The Daily Populous Saturday April 4th, 2026 night edition
Authored by the-independent.com and submitted by Aggravating_Money992

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Hours after firing Pam Bondi as attorney general — and with reports that more Cabinet members could be on the chopping block — President Donald Trump has saddled his vice president with a title that became an albatross around the neck of his predecessor Kamala Harris for most of her time in office.

Trump took to social media on Friday to reiterate his desire to have Vice President JD Vance lead a nakedly political effort to harass state and local governments in places that did not vote for them in the 2024 election under the premise of cracking down on federal benefits fraud.

In a bizarrely worded post to Truth Social, Trump wrote that Vance was “now in charge of ‘FRAUD’ in the United States” as he announced the veep’s new role, calling the problem “massive and pervasive.”

“The job he will be doing, in conjunction with many great people within the Trump Administration, will be a major factor in how great the future of our Country will be,” Trump said.

He added that Vance’s “focus will be ‘EVERYWHERE’,” but stressed that the administration’s efforts would be targeted “primarily in those Blue States where CROOKED DEMOCRAT POLITICIANS, like those in California, Illinois, Minnesota (Somalia beware!), Maine, New York, and many others, have had a “free for all” in the unprecedented theft of Taxpayer Money.”

open image in gallery President Donald Trump just gave Vice President JD Vance a new politically charged role ( Getty )

The president also claimed, without offering evidence, that the supposed amount of federal funds lost to fraud is “so large” that if Vance’s efforts are successful they would “literally” allow the U.S. to balance its’ budget, and said law enforcement agencies had already started “raids” in Los Angeles, the largest city in the largest state led by a Democratic governor and potential 2028 presidential candidate.

Trump had already signed an executive order last month putting Vance in charge of what press secretary Karoline Leavitt called “anti-fraud task force” which will “investigate fraud across the country,” and his explicit declaration that Vance should be henceforth known as the administration’s “fraud Czar” appears to ignore the history of the way the Russian-language term has traditionally been used in conservative media and political circles as a pejorative against Democratic administration officials to imply such officials are unaccountable and power-hungry.

Vance’s predecessor, former vice president Kamala Harris, was saddled with the unofficial “Border Czar” moniker during her time in office across hundreds of television segments on Fox News and Newsmax, with the conservative networks pegging her work addressing migration from South and Central America to border security even though the latter subject was never in her policy portfolio.

Her Biden administration colleague, former Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, was similarly dubbed the “Climate Czar” by commentators who mocked his frequent international travel and cast him as an out-of-touch elitist working to force “green mandates” on working-class Americans.

open image in gallery Vice President Kamala Harris conferring with a US Border Patrol officer along the Mexico border in Arizona in 2024 ( Reuters / Pool )

During the Obama administration, then-Fox News host Glenn Beck made a habit of using a chalkboard to illustrate the dozens of administration officials — most of whom were low- to mid-level advisors — who he referred to as “czars” working on what he described at the time as a wide-ranging “Marxist” plot to undermine the United States from within.

While Vance is ostensibly being tasked with leading federal efforts to crack down on benefits fraud, the administration’s focus on the subject has been largely a function of political imperatives, either to punish Democratic-led jurisdictions or sandbag Democratic politicians perceived as enemies to the president — or potential rivals to the vice president in future elections.

In January, Vance announced that the White House was creating a new assistant attorney general position at the Department of Justice for the specific purpose of fighting what he described as “fraud” in places such as Minnesota, where a right-wing YouTube influencer’s viral video about Somali-run health care businesses led the Department of Homeland Security to surge thousands of immigration enforcement officers and agents to conduct roving patrols that resulted in two innocent Americans being gunned down.

open image in gallery President Donald Trump just gave Vice President JD Vance a new politically charged role ( Truth Social )

There have been some high-profile cases of public benefits fraud in the North Star State in recent years, such as one in which the nonprofit Feeding Our Future was charged with submitting fraudulent documentation to obtain roughly $250 million in Covid-19 pandemic aid during the Biden administration.

Federal prosecutors have also alleged that at least half more of the roughly $18 billion in federal funds that supported 14 Minnesota-run programs since 2018 may have been stolen from federal programs supporting child nutrition, housing services and autism services.

The sprawling case has become politically and culturally fraught, as Somali Americans make up 82 of the 92 defendants charged so far, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota. But Trump has capitalized on that fact to target the Somalia diaspora in Minnesota, which has the largest Somali population in the U.S., as well as the state's Democratic leadership — including Governor Tim Walz, who was the Democratic Party’s 2024 vice presidential nominee.

Trump’s announcement that the Vance-led “fraud” force would be targeting California next could give Vance a perch upon which to attack one of his possible 2028 presidential rivals, Gov. Gavin Newsom, and other prominent Democrats who could end up vying for their party’s presidential nomination two years from now.

A White House fact sheet released last month on Trump’s executive order said there was “strong reason” to believe large-scale fraud is a problem in “California, Illinois, New York, Maine, and Colorado” on account of what the order called “insufficient safeguards and weak oversight.”

Illinois, New York and Colorado are also home to possible Vance rivals, such as Governor J.B. Pritzker, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Governor Jared Polis, respectively.

SingularityCentral on April 3rd, 2026 at 16:14 UTC »

Clearly calculated. Trump cannot fire Vance and he apparently has come to despise him, plus Trump cannot possibly stomach the idea of a successor because it would mean his time in the sun would end. So JD gets a job designed to make him as politically unpopular as possible.

Have Republicans figured out yet that Trump would rather burn the GOP and nation to ash than be replaced or retired?

Colonel-Mooseknuckle on April 3rd, 2026 at 15:40 UTC »

"Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man. Lord help us."

"I’m a Never Trump guy."

"My god, what an idiot."

"America’s Hitler."

"Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office."

"I can’t stomach Trump."

"Morally reprehensible human being."

-JD Vance

Head-Fun3394 on April 3rd, 2026 at 15:40 UTC »

JD knows he is about to become maga road kill. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy...