Special to WorldTribune.com

Commentary by Larry Ward, January 7, 2026

The best part of the incoming Trump Administration was DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency.

Here, finally, was the program promised by every Republican since Dr. Larry Hunter drafted the Contract with America for Newt Gingrich in 1994. After thirty years of talk about eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse, President Trump was finally going to do something about it. DOGE came in like the wrecking ball we needed.

And for a glorious moment, it worked. DOGE obliterated and exposed fraud at USAID, billions funneled to transgender operas in Colombia, DEI musicals in Ireland, and phantom programs that enriched bureaucrats while betraying American taxpayers. It ruffled all the right feathers. The Deep State trembled. For a brief, shining moment, we were winning.

Then the infighting began.

Instead of focusing on the massive waste, fraud, and abuse embedded in federal agencies, MAGA started swiping at each other for clicks and status in the pecking order. The issue didn’t matter: The Epstein files, foreign wars, H1B visas, or demands for perp walks.

MAGA’s circular firing squad took its eye off the DOGE prize, and the Deep State quietly absorbed the initiative into the swamp. Elon Musk left in May. Vivek Ramaswamy departed for other pursuits. By November, the OPM director was telling Reuters that DOGE no longer exists as a “centralized entity.”

Gov. DeSantis was right: DOGE was defeated by the swamp. Not because the mission was wrong, but because we let ourselves get distracted by internal squabbles while the bureaucracy regrouped and waited us out. The federal deficit grew by over $2 trillion in 2025. So much for the chainsaw.

Then came Nick Shirley, a 23-year-old independent journalist with a camera, a hoodie, and 42 minutes of footage that has now been viewed over 130 million times. Shirley drove around Minneapolis visiting daycare centers that receive millions in government funding, and found empty buildings, misspelled signs (“Quality Learing Center”), and facilities that couldn’t produce a single child during business hours.

He documented what federal prosecutors now say could be $9 billion or more in fraud funneled through Minnesota’s social services programs since 2018.

Vice President Vance said Shirley “has done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 Pulitzer prizes.” FBI Director Kash Patel announced the Bureau had “surged personnel and investigative resources to Minnesota.” The Department of Homeland Security began visiting the facilities Shirley documented.

Related: Yes, DOGE is still in business, with substantial and growing impact, January 5, 2026

And just like that, MAGA again had a common enemy: waste, fraud, and abuse. Not each other. Not abstract policy debates. Real, tangible, documentable theft from American taxpayers.

Nick Shirley pointed the way to victory, for both the midterms and the nation. This is the formula that works: sunlight as disinfectant, fraud exposed in headlines, Americans united against the grifters bleeding our treasury dry.

We must get back to the DOGE wrecking ball. We need newly discovered fraud in the headlines every single day. We must draw a direct, unmistakable line between government corruption and the kitchen-table economics crushing American families.

Every fraudulent dollar raises the price of your taxes, your groceries, your childcare, and your rent. While government gangsters and their cronies get rich, you’re working overtime just to stay afloat. This isn’t abstract. This is your paycheck being raided by people who’ve figured out how to game the system while hardworking Americans play by the rules.

The Minnesota fraud scandal isn’t an isolated incident, it’s systemic in a federal government that has lost the capacity to police itself. When inspectors general get fired for doing their jobs, when whistleblowers are ignored, and when career bureaucrats water down fraud statistics to protect their political interests, the system becomes an open invitation for theft.

But here’s what the swamp doesn’t understand: Americans are paying attention. A 23-year-old with a YouTube channel and the courage to knock on doors accomplished what billions in federal oversight failed to do. That should embarrass every bureaucrat in Washington. It should also inspire every patriot who believes that sunlight and persistence can still defeat corruption.

This is the path to victory, if we stop firing on one another. The debates about H1B visas, the Epstein files, and who gets invited to Mar-a-Lago can wait. What cannot wait is the systematic dismantling of the fraud networks that are stealing from every American household.

DOGE may have been absorbed by the system, but its spirit lives on. Every time a citizen journalist exposes an empty daycare collecting millions, every time a whistleblower comes forward, every time Americans demand accountability, that’s DOGE. That’s the wrecking ball.

The swamp didn’t defeat us. We defeated ourselves by forgetting what united us in the first place. Nick Shirley just reminded us. Now it’s time to get back to work.

Larry Ward is President of the Free Press Foundation.

  Opinion: On the bright side, Somali fraud is the path back to DOGE and restored MAGA unity