Under "In which we briefly return to Minnesota":

> And I think journalism and civil society should do some genuine soul-searching on how we knew—knew—the state of that pond, but didn’t consider it particularly important or newsworthy until someone started fishing on camera.

In... the same section where he cites all of the evidence the government has put together against the fraudsters. What is the issue? That these investigations should have been more prominently featured in the mainstream news? Would that have helped or hurt investigations?

> Of course, as the New York Times very carefully wordsmithed recently:

>> Minnesota officials said in early January that the state conducted compliance checks at nine child-care centers after Mr. Shirley posted his video and found them “operating as expected,” although it had “ongoing investigations” at four of them. One of the centers, which Mr. Shirley singled out because it misspelled the word “Learning” on its sign, has since voluntarily closed.

> An inattentive reader might conclude from this paragraph that the Times disputes Shirley’s reporting.

The New York Times is literally quoting what the Minnesota officials said. What were they supposed to do, add on "but a kid on YouTube says differently"?

I don't think the serious response to Nick Shirley's "journalism" is that there was no fraud; rather, it's that he came into the situation with a thinly veiled agenda and fed his audience exactly what they wanted to hear. Did his video make it more or less likely that we'll be able to investigate and resolve the fraud situation in MN? I guess that depends on how serious you think the laughably corrupt Trump administration is, but the fact that they seized on this as an excuse to send in 3000 ICE agents is not exactly promising.

The report to the government about a more than 50% fraud rate was from six years ago. The Minnesota government was not serious about dealing with problem. Most businesses would not last that long with a 50% customer fraud rate.

Yes, there were some investigations and convictions, but nothing to on a scale that would deal with problem, nor any systematic change to a level paying huge amounts of money to scammers.

> What is the issue? That these investigations should have been more prominently featured in the mainstream news?

Important points throughout the article include: relatively little prosecution or enforcement occurred despite the awareness of rampant fraud; officials were naive to the common wisdom in fraud-prevention circles that people committing fraud in the past correlates strongly with the same individuals committing fraud in the future; "pay-and-chase" policies don't preempt funding flows to individuals suspected of fraud until it's established and feel the need to account for every fraudulent dollar instead of just blacklisting known bad actors the way that actual financial institutions do. FTA in particular, all emphasis FTA:

> For example, the primary evidence of a child attending a day-care was a handwritten sign-in sheet of minimal probative value. Prosecutors referred to them as “almost comical” and “useless.” They were routinely fraudulently filled out by a 17 year old “signing” for dozens of parents sequentially in the same handwriting, excepting cases where they were simply empty.

> To refute this “evidence”, the state forced itself to do weeks of stakeouts, producing hundreds of hours of video recording, after which it laboriously reconstructed exact counts of children seen entering/exiting a facility, compared it with the billing records, and then invoiced the centers only for proven overbilling.

> On general industry knowledge, if you are selected for examination in e.g. your credit card processing account, and your submission of evidence is “Oh yeah, those transactions are ones we customarily paperwork with a 17 year old committing obvious fraud”, your account will be swiftly closed. The financial institution doesn’t have to reach a conclusion about every dollar which has ever flowed through your account. What actual purpose would there be in shutting the barn door after the horse has left? The only interesting question is what you’ll be doing tomorrow, and clearly what you intend to do tomorrow is fraud.

Moving on,

> I don't think the serious response to Nick Shirley's "journalism" is that there was no fraud; rather, it's that he came into the situation with a thinly veiled agenda and fed his audience exactly what they wanted to hear.

My take is that there's no good reason to suspect that, except for holding an opposed thinly veiled agenda. And there is no serious dispute of the fact that billions of dollars of fraud occurred.

> Did his video make it more or less likely that we'll be able to investigate and resolve the fraud situation in MN?

It clearly made it more likely, as demonstrated by federal senate hearings that have extensively referenced the video (I've seen a segment where a senator literally had a prop photo of the "Quality Learing Center").

> the fact that they seized on this as an excuse to send in 3000 ICE agents is not exactly promising.

Your premise is that a YouTube video published Dec 26, 2025 somehow motivated a federal law enforcement action that commenced on Dec 4, 2025. Also, this claim conflates ICE with CBP. Also, per Wikipedia, out of thousands of arrests, only 23 have been of Somalis; and it's been abundantly clear in all the press functions that the targets have overwhelmingly been Hispanic — because they're overwhelmingly represented among illegal immigrants in the US, including in MN.