Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz told lawmakers Wednesday that his state has been terrorized by the Trump administration over mass welfare fraud allegations, pointing to the killing of U.S. citizens in the midst of an immigration enforcement surge around Minneapolis.
“Let me be clear: In Minnesota, if you defraud public programs, if you steal taxpayer money, we’ll find you, we’ll prosecute you, we’ll convict you, and we’ll throw you in jail,” the Democrat said in his opening remarks at a hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
But, he added, “the people of Minnesota have been singled out and targeted for political retribution at an unparalleled scale, including blocking Medicaid reimbursements to our state just last week.”
Walz, the 2024 nominee for vice president, is fending off accusations from congressional Republicans that he didn’t do enough to prevent a scandal that has embroiled his state. Prosecutors have charged more than 90 people with defrauding the government, and two individuals connected to the Minnesota nonprofit Feeding Our Future were convicted of stealing federal nutrition funds in March.
The revelations have led the Trump administration to take drastic, punitive measures, such as prompting the Department of Health and Human Services to freeze its child care funding and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to cancel hundreds of millions in Medicaid money.
Walz, alongside Minnesota’s Democratic attorney general, Keith Ellison, have been hauled to Capitol Hill to testify before the committee about the scandal — and also to respond to an interim report committee Republicans released early Wednesday morning alleging that Walz and Ellison “knew about the fraud in federal programs administered by the State of Minnesota much earlier than they told the American people.”
House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) asked why Walz did not order the stop or suspend welfare program payments, despite warnings of fraud.
“We’re not going to stop payments to feed children until we have the proof that things happen,” Walz said.
Comer objected: “You didn’t stop payments because you didn’t want to rock the boat.”
In his opening statement, Ellison maintained that his office has pursued fraud convictions aggressively where it has the jurisdiction to do so.
Republicans have homed in on the welfare scandal as an opportunity to disparage the state’s Democratic leadership, but it also has fueled anti-immigrant rhetoric within the GOP — specifically against Minnesota’s large Somali community. At one point, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, who is also a member of the Oversight panel, asked Walz whether he knew how many of those indicted have been Somali-American.
“We don’t investigate or prosecute people based on ethnicity, religion—,” Walz said, before Jordan interrupted him.
“Neither do I, we shouldn’t do that,” Jordan responded. “85 percent of the people indicted were Somali-American, a key voting bloc, and I think that’s what drove this whole thing.”
The White House quickly amplified video of the exchange on X.
Democrats on the committee are using the opportunity to criticize the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda. The panel’s ranking member, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, pointed to a large poster of Renee Good’s bloody driver’s seat, after she was shot by ICE agents in January.
“This violence does not make us safer,” Garcia said. “It does not address fraud, waste, and abuse. It doesn’t help families with health care. … And it certainly, as we’re continuing to discuss, is not preventing the kind of fraud that Republicans are discussing here today.”
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