Washington State Is Paying Daycares With No Children — and Officials Are Attacking the Journalists Who Found Out

So now, in the state of Washington, showing up at the door of a business that is collecting public funds and asking legitimate questions about those funds is now being treated as a potential hate crime. The fraudsters get protection. The journalists get threatened. The taxpayers get the bill.

This is not a Washington state original. This is a pattern. Minnesota, California, and now Washington — all deep blue states, all with the same story. Fraudsters identify government childcare subsidy programs, set up fake operations, collect millions in taxpayer money, and count on state officials who are too ideologically committed to the idea of expansive government programs to ever admit those programs are being systematically looted.

The Biden administration’s COVID-era childcare funding expansion turbocharged this problem nationwide — pouring hundreds of billions into subsidy programs with minimal verification requirements, because requiring verification might discourage eligible recipients. The predictable result was an open invitation to every fraudster in America to set up a fake daycare, start collecting checks, and wait to see how long it took anyone to notice.