A Minnesota mother who spoke out Wednesday against the Trump administration’s freezing of child care funding abruptly cut her remarks short after admitting that “fraud is bad.”
Deko Nor, a medical student whose four-year-old attends a daycare center outside Minneapolis, told reporters at a New Year’s Eve press conference that her child would be one of more than 20,000 losing access to the facilities without federal help.
“I rely on child care. I work. If child care is cut, I am unable to work or go to school,” she said, before beginning her next sentence by declaring: “I understand fraud is bad—”
Deko Nor seen covering her mouth after blurting “I understand fraud is bad—” KSTP 5Nor immediately looked down at the text of her speech, shook her head in disbelief and placed her right hand to her mouth while inhaling sharply.
She then looked up, apparently flustered, and told the other attendees at the news conference: “I don’t think I can speak.”
Elsewhere in the press conference, Maria Snider, vice president of the Minnesota Childcare Association, blurted out, “there is fraud,” before placing her hands to her mouth in exasperation that she had also uttered the phrase.
“Deko just let me know that she had to skip school today and she just got emotional being here,” explained Snider, who also serves as director of the Rainbow Child Development Center in St. Paul.
“The fraud that is occurring is not at the hands of families,” she also said. “We need to be looking at who’s in power, who’s making decisions, who’s guarding the purse strings of our tax dollars.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison helped stage the news conference with child care advocates like Snider and other parents who benefit from the services.
The US Department of Health and Human Services halted all child care funding to Minnesota until state officials can prove none of it is being used by crooks — days after a viral video from right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley showed many Twin Cities entities receiving millions of taxpayer dollars appeared to be either closed or inoperable.
Adults and children are seen arriving to the “Quailty Learing Center” in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Monday, Dec. 29, 2025. LP Media for NY PostHHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill on Tuesday announced that “all child care payments to the state of Minnesota” would be frozen after state welfare services allegedly “funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to fraudulent daycares” over the last decade.
Gopher State officials will have to justify their funding allocations to HHS — and conduct a comprehensive audit of organizations that had been on the take — before the spigot gets turned back on.
Audits will have to include the production of “attendance records, licenses, complaints, investigations, and inspections,” according to O’Neill. The federal public health department has also created a hotline and an email address to help assist in the reporting of fraud at childcare.gov.
Other US states are also being forced “to verify the proper use of taxpayer funds” before receiving more tranches, HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said in a statement Wednesday.
Federal prosecutors based in Minnesota who busted the nonprofit Feeding Our Future for stealing $250 million in taxpayer-funded COVID relief dollars have since alleged that “industrial-scale fraud” may have pilfered as much as $9 billion in total since 2018.
Nonprofits accused of the fraud have ties to the nearly 80,000-strong Somali community in the Twin Cities area, many of whom came to the US as refugees from the war-torn East African country.
