Vice President JD Vance went to Bangor, Maine, to criticize fraud in social programs and blame Democrats like Gov. Janet Mills for enabling it. Here’s a look at how accurate Vance was.
Vice President JD Vance addresses the Trump administration's efforts to combat fraud in a speech in Bangor, Maine , on May 14, 2026. Visiting Maine weeks before the state’s primary election, Vice President JD Vance accused Democrats of capitulating to fraudsters.
Calling Maine the"bronze medalist" in fraud after California and Minnesota, Vance predicted that federal officials will find"hundreds of millions of dollars every single month" because Maine"is not a state that takes it seriously.
"in federal programs, said May 14 in Bangor that states that don’t go after fraud"care more about illegal aliens than the people they represent. " Maine has experienced some fraud in Medicaid and autism coverage in recent years, but some of the things Vance said exaggerated how much fault lies with Democratic officials, and he left out that, by some metrics, Maine experiences less fraud than other states.data shows in fiscal year 2025 that New Jersey and the Southern District of Florida were tied for the most health care fraud sentencings.
Nationwide, 91% of people sentenced were United States citizens. Maine has about 10,000 immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, just under 1% of the state’s population and one of the smallest unauthorized immigrant populations in the U.S. The largest cases of fraud over a decade in MaineCare, the state’s Medicaid healthcare program for low-income people, have involved pharmaceutical manufacturers and pharmacies, including companies with offices in the U.S.,Democratic Gov.
Janet Mills rejected Vance's portrayal after his speech, resending a March statement that said she cracked down on fraud as a district attorney, attorney general and governor,"often by working hand-in-hand with the federal government.
" Vance campaigned with former Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who is running in an open-seat race for Maine's 2nd Congressional District, an area that Trump won three times. Republican Sen. Susan Collins did not attend the event, but Vance had a kind word for the senator, who voted to convict Trump in 2021 and is in a competitive Senate race.
"I almost wish that she was more partisan, but the thing I love about Susan is she is independent," Vance said. Vance:"The government wasn't going after fraud. And ladies and gentlemen, that changed the moment, Donald J. Trump became the President of the United States.
"governmental fraud-finding tools. He fired more than a dozen inspectors general whose jobs were to ferret out fraud and inefficiencies and appointed his own. Heenforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits businesses from taking bribes from foreign officials. He has also grantedin response to anti-corruption efforts that started after the 1972 Watergate break-in and cover-up that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation.
Another federal entity, the Government Accountability Office, conducts audits.reported in January that since 2015, the Maine Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit recovered more than $17 million in 162 cases, sometimes involving repeat offenders. That is a small percentage of the billions of dollars spent annually on MaineCare.found that there were dozens of fraud investigations every year between 2015 and 2025. That includes the final four years of LePage’s tenure and most of Mills’ governorship.
Assigning credit for investigations and prosecutions is tricky, because convictions can represent cases in which investigations were launched years earlier.who defrauded MaineCare from 2015 to 2018 were sentenced for health care fraud in 2021. This prosecution was the result of a three-year investigation by federal and state officials during the Trump, Biden, LePage and Mills administrations.for MaineCare to Gateway Community Services, a nonprofit that works with Somali immigrants, because of allegations of fraud.
A few employees were later Vance mentioned the case of Rakiya Mohamed, an Auburn, Maine, resident and owner of a language interpretation business. Mohamed in MarchMohamed reported the income and expenses for the business, Reliable Language Resources, on her individual income tax returns and reported false and fraudulent expenses for contract labor and office expenses.
AVance:"In Maine, we've seen people go out there and say that they're providing services to autistic children, when, in reality, they maybe don't have any children at all, or they certainly don't have autistic children.
" There is evidence of payment problems within Maine’s autism-related Medicaid coverage, but the auditor cited incomplete paperwork and did not say anyone had fabricated autistic children. An"improper" payment in a government program refers to erroneous payments made to beneficiaries and their providers or without sufficient documentation. The Maine audit deemed some Medicaid payments improper if children did not receive all the required assessments or if filed assessments lacked required signatures of staff, parents or guardians.
Others were considered improper because the notes from patient evaluation sessions were not fully documented or lacked a provider’s credentials. The agency said Maine should return $28.7 million, which was the federal share of the payments. The inspector general examined the program because of rising costs; it had grown from $52.2 million in 2019 to $80.6 million in 2023. Mills in February what the state was doing to prevent fraud and recoup stolen payments.
The letter came weeks after the federal government deployed immigration agents to Maine in afrom her tenure, including requiring all group homes and personal care agencies in Maine to be licensed and enhancing licensing requirements for home and community rehabilitation support services. Maine Made at Least $45.6 Million in Improper Fee-for-Service Medicaid Payments for Rehabilitative and Community Support Services Provided to Children Diagnosed With Autism"There's two ways of calculating percentage" decreases.
“If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that's a 600% reduction. "The SAVE America Act “would force Americans to register only in person, something only 5% of Americans do today. " “Today, there are more children sleeping in New York City’s homeless shelters than there are seats in Yankee Stadium.
” Congress passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act because “the Democrat party at the time, especially in the South, were racially gerrymandering districts to disenfranchise Black voters. ” Proposed data centers in New York state would use “approximately double the energy usage of all households in the state combined. ”
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