Gov. Tim Walz’s (D-MN) announcement that he will no longer seek reelection this fall was characteristically unimpressive. Yes, he recited a statement that included the words, “the buck stops with me,” which offered a patina of personal responsibility for the outrageous fraud scandals over which he’s presided as Minnesota’s chief executive. But the phony mea culpa barely lasted one sentence. He immediately pivoted to whiny blamestorming:
“The political gamesmanship we’re seeing from Republicans is only making that fight harder to win. We’ve got Republicans here in the legislature playing hide-and-seek with whistleblowers. We’ve got conspiracy theorist right-wing YouTubers breaking into day care centers and demanding access to our children. We’ve got the president of the United States demonizing our Somali neighbors and wrongly confiscating child care funding that Minnesotans rely on. It is disgusting. And it is dangerous. Republicans are playing politics with the future of our state. And it’s shameful.”
The buck stops with him, you see, but it’s those nasty Republicans in St. Paul, and “conspiracy theorist right-wing YouTubers,” and President Donald Trump, of course, who’ve truly acted disgustingly and dangerously and shamefully, or whatever. None of Walz’s political scapegoats are responsible for the staggering criminal schemes that have robbed Minnesota taxpayers of billions of dollars, according to federal prosecutors. I’ll also note that the state’s largest, left-leaning newspaper looked into the viral exposé by the “conspiracy theorist right-wing YouTuber” in question and could only confirm the presence of children at a fraction of the supposed “child care” centers Nick Shirley highlighted — even after the glare of scrutiny was burning brightest.
The blame for this vast, illegal enterprise lies with the perpetrators, who do happen to be overwhelmingly and disproportionately members of the Somali community, and the ruling Democratic politicians who enabled it. In announcing new charges recently, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson described the scope of the crisis like this: “Minnesota has become a magnet for fraud, so much so that we have developed a fraud tourism industry — people coming to our state purely to exploit and defraud its programs.” The system was so easily exploited and compromised that fraudsters flocked to Minnesota to get in on the action. That’s on Walz, his administration, and the state bureaucracy. So is this, from the New York Times report on the burgeoning scandal:
“Red flags in the meals program surfaced in the early months of the pandemic, but the money kept flowing. … In 2020, Minnesota Department of Education officials who administered the program became overwhelmed by the number of applicants seeking to register new feeding sites and began raising questions about the plausibility of some invoices. Feeding Our Future, the nonprofit group that was the largest provider in the pandemic program, responded with a warning. In an email, the group told the state agency that failing to promptly approve new applicants from ‘minority-owned businesses’ would result in a lawsuit featuring accusations of racism that would be ‘sprawled across the news.’ Feeding Our Future later sued the agency, which continued reimbursing claims and approving new sites in the months that followed. A report by Minnesota’s nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Auditor about the lapses that enabled the meals fraud later found that the threat of litigation and of negative press affected how state officials used their regulatory power.”
Identity politics was shamelessly weaponized against the Walz government, and it worked. Because such nonsense was incentivized and rewarded. The New York Times piece quoted a former fraud investigator, who is Somali American himself, stating outright that members of Minnesota’s “Democratic-led administration were reluctant to take more assertive action in response to allegations in the Somali community” because there was “a perception that forcefully tackling this issue might cause political backlash among the Somali community, which is a core voting bloc” for Democrats. At least $1 billion, and probably a lot more, was stolen from the people of Minnesota because their elected leaders were afraid to be called racist by a piece of their partisan coalition. That unforgivable rot extends far beyond just the current governor. The state’s attorney general, Democrat Keith Ellison, is also knee-deep in this. The House Oversight Committee laid out this set of facts against him in a scathing letter published last month:
“You were caught on tape pledging to help Feeding Our Future fraudsters in a conversation that also included discussion of campaign donations from Somali community leaders to secure your donor base and, only days later you and your son accepted contributions to your campaigns from the individuals in this meeting. Based on these reports, the Committee is concerned that you were negligent in handling taxpayer dollars that were ultimately stolen and had systems in place that allowed the funds to be funneled to terrorist networks responsible for killing Americans. Whistleblowers have indicated that DHS employees are destroying evidence. The Committee expects that you will take all steps to preserve evidence during this investigation.”
Gopher State voters will have to decide whether a reshuffling of the Democratic deck chairs will be sufficient to restore accountability and good governance. That doesn’t seem like a very smart bet, especially considering that Minnesota has just implemented a new welfare program that critics say lacks nearly any guardrails against fraud. This latest program is open to illegal immigrants, naturally. Walz’s response to detractors? Blathering indignation. “How disrespectful to people to assume that ailing Minnesotans are scamming,” he bloviated. “That’s what I hear from [critics] all the time. I trust Minnesotans.” Breathtaking. Understand that he said this smack-dab in the middle of the gargantuan fraud scandal consuming his administration. Zero lessons have been learned, and he thinks it’s “disrespectful” to raise highly relevant concerns about yet another costly benefits adventure. I’ll leave you with an NBC News social media post downplaying one tentacle of the existing, raging controversy: “Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families said that investigators have found child care centers at the center of recent fraud allegations were operating as they should.”
DEMOCRATS’ KNEE-JERK CYNICISM EXPOSED ON VENEZUELA
“Operating as they should”? From the article itself:
“The department said it has ongoing investigations into four of the centers, and 55 investigations into providers that receive funding from the Child Care Assistance Program, which it oversees. … The nine centers in the video received a total of $17.4 million in CCAP funding in the 2025 fiscal year, the department said. One of the centers has been closed since 2022, it said.”
“Operating as they should.” This festering problem runs far deeper than one bumbling governor.