“It’s Like an Uber Service for Fraud”

In Minnesota, a federal prosecutor found that a “web” of fraudulent schemes “stole billions of dollars in taxpayer money.” Last year, Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Rufo reported that many of those indicted are members of the state’s Somali community—and some fraudulently obtained funds ended up in the hands of Al-Shabaab terrorists.

Such big-money scams are not limited to Minnesota. In a new interview, Rufo speaks with a veteran blue-city police detective about an alleged pattern of fraud on the West Coast committed by foreign criminals. Various groups, the detective claims, are stealing from and cheating Americans, whom they view as “a big, fat target.”

Read more about the alleged schemes—and why they’re hard to stop.

What makes New York City so special? Is it still a center of opportunity? And what does good governance look like?

Those were some of the questions Adam Lehodey set out to ask five New Yorkers across the five boroughs. They shared what the city means to them, how it has changed over the years, and what they hope for in the years ahead.

Read some of their conversations.

In 2019, then-mayor Bill de Blasio and the city council set a deadline—since extended to August 2027—for closing the jail complex on Rikers Island. In its place would be four “borough-based jails.”

The problem? None of the new jails will be ready in time for the Rikers closure. New York law, which governs local correctional facilities, states that the city can’t close a local jail without providing a functional replacement. Not only are the new jails not built, but they will only be able to hold 4,000 inmates combined. (Rikers currently houses 7,000.)

“The borough-based jails will not be like-kind replacements for Rikers,” Christian Browne writes. “They will hold only about half of its present, relatively low population—not by mistake, but because of activists’ plan to leave the city with ‘dramatically reduced’ jail capacity.”

Read more about the plan’s legal issues.

The Manhattan Institute is proud to serve as the Principal Institutional Partner for the Sun Valley Policy Forum’s 2026 Winter Summit in the iconic resort town of Sun Valley, Idaho on February 11, 2026.

We are thrilled to join Joe Lonsdale and MI senior fellow Christopher F. Rufo for an evening on principled leadership and the future of American institutions in an AI-driven era. Please click here to learn more about the Sun Valley Policy Forum and our partnership and to purchase tickets at a discounted rate for friends of the Manhattan Institute.

President Trump’s recent executive order, “Fostering the Future,” aims to improve America’s foster-care system. Alex J. Adams, Assistant Secretary for Family Support and head of the Administration for Children and Families, notes that one of the ways to do that is by boosting the number of licensed foster homes, of which there is a national shortage.

“The consequences are heartbreaking: children sleeping in offices or short-term rentals, the overuse of congregate (group) care, and emergency placements that prioritize availability rather than fit,” writes Adams.

The key to alleviating this shortage is for states to “license broadly, match carefully.” He argues that this approach will move us “closer to ACF’s vision: homes waiting for children, not children waiting for homes.”

“Mamdani will be a baby bouncing on the laps of the teachers’ unions, like all other Democrat mayors. Keep an eye on his policies re: charter schools. If no new charters are licensed, that will be a sign that the unions have been given full power to pump Marxist sludge into New York City kids’ heads.”

Photo credit: Mel Melcon / Contributor / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images