Vice President JD Vance hosted the inaugural meeting of the newly formed White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud on Friday, convening senior administration officials to outline a national strategy targeting what the administration describes as widespread abuse of federal benefits programmes.
Vance used the meeting to argue that anti-fraud protections had been weakened under the previous administration. “A lot of the anti-fraud protections that existed in our government for a very long time were actually turned off by the Biden administration,” Vance said. “We’re going to turn back on those anti-fraud protections so that all of these Cabinet officials are looking at what’s going on and focusing on it.” He described fraud as a theft of critical services, citing an autism benefits scheme in Minneapolis as an example. “You have families who need these services, who are unable to get them because people are getting rich,” he said.
Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson, who serves as the task force’s vice chair, described the fraud crisis as existential and said the group’s work would involve developing “a comprehensive national strategy to combat the corruption of our federal benefits programs and to assist the Department of Justice in prosecuting those who have corrupted them.” Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, a senior advisor on the task force, spoke about difficulties obtaining SNAP programme records in Minnesota and made remarks targeting Somali refugees in the Twin Cities, alleging that individuals had fraudulently obtained government benefits. Miller also addressed the partial government shutdown, calling the Democratic position on DHS funding “legislative terrorism.”
President Trump announced the creation of the task force during his State of the Union address in February and formalised it through an executive order signed on 16 March. Vance described the order’s dual purpose at the signing event: “Stop the fraud of the American taxpayer, and make sure that the benefits that ought, by right, go to American citizens, go to American citizens, and not to fraudsters.”
Minnesota has been an early focus of the task force’s attention. The state drew national scrutiny last year after a YouTuber posted viral footage alleging that millions in taxpayer dollars were flowing to seemingly vacant daycare centres. Investigations and legislative hearings followed. In February, Vance and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz announced a pause on federal Medicaid reimbursements to the state. A task force fact sheet also identified California, Illinois, New York, Maine, and Colorado as states where “insufficient safeguards and weak oversight increase the risk of large-scale fraud.”
Attendees at Friday’s roundtable included much of the Trump cabinet, among them Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Linda McMahon, Scott Bessent, Brooke Rollins, Kelly Loeffler, and Russ Vought, alongside several other senior administration officials.
