'Without citing evidence': NYT steps on a rake trying to attack Trump administration over fraud crackdown

The Department of Health and Human Services cut off five Democrat-run states' access to over $10 billion in federal child care and family assistance funds on Tuesday, citing "serious concerns about widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars in state-administered programs."

The New York Times joined Democrats in criticizing the Trump administration's anti-fraud campaign — but bungled its execution.

The Times' Minho Kim opened his Tuesday piece with the following sentence:

The Trump administration plans to freeze $10 billion in funding for child care subsidies, social services and cash support for low-income families in five states controlled by Democrats, claiming widespread fraud throughout those states, without citing evidence, after a major welfare fraud scheme in one of them.

The sentence was later rearranged without an editor's note but without any significant alterations.

'The first response of Democrats to instances like the Minnesota fraud findings should not be to criticize the other side.'

It was not lost on critics that immediately after asserting that the administration claimed widespread fraud "without citing evidence," Kim himself proceeded to allude to the damning evidence of widespread fraud in one of the states facing the funding pause — fraud that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz acknowledged on Monday when giving up on his ambition of re-election.

Drew Holden, the managing editor at American Compass, suggested that the New York Times perhaps "got so used to saying that the Trump admin did something 'without citing evidence' that they didn't realize they mention the 'evidence' in the same sentence."

RELATED: Trump administration sends Democrats into hysterics by freezing funding to 5 blue states over fraud concerns

Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images

Later in the Times article, Kim acknowledged that the funding freeze builds on the HHS' pause of $185 million in annual childcare funds in the wake of credible allegations of massive fraud in taxpayer-subsidized day care facilities in the Gopher State.

Minnesota has been home to historic fraud committed by members of the Somali community in relation to coronavirus relief funding and allegedly in relation to taxpayer-subsidized day care facilities. The COVID scams in Minnesota have resulted in dozens of criminal convictions and scores of indictments in recent years. Government officials are working to ensure similar graft is not impacting other jurisdictions.

Following the publication of Kim's piece, American Enterprise Institute fellow Ruy Teixeira stressed that "the first response of Democrats to instances like the Minnesota fraud findings should not be to criticize the other side for attacking them and wave the bloody shirt of racism against President Trump but rather to stress the seriousness of the problem and how it will not be tolerated."

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