Minnesota’s Democrat Senate nominee keeps telling voters she is “appalled” by the state’s historic welfare theft. The problem is the woman standing next to her in that viral hijab video, the one Flanagan called a friend of nearly 25 years, is now running an autism center the state has kicked off Medicaid and placed under investigation.
Nimco Ahmed, CEO of Minneapolis-based Milestone Development Center, appeared beside then-Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan at Karmel Mall in December 2025.
Flanagan, a Catholic, wrapped herself in a hijab for Somali TV and declared the Somali community “part of the fabric of the state of Minnesota.” Then she gestured to Ahmed and talked about their friendship of “almost 25 years.”
ALERT: Minnesota Democratic Senate candidate makes a video wearing a hijab and thanking the Somali community while the woman to her right is under investigation for fraud.
Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan is accompanied by Nimco Ahmed, who is under state… pic.twitter.com/vDmxqTygyp
— E X X ➠A L E R T S (@ExxAlerts) September 21, 2026
That same Ahmed is a longtime DFL activist, a former DFL state director, and president of the Somali American Coalition.
She is also listed as CEO of Milestone. Minnesota Department of Human Services officials have now confirmed open investigations into Milestone and a second provider, Spectrum Therapy Center.
Both were terminated from the Medicaid program months ago during the state’s Revalidate 2026 review. Both providers have appealed the decision, Fox News reported.
“These agencies are on our radar,” a DHS spokesperson told Fox News Digital. Officials say they cannot legally disclose the details of an open probe. They can say this much: the agencies failed the state’s credential-and-compliance check and lost the ability to bill Medicaid.
Whistleblower: Clients Didn’t Look Autistic, Notes Weren’t Written, Owner “Didn’t Seem to Care”
Alpha News broke the story first. Former therapist Grant Morgan told Liz Collin he worked at Milestone for about two months in late 2023 and also spent time at Spectrum. He described both as low-quality operations with almost no professional oversight.
Morgan said he never saw a Qualified Supervising Professional or Board Certified Behavior Analyst on site at Milestone — the people who are supposed to supervise Medicaid-funded autism care.
Practitioners, he said, had “barely any knowledge” of applied behavior analysis. He was never asked to write a session note, even though those notes are how providers justify billing the state. Treatments looked ineffective. Some clients, he said, did not appear to be autistic at all.
He kept receipts. An email from 2023 recorded his belief that the clients did not look autistic. A text from the same period said he planned to leave because of fraud concerns and because “the owner, Nimco, didn’t seem to care.”
When Morgan later saw Flanagan standing next to Ahmed in that hijab clip, he said he was shocked.
“She did not seem like someone that someone on the political stage should associate with,” Morgan told Alpha News. “She seemed like a bad person.”
He went further: “I think it’s very likely that Peggy was intentionally trying to help out bad actors. And I’ll even say I think there’s a chance that she was directly involved in the fraud herself. I think that is very possible.”
Ahmed denied the allegations, accused Alpha News of “bias,” and claimed the outlet chased the story because she is Somali.
She said every child has a diagnosis, the center follows state steps “very seriously,” and it is “regularly audited.” Spectrum’s owner also denied wrongdoing.
DHS still terminated both shops from Medicaid and opened investigations anyway.
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