Republican Senators Joni Ernst of Iowa and Mike Lee of Utah have requested the Justice Department investigate Generation Hope MN, a Minneapolis-based charity that nearly received a $1 million federal earmark secured by Rep. Ilhan Omar and Minnesota’s Democratic senators, alleging the “Somali-led” addiction recovery nonprofit shows “signs of being a fraudulent operation.”
The senators, who successfully persuaded colleagues to strip the earmark from a spending package, cited glaring red flags including the group’s minimal reported staffing and finances—with most of its spending going to contractors—and its questionable locations, one being a shared space with a Somali restaurant and another a residential home. This led Ernst to declare, “It is almost too insane to believe: Congress trying to send $1 million to an ‘East African’ addiction center operated above a Somali Restaurant and run by three people who live in the same house.”
Their letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi also raised “most serious concerns” over the group’s ties to terrorism, noting that a brother of co-founder Abdirahman Warsame, Abdirizak Mohamed Warsame, was arrested in 2015 for plotting to join the Islamic State group, pleading guilty and later testifying against co-conspirators.
In defense of the funding, Omar had argued the earmark would provide “job-specific training, computer skills development, peer support services and access to education” for “justice-involved” residents, while Senator Tina Smith said it would help them “break the cycle through job training and support.”
The Republicans countered that the group’s financial profile “suggests minimal direct services, opaque financial reporting, and heavy reliance on contractor payments — conditions that should trigger immediate scrutiny, not federal taxpayer dollars,” with Lee insisting that “stopping these funds is not enough: we should pursue every red flag, uncover every wrongdoing.”