In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Donald Trump announced a “war on fraud,” a term that the administration has used in increasingly broad and deceptive ways.
The president made the declaration after referencing a welfare fraud scandal in Minnesota that was uncovered and prosecuted by the Biden administration.
Trump and his Republican allies have used the scandal as justification to swarm the North Star State with immigration officials, to attack the state’s large Somali community and to allege rampant corruption in Democrat-led states in general.
“I am officially announcing the war on fraud to be led by our great Vice President JD Vance,” Trump said during his address. “If we’re able to find enough fraud, we’ll actually have a balanced budget overnight.”
While Trump’s statement was not particularly detailed, it builds on a murky story that — at least…
Review your monthly bank statements and credit card bills line-by-line to spot small “tester” transactions of R5 or R10, which fraudsters use to verify if a stolen card is still active.