Minnesota’s lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan donned a hijab to express solidarity with Somalis in a local TV appearance amid federal and congressional investigations into fraudsters in their refugee community who bilked taxpayers out of as much as $9 billion.
“I am incredibly clear that the Somali community is part of the fabric of the state of Minnesota,” Flanagan said at Karmel Mall in Minneapolis alongside local officials in a video released by Somali TV of Minnesota on Thursday.
“I am here shopping today and just encourage other folks to show up, support our Somali businesses, support our immigrant neighbors, and I know that things are scary right now,” added Flanagan, a Catholic, while wearing the Islamic head covering.
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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey also held a news conference Tuesday denouncing the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities — including at Karmel, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents reportedly detained four on Monday.
The US Treasury Department and a powerful House committee are currently probing Somali-linked organizations and other nonprofits in the state accused of defrauding taxpayers out of around half of the $18 billion in federal funding provided to Minnesota since 2018.
“The magnitude cannot be overstated,” top Minnesota federal prosecutor Joe Thompson has said. “What we see in Minnesota is not a handful of bad actors committing crimes. It’s staggering, industrial-scale fraud.”
The largest scheme convicted dozens of fraudsters from the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, who used more than $250 million in ill-gotten gains to splurge on luxury cars and real estate — sometimes in countries as far away as Kenya and Turkey.
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Employees who claimed to work at the Minnesota Department of Human Services, one of the two state agencies that distributed the funds, slammed the Democratic the governor the following month for having been “100% responsible for massive fraud.”
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Flanagan is one of three declared candidates — along with Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) and political outsider Billy Nord — facing off for the 2026 Senate Democratic primary nomination in the state.
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[Editor’s Note: Here is a video of Miss Flanagan in the hijab.]
The post Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan Wears Hijab in Solidarity With Somalis appeared first on American Renaissance.
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