Minnesota’s infamous “Quality Learing Center” is shaping up to be the perfect monument to the pandemic free-money era: sloppy, suspicious and somehow still swimming in taxpayer cash.
The now-shuttered Minneapolis daycare, which became nationally notorious after a YouTuber filmed its nearly empty parking lot and misspelled sign, allegedly hauled in another six-figure windfall from Uncle Sam while federal bureaucrats apparently asked few questions and signed plenty of checks.
Now, Sen. Joni Ernst wants answers — and she’s demanding receipts. Literally.
According to Ernst’s investigation, the daycare snagged roughly $215,000 in pandemic-era Small Business Administration loans in 2020, part of more than $231,000 in federal awards that were later forgiven. The money was supposed to cover payroll, rent and operating costs during the COVID shutdown frenzy. The problem? Investigators reportedly can’t find clear documentation showing where the cash actually went.
Especially because the “Quality Learing Center” had already become a symbol of Minnesota’s sprawling welfare and pandemic-fraud scandals. Before shutting down earlier this year, the daycare reportedly pulled in nearly $1.9 million from Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program in just one year and around $10 million in state funding since 2019.
For everyday Americans struggling through inflation, sky-high grocery bills and mortgage payments, stories like this land like a punch to the gut. While families clipped coupons and small businesses folded during lockdowns, politically connected operators and shady nonprofits across the country seemed to discover that Washington’s pandemic programs functioned less like emergency relief and more like an ATM with no security camera.
In a letter to the SBA inspector general, Ernst wrote, “The crooks behind the ‘Learing Center’ didn’t stop there,” she wrote. “They also took advantage of hardworking Americans through COVID-era U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) programs and raked in nearly a quarter of a million dollars.”
The Iowa Republican has become one of Capitol Hill’s loudest voices pushing investigations into COVID-era fraud, arguing the government practically rolled out the red carpet for scammers during the pandemic panic. This latest case is reportedly one of 28 separate fraud matters she wants federal watchdogs to investigate. And Minnesota keeps popping up in all the wrong ways.
Federal officials have already linked the state to massive fraud concerns involving pandemic relief loans and public-assistance programs. Earlier this year, SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler announced that nearly 6,900 Minnesota borrowers had been suspended from future SBA programs amid investigations into roughly $400 million in potentially fraudulent PPP and EIDL loans.
Loeffler also froze millions in federal funding flowing to Minnesota entities while investigators sorted through what she described as widespread abuse tied to COVID-era programs.
The daycare scandal also overlaps with the broader “Feeding Our Future” debacle, one of the largest pandemic fraud schemes in the country, which has already resulted in dozens of federal convictions.
Ernst told reporters taxpayers are tired of watching fraudsters treat federal programs like a personal Venmo account. “Americans expect their tax dollars to be spent responsibly — not to bankroll criminal enterprises,” she said. “I have a message to anyone even thinking of ripping off taxpayers: You engage in government grift and graft, then you’re getting cuffed and stuffed, with scammers going to the slammer.”
The pandemic exposed a painful reality: Washington sprayed trillions across the economy at warp speed with laughably weak oversight, and opportunists noticed immediately. The Government Accountability Office has repeatedly warned that COVID relief programs were magnets for fraud, while investigators continue uncovering fake businesses, phantom employees and forged applications years after the money went out the door.
Now the political winds have shifted. President Donald Trump has tasked Vice President JD Vance with leading a federal anti-fraud initiative aimed at recovering stolen taxpayer money and tightening oversight on entitlement and relief programs.
