On Dec. 18, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson said as much as half of the roughly $18 billion allocated to 14 Minnesota-run aid programs since 2018 may have been stolen. By Jan. 7, 2026, federal investigators had charged 92 people with fraud. According to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), 85 of them were Somali immigrants or American-born Somalis. On Jan. 5, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) reversed his plans to run for a third term. He insisted that “the buck does not stop with me,” but the bucks are long gone.

“Take the gun. Leave the cannoli.” The Minnesota scandal is classic ethnic crime. Though The Godfather has become the national epic by popular demand, no one wants to live in it. We want to live in high-trust, low-crime societies where justice is blind but does not turn a blind eye. We want immigrants who want to integrate into that kind of life. Instead, sweeping tracts of American life are low-trust, high-crime societies, managed by a contract between ethnic blocs and pandering politicians. Minnesota was shaped by Swedish moralists. It was undone by Somali pirates. Minnesota Democrats let it happen. This, too, is as American as Michael Corleone.

In 1955, the sociologist Edward C. Banfield went to Chiaromonte in southern Italy. Banfield found that Chiaromonte was not a society at all. Family and clan units competed against one........

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