Are you ready for the new year?
Saturday morning, the U. S. invaded Venezuela and removed its leader. The federal government is withholding money intended for childcare and small businesses in Minnesota. Locally, Mayor Frey and the newly elected City Council will be sworn in on Monday, followed by the council’s first meeting on Tuesday. We expect the council to elect Jamal Osman as Vice President despite his well-documented connections to fraud.
If you were fortunate enough to spend the holidays away from Minnesota’s snow and ice, you may have missed that we became the center of outrage in America.
Of course, you would have had to leave your phone at home and avoid the news entirely to be unaware that a well-known right-wing scandalmonger visited Minneapolis and produced a 42-minute video alleging widespread fraud among Somali-run daycare centers. The video was then amplified by the richest man on earth using his X platform, ensuring that more than 142 million people could share in the outrage, directed not just at lax oversight by the Minnesota government, but at the Somali community broadly.
Welcome to 2026.
Rage Bait is Oxford’s Word of the Year, a term for content designed to provoke anger or outrage to capture attention. Accuracy is secondary. Consequences are an afterthought. What matters is engagement.
Minnesota has just experienced a masterclass in how this works. The effects will linger. Already, the federal government is delaying funds intended for subsidized childcare and small business lending. In the process, legitimate and illegitimate businesses alike are swept up together, punished not by evidence but by perception.
The daycare video at the center of this moment highlighted the most inflammatory details, framed the story as a moral emergency, and demanded an immediate emotional response. Sincere civic understanding was never the goal.
Since its release, copycat content has followed, along with threats against immigrant-owned businesses in Minnesota and beyond. Efforts to explain the video’s flaws or add nuance have struggled to compete because explanation rarely travels as fast as outrage.
When people feel deceived or taken advantage of, anger comes easily. Complex issues are simplified. Conservative media have been quick to supply clear targets for our emotional reaction: Governor Tim Walz and Minnesota’s Somali community. If they are successful at harnessing this anger, Minnesota will end up with someone like Lisa Demuth, Republican Speaker of the House, as governor. Demuth took credit for providing the “independent journalist” with the list of daycare providers to visit.
Why Did This Video Strike a Nerve?
Over the holidays, we received several calls from friends and family who live outside Minnesota. They checked in, wished us well, and then got to the real question. What did we think of the daycare video? And is the fraud really as bad as it claims?
Our first instinct was defensive. No one likes seeing their home reduced to a viral indictment. But we had to acknowledge that the video tapped into a real and longstanding problem.
Minnesota legislators built social service programs with too little attention to how they might be abused. Agencies tasked with oversight failed to keep pace as costs ballooned. Some providers took advantage of weak controls. And when rapid growth in program spending should have triggered alarm bells, state government, including DFL leadership, responded slowly, if at all.
What made the moment especially jarring is that none of what was reported in the video was new. Variations of these issues have been reported on for more than a decade by local journalists. Yet when the video surfaced, it appeared to catch officials flat-footed, not because the problem was unknown, but because it had never been confronted with urgency.
There are several reasons the video spread as quickly and widely as it did. Politics is the most obvious. The creator did not arrive in Minnesota out of a sudden concern for taxpayers or childcare policy. His work fits a familiar political pattern: targeting a Democratic governor in a closely divided state, amplifying allegations that inflame cultural tensions, and releasing the content into a media ecosystem designed to reward outrage.
The video was rapidly promoted across Elon Musk’s X platform, Fox News, and a network of right-leaning outlets that specialize in this kind of escalation. Minnesota is competitive terrain, and Republicans are eager to put the state in play ahead of the November midterms, when voters will decide whether Governor Tim Walz deserves a third term.
None of this will surprise regular observers of modern media. Conservatives have built a highly effective outrage machine. Their ability to generate and sustain anger far exceeds that of the left, whose moments of mass protest or attention, like the recent “No Kings” rallies, tend to flare briefly and fade.
By contrast, conservative media delivers a steady drumbeat of simplified narratives: anti-immigrant, anti-liberal, anti-regulatory, and pro-gun. These messages are reinforced daily through outlets backed by billionaire patrons, creating an ecosystem where rage is not a byproduct, but the business model.
The left faces a structural disadvantage when trying to counter a well-funded media ecosystem that is optimized to discredit its ideas. Fact-based reporting, careful language, and an avoidance of emotional manipulation rarely go viral. Outrage does.
A recent example illustrates the imbalance. On December 17, the Associated Press reported on a billion-dollar fraud committed by executives at Tricolor Holdings, a subprime auto lender. The scheme involved fabricated data and false statements, the same core allegations leveled against some social service providers. Yet the story generated no viral videos, no outrage podcasts, and no citizen journalists knocking on executives’ doors. It landed, as business news often does, with a dull thud.
Moral Instruction Rarely Works
The left also undermines itself through its own messaging. Too often, it relies on academic language and moral instruction to describe everyday human behavior. People discriminate by religion, language, race, class, sex, and nationality, and while it deserves examination, lecturing people rarely changes it. More often, it drives prejudice underground rather than eliminating it.
A more durable approach might emphasize equal standards and shared obligations, respect and tolerance, rather than performative displays of solidarity. When white politicians show up at the Karmel Mall in hijabs to show solidarity with Muslims or eat spicy food with their hands until they are ready to cry, everyone can see it for what it is: pandering. That perception makes it easier for critics to argue that programs are designed to favor certain groups while overlooking misuse or abuse.
This pandering is where the left creates its own internal tension. They want programs that elevate some groups over others, but also want everyone to be treated as equals. Conservative media is adept at exploiting that contradiction, using the blunt language and emotional shortcuts of reality television to turn complexity into grievance. The DFL and the left in general might give more consideration to supporting programs that are universal in their appeal rather than designed for specific groups. For example, what would a health care system look like that provided care for all residents, regardless of their income? The DFL would garner support across all demographics if it demonstrated backbone when it comes to confronting health insurance companies, providers, and drug companies.
The Paid Family and Medical Leave Program Success Is at Stake
One of the major laws that took effect on January 1 is Minnesota’s Paid Family and Medical Leave Act. The program guarantees eligible workers up to 12 weeks of paid leave for qualifying family or medical events. Because family and medical leave can be used separately, some workers may qualify for up to 20 weeks in a year. To offset the burden on employers, the state also offers loans to businesses that need to cover overtime or hire temporary replacements.
Even before the program officially launched, the state received nearly 12,000 applications. To administer it, Minnesota has hired roughly 345 employees, a sign of the scale and complexity involved. In a moment when fraud and oversight have become central political concerns, this program will be closely watched by people both inside and outside Minnesota. Its success or failure will be judged by how effectively it is run.
If the program is perceived as vulnerable to fraud and abuse, the political consequences could be severe. Governor Tim Walz and the DFL have staked much of their governing philosophy on the ability of the state to manage ambitious social programs. Failure here would give critics fresh rage-bait content and could jeopardize the program before it has a chance to demonstrate its value.
The test for Minnesota in 2026 is practical. Can the state reduce inequality and support workers without unsustainable spending or raising taxes on the middle-class? Can it back legitimate businesses while enforcing clear standards on those that break the rules?
In an era of rage bait, competent, transparent governance may be the state’s most effective defense.
