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Thursday, December 4, 2025

What did Ilhan Omar know about the $1B welfare fraud case in her Minnesota district?

US Rep. Ilhan Omar’s close ties to the $1 billion welfare scam in her Minnesota congressional district are being uncovered.

Omar (D-Minn.) held parties at one of the key restaurants named in the fraud, knew one of its now-convicted owners, and one of her own staffers has also been convicted — both for stealing millions.

Omar even introduced the bill that led to $250 million in fraud. Yet she claims to have been completely unaware of it.

“[Rep. Omar] knew who these people were. People she personally knew were making tens of millions of dollars in this program,” claimed Bill Glahn, a policy fellow with the Minnesota-based Center of the American Experiment, to The Post.

“She had been inside the [Safari] facility on numerous occasions and couldn’t put 2 and 2 together? Either she’s terminally naive, or knew and didn’t care,” Glahn added.

Around $250 million was handed out by the Minnesota government to provide meals to schoolchildren during the pandemic from 2020 onward.

Instead, it was pocketed by corrupt business owners, including Salim Ahmed Said. He’s the co-owner of Safari Restaurant, where Omar held her 2018 congressional victory party.

Said was found guilty in August of stealing over $12 million for serving 3.9 million “phantom” meals during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He blew much of the money on a $2 million Minneapolis mansion and a $9,000-a-month shopping habit at Nordstrom, according to prosecutors.

Omar has not been directly linked to the scandal, according to prosecutorial documents. Her office did not respond to a request for comment from The Post.

The free meals were made possible by the 2020 MEALS Act, which was introduced by Omar and passed with bipartisan support.

Most of the money in Minneapolis was funneled through the now-defunct nonprofit Feeding Our Future.

It allowed both nonprofits and for-profit businesses to be reimbursed with taxpayer money for feeding kids by dramatically loosening oversight, waiving site inspections, and allowing bulk take-home food, with almost no verification.

As the scam was going on in 2020, Omar appeared on video at Minneapolis’ Safari Restaurant to praise the program.

The congresswoman later told KARE 11 News: “The alleged fraud scheme orchestrated by Feeding Our Future is reprehensible. Using the guise of feeding children to funnel millions of dollars toward extravagant expenses is abhorrent, and anyone who participated in this scheme must be held accountable.”

Her spokesperson also said she had no knowledge of any wrongdoing.

In 2021, when Minnesota’s Department of Education (MDE) flagged that organization for irregularities and “serious deficiencies” such as incomplete audits, a top aide to Omar, deputy district director Ali Isse, came rushing to their defense, in a newly resurfaced video.

He spoke at a gala praising the “vital work” of Feeding Our Families and blasted state agencies for asking too many questions.

“I’m tired of the MDE thing. How many more do we have to fight against?” the top Omar associate, who has not been indicted or directly linked to the fraud, said during the impassioned speech.

He also blamed the unwanted attention from authorities on racism and rallied the “community” to stick together. Isse did not immediately return The Post’s request for comment.

Whistleblowers have claimed the fear of being called racist meant government officials were reluctant to prosecute the scheme to its full extent early on.

“When you raise your hand and call this into question, you get handed the racism card,” David Gaither, a former Minnesota legislator who spent 13 years running an adult education center in Minneapolis for Somali immigrants, told The Post.

“You’re shamed and put into a corner, especially if you’re some mid-level bureaucrat. You’re told to take some remedial training and look the other way.”

A different Omar campaign official, a Democratic activist named Guhaad Hashi Said, pleaded guilty in August to running a fake food site called Advance Youth Athletic Development, where he falsely claimed to serve 5,000 meals a day and pocketed $3.2 million out of the food program.

Said worked on Omar’s 2018 and 2020 campaigns as an “enforcer” who oversaw aggressive voter mobilization in the Somali community, according to local Alphanews.org.

Omar and Said frequently attended events together. Numerous Facebook photos apparently shared by Said show him with Omar, including a smiling selfie together.

“This is a clan-based society, everybody knows everybody else and it’s only open to those folks in that clan,” Gaither said of the Somali immigrants.

Others receiving fraudulent money from the charity scam were donors to Omar’s campaign.

She received $7,400 in direct donations from now-convicted fraudsters. After the scandal broke in 2022, Omar returned those donations.

In total, 78 people have so far been indicted over the fraud, which also includes bogus claims of providing shelter for homeless people and diagnosing non-autistic children as having the condition and claiming government money for their care.

As the extent of the fraud becomes better understood, the state’s top officials are under the spotlight for not catching it sooner.

On Monday, a US House committee and the Treasury Department launched investigations into whether Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz had a role in oversight of the scheme, which could have been caught much earlier.

Walz commented to say he “welcomed” the fraud investigation, but didn’t comment on his inclusion in it.

“The [Somali community] have a distrust of norms in our society, like ‘Minnesota nice.’ They’re conditioned to ripping off the government because that’s what goes on in Somalia,” added Gaither.

https://nypost.com/2025/12/04/us-news/what-did-ilhan-omar-know-about-the-1b-welfare-fraud-case-in-her-minnesota-district/

Bayer takes Alport syndrome drug into phase 2

Bayer has started a phase 2a trial of an antibody that it hopes could provide a targeted, potentially disease-modifying therapy for Alport syndrome, a rare, genetic disease that leads to chronic kidney disease (CKD).

Alport is caused by mutations in genes that are involved in the formation of type IV collagen, a protein integral to the structure of organs and tissues, and is the second most common form of inherited kidney disease.

Along with progressive kidney damage, which can sometimes result in patients needing a kidney transplant in early adulthood, it also leads to hearing loss and eye abnormalities affecting vision. The kidneys soon lose their ability to remove waste products from the body properly, resulting in end-stage kidney disease.

Current treatment for Alport is based on drugs that are designed to reduce the workload of the kidneys – ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) – and slow down disease progression. Despite the use of those drugs, patients still experience progressive decline of kidney function, resulting in end-stage kidney disease in their 30s or even earlier.

Bayer's new antibody – codenamed BAY 3401016 and stemming from an alliance with Evotec – is designed to block a protein called Semaphorin 3A (Sema3A), which is thought to be involved in the progression of kidney damage in Alport.

The drugmaker hopes to show in the new ASSESS study that BAY 3401016 can reduce proteinuria – protein in the urine that is a marker for kidney disease – and slow down the loss of kidney function. It will compare a weekly dose of the antibody over 24 weeks to placebo, with the main efficacy measure being the change in urinary albumin creatinine ratio (UACR) from baseline.

"The initiation of the ASSESS trial represents an important milestone for our investigational BAY 3401016 programme," said Andrea Haegebarth, global head of research and early development for cardiovascular, renal, and immunology at Bayer's pharma division.

"We are collaborating closely with the patient organisation community to gain a deeper understanding of the real challenges faced by people living with Alport syndrome," she added.

"We believe BAY 3401016 holds promise as a potential therapeutic approach, and we look forward to assessing its efficacy and safety profile as we advance this important programme in our pipeline."

Other drugs that have been tested for Alport include Bayer's mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) antagonist Kerendia (finerenone), Novartis' endothelin A receptor antagonist Vanrafia (atrasentan), and Eloxx Pharma's gene therapy ELX-02. Bayer does not seem to have an active trial of Kerendia in Alport at the moment, however, and ELX-02's progress seems to have been scuppered by the company running out of money.

https://pharmaphorum.com/news/bayer-takes-alport-syndrome-drug-phase-2

FDA Eyes Higher User Fees for Companies Holding Phase I Studies Abroad

Companies who run their early-stage clinical development outside the U.S. would “experience higher fees” according to an FDA proposal made during the negotiation process for the eighth cycle of the user fee program.

The FDA is proposing raising user fees for companies conducting Phase I clinical trials outside the U.S. in a bid to boost domestic drug development.

Speaking to industry representatives on Nov. 6, agency officials said “programs that do not conduct Phase 1 clinical trials in the U.S. would experience higher fees,” according to the minutes of that meeting. The move, the FDA said, will help “anchor clinical development in the United States.”

Industry groups—including the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and Consumer Healthcare Products Association—asked why the FDA chose to change the user fee structure instead of “leveraging efficiencies” to speed up drug reviews. The regulator said that that approach is also “of interest,” though it falls “outside of scope of the PDUFA negotiations.”

FDA officials were also unable to provide specifics about how it plans to implement these fee changes, noting that those details will be determined in future negotiation meetings.

The Nov. 6 meeting comes as the FDA and the industry negotiate the terms of the eighth cycle of the agency’s prescription drug user fee program, which is set to begin in late 2027. The scheme allows the regulator to collect certain fees from drugmakers that want to have their products reviewed. Importantly, this payment does not guarantee a favorable result, but instead gives companies certain standards to which they can hold the FDA accountable, including turnaround times and access to meetings with the regulator.

Last month, Commissioner Marty Makary floated the idea of different fees for companies conducting domestic development versus those with overseas early-stage programs. “If your Phase I trial is not in the United States, maybe you should pay a higher user fee,” Makary said during his speech at a workshop by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He called this push the FDA’s “America-first agenda.”

Makary has also previously said he wanted to see lower user fees, noting in July that this would lower the barrier of entry for smaller drug developers, such as “small companies and individual investors and people in academics.” This idea has yet to be formally proposed as of the Nov. 6 meetings, according to the minutes that have been released so far, though it remains unclear whether the FDA has already raised it with the industry in subsequent talks.

https://www.biospace.com/fda/fda-eyes-higher-user-fees-for-companies-holding-phase-i-studies-abroad

COVID Contrarian Tracy Beth Høeg Named as FDA’s Acting CDER Chief

Høeg is the fifth person to lead the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research this year.

Tracy Beth Høeg—a known vaccine skeptic—will lead the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research as acting chief, becoming the fifth person just this year to hold the agency’s top drug regulatory post.

Høeg, who joined the FDA earlier this year as an aide to Commissioner Marty Makary, is a doctor who previously specialized in physical and interventional spine and sports medicine, according to an FDA news release on Wednesday. She served as a senior advisor in the Office of the Commissioner and at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Høeg holds a PhD in Public Health and Epidemiology from the University of Copenhagen.

“I am committed to transparency, honesty, and decisions based on rigorous science,” she said in a prepared statement on Wednesday. “I am humbled to support the FDA’s work to modernize and strengthen how we evaluate evidence so the public benefits from the best science.”

Høeg succeeds Richard Pazdur, who earlier this week announced his retirement from the FDA just weeks after he was convinced by Makary to head CDER. Pazdur himself inherited the seat from George Tidmarsh, who was appointed in July and resigned last month amid a probe into his personal conduct. Before Tidmarsh, CDER’s acting director was Jacqueline Corrigan-Curay, who assumed leadership of the division after Patrizia Cavazzoni stepped down in January.

CDER is the main office at the FDA responsible for regulating prescription and over-the-counter drugs, including generics and biological therapies.

Like other health appointees under the Trump administration, Høeg has long been a skeptic of vaccines, particularly of the COVID-19 shots. In October 2023, she wrote on her Substack that “the CDC will continue to mislead the public or simply push policy without doing the studies,” referring to the agency’s insistence on school closures during the pandemic, despite what she said was a lack of evidence showing a link between community spread and school reopening.

Later in that same post, she claimed that the CDC “started ignoring reports” of deaths related to myocarditis associated with the COVID-19 vaccines.

Høeg has continued to publicly criticize U.S. vaccination policy and in December 2024 spoke on a podcast questioning the current childhood schedule in the country.

More recently, Høeg’s work led to the claims by Vinay Prasad, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, that “at least 10 children” died because of the COVID-19 vaccines. In an internal memo last week, Prasad wrote that “for the first time, the U.S. FDA will acknowledge that COVID-19 vaccines have killed American children.”

While the memo was light on actual data to support these claims, Prasad noted that it was Høeg who led the investigation into these mortalities, digging through reports in the FDA’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System for reports of children who died after receiving the shot. Høeg was also the one who first concluded that the deaths were linked to the vaccines.

https://www.biospace.com/fda/covid-contrarian-tracy-beth-h%C3%B8eg-named-as-fdas-acting-cder-chief

FDA To Provide More Data on 10 Pediatric Deaths Tied to COVID-19 Vaccines By End of Month

Last week, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Vinay Prasad claimed in an internal memo—without providing evidence—that COVID-19 vaccines were responsible for the deaths of 10 children between 2021 and 2024.

The FDA will not immediately provide data to back the claim from Vinay Prasad, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, that 10 children have died because of COVID-19 vaccination.

In a statement to Endpoints News, which broke the news on Wednesday, a spokesperson said that the FDA will not be releasing details regarding the claim in the “near term” because it is still investigating “additional adverse event cases.” The spokesperson later followed up, adding that the agency plans to “make a report publicly available by the end of this month that covers the reported 10 deaths.”

BioSpace has reached out to the FDA for independent confirmation of the news.

Last week, Prasad sent an internal memo to FDA staff claiming that “at least 10 children have died after and because of receiving COVID-19 vaccination.” Newly appointed acting director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Tracy Beth Høeg, as well as an internal team at CBER, analyzed 96 reported deaths occurring from 2021 to 2024 and found that “no fewer than 10” mortalities are “related” to the shots. This number, Prasad continued in his memo, “is certainly an underestimate due to underreporting.”

Observers were quick to blast Prasad’s memo and question the veracity of his claims. “After years of working at the FDA I’ve never seen a memo like that,” Peter Lurie, who previously served as an associate commissioner at the agency, told BioSpace earlier this week.

Meanwhile, Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told BioSpace that “when you make a sensational claim like that, a frightening claim like that, at the very least, you owe it to the public to provide the evidence.”

In his memo, Prasad revealed only that these alleged mortality signals were picked up by the FDA’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a public monitoring mechanism that can receive reports from “all concerned individuals, including doctors, vaccine manufacturers and even the public. The VAERS “generally cannot be used to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event or illness,” the FDA itself notes on its website.

Høeg was named as Prasad’s counterpart at CDER only days after news of the memo was made public. She succeeds Richard Pazdur, who earlier this week announced his retirement from the agency after just weeks leading CDER. Pazdur has been with the FDA since 1999.

https://www.biospace.com/fda/fda-to-provide-further-data-on-10-alleged-pediatric-deaths-linked-to-covid-19-vaccines-by-end-of-month

‘This Fed went to sleep’: El-Erian

As the Federal Reserve eyes a period of transformation to a new chairman, famed economist Mohamed El-Erian is of the opinion that it can’t come soon enough.

The former Pimco CEO echoed calls from the likes of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for the Federal Reserve—and indeed its interest-rate-setting committee—to take more of a back seat in economic debate and instead focus on the big picture.

“This Fed went to sleep,” El-Erian, former president of Queens’ College Cambridge, told CNBC. He said the independent central bank needs to admit it made some mistakes: It needs to think about scenario analysis as opposed to point estimates; it needs to look more closely at supply-side economics; and it needs to improve its culture of compliance.

“There’s a lot of things that we have to focus on [at] the Fed, because it’s so central to our economic well-being,” he added.

El-Erian said Bessent’s estimation of the future of the Fed is “perfect,” noting: “We don’t need a play-by-play Fed, we need the Fed to cool it. We need the Fed to step back and take a bigger, visionary view, and we need reforms. We desperately need reforms, and I think all five on the short list are committed to reforming that institution, which is critical not just for the U.S. but for the global economy.”

Of the candidates on the short list, a front-runner is already emerging. While interest in who the next Fed chairman will be has rumbled on all year—spurred by President Trump’s battle against Jerome “Too Late” Powell—speculation has spiked over the past 48 hours after the White House confirmed a decision on the nominee has been made.

The White House has been transparent about potential names on the list: the “two Kevins” (Trump’s chief economic advisor Kevin Hassett and former Fed governor Kevin Warsh) as well as some names within the Fed. These have included current Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members such as governors Chris Waller and Michelle Bowman. BlackRock’s Rick Rieder has also been a name floated.

At the time of writing, Hassett leads the polls as the person most likely to receive Trump’s backing, with odds on prediction markets platform Kalshi sitting at 80%. Next is Warsh at 10%, and governor Waller at 4%.

Bessent is already prepping Wall Street on what to expect from a reimagined Fed. Analysts may not like it, as they’ve grown accustomed to poring over the details of speeches made by various Fed presidents and governors. “I think we just need to calm down all these speeches by bank presidents that are just redundant,” Bessent said last week. “Why don’t they actually just come out and talk about the meaningful issues [for] the American people, rather than the short-term view of the next meeting?"

The spikes in expectations for a Fed cut in December are evidence of why the Fed needs to take more of a back-seat approach, added El-Erian, referencing the likes of CME’s FedWatch tracker, which has increased from a 50/50 likelihood of a cut at the next meeting to odds at the time of writing of more than 87%.

“It’s crazy,” El-Erian said. “This should not happen. The whole point of forward guidance is predictability and stability. So there is something wrong that has to be addressed. The rest of the world looks at this and says, ‘Wait a minute, the Fed is at the core of the system, and there’s so much volatility in what they expect they’re going to do in a few weeks, what’s going on here?’”

A question of independence

Investors will be watching closely to ensure the upheaval doesn’t stray anywhere close to a threat on the central bank’s independence. Earlier this year, markets revolted after President Trump threatened to fire Powell, a claim walked back when investors kicked strongly against political intervention into the leadership of the Fed.

UBS chief economist Paul Donovan already signaled to clients he is keeping an eye out for such outcomes, saying Hassett’s leadership could draw “parallels” to a disastrous relationship between President Nixon and Fed Chair Arthur Burns in the 1970s. However, Donovan did caveat the concern with the fact that some members of the current FOMC have been known to pull away from the consensus vote when they feel it’s needed.

Deutsche Bank also outlined in its 2026 world outlook that among the risks facing the U.S. is the “potential infringement on Fed independence,” and analysts won’t be waiting long to see the factor come into play.

January marks the beginning of Supreme Court hearings for Fed governor Lisa Cook, who is challenging President Trump over his bid to remove her from her post. As Deutsche Bank noted: “This case is pivotal as it challenges the president’s ability to dismiss a sitting Fed governor, with potential implications for the independence and stability of the Federal Reserve.”

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fed-went-sleep-says-top-114953617.html

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