On Monday, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota ▶announced he would no longer run for reelection to a third term. He is opting instead to focus on governing the state…and defending himself and Minnesota against the menace that is the United States government under Donald Trump.
The decision came after a video that claimed to expose childcare fraud in Minnesota, compiled by right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley, went viral. The outcry prompted Trump to surge some 2,000 federal agents into Minneapolis in what ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons called the agency’s “largest immigration operation ever.”
On Tuesday, Walz slammed the deployment as “a war that’s being waged against Minnesota,” saying,
“We are under assault like no other time in our state’s history because of a petty, vile administration that doesn’t care about the well-being of Minnesotans.”
Little did Walz know, Trump was just getting started.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration took its assault to the next level. It announced that the Department of Justice “is withholding funding for programs that support needy families with children in five Democratic-led states over concerns about fraud.”
Then on Wednesday, tensions in the state rose to new heights after one of Trump’s ICE agents murdered a Minneapolis resident as she tried to flee in her vehicle.
In response, Walz held a press conference during which he emotionally confronted Trump and his administration. Echoing the question that once marked the end of the McCarthy era, he ▶asked,
“Do you have no decency? Do you have no decency?”
As discussed below, Walz also announced that he had given a “warning order” to the Minnesota National Guard, preparing them in the event that Trump escalated tensions further causing civil unrest.
The self-proclaimed “peace president” has bombed Iran, deployed the military to oust a dictator in Venezuela to seize their oil and saber rattled against Greenland, Cuba and Colombia. But it’s the war he’s waging here at home that could prove most disturbing of all. And Minnesota is ground zero.
The war Trump is waging on Minnesota is not a new one. Back in early December, he went full xenophobe on the Minnesota Somali immigrant population. As NBC News reported at the time:
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump ended a Cabinet meeting by unleashing a tirade against Minnesota’s population of Somalis, saying
[“they should go back to where they came from” and calling Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., “garbage.”]“I don’t want them in our country.”
Then the next day, again per NBC News,
For a second day in a row, President Donald Trump launched into a hate-filled
[rant against Somalia]and Somali[immigrants]living in the U.S., saying they’ve “destroyed Minnesota” and “our country.”Minnesota, Trump said, is “a hellhole right now. The Somalians should be out of here. They’ve destroyed our country…”
Trump also went after Governor Walz, calling him “retarded” and again labeling Rep. Ilhan Omar, who is a naturalized Somali immigrant herself, “garbage.”
This coincided with Trump’s announcement that he was halting new immigrant applications from 19 countries, including Somalia, as well as a major immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
This all came in the wake of reporting from The New York Times about a major fraud scandal in the Somali population of Minnesota that centered around fraudulent Covid-era safety net programs.
Per The Times:
Over the last five years, law enforcement officials say, fraud took root in pockets of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora as scores of individuals made small fortunes by setting up companies that billed state agencies for millions of dollars’ worth of social services that were never provided.
Federal prosecutors say that 59 people have been convicted in those schemes so far, and that more than $1 billion in taxpayers’ money has been stolen in three plots they are investigating.
Despite what the right would have us believe, this fraud was not only on the radar of President Biden and Governor Walz, they took affirmative steps to root it out.
The first public sign of a major problem in the state’s social services system came in 2022, when federal prosecutors
[began charging]defendants in connection to a program aimed at feeding hungry children. Merrick B. Garland, attorney general during the Biden administration, called it the country’s largest pandemic relief fraud scheme.The prosecutors focused on a Minneapolis nonprofit organization called Feeding Our Future, which became a partner to dozens of local businesses that enrolled as feeding sites.
State agencies reimbursed the group and its partners for invoices claiming to have fed tens of thousands of children. In reality, federal prosecutors said, most of the meals were nonexistent, and business owners spent the funds on luxury cars, houses and even real estate projects abroad.
According to a 2022 DoJ press release, Biden’s Justice Department charged 47 people in a $250 million fraud scheme, including Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock, who herself is not Somali.
The indictments charge Bock with overseeing a massive fraud scheme carried out by sites under Feeding Our Future’s sponsorship. Feeding Our Future went from receiving and disbursing approximately $3.4 million in federal funds in 2019 to nearly $200 million in 2021.
Per The Times, in September, Walz “created a new task force to pursue fraud cases; made it easier for state agencies to share information with one another; and announced plans for new technology, including artificial intelligence tools, to spot suspicious billing practices.”
According to Walz’s press release at the time, he:
Introduced and signed into law comprehensive anti-fraud legislation during the 2023–2025 legislative sessions, including expanded authority to stop fraudulent payments.
Increased data-sharing across agencies.
Created an Office of Inspector General at the Department of Education.
Established new anti-kickback provisions.
Established the Financial Crimes and Fraud Section at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension through
Executive Order 25-01, creating a centralized investigative unit led by law enforcement. In 2025, the legislature codified this unit in law and required mandatory reporting of suspected criminal activity to the BCA, as well as regular reporting from the BCA to the legislature.Assist the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and other law enforcement agencies to bring fraudsters to justice.
Installed new leadership at the Department of Human Services (DHS), including Temporary Commissioner Shireen Gandhi and Inspector General James Clark, with an emphasis on fraud prevention and program integrity.
In his statement announcing he will no longer seek reelection, Walz made the case for the work his office had done:
“We’ve gone to the legislature time and again to get more tools to combat fraud. We’ve fired people who weren’t doing their jobs. We’ve seen people go to jail for stealing from our state. We’ve cut off whole streams of funding, in partnership with the federal government, where we saw widespread criminal activity. We’ve put new locks on the doors of our remaining programs, and we’ve hired a new head of program integrity to make sure those locks can’t be broken.
“All across the state, Minnesotans are hard at work on this problem. Advocates, administrators, investigators are on the front lines defending the integrity of our state’s programs, and I want to thank them for their efforts.”
But none of this mattered to Trump or the right-wing outrage disinformation machine. Despite the fact that the prosecutions implicated just 80 or so Somali-Americans (most of whom were naturalized or native born American citizens) among a population of more than 60,000, Trump saw this as an opportunity to defame an entire immigrant community and to lay a pretext for a surge in ICE raids.
YouTuber Shirley saw an opportunity to do some faux-citizen journalism, which led to his ▶viral 43 minute video purporting to expose massive childcare fraud in Minnesota. But since its launch, and after amassing tens of millions of views across YouTube and X, Shirley’s claims have largely been called into question.
The Republican Party of Minnesota has admitted to “working with” Shirley on the video, which Qasim Rashid calls full of “propagandized claim[s] with zero evidence.”
As Rashid notes,
First, what Shirley allegedly “uncovered” is not some new scandal. Since 2022
[several of these same day care centers have been fined and shutdown for violating the law]. Local media in Minnesota has already reported on that alleged fraud and reported on the subsequent FBI investigations.
Additionally, as Caroline Orr Bueno points out on Substack,
Shirley‘s video has now been pretty thoroughly
[taken apart]by numerous[news organizations], and many of his core claims have been debunked or at least called into serious doubt. In one case, Shirley arrived when the facility[was closed]. In another instance,[security footage from the daycare center]shows children being dropped off on the same day Shirley was there claiming that no children were anywhere to be seen. In two other cases, Shirley showed up to[non-operational child care facilities].While there have been
[proven and prosecuted cases]of fraud in publicly-funded programs in Minnesota, Shirley’s video doesn’t prove that it’s happening at the daycares he went to.
But the damage was done. Shirley’s claims were reposted by everyone from Vice President JD Vance to FBI Director Kash Patel and amplified by the racist right as further justification for Trump’s widespread anti-immigrant operations.
On Monday, Governor Walz opted out of running for a third term. He knows full well how the scandal and the claims spreading online would be used against him in his campaign and would distract him from, as he put it, giving a reelection campaign “his all. ”
Instead, he has chosen to fight. As he put it in his press release,
“I cannot abide the actions of the political leadership in Washington – these opportunists who are willing to hurt our people to score a few cheap points. They and their allies have no intention of helping us solve the problem – and every intention of profiting off of it.
“Which brings me to this: 2026 is an election year. And election years have a way of ramping up the politics at a time when we simply can’t afford more politics.
“In September, I announced that I would run for a historic third term as Minnesota’s Governor. And I have every confidence that, if I gave it my all, I would succeed in that effort.
“But as I reflected on this moment with my family and my team over the holidays, I came to the conclusion that I can’t give a political campaign my all. Every minute I spend defending my own political interests would be a minute I can’t spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity and the cynics who prey on our differences.
“So I’ve decided to step out of the race and let others worry about the election while I focus on the work.
Not surprisingly, Nick Shirley took a victory lap, 𝕏declaring on X “I ended Tim Walz.”
Wrong again, Nick. Far from “ending” him, Shirley and the right have unleashed Walz, who is stepping up to battle against a war waged against his state by a deranged president and his unscrupulous party.
As he did back in December, now in the wake of the viral success of Shirley’s video, Trump has used the fraud story as a pretext to surge federal immigration officers into the state’s capital.
DHS and ICE 𝕏posted on X making light of the crackdown.
The operation, dubbed “Operation Metro Surge,” began on Sunday and is an extension of Trump’s deployment of federal agents to the Twin Cities in early December. This time, according to The Guardian, they added 2,000 ICE and DHS agents for a period of 30 days. CBS News reports this is “the first major target of the Trump administration’s expanded immigration crackdown in the new year.”
It is amid this surge in ICE enforcement in the city that yesterday, tragically, Renee Nicole Good was shot at point blank range by an ICE agent as she tried to drive away peacefully. Much as the tragic murder of a National Guard officer in D.C. in November was directly attributable to Trump’s deployment of troops to our nation’s cities, so too is Good’s death on Donald Trump’s hands.
In the immediate aftermath of Good’s death, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem defended the use of lethal force, likening the victim to a “domestic terrorist.” Trump, in a deranged post 𝕏on Truth Social later in the day, reinforced Noem’s position, claiming Good “violently, willfully and viciously ran over the ICE officer” sending him to the hospital.
The government’s position is in no way supported by the video of the tragedy, as 𝕏The New York Times makes clear in its definitive forensic analysis of videos of the shooting.
But it’s no accident that the Trump administration is using this moment to amp up the already high tensions. Just as in the other cities where he has deployed, it is clear what Trump has in mind. As Minneapolis nurse Stephanie Abel told The AP,
“I thought the federal government would realize that now is not the time to be toying with people,” Abel said. “What are they going to try to do to…
