The Movement: Behind the GOP’s anti-fraud midterm push

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From Vice President Vance’s task force to a wave of messaging bills in Congress, Republicans have gone all-in on an anti-fraud push ahead of the midterm elections, turning to a long-running GOP theme in the hope that it is a political winner.

Underscoring the importance of the issue to the GOP midterm message, Vance highlighted his anti-fraud messaging at rallies in Nassau County last week — where Republicans hope to unseat Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) — and in Bangor, Maine, last month, where Republicans are defending Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).

Several congressional committees have undertaken investigations into fraud in federal programs. House Republicans passed a wave of anti-fraud messaging bills this month aimed at boosting agencies’ ability to detect and stop fraudulent payments, and fiscal hawks still hoping to pass another party-line reconciliation bill say that it will be focused in part on rooting out fraud.

Republicans have for decades decried “waste, fraud and abuse,” with budget hawks, even compiling annual lists of projects they see as objectionable spending. But this “war on fraud” — as President Trump articulated in his State of the Union speech early this year — takes the push to an extent not seen outside the party’s reeling over claims of a rigged election in 2020.

Outside conservative groups say the anti-fraud message is resonating with the grassroots base. Daniel West, government relations director at Heritage Action, brought up the anti-fraud messaging unprompted as I was chatting with him about the conservative group’s top areas of focus in the midterms.

A Trump administration official recalled seeing an internal poll that showed anti-fraud was a bigger issue to Republican voters than immigration.

Conversations with GOP staffers and operatives reveal that the push is something of a refinement of anti-fraud and anti-waste messages that have been major themes through Trump’s second term.

One GOP staffer supportive of the anti-fraud endeavors quipped that the push is like DOGE 2.0 — casting it as a new-and-improved effort at rooting out fraud that is more disciplined with lasting effects, and without the negatives of the miscalculations, cuts and firings that hindered the public’s view of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) efforts.

Some of those involved with the anti-fraud endeavors would certainly not characterize it as being like DOGE, though. They see rooting out clear fraud as distinct from DOGE slashing entire agencies, programs or budgets.

Even with the negatives, DOGE helped reveal an interest and hunger among the conservative base.

Republicans had built on that sentiment a little bit last year when they presented the “One Big Beautiful Bill” as combatting waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid and food assistance programs, pushing back on any descriptions of its provisions as cuts to the programs — and feeling encouraged at polling they saw from the message.

But the anti-fraud message really ramped up to a whole-of-party focus at the start of the year after right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley went viral for his videos alleging fraud at Somali-run childcare facilities in Minnesota. That video had a “powder-keg effect” for the anti-fraud messaging, according to West of Heritage........

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