Mike DeWine finally had enough.
The social media storm of misinformation stirred by a child care fraud scandal in Minnesota that implicated dozens of Somali immigrants was spreading, and now another Somali community, in Columbus, the capital of Ohio, was being targeted.
So after a statement by his office last week did little to tamp down the false claims, DeWine, the state’s governor, summoned reporters to a news conference this week to scold people who had posted videos fueling speculation of suspicious activity at child care centers in Ohio, which has a sizable Somali population.
President Donald Trump has called Somalis “garbage,” and immigrants from the East African country have been vilified by administration officials, which appears to have encouraged social media campaigns like the ones DeWine was trying to counter.
“We need to look at this as not a Somali problem, we need to look at this as a fraud problem,” said DeWine, whose exasperation recalled his effort to rebut fictitious claims that Trump amplified during the 2024 presidential campaign that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs.
Litany of facts
At the news conference Monday, DeWine, 79, a Republican in his last year in office, marshaled a litany of facts to try to refute the baseless rumors being pushed by some far-right members of his own party.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) speaks at a press conference at Springfield City Hall alongside Ohio State Highway Patrol Colonel Charles Jones, left, Director of the Department of Public Safety Andy Wilson, second from right, and Springfield City School Superintendent Robert Hill, right, in Springfield, Ohio, Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Patrick Aftoora-Orsagos)
He noted that the state subsidizes day care for more than 100,000 children and that there are nearly 5,200 child care centers in Ohio. State officials conducted more than 10,000 unannounced checks on child care centers last year, he continued. A phone line for child care fraud yielded 124 tips for investigators last year, he went on. The state closed 38 child care facilities last year for failing to comply with state laws, he said.
But facts can seem like little match for the right-wing, social media-fueled narrative that a vast fraud scheme in Minnesota child care centers, which has led to the indictments of dozens of people of Somali heritage, was part of a nationwide scandal.
That portrayal has been embraced by the White House, which has frozen child care funds in all states until they provide administrative data, and the Ohio statehouse, where lawmakers have called for ramping up inspections, especially in Columbus, which is home to more than 30,000 people of Somali heritage.
DeWine, while acknowledging that there have been instances of fraud, said the system has safeguards that limit misuse of funds. He noted that child care centers receive funding based on attendance, not registration, and that children are logged in and out of centers using a phone app that requires personal identification numbers.
DeWine repeatedly expressed exasperation that false claims about fraud were being amplified by influencers who were trying to enter day care centers and then, when they were refused entry, claiming that there must be nefarious activity inside.
“There’s a good reason why they are not getting into these facilities — to protect these children in these day care centers,” DeWine said.
The governor also pushed back on claims by Ken Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state, who said on social media that a Somali community organization being shut down after a state investigation was only “the tip of the iceberg.”
But DeWine said the supposed irregularity cited by Blackwell — that 40 day care centers associated with the Somali organization opened on the same date — was the result of a computer glitch when software was updated.
Day cares respond
Somalis and other immigrants in Columbus faced a surge in enforcement last month, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a series of sweeps in the city. Now, the child care fraud misinformation has created fresh anxiety.
At Little Lions Learning Center in the heart of the Somali community, Kafa Zubi, who runs the facility, said the videos on social media had created a sense of hysteria. “It’s all Islamophobia,” she said of the attention on Somali day care centers. (Most Somalis are Muslim.)
Zubi said centers like hers have to file extensive regulatory documents and are subject to inspections, both announced and unannounced, to maintain federal funding that is a significant part of their budgets.
Abdullahi Saleh, whose parents operate a child care center in Columbus, said they recently had to shoo away strangers who showed up wanting to observe what was happening inside the center. The encounter alarmed parents of the children who attend the center, said Saleh, who asked that his family’s child care center not be named out of fear of retaliation.
“Parents are concerned,” Saleh said. “The conversations are ‘How dare someone with a camera come through a day care center and ask to video my children.’”
‘It’s the story that really sells it’
Jodi Norton Trimble, an official with the Ohio Department of Children and Youth, said over the past week administrators from several child care businesses in central Ohio had contacted her office after receiving threats.
Kurt Gray, a psychology professor at Ohio State University who studies morality in politics, said social media has amplified a familiar device: the vilification of marginalized people.
The actions of a few bad actors, Gray said, are seized upon to turn a class of people who would normally be sympathetic figures, like immigrants or poor people, into villains. He likened the scrutiny of Somali day care centers to that of people on public assistance, noting how President Ronald Reagan popularized the term “welfare queen” to characterize abuses of the welfare system.
“You might think of her as a victim, but now she’s really a villain,” Gray said.
While DeWine came to his news conference armed with numbers and facts, Gray is skeptical that they will resonate with the people the governor is trying to reach, those who believe the accusations in the social media influencers’ videos.
This happened a little over a year ago when DeWine convened another news conference to emphasize that, contrary to Trump’s assertion during a debate, Haitians in his state were not eating pets.
“People don’t think facts are the right things when it comes to moral issues,” he said. “It’s the story that really sells it.”
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