No evidence Minnesota daycares gave millions to political campaigns

Published on January 7, 2026 at 19:52
3 min read
By Marisha GOLDHAMER, AFP USA

Millions of people have watched a disputed video accusing child care centers in Minnesota of fraudulent activity. But while state and federal authorities have been investigating fraud in the state, online claims that its daycares gave millions of dollars to political campaigns are unfounded. Public databases show no evidence of such large donations, and the screenshot shared as proof is not displaying campaign contributions, but instead misrepresents funds received under a state program supplementing care costs for low-income families.

"Daycares in Minnesota donated a combined $35 million to political campaigns in the last two years," says a January 1, 2026 post on X. "They didnt even try to hide the money trail."

The post includes a screenshot purporting to show political donations by Minnesota's Somali-led child care centers at a rate that would outpace giving by major technology firms.

The image spread widely across X, Facebook, Threads and Instagram, with some posts explicitly linking the donations to the Democratic Party.

"Fraud used to make political donations," billionaire X owner Elon Musk wrote in one post.

Screenshot of a post on X taken January 2, 2026

The posts followed the December 26, 2025 publication of a controversial video by right-wing YouTube content creator Nick Shirley, in which he filmed himself visiting various centers and claimed to be catching the facilities siphoning public money.

Local and national news outlets have reported for years on fraudulent applications to benefit programs in Minnesota -- which has a generous social safety net bankrolled by high taxes -- including the largest Covid-19 fraud scheme in the nation (archived here).

But Shirley previously spread misinformation about US funding the war in Ukraine, and his Minnesota video has been disputed by some of the day care centers he targeted.

Investigators from the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) said in a January 2, 2026 statement to AFP that checks on the nine child care centers Shirley singled out showed the facilities were "operating as expected."

Nevertheless, the US Health and Human Services Department announced a freeze on all child-care payments to the state, and Governor Tim Walz said January 5 that he was ending his bid for a third term.

The screenshot purportedly showing daycare center donations to political campaigns, meanwhile, depicts nothing of the sort.

CCAP funding

The chart is labeled as tracking funding from CCAP, an acronym for the Child Care Assistance Program in Minnesota, which helps offset daycare fees for 12,000 working families.

The data originates from the website SomaliScan.com, which claims to monitor fraud using "data sourced from public records and may contain errors or omissions." The X account that first spread the claim is linked to the website.

The account later admitted the chart did now show what was alleged (archived here).

"We dont care," the account wrote. "We have just stopped following the rules, like everyone else did a LONG time ago. The gloves are off and you are not gonna like what happens next."

AFP could not replicate the exact chart using the SomaliScan.com website, but the numbers do not align with official data provided by DCYF.

For example, the site displays $2.50 million paid by CCAP to Tayo Daycare in Minneapolis in the 2025 fiscal year (archived here).

However, figures DCYF provided to AFP show Tayo Daycare actually received a lower sum of $1.09 million through CCAP that year.

There is "dark money" flowing throughout the US political system, with politically active nonprofits skirting obligations to disclose their donors, but searches of open records do not show large political contributions from the child care facilities under scrutiny in Minnesota.

OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks data on money in politics, listed the top 20 political donors in Minnesota in the 2024 election cycle (archived here). They range from American Crystal Sugar to the Target Corporation. None were local childcare providers.

At the state level, candidates and political committees are required to disclose contributions over $1,000 to the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board. AFP reviewed the notices currently available online that cover donations received after October 21, 2025. None named the daycares in question.

Searching the Federal Election Commission individual contribution database for people working at the daycare centers in the screenshot surfaces just one donation by an employee of Tayo Daycare for $25 in May 2021. The money was earmarked to the state's Democratic US Senator Amy Klobuchar.

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