A departure from usual AI, AI market, and other programming. It is however something adjacent. I monitor X and the Somali-linked Minnesota fraud stories are exploding. My sense of the trajectory was informed by many years of Twitter watching. Usual partisan sides were forming:
Shock at the depths of reported corruption and confidently acting as judge and jury on Walz's administration and the Somali community.
or
Convinced it is all fiction and a distraction from Trump administration actions and confidently acting as judge and jury on the right wing information ecosystem.
What does this have to do with anything I usually write about? It is the same sense of debilitation about waves of hype or mis / disinformation and knowing how far the average internet user won't go with validation. It is somewhat analogous to the AI hype machine. It only needs to convince investors and face down the surface knowledge of strategic decision makers.
The Usual Progression Is This:
Freeze their brand - Take something central to the thesis and belief system of a target audience - e.g. overhead reduction, innovation, national security (beating China). Frame it in the context of whatever one is promoting and blast it broadly into the public conversation. Steadily drive up FOMO and existential concern. Eventually turn it toxic either as promise or risk: 'Go all in with AI and win.' Ignore AI and lose' or 'We all lose if we don't beat China to control AGI and now we need government funding because we are too big to fail'. Critics cast as anti-progress, anti-innovation, anti-growth, or Luddite (with all stereotyped implications).
Put all of the various cultural judgements about business productivity and national economic primacy under the umbrella of AI promise. Make AI emblematic of all things good, with a fear-fuelled urgency to control what is created. This has taken a genuine technological evolution with known limitations and measured potential and expanded the AI acronym to encompass anything related to business success, national security, market robustness, geopolitical dominance, social welfare, education, scientific progress, and all other industries.
That first paragraph includes a fairly faithful reworking of Christopher Rufo's process to counter core liberal positions and attach them by association with right wing freedom, grievance, and control narratives. Not suggesting the same mission, but cause and effect can be intent agnostic.
Who is Rufo?
That assumes you know who Christopher Rufo is. Here is a pretty robust explainer in context of him shifting Critical Race Theory (CRT) from a niche graduate study concept into a school board killer.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells
The methodology follows a consistent pattern across his campaigns - Rufo's March 2021 tweet boasting about what he did:
"We have successfully frozen their brand 'critical race theory' into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category."
Phase 1 - Academic/Think Tank Seeding: Publish in outlets like City Journal (where Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute) that carry establishment credibility but have ideological purpose. These pieces establish the "source material" that can be cited later.
Phase 2 - Influencer Amplification: Feed the narrative to figures with large platforms. With CRT, this meant Tucker Carlson's nightly audience. With Minnesota fraud, it meant Trump's Truth Social and then the broader MAGA influencer network.
Phase 3 - Grassroots "Discovery": Create conditions for ordinary people to "find" the evidence themselves. School board meetings became the venue for CRT; Shirley's daycare videos serve this function for Minnesota. The audience feels they are uncovering truth rather than receiving propaganda.
Phase 4 - Policy Capture: Use the manufactured outrage to justify institutional changes that were the actual goal from the start - in education, this meant vouchers, curriculum control, and defunding public schools; with Minnesota, it appears to be ICE operations, attacks on Walz, and broader anti-immigrant policy.
Minnesota Fraud and Somali Attack Timeline
(Collated with Claude Opus 4.5)
July 2024: Trump's campaign reached out to Salman Fiqy to help drum up support for the Republican ahead of the general election. In July, Fiqy stood front row behind President Trump during a campaign rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota. CBS News At this point, Trump was actively courting Somali voters, telling them they wanted "safety" and "security" just like everyone else.
November 2024: After the election, Democrats lost ground and Donald Trump made gains among Somali Minnesota and Muslim voters. Support for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris dropped in three Minneapolis precincts with large East African populations. In the Somali American hub of Cedar-Riverside, support for Harris dropped 14 percentage points. Star Tribune
Mid-November 2025: In mid-November, a little-known conservative website published an explosive claim: Al-Shabab, an Islamic terrorist group active in Somalia, was being funded by millions of dollars stolen from Minnesota taxpayers. Star Tribune This was the City Journal article by Christopher Rufo and Ryan Thorpe, headlined "The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer."
21 November 2025: On Friday, November 21, as most Americans were prepping for Thanksgiving, President Trump went on a tirade on his Truth Social platform. Egged on by unsubstantiated claims by noted right-wing pugilist Chris Rufo, he posted: "Minnesota, under Governor Walz, is a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity…. Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing." The American Prospect
2 December 2025: Near the end of a two-hour meeting Dec. 2, President Donald Trump unleashed a xenophobic tirade against Somali immigrants, calling them "garbage" he does not want in the United States. Star Tribune The fallout was swift. Within days, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched an intensive operation in the Twin Cities, and the administration announced a series of investigations into state programs. Star Tribune
8 October 2025 (background): By 2025, Shirley was well-known in the MAGA universe and was invited to speak at the White House in October during a roundtable with President Donald Trump about Antifa. CNN This established Shirley as part of the administration's network of "independent journalists."
26 December 2025: The video, posted by conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley, alleged nearly a dozen day care centers in Minnesota that are receiving public funds are not actually providing any service. CBS News The video was posted on a typically quiet news day.
27 December 2025: The explosion in viewership came after a boost from other conservative figures, including Nick Sortor, Gunther Eagleman and Collin Rugg. But the views really took off when Vance and X owner Musk reposted Shirley's video on December 27. Musk, in particular, has long commented about allegations of fraud in the immigrant community, including the Somali community. CNN
The Pattern of Coordination
The key insight is that the City Journal article functioned as the catalyst:
But a core source for the article now calls the story "bullshit" and claims he was misquoted. Retired Seattle detective Glenn Kerns – the only named person in the City Journal article who connects Minnesota Somali fraud with terrorism, a core premise of the story – said he never traveled to Minnesota to investigate the connection, as the piece claims. Star Tribune
Despite this, after publishing the story, co-author and conservative activist Christopher Rufo urged Trump on social media to revoke temporary asylum for Somali refugees fleeing civil war. The president obliged. Star Tribune
The Amplification Infrastructure
His Minnesota investigation video has garnered over 116 million views on X and 1.6 million views on YouTube. Shirley and others like him present themselves as the future of journalism. They often claim the lack of traditional editing, fact checks and guardrails makes them more trustworthy. CNN
The state's response is revealing: Minnesota officials revealed Monday the state is taking a second look at several day care centers featured in a now viral YouTube fraud investigation but say past visits and investigations uncovered no hard evidence of fraud. Brown says each of the 10 facilities featured in the YouTube video has been visited at least once by the state over the last six months as part of standard licensing checks. FOX 9
Brown said the previous visits were unannounced and children were present at each of the sites during the checks. Those past checks have Brown's office wondering when Shirley shot his video. "When were the videos taken? Were they during times that the center was scheduled to be open? Were they during the weekend?" FOX 9
The Political Purpose
This connects directly to what Weigel identified as "attention hacking." The real fraud case from 2022 under Biden's DOJ is being weaponised for multiple purposes: attacking Walz, justifying ICE operations against the Somali community, supporting deportation momentum, and potentially electoral strategy.
Fiqy said Trump's comments will ruin Republicans' chances of winning Minnesota. Axios
The same community Trump courted in July 2024 is now being scapegoated, and even his own Somali supporters feel betrayed: "We felt betrayal by the president, the one we organised for and did an outreach for." CBS News
Rufo's Involvement as Both Shocking and Unsurprising
Another piece of recommended reading to grasp impact of the CRT campaign seeded.
Sian Norris and Heidi Siegmund Cuda
A thread defensibly described as running all the way through to events on January 6th 2021 at the Capitol.
Sian Norris and Heidi Siegmund Cuda
It is a rarely heard acronym these days. The approbation moved on to DEI as the natural successor. Without CRT, going after Diversity Equity and Inclusion would likely not have survived scratching the surface.
Rufo's Greatest Hits
(Collated with Claude Opus 4.5)
Career Arc and Institutional Position
Christopher Ferguson Rufo (born August 26, 1984) is an American conservative activist, New College of Florida board member, and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Wikipedia His career has moved through a series of conservative institutional affiliations: He is a former documentary filmmaker and former fellow at the Discovery Institute, the Claremont Institute, The Heritage Foundation, and the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism. Wikipedia
Rufo began writing for City Journal in June of 2018. His articles focused primarily on homelessness and anti-left wing politics, until 2020 when he began writing extensively in opposition to critical race theory. Transdatalibrary
His credentials are revealing: Rufo earned his Bachelor of Sciences degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service in 2006. In 2022, he earned a Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies from Harvard Extension School, an open-enrollment institution. Transdatalibrary
The Documented CRT Strategy
The most damning evidence for your framing comes from Rufo's own words. On March 15, 2021, Rufo tweeted: "We have successfully frozen their brand—'critical race theory'—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category." X
He continued: "The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think 'critical race theory.' We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans." Flux
Rufo described his strategy to oppose critical race theory as intentionally using the term to conflate various race-related ideas in order to create a negative association. Wikipedia
The Tucker Carlson/Fox News Pipeline
That September, he appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight to press then-President Donald Trump to prohibit any federal training programs geared toward racial sensitivity awareness, and he took credit when Trump followed his advice. Days later, Carlson launched his own attacks against CRT, praising Rufo in the process. Fox News completely embraced the anti-CRT panic, and by the end of 2021, had hosted Rufo at least 52 times and mentioned CRT nearly 4,000 times that year. Media Matters for America
Expansion to "Groomer" Narrative
The "grooming" narrative has been actively promoted by conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who has also led the charge against teaching critical race theory. Now he has turned his attention to what he calls "gender ideology." This year, he asked for help from his Twitter followers: "I'm looking for documents, PDFs, audio-video, and training materials related to gender, grooming, and trans ideology in schools," he tweeted. NPR
In a speech at Hillsdale College in April titled "Laying Siege to the Institutions," Rufo explained his strategy for steering the narrative about gender and sexual identity. "You have to be very aggressive," he told the audience. "You have to fight on terms that you define. You have to create your own frame, your own language. And you have to be ruthless and brutal in pursuit of something good." NPR
The New College of Florida Takeover
Gov. Ron DeSantis has appointed conservative activist Christopher Rufo and five others to the New College of Florida Board of Trustees in his continuing move to eliminate "political ideology" from public higher education. With the six new members of the school's Board of Trustees, the DeSantis administration plans to weed out concepts like diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and critical race theory. Florida Politics
Rufo announced this with characteristic transparency: "I'm proud to announce that Gov. Ron DeSantis has appointed me to the Board of Trustees of the New College of Florida," Rufo tweeted. "My ambition is to help the new board majority transform New College into a classical liberal arts institution. We are recapturing higher education." Florida Politics
Militant anti-DEI activist Christopher Rufo is on the path to a trial in Florida state court over allegations he and other board members of New College of Florida illegally withheld records documenting their ideological takeover of the school in 2023. Florida Bulldog
Reporting on the fall session for 2023 has described a chaotic and uncertain environment for students after nearly 40 percent of the school's faculty resigned in response to Rufo's leadership. Transdatalibrary
The Claudine Gay Campaign
The Harvard president case demonstrates Rufo's timing methodology: "@RealChrisBrunet and I sat on the Claudine Gay plagiarism materials for the past week, waiting for the precise moment of maximum impact," Rufo wrote. "The Harvard board is meeting tonight and there are rumors that the plagiarism scandal could be the final nail in Gay's coffin." The Harvard Crimson
Gay was pushed to resignation to the delight of Harvard's most outspoken antagonists, Rufo included. "Today, we celebrate victory. Tomorrow, we get back to the fight," Rufo posted to X the day of Gay's resignation. "We must not stop until we have abolished DEI ideology from every institution in America." The Harvard Crimson
Since right-wing firebrand Christopher Rufo helped bring down Harvard's president, at least seven more scholars—most of them Black—have confronted accusations of plagiarism or research misconduct spread by conservative media. Inside Higher Ed
The Pattern of Misrepresentation
Rufo has repeatedly been caught distorting sources. Citing a study by Charol Shakeshaft, Rufo has claimed that public school teachers are responsible for 100 times more child sexual abuse than Catholic priests. Shakeshaft termed this a misuse of her data, calling it "completely invalid". Wikipedia
With the Minnesota fraud story, the same pattern emerges. The City Journal article he co-authored has now had its core terrorism claim disputed by its named source.
His Stated Mission
On his Substack, Rufo states: "My work is organized around a simple mission: to challenge and then overthrow the left-wing ideological regime that has dominated American life for a generation." Substack
But Back to Minnesota - What is Fact vs Fiction?
I sensed this was growing legs when watching the timeline shown earlier. I knew it was not all false, but the narrative machine was whirring. Fraud should be tackled. The pandemic funding in crisis conditions loosened rules that meant more fraud happened. Tackling that is getting very variable international traction. However, when used as a basis to demonise an entire racial or national group... that is the tell.
Until today I had no motivation to dig further. Here is a document combining the Minnesota fraud story progression, Rufo involvement, and DOJ fraud case background. Doing the digging so you don't have to. We owe ourselves that effort. As always check all sources - as LLMs say every time you use them - AI can make mistakes.
How do we counter this and the AI hype excesses? Answers on a postcard please.