Government fraud meets its worst enemy: Some dude with a phone
Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
What’s emerging isn’t a movement with a leader — it’s a decentralized ecosystem. Accountability no longer depends on a single newsroom or institution. It comes from a generation that has figured out that exposing corruption is vastly more rewarding than working a shift at Starbucks.
That should terrify every political leader who has relied on the assumption that no one is really watching.
A single viral video now generates more pressure than a year of congressional hearings. The Minnesota press corps had years to uncover what Shirley documented in an afternoon. They didn’t look — not because the evidence was hidden, but because looking wasn’t incentivized. Now it is.
This shift is part of the reason I created Rhetor, an AI-driven political strategy firm designed to track what people are actually saying and doing in real time. Using these tools, we’ve identified billions of dollars in questionable spending beyond Minnesota.
In New York City, for example, migrant-related spending is projected to reach $4.3 billion through 2027. Audits have flagged contractors billing the city for empty hotel rooms — charging $170 per night while paying hotels closer to $100 and pocketing the difference.
Chicago has paid at least $342 million to staffing firms charging $156 an hour for shelter workers. Illinois spent $2.5 billion in 2025 under emergency rules with minimal oversight.
These are not isolated incidents. They share the same ingredients as Minnesota’s scandal: emergency declarations, suspended procurement rules, inexperienced contractors, and little meaningful oversight.
And someone is going to knock on those doors too.
The old gatekeepers understand what this means — and they’re panicking. For decades, investigative journalism required institutional backing. Stories could be delayed, softened, or killed outright if they threatened the wrong people and interests.
That system is dead.
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
The new investigative journalism runs on virality, not permission. The reporter is a 23-year-old with a ring light and a Substack. The editorial board is the algorithm. The feedback loop is brutal, immediate, and unforgiving. Get it wrong and the internet will tear you apart. Get it right and the story spreads faster than any newspaper ever could.
This isn’t replacing traditional journalism. It’s filling the void left when traditional journalism stopped doing its job.
Minnesota was the proof of concept. The data was public. The facilities were visitable. The fraud existed for years. Nobody looked — until looking became profitable.
Now it’s profitable everywhere.
The bureaucrats and contractors who built careers on the assumption that no one was watching are about to discover that everyone is. The politicians who treated emergency spending like free money are about to learn that the emergency is over — and the receipts are coming to light.
A generation that treats views like oxygen just learned that fraud is the best clickbait.
Good luck stopping that.
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