harm. Trump knows this well, having repeatedly weaponized the justice system only to retreat when his hand is called.

In that respect, the Minnesota episode closely resembles Trump’s recent bullying of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Powell stated the point plainly: threats of criminal prosecution were not about misconduct at all, but about pressuring the Federal Reserve to abandon its independent judgment and follow the president’s policy preferences.

Threatening criminal prosecution to gain leverage in a political dispute is an additional level of corruption. It is all the more brazen when deployed in contests the administration is losing on the merits. Recent polling shows that a majority of Americans view ICE unfavorably and support the independence of institutions like the Federal Reserve. Here, the Justice Department is being pressed into service to achieve political objectives that cannot be secured democratically.

4. Flagrantly Improper Public Declarations of Guilt

Even as this purported investigation proceeds, senior administration officials have paired it with public statements that all but declare guilt. In the context of a pending criminal inquiry, that conduct is itself an abuse of power.

Administration figures have mocked Walz and Frey as “dumb” or “boobs,” demeaned them as “corrupt,” and gone so far as to label them “terrorists” or “insurrectionists.” This language does not clarify the government’s legal theory. It poisons the well, framing elected officials as criminals before any adjudication—and in some instances before any charge.

The most repugnant comments have come from the public official who should know better than anyone else not to prejudice a pending investigation: Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Blanche declared that a “Minnesota insurrection is a direct result of a FAILED governor and a TERRIBLE mayor encouraging violence against law enforcement,” adding that he was “focused on stopping YOU from your terrorism by whatever means necessary.” These are extraordinary remarks from a senior Justice Department official speaking mid-investigation.

When the story of this Justice Department is written, there will be a special section devoted to Todd Blanche. A once-ordinary federal prosecutor has remade himself into a loyal political enforcer, repeatedly transgressing long-settled Department norms in service of the president’s political aims. His conduct here is not an aberration; it is a marker of institutional decay.

5. Corrupt Use of the Grand Jury Process Itself

Finally, the issuance—or even the threatened issuance—of grand jury subpoenas in such a threadbare case completes the abuse.

We have not seen the subpoenas. But it defies common sense to think they are limited to the public statements that form the entirety of the administration’s supposed theory of exposure; such subpoenas would serve no investigative purpose. One can be confident they demand internal communications, drafts, calendars, messages, and deliberative materials from the offices of a sitting governor and mayor.

Courts have long held that the grand jury may not be used when its dominant purpose is something other than pursuing a viable criminal prosecution. Federal prosecutors may not deploy compulsory process to rummage through officials’ records, harass or intimidate them, or gather political intelligence. Yet that is precisely what remains once it is clear—as it is here—that the floated charge is going nowhere and that the Department knows it.

Taken together, the picture is unmistakable: a criminal investigation launched without a crime, aimed at protected speech, used to gain leverage in a losing political battle, accompanied by public declarations of guilt, and enforced through abusive use of the grand jury.

The legitimacy of the Justice Department rests on the fundamental premise that its extraordinary powers may be exercised only to pursue provable crimes, not to coerce political outcomes. The investigation of Governor Walz and Mayor Frey inverts that premise. It deploys the most fearsome tools of the federal government in response to lawful political speech, while stretching a criminal statute past recognition to manufacture exposure. That is not law enforcement. It is political pressure by prosecutorial means.

Walz and Frey are doing precisely what the First Amendment contemplates and protects, and its value is all the greater because they are leaders of the community. The fundamental perversion of the Administration, as in so many other instances, is to redefine anyone who disagrees with Trump as criminal and an enemy of the state. It’s the classic move, and springboard for vicious repression, of totalitarian tyrants from Stalin to Putin.

The core value on the line here is not the government’s authority to rein in lawless conduct; it is just the opposite, the constitutional protection of dissent aimed at that very government abuse. That is not law enforcement. It is political repression carried out under the color of law.

Harry Litman is a former United States Attorney and the executive producer and host of the Talking Feds podcast. He has taught law at UCLA, Berkeley, and Georgetown and served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton Administration. Please consider subscribing to Talking Feds on Substack.

Reprinted with permission from Talking Feds.

Right-Wing Propaganda Spins Up Fake Profile Of Minnesota Assassin

In the early hours of June 14, Vance Boelter allegedly shot two Minnesota Democratic state lawmakers in their homes while impersonating law enforcement — Rep. Melissa Hortman and Sen. John Hoffman, along with their spouses. Hortman and her husband were killed, and Hoffman and his wife are recovering from their injuries. While the public waited for more information about the suspect and his motives, right-wing media began to speculate wildly about Boelter, spinning a false narrative that he was a leftist figure aligned with Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz.

The evidence for this theory is scarce: Conservative media suggested Boelter killed Hortman for breaking from the Democrats on a recent vote to give undocumented immigrants health care. Right-wing media also referenced the flyers from Saturday’s “No Kings” protest that were found in the suspect’s vehicle and pointed to the fact that Boelter was appointed by Walz to a bipartisan working group in 2019, with one figure saying that “he was friends with Walz” and another claiming the governor is “directly connected to a domestic terrorist.” Some even speculated that Walz put a “political hit” out on the lawmakers in retaliation for their vote — even as reports surfaced that the governor himself was on a list of targets found in the suspect’s vehicle — and demanded that someone “investigate.” The narrative snowballed over the weekend, culminating in a sick post from Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), which suggested that the shooter was a “Marxist.”

As more information surfaced, a very different picture emerged: The suspect left behind a “hit list” of 70 targets, including abortion providers and other Minnesota Democrats. Walz, U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, Rep. Ilhan Omar, and state Attorney General Keith Ellison were all on the list. The suspect’s friend described him as a supporter of Trump who enjoyed watching Alex Jones’ Infowars and said that Boelter “would be offended if anyone called him a Democrat.” Wired reported that Boelter is linked to evangelical ministries and is “president of Revoformation Ministries.” The report also said that the suspect has preached against abortion and the LGBTQ community. Additionally, he “liked” the right-wing legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom on Facebook.

By the time the actual facts emerged, the right’s reckless and conspiratorial speculation had done its job, muddying the waters with misinformation claiming the shooter was a left-wing associate of Walz, which quickly spread across social media.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

For Democrats, There Can Be No More Playing Nice Guy

Let me tell you how badly wrong I was about the presidential race back on August 6. It was the day that Kamala Harris picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. Putting Walz on the ticket as the Democrats’ choice to be Vice President didn’t raise any problems. He ticked off a whole list of boxes – he’d been a teacher and a football coach; he came from the middle of the country; he was not too far to the left for centrists or too close to the center for progressives; he was amiable and folksy and thought to be a good contrast up against Mr. Yalie Double-speak, J.D. Vance.

To make the formal introduction of Walz, the Harris campaign held a rally in a key city of a key state, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Democrats needed to carry Pennsylvania if they were to win in November, so it was a smart move. Tracy and I watched the rally. We were excited by the Walz pick and by the contrast between the Democrats’ joyful celebration and the typical “grim” Trump rally, as I described it.

After watching the rally, I sat down and wrote a column I titled, “The political power of the smile.” I celebrated the “enthusiasm and delight” on display in Philadelphia that night. “Kamala Harris and Tim Walz reminded Democrats who they are,” I wrote rapturously. “Empathy is energy. Humor is energy. Dedication to freedom and justice is energy. Being willing to fight for what you believe is energy.”

All of that is true, as far as it went. But what I failed to see then was that Democrats had followed their choice of a nice guy in 2020 with another choice of someone nice to run as their candidate this year. Kamala Harris’ smile, on display everywhere she went, was genuine. So was Tim Walz’s jolly demeanor.

But voters didn’t want someone nice to take command of an economy and a country they saw as failing them. What was the right-track/wrong-track polling figure for this presidential race? Exit polls on election day revealed that about 70 percent of voters thought that the country was “on the wrong track.” Two-thirds felt the same way in September polls. People don’t care how nice you are when they’re hurting. They wanted someone who had an attitude that was as sour as they were feeling, and they went for him on election day.

If they want to win, Democrats have nominated their last nice guy candidate for president. Donald Trump went out there on the stump and spent months calling Democrats “enemies,” “evil,” “dangerous,” “radical leftists,” “communists,” “Marxists,” “the enemy within.” He did it over and over and over. Kamala Harris called Trump “increasingly unstable and unhinged,” and told voters that “A second Trump term is a huge risk for America.”

That’s about the worst she came up with. I’m not saying Harris should have matched Trump like a couple of kindergartners on the playground calling each other names and saying “I’m rubber and you’re glue.” But if you stand there and let your opponent call you ridiculous shit like “communist” and “Marxist” without at least pointing out how desperate it sounds, you’re just letting him embed those words in the minds of voters using sheer repetition.

During the debate, instead of turning toward Trump and calling him a liar to his face every time he opened his mouth and a lie came out, Harris relied on the tried and true Democratic tactic of countering his lies with rational argument. When Trump said he wouldn’t sign a national abortion ban, instead of laughing in his face and turning to the camera and telling the audience they had just heard the man who appointed the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade tell the fifty-seven thousandth and possibly biggest and worst lie of his career, Harris listed some examples of disastrous outcomes women had faced when seeking care for troubled pregnancies in states with abortion bans. When Trump said Democrats support “execution” of babies after they are born, instead of calling Trump a damn liar, Harris waited for one of the moderators to correct him with the statement, “there is no state in which it’s legal to kill a baby after it’s born.”

I sat there watching that debate and kept asking out loud, “why doesn’t she call him a liar?” as she missed opportunity after opportunity to call out his lies. I kept waiting for her to say something like, “That’s just bullshit, Donald. Stop insulting the American people.” I waited in vain.

I don’t care who the Republicans nominate for president next time, we can’t have a Democrat up there who isn’t willing to stand up and tell people “he’s full of shit” every time the Republican says something that is full of shit.

And while I’m at it, no Democrat should ever again counter some line of racist or xenophobic or sexist cant from a Republican with the lame denial, “that is not who we are.” You don’t respond to racist garbage with a denial. You respond by calling out the racism and asking them, “is that what you teach your children?” Democrats should deploy shame as a political tactic far more than they have for the last dozen years. It works, especially when it’s repeated again and again.

I’m not trying to do an autopsy on the Harris campaign, and I’m not saying that she should have tried to “out-Trump” Donald Trump. Let Republicans do that to each other the next time they have a primary. But Democrats need to convince people that we get how they’re feeling and why. People need to know that we are aware of the problems that they face in their lives, and that we can deal with them. People don’t want to know about plans. Publishing “white papers” with lists of policies doesn’t do it. Telling people that you have a “plan” that’s going to solve this or that problem is a dead end. They’ve heard too many plans.

Trying to tell people that inflation is down, even when it is down, when they can’t afford their rent or are paying more for gas to get to work than they are for lunch is an insult to their intelligence. Citing all the figures in the world that show reduced crossings of immigrants at the border doesn’t work. Even though it was true, telling people that immigrants pay taxes and contribute to the economy and that immigrants are not taking their jobs didn’t mean anything, because voters weren’t concerned with numbers, they were responding to the boogey-man word “immigrant,” not to facts.

And whatever Democrats do from now on, don’t try to find a solution to any problem in the United States Congress, unless by some miracle, you get control of both houses. Republicans learned from the masters, Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell, that it’s hard as hell to get anything done with legislation, but the easiest thing in the world is stopping the opposing party from enjoying the tiniest victory.

Gingrich and McConnell were fucking obstructionist assholes, but we know their names, don’t we? Is it too much to ask for Democrats to have a few obstructionist assholes in our arsenal of political talent? Gingrich used to be called a “bomb-thrower.” Where the fuck are our bomb-throwers?

My old friend Joe Klein wrote a column a few days ago he called "On Strength." It’s nominally about the idea that Biden’s pardon of his son was, if you’ll pardon the expression, unpardonable. Klein says he’s known Biden for 37 years and always found him to be “a really good politician, which is high praise in my book.” Klein follows that rather faint praise with, “Biden was the sort of quarterback that football players call a ‘game manager’ as opposed to a game-changer. He was reliable. He wasn’t dynamic. He certainly wasn’t charismatic.”

Klein goes on to say that he doesn’t think Kamala could have won the election, even “with a full running start because we are talking about the passive, sensitive, recumbent DNA of the Democratic Party here,” as opposed to “its exact opposite, a lucky con-man, who raised his fist above his blood-spattered face with the American flag flapping in the background on a sunny summer day in Pennsylvania—if an image can win an election, that may have been it.”

What Klein says about Biden between the lines is that he has always been a nice guy, a kind of perfect exemplar of the nice political party into which he was born and that rewarded his decades of loyalty with a presidency for which he was too nice and too late.

Politics ain’t paintball, a game where somebody gets hit by an exploding glob of paint and there’s a blue stain on their shirt and they’re out of the game. After eight long, miserable years of Donald Trump, the game doesn’t even have any rules anymore. If we haven’t learned by now that this Republican Party plays for keeps, it’s on us, not them, because they’ve been out in the open about it at least since Donald Trump arrived and started shooting people in the middle of Fifth Avenue and asking, “What are you going to do about it?”

That’s the question for Democrats, isn’t it? What are we going to do to beat this gang of authoritarian thugs who want to shred the Constitution and put tanks and soldiers in our streets? As the old saying goes, nice guys finish last, and we’re at the stage in our history where finishing last means the last of our democratic way of life.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Reprinted with permission from Lucian Truscott Newsletter.

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