Another day. Another moral panic.

By now, I’m sure you’ve seen the Minnesota day-care videos. If not, they feature right-wing YouTuber/proud virgin Nick Shirley claiming to “expose” widespread daycare fraud in Minnesota. It quickly went viral, racking up millions of views and igniting the usual outrage across the MAGA-sphere.

The video itself was thin on facts and heavy on insinuation. A guy with a camera wandered into daycare centers at odd hours, filmed empty rooms and closed doors, and stitched together a narrative perfectly designed to convince your grandmother that Somali immigrants in Minnesota were stealing her tax dollars. Ignoring the fact that if any rando with a camera rolled up on my kids’ daycare and asked to film them for their YouTube channel, I’d throat-punch him them on the spot. But that's just me.

Professional reporting quickly filled in the gaps. Per NPR, Minnesota regulators and federal investigators had already been investigating daycare fraud tied to these programs for years, with site visits conducted as early as 2022 and prosecutions already underway well before Shirley ever hit “upload.”

Many of the supposed “red flags” highlighted in the videos turned out to be mundane realities of small childcare operations. Centers featured as “empty” had been inspected during normal hours, with children present. None of this was hidden or new.

CNN’s breakdown of the case makes this even clearer, detailing what fraud was actually proven, what wasn’t, and how much of the viral narrative ignored documented facts.

You’d think that would’ve been the end of it. But since we live in the dumbest timeline imaginable, it wasn’t.

Like moths to a flame, the Trump administration seized on the viral moment and froze federal childcare funding, not just in Minnesota, but nationwide, a move that state officials and childcare advocates warned would hurt families who had nothing to do with the alleged fraud. Take that, fucking KIDS!

Listen, if fraud exists, it should be stomped out. Real crimes deserve real consequences. But that was never the goal here. The goal was to confirm a worldview where public programs are corrupt, immigrants are suspect, and cruelty can be framed as accountability.

This is what governance looks like when your movement can’t survive without an enemy. Facts become optional. Collateral damage becomes acceptable. And real people become expendable as long as the outrage machine stays fed.

So no, this isn’t really about daycare fraud. That was already being handled. This is about whether we’re willing to keep letting manufactured moral panics replace governance. Whether we’re okay with viral outrage setting policy while real people absorb the fallout. And whether we’re finally ready to stop rewarding the politicians and media ecosystems that profit from breaking things and walking away.

"Daycare Fraud" is just another version of "Transgender for Everyone", "Open Borders", "Fake News", or "DEI Hires". Cultural boogeymen engineered to keep people angry, scared, and pointed in the wrong direction. And unfortunately, it's working.

Until that changes, this won’t be the last time "outrage" claims another victim.

Let's just hope this particular panic episode ends before taking down the entire American childcare system.