The House passed a bill to codify President Trump's National Fraud Enforcement Division into permanent law by a lopsided 352, 72 vote, forcing most Democrats, including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, to hand the administration a bipartisan win on an initiative that has zeroed in on Minnesota's welfare fraud scandal.
Every House Republican voted in favor of the measure on Wednesday. More than 140 Democrats joined them, leaving just 72 progressives in opposition. The bill would transform the fraud division, created by executive order in January 2026, into a permanent unit inside the Department of Justice, charged with targeting fraud against the federal government, federally funded programs, and private citizens.
The vote marks a rare moment of near-consensus in a bitterly divided Congress, and it came on a subject that puts Democrats in an uncomfortable position. The fraud division has become the administration's primary vehicle for pursuing what it calls a "fraud epidemic" in Minnesota, a scandal that has already prompted Vice President JD Vance to refer Gov. Tim Walz and state Attorney General Keith Ellison to the division for a potential criminal investigation.
The floor debate exposed the tension Democrats felt. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, one of the party's most prominent progressives, voted for the bill but used his floor time to diminish it and redirect blame at Republicans. Fox News Digital reported on the exchange in detail.
"This is hardly some kind of great breakthrough in law enforcement or criminal justice, but it is perhaps the least offensive piece of legislative flotsam and jetsam that has washed ashore in the last 48 hours of Republican chaos and retreat here in the House of Representatives."
That was Raskin's opening assessment of a bill he then voted to pass. He went further, turning to Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, a Republican sponsor, and challenging him on the administration's record on white-collar crime.
"Why don't you cross the aisle and say it's wrong for them to be pardoning white-collar fraudster after white-collar fraudster, or at least pardoning them from having to pay the fines and the restitution back? It's an honest question. Do you really think that $1.7 billion should go from what was going to be the pockets of the victims back into the bank account of the perpetrators?"
Raskin's $1.7 billion figure was not independently verified in the floor record. Van Drew pushed back, calling Raskin's arguments partisan and keeping focus on the legislation itself.
"The gentleman has his numbers. He has his vision, he has his partisan ideas, and that's up to him. But I'm trying to point out today... we're trying to make something that is right now just an executive order and make it law to help the people."
Van Drew also addressed the broader frustration driving the bill, arguing it was not a party-line initiative.
"They're getting tired of all the money that has been wasted. And to try to pretend that just a few years ago, a couple of years ago, everything was perfect, everything was taken care of and that there was no corruption, we know better."
The pattern was clear: Democrats could not afford to vote against a fraud enforcement bill, but they did not want to give the administration credit for it, either. Raskin described his own support as "tepid." Jeffries voted yes without making a public statement about the bill.
The Trump administration has made Minnesota the centerpiece of its fraud enforcement push. The White House announcement creating the division in January specifically cited the state, and Vance's referral of Walz and Ellison for potential criminal investigation earlier this year made the political stakes personal for Democrats who spent 2024 defending Walz as the party's vice-presidential nominee.
Rep. Harriet Hageman of Wyoming did not let the Minnesota connection go unmentioned. She pointed to what she described as a pattern extending well beyond one state.
"What has come [out of Minnesota] over the last year, what has been exposed, is absolutely criminal in nature. I think what is coming, what is being exposed in blue cities and blue states run by Democrats, demonstrates that it's probably higher by an order of magnitude."
Walz and Ellison have acknowledged that taxpayer dollars were taken advantage of in the state's social welfare programs, but both have accused Republican officials of exaggerating the scope of the problem as a political attack. The administration has not publicly detailed the status of any criminal investigation stemming from Vance's referral.
The broader fraud crackdown has produced results elsewhere. The FBI's Most Wanted Fraudsters list has netted six fugitives in three months, part of an administration tally claiming $245 billion in fraud uncovered across federal programs.
The practical effect of the bill is straightforward. Executive orders can be rescinded by any future president with a stroke of a pen. A law cannot. By voting 352, 72 to make the fraud division permanent, the House ensured that any future administration, Democratic or Republican, would need an act of Congress to dismantle it.
That is exactly the kind of permanence Democrats typically resist granting to Trump-era initiatives. But the politics of opposing a fraud enforcement unit proved too costly. Voting no would have handed Republicans a clean attack line heading into the 2026 midterms: your representative voted to protect fraudsters.
The administration's anti-fraud infrastructure has expanded on multiple fronts since the division's creation. Federal prosecutors have pursued Medicaid billing schemes and shut down fraudulent operations across industries, including more than 270 truck-driving schools implicated in credential fraud.
Raskin's floor remarks inadvertently underscored why Democrats found themselves boxed in. He noted that a fraud division has "already existed within the DOJ for decades," framing the new unit as redundant rather than dangerous. If it is redundant, voting against it becomes even harder to explain to constituents.
The bill now moves to the Senate, though no timeline or floor schedule has been announced. The administration's fraud enforcement efforts have continued to expand even as the legislative branch catches up, with the White House maintaining its anti-fraud push through DOJ channels after other cost-cutting initiatives wound down.
The 72 Democrats who voted no will now carry that vote into their next election cycle. In a Congress where bipartisan supermajorities are rare, they managed to land on the short end of one, on the question of whether the federal government should permanently fight fraud.
Walz testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on March 4, 2026, in what has become an ongoing congressional examination of the Minnesota scandal. Republicans have accused Walz and Ellison of helping facilitate the fraud, an allegation both officials deny. The referral from Vance to the fraud division remains unresolved, at least publicly.
The administration has also expanded its enforcement posture beyond domestic fraud, with Trump signing a memo directing cyber operations against transnational crime syndicates involved in financial schemes targeting American institutions.
Van Drew framed the vote in the simplest terms available: turn an executive order into law so it outlasts any single president. Raskin framed his yes vote as grudging. Jeffries cast his quietly. And 72 of their colleagues decided that opposing a fraud enforcement division was a hill worth standing on.
When more than 80 percent of the House, including the Democratic leader, agrees that a fraud-fighting unit should exist permanently, the 72 members who disagreed owe their voters a better explanation than "tepid" politics.
