Donald Trump’s “full-scale war on fraud” is the kind of low-hanging fruit that populists know how to pick. Yesterday, the Trump Justice Department charged 455 people, including 90 doctors, involved in fraud schemes totaling an alleged $6.5 billion. According to CNN, “The cases included fraudulent wound care claims, which resulted in $2 billion in Medicare payments to one Arizona company and another $906 million scheme in Texas.” The DOJ also zoomed in on alleged Medicaid fraud to the tune of $518 million in false claims.

The spirit of DOGE lives on, even as the task force slipped its mortal coil late last year. Nick Shirley’s viral video probe into Minneapolis-area fraud almost certainly inspired the administration to lean further into crackdowns. In Trump’s State of the Union address, months after Shirley’s video ripped through the national discourse, he appointed JD Vance “anti-fraud Czar”, raising eyebrows among some in the pundit class who speculated it could be a kiss of death.

Trump announced a Fraud Task Force helmed by Vance just three months ago. Only one month after that announcement, the task force said it “had identified nearly $6.3 billion in government contracts believed to be tied to potentially fraudulent businesses”.

The public relations opportunities for this success are endless. High-ranking Trump officials now hold press conferences in communities around the country — from Vance in Maine to Dr Oz in Los Angeles — getting favorable coverage in local outlets for taking on a cause with which no one can really argue. Some of the cases involve, for example, tragic deaths and opioid addiction. Others involve non-citizens, further allowing the administration to lean into more palatable elements of its illegal immigration crackdown.

For the MAHA movement helmed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and augmented by Oz, anti-fraud crackdowns also offer an easy win since so many of the investigations are focused on false claims filed to Medicare and Medicaid. Politically, it allows MAHA — and MAGA more broadly — to distinguish their movements from the unpopular status quo and the Washington swamp. They’re not tolerating business as usual, so the message goes. As sprawling and serious allegations of self-dealing wash over Trump, threatening his reputation as an enemy of elites, it’s easy to see why the White House is eagerly chasing these cases. Vance himself framed the issue this way in May.

In response, the Democrats have argued that Trump is targeting blue states — California and Minnesota feature heavily in the investigations. The average voter cares much less about that than the eye-popping figures in these charges. In context, the sums recouped seem to amount to a relatively minor fraction of the federal budget. But millions and billions are meaningful to people who work hard, pay taxes, and then see so many bad actors get away with predatory conduct.

During the Biden administration, a government report found “that between $233 billion and $521 billion in federal money could be lost annually to fraud in a first-of-its-kind government-wide estimate”, CNN reported. “That represents 3% to 7% of average federal obligations.”

Rather than surrender to the inevitable losses in a country as big as the US, Trump correctly sensed — as did Elon Musk in the DOGE era — a massive political opportunity. Trust in the federal government has declined since the Johnson administration, tanking from 77% at its 1964 high to 17% now. The low point in Pew’s data was 15% in 2011, after the Great Recession and the bitter Obamacare debate. But it’s barely recovered since.

Whether the task force is actually successful at making structural changes to these programs that clearly require them, and whether the efforts are conducted with great precision, the anti-fraud thrust is one area where Trump’s populist instincts remain sharp. As Democrats credibly accuse him of slashing the safety net and enriching his family, Trump’s administration can plant seeds of doubt about that narrative by touting efforts which strengthen safety net programs, prioritize vulnerable American citizens, and make the federal government feel less wasteful.

“Amazingly, Dumocrats are fighting us all the way,” Trump posted of the fraud crackdowns in early June. “This is something that I am surprised at, because I thought this would be a Bipartisan effort.” He knows the message is a strong one.

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Emily Jashinsky is UnHerd‘s Washington correspondent.

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