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Tim Walz

From Wikiquote
Look, I know guns. I’m a veteran. I’m a hunter. And I was a better shot than most Republicans in Congress, and I’ve got the trophies to prove it. But I’m also a dad. I believe in the Second Amendment, but I also believe our first responsibility is to keep our kids safe.

Timothy James Walz (born April 6, 1964) is an American politician, veteran, and former educator serving as the 41st governor of Minnesota since 2019. A member of the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), he was Kamala Harris' running mate and the Democratic nominee for vice president in the 2024 United States presidential election.

Walz initially sought a third term as Governor of Minnesota but withdrew his bid in January 2026 amidst pressure from the second Trump administration, and accusations of childcare fraud in Minnesota during his tenure as Governor.

Quotes

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To my mother, Darlene Walz. Thank you. Thank you for everything you have done for me and showing me what strength looks like. I love you, Mom.
As a small town boy turned soldier, football coach and high school teacher, never did I envision standing before you today as Minnesota’s 41st Governor—and neither, I am sure, did you. The inaugural ceremony is a public acceptance of our legal—and moral—responsibility to this great state. A clear recognition of the privilege we’ve been given by the people of Minnesota to do our best to further our state’s magnificent legacy.
To those of you who voted for me, thank you for your trust. For Minnesotans who voted for someone else—like the gentleman who came out to a listening session on a Friday night in Fergus Falls to tell me he didn’t vote for me, but doesn’t want to see me fail—I’ll work hard to earn your trust as your governor.
Old ways of doing things must be updated. New solutions must be found for new problems. We must continue to aim higher, reach further, and build brighter futures for the people of our state.
To all who have been elected to serve: Be the decent, dedicated, and diverse leaders you were elected to be. Be the ally, and the role model, and the change maker your constituents need you to be.
Work pragmatically. Work with someone you never thought you could to accomplish something you never thought possible.
You know, when I was teaching, every year we’d elect a student body president. And you know what? Those teenagers could teach Donald Trump a hell of a lot about what a leader is. Leaders don’t spend all day insulting people and blaming others. Leaders do the work.
Freedom. When Republicans use the word freedom, they mean that the government should be free to invade your doctor’s office. Corporations — free to pollute your air and water. And banks — free to take advantage of customers. But when we Democrats talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make a better life for yourself and the people that you love. Freedom to make your own health care decisions. And yeah, your kids’ freedom to go to school without worrying about being shot dead in the hall.
Violent crime was up under Donald Trump. And that’s not even counting the crimes he committed.
I can't wait to debate the guy–that is if he's willing to get off the couch and show up.

2018

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2019

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First inaugural address as Governor of Minnesota (7 January 2019)

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First inaugural address as 41st Governor of Minnesota in St. Paul, MN
  • As a small town boy turned soldier, football coach and high school teacher, never did I envision standing before you today as Minnesota’s 41st Governor—and neither, I am sure, did you. The inaugural ceremony is a public acceptance of our legal—and moral—responsibility to this great state. A clear recognition of the privilege we’ve been given by the people of Minnesota to do our best to further our state’s magnificent legacy.
    To those of you who voted for me, thank you for your trust. For Minnesotans who voted for someone else—like the gentleman who came out to a listening session on a Friday night in Fergus Falls to tell me he didn’t vote for me, but doesn’t want to see me fail—I’ll work hard to earn your trust as your governor.
  • You know what they say, behind every governor is an astonished mother-in-law.
    To my mother, Darlene Walz. Thank you. Thank you for everything you have done for me and showing me what strength looks like. I love you, Mom.
    Finally, to those who walked into this theater with me—teachers of mine, teachers I have worked with, students I have taught, and all other educators in the room—please stand as we thank you.
    Thirty-six years ago, Governor Rudy Perpich also asked the teachers in the room to rise during his swearing-in at Hibbing High School. I’m honored to recognize our educators again today.
  • We find ourselves at a time when economic, social, racial, and geographic division feels rampant. I will not normalize behavior that seeks to deepen and exploit these divides. I will not normalize policies that are not normal—ones that undermine our decency and respect. If Washington won’t lead, Minnesota will.
  • There is a temptation to see these times as unprecedented, to see our current challenges as insurmountable. As a history teacher, I found it instructive to look back at past inaugural speeches to see how incoming governors portrayed the situations facing them.
    In 1955, Governor Orville Freeman painted a picture of a society in intense crisis, besieged by the struggle between freedom and totalitarianism raging around the world.
    In 1971, Governor Wendy Anderson spoke about how health care cost too much—or wasn’t even available. He described a housing shortage in which the average young couple in Minnesota could not dream of buying a home.
    In 1979, Governor Al Quie expressed concern about discrimination in our state. He urged the legislature to take action to eliminate discrimination in all forms, and to open opportunities for women, people of color, the poor, those with disabilities, and the elderly.
    In 2011, Governor Mark Dayton described how our education system was failing our students, thus failing our future.
    It strengthens my resolve to know those who came before me, on whose shoulders I stand, faced difficult challenges, many similar to those we face today.
  • My predecessors tackled the problems they faced, and working together with the legislature, they made progress. Because of that progress, our state enjoys one of the best education systems in the country, one of the best health care systems in the country, and perhaps the best quality of life in the country.
    But we can and must do better. Old ways of doing things must be updated. New solutions must be found for new problems. We must continue to aim higher, reach further, and build brighter futures for the people of our state.
  • Education is the great equalizer of society. Education unleashes untapped potential. Education conjures the magic of promising beginnings and the grace of second chances. Putting a young child on a yellow bus to pre-kindergarten in St. Cloud can prevent him from riding a prison bus to Stillwater.
  • There’s no doubt about it: we face some tremendous challenges in the coming years. Our economy is changing. Healthcare costs are soaring. Even the climate is unstable, causing devastating weather events. But we must face these challenges with a quiet confidence that can only be found in Minnesota, with a bipartisan pragmatism, and a humble determination to lead the Bold North.
  • As you know, I was a high school coach for many years. I have a high regard for competition on the football field. But governing is not a sporting contest with opposing teams each wanting to defeat the other. It’s not a horse race nor a poker game to see who can best the other. It’s about working together. Working to give everyone a better chance.
  • No matter how daunting the challenge; no matter how dark the times; Minnesota has always risen up—by coming together. Our blood saved the Union at Gettysburg. Our iron forged the tanks that liberated Europe. Our farmers sparked a green revolution that fed the world. Our imagination transformed medicine. One Minnesota is who we are. We just need to foster it. Together as One Minnesota, we don’t fear the future. We create it.

2023

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  • Today, we’re protecting the rights of Minnesotans and making sure our state remains a place where people have the freedom to get the care they need to live their fullest lives. We’re also protecting young and vulnerable Minnesotans from the harmful and discredited practice of conversion therapy. We’re putting up a firewall to ensure Minnesotans have the freedom to make their own health care decisions.
    • Remarks on signing Chapter 28, House File 16 (protecting people seeking or providing abortions in Minnesota); Chapter 29, House File 146 (banning the practice of conversion therapy); and the Reproductive Freedom Defense Act (Chapter 31, House File 366, protecting people seeking or providing gender-affirming health care in Minnesota) on 27 April 2023[1]

Second inaugural address as Governor of Minnesota (2 January 2023)

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Second inaugural address as 41st Governor of Minnesota in St. Paul, MN
  • It’s the honor of my life to be your governor, and I am humbled to have the opportunity to do this important work for another four years. I will do my best to serve you well. At this occasion four years ago as I took my oath of office, we had no idea the extraordinary challenges that lay ahead. I believed in you, and you believed in me. Together, we emerged from those historic challenges a better state – and today, we are faced with historic opportunity.
  • To members of the state and federal judicial branches, thank you for being here and for your service to our state and nation. I would like to congratulate my fellow constitutional officers – It’s an honor to work with each of you. To my staff and my cabinet, thank you for your tireless work. I’m forever grateful.
  • Gwen, my wife, and Minnesota’s First Lady – we began our journey together with a commitment to service... who would have guessed... Our partnership keeps me honest, grounded, and true to our shared values and vision for the world we want to create for our children, our nieces, and nephews. I’m grateful for your sage advice, your acumen, your proof reading, and your never-ending attention to detail. Thank you for sharing your family—Val, Lynn, your sisters and brothers-in-law—with me. I can’t wait to continue building our exciting life together.
    Hope and Gus, I’m proud to be your dad. I love you both. It must be difficult to have me as your dad – for so many reasons – especially over the last four years. I respect your maturity, your intellect, your humor, compassion, and generosity. Thank you for sharing our family with the people of Minnesota. I know you both will continue to make a positive impact on the lives of others by defining service in your own way.
  • And to my mom, Darlene, who is with us today. When dad died, you worked tirelessly to keep us together. My dad — a Korean War era vet, an educator, and a cigarette smoker — died of lung cancer when I was a teenager, and my family struggled enormously to pay his outstanding medical bills. We got by on social security survivor benefits and my mom’s job in a nursing home. Mom, your hard work and courage was a powerful example for me.
    My mom raised four teachers – and three out of four of us married teachers. Education is in our blood. Gwen and I met teaching high school, and we taught together for many years after we were married. We saw firsthand the challenges our students face. While we were in the classroom, coaching football, organizing dances, and directing plays, Gwen and I got to know our students and the obstacles in their lives. It was my experience as a teacher and my passion for education that led me to run for governor.
  • My mission as governor is simple: make Minnesota the best state in the country for kids. This is what I have charged my team to do – to make our state the best place to raise a family, and I’m proud to say we have made historic strides.
  • But let’s be clear: we have more work to do. Across the country, the pandemic disrupted the lives of our students. And despite the heroic efforts of teachers, students, and parents, many of our kids have fallen behind. We’ve re-doubled our efforts with summer catchup programs but we have more work to do.
    And to be clear: the burden is not on our children, or even our teachers – it’s on all of us. That’s why in this coming legislative session, we will make the largest investment in public education the state has ever seen. We will pass universal meals to ensure every student is given something to eat and no child has to worry about the color of their lunch ticket. We will fund special education and make sure every young person in Minnesota has the resources they need to succeed. We will put mental health front and center. We’ll work together to stop the stigma and allow young people access to the help they need to reach their full potential. We will ban conversion therapy to ensure that every LGBTQ student knows they are perfect just the way they are. And we will fund programs to recruit and train the next generation of teachers – so a diverse generation of students has an equally diverse generation of teachers.
    But Investing in our classrooms is only the beginning. Building the best schools in the nation is a good start, but to make Minnesota the best state for kids we need to make sure that kids are thriving in and OUT of the classroom. Children can’t learn if they’re hungry or without a home. We have the opportunity to ensure every child has a safe place to call home and that no child goes hungry. I am committed to ending child poverty in Minnesota.
  • Now is the time to be bold and build a bright future for all Minnesotans. Now is the time to deliver.
    We can lead the nation in ending child poverty and making sure every child receives a world-class education. And in doing so, we will continue to make Minnesota the best place to raise a family. I have a positive vision for the future of our state and it’s rooted in my belief that we’re in this together. I still believe that we’re One Minnesota – not that we are all the same or that we all the agree, but that we can work together across lines of difference to do what’s right, what’s fair, and make our state a better place for all.
    As I look into this room and see so many newly elected leaders—including the promising faces of our new majorities in both the House and the Senate—I can’t help but feel optimistic. I’m looking at a state legislature—on both sides of the aisle—that looks more like the people of Minnesota than any time in history. This gives me hope. It inspires me. And I look forward to working together – Republicans and Democrats alike.
    I’ll work with anyone who’s willing to work with me to get things done – because Minnesotans spoke clearly this last election, and they expect all of us to do just that: get things done. The era of gridlock is over. Minnesotans have chosen hope over fear, fact over fiction, and action over excuses. Our path is clear. It’s time to lead.
  • To all who have been elected to serve: Be the decent, dedicated, and diverse leaders you were elected to be. Be the ally, and the role model, and the change maker your constituents need you to be.
    Work pragmatically. Work with someone you never thought you could to accomplish something you never thought possible.
    We are not here to score political points. We are not here for victory laps. We are here to improve lives. We have a moment – and it’s not about which party won or which party is in control; this moment is about our opportunity to work collaboratively and get things done for Minnesotans.
    This is our opportunity to model what public service and public servants look like. This is our opportunity to make change, to make what was previously impossible possible, and to strengthen faith in government as a force for good. This is our opportunity to restore civility, transparency, and accessibility to the decision-making table for Minnesotans of all ages, races, genders, and zip codes. This is our opportunity to build One Minnesota, and to make our state the best place in the country to live, to work, and to raise a family. This is our opportunity. Let’s get to work.

2024

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After Joe Biden's withdrawal (21 July 2024)

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  • But I'll have to be honest with you, what struck me everywhere I went -- without exception, people really wanted the same basic things out of an American life. And I wanna be clear, when I say "basic things", I mean things like meaningful work, safe neighborhoods, good schools, affordable quality healthcare. But I also mean something more. It became clear to me, people want security. And I mean that broadly; they wanna feel like their life is built on a solid foundation that won't collapse under them if the wind blows the wrong way or something happens. People want an opportunity where they feel like they can get ahead, not just settling to get by. And they really are concerned about giving their kids a chance to get ahead. And I think, most of all (and you saw it, in a very deep way), people want freedom. To live their lives the way they want to live them. It's not the way-- Maybe their neighbors wouldn't want them to live the same way, but the freedom is supposed to be everybody's birthright! Not because of how much money you had, or where your family came from, no matter who you love or how you prayed... or what you think about the issues of the day are.
  • [If] you're feeling deflated, discouraged today, I get it. Take some time, take care of yourselves, take care of your loved ones, take care of your community! There's a million ways to make a positive difference and get back in this fight when you're ready. And know that, when you're ready to get back in that fight, I'll be standing right here, ready to fight the fight with you.

Speech at Democratic National Convention (21 August 2024)

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"Full Transcript of Tim Walz’s Speech at the Democratic Convention", The New York Times (August 22, 2024)

  • If you’ve never experienced the hell that is infertility, I guarantee you, you know somebody who has. I can remember praying each night for a phone call. The pit in your stomach when the phone would ring, and the absolute agony when we heard the treatments hadn’t worked.
  • Freedom. When Republicans use the word freedom, they mean that the government should be free to invade your doctor’s office. Corporations — free to pollute your air and water. And banks — free to take advantage of customers. But when we Democrats talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make a better life for yourself and the people that you love. Freedom to make your own health care decisions. And yeah, your kids’ freedom to go to school without worrying about being shot dead in the hall.
  • Look, I know guns. I’m a veteran. I’m a hunter. And I was a better shot than most Republicans in Congress, and I’ve got the trophies to prove it. But I’m also a dad. I believe in the Second Amendment, but I also believe our first responsibility is to keep our kids safe.
  • You know, when I was teaching, every year we’d elect a student body president. And you know what? Those teenagers could teach Donald Trump a hell of a lot about what a leader is. Leaders don’t spend all day insulting people and blaming others. Leaders do the work.
  • You know, you might not know it, but I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this. But I have given a lot of pep talks. So let me finish with this, team. It’s the fourth quarter. We’re down a field goal. But we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field. And boy, do we have the right team.
  • Look, we’ve got 76 days. That’s nothing. There’ll be time to sleep when you’re dead. We’re going to leave it on the field. That’s how we’ll keep moving forward. That’s how we’ll turn the page on Donald Trump. That’s how we’ll build a country where workers come first, health care and housing are human rights, and the government stays the hell out of your bedroom. That’s how we make America a place where no child is left hungry. Where no community is left behind. Where nobody gets told they don’t belong. That’s how we’re going to fight.

2026

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"Minnesota Officials Hold Briefing on ICE-Related Shooting", C-SPAN (7 January 2026)
  • Donald Trump and his administration may not care much about Minnesota. That's been pretty evident, but we love this state. We won't let them tear us apart. We'll not turn against each other. To Minnesotans, I say this, I feel your anger. I'm angry. They want a show. We can't give it to them. We cannot. If you protest and express your First Amendment rights, please do so peacefully as you always do. We can't give them what they want. The hearts and minds of the people in this state are on our side. To Americans, I ask you this. Please stand with Minneapolis. To Minnesotans know that our administration is going to stop at nothing to seek accountability and justice
  • I have a very simple message. We do not need any further help from the federal government.
    To Donald Trump and Kristi Noem: you've done enough.
    There's nothing more important than Minnesotan safety. I've issued a warning order to prepare the Minnesota National Guard. We have soldiers in training and prepared to be deployed if necessary. I remind you, a warning order is a heads up for folks, and these National Guard troops are our National Guard troops. They're teachers in your community. They're business owners. They're construction professionals. They are Minnesotans. Minnesota will not allow our community to be used as a prop in a national political fight. We will not take the bait. We will continue to update you, Minnesota, as we get more information.
  • I hope maybe we're at the McCarthy moment. Do you have no decency? Do you have no decency? We have someone dead. In their car For no reason whatsoever, and And I, I don't, I don't want to be right about this, but I said if they do this they're going to create a chaotic situation where someone innocent's going to get killed, and they did it. And now we hear more political rhetoric. Enough, enough is enough. And so to Minnesotans don't take the bait. Do not take the bait. Do not allow them to deploy federal troops into here. Do not allow them to invoke the Insurrection Act. Do not allow them to declare martial law. Do not allow them to lie about the security and the decency of this state. And let's let this investigation play itself. Let's make sure we protect our neighbors. I encourage you to use your First Amendment rights and all of your constitutional rights, but do so in a peaceful manner. We'll gather back with you as soon as we gather more information that needs to be put out. But again, stay safe, Minnesotans, and we'll be back with you.

Quotes about Walz

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It is the honor of a lifetime to serve the people of Minnesota with my friend and favorite coworker, Governor Tim Walz. The Governor asked me last year, if I knew everything that we know now – would I have signed up? My answer was, and is, absolutely. Let’s get back to work. ~ Peggy Flanagan
I am proud to announce that I've asked @Tim_Walz to be my running mate. As a governor, a coach, a teacher, and a veteran, he's delivered for working families like his. It's great to have him on the team. Now let’s get to work. ~ Kamala Harris
Mr. Walz brought passion every day. He loved to coach. He loved to teach. . . . Tim, he just had a way of not making you feel bad but making you want to do better. ~ Mitch Salsbery
In the years since his tenure heading the GSA, Walz has made supporting LGBTQ+ rights a pillar of his political career, never shying away from it even when it may have helped him win elections to do so. ~ Ariel Messman-Rucker
Walz is now the presidential running mate of current U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. His resume includes a stint as a high school social studies teacher who sponsored a student queer sex club in 1999. ~ Joy Pullmann
He'll unleash HELL ON EARTH ~ Donald Trump
  • After Vice President Kamala Harris announced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate earlier this week, LGBTQ+ voters immediately zeroed in on one particular detail from his lengthy biography: In 1999, while coaching the football team at Mankato High School and working as a social studies teacher, he also served as the faculty advisor for the school’s first-ever gay-straight alliance (GSA).
    “It really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married,” Walz told the Star Tribune in 2018 of the symbolic significance of his decision to advise the group.
    As any queer person who was in grade school in 1999 can attest, the straight teacher who coached the football team and served in the Army National Guard is perhaps the last person you’d expect to sponsor a GSA. That's exactly why Jacob Reitan, a former student of Walz’s wife Gwen at Mankato High, was so impressed by the couple’s vocal support for LGBTQ+ youth. In an MSNBC interview with NBC News’ Jen Psaki on Wednesday night, Reitan recalled the impact the Walz family had on him in 1997 when he was still in the closet.
  • In 1999, when Reitan came out, Gwen Walz was the third person he told after his close friend and his sister, as he said during his appearance on MSNBC. Reitan subsequently approached Tim Walz to become the advisor for the GSA, and Walz agreed. “Both Tim and Gwen were incredibly supportive of their gay students. They modeled values of inclusivity and respect. That helped not just me — I was bullied in high school — but it also, I think, helped the bully. It helped show the bully a better path forward,” Reitan continued.
    Reitan went on to have a storied career in LGBTQ+ advocacy before working as a lawyer. In 2006, at age 23, he founded the Soulforce Equality Ride bus tour campaign, which brought LGBTQ+ students to Christian colleges for debates on queer issues. In addition to his work to help repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy, which barred U.S. military servicemembers from disclosing their sexual orientation, Reitan joined the Minnesota Governor’s Task Force on the Prevention of School Bullying in 2012, as the Mankato Free Press reported in a 2017 profile on his work. (Them has reached out to Reitan for comment on this story.)
    In many respects, that history of LGBTQ+ advocacy lines up with Walz’s own: As a United States congressman, Walz opposed DADT, voting to repeal the policy in 2010. Walz also ran for Congress while openly supporting same-sex marriage in 2006.
    “He’s a remarkable individual,” Reitan told MSNBC.
  • The Trump administration announced it is suspending $129m in federal benefit payments to Minnesota amid allegations of widespread fraud in the state. The secretary of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), Brooke Rollins, shared a letter on Friday on social media that was addressed to Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, and the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, notifying them of the administration’s decision and citing investigations into alleged fraud conducted by local non-profits and businesses. “Despite a staggering, wide-reaching fraud scandal, your administrations refuse to provide basic information or take common sense measures to stop fraud. The Trump administration refuses to allow such fraud to continue,” Rollins wrote.
    Rollins asked Walz and Frey to provide the USDA with justification for all federal spending from 20 January 2025 to the present within 30 days. She is also requiring that all federal payments to the state moving forward require the same justification. “We’re communicating with state partners to understand the impacts of such a blanket cut to funding meant for residents most in need,” Brian Feintech, a spokesperson for the city of Minneapolis, said in a written statement in response to Rollins’s letter.
    “What’s abundantly clear is that Minneapolis is the latest target of the Trump administration – willing to harm Americans in service to its perceived political gain.”
    Minnesota’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, publicly responded to Rollins’s post, writing on X: “I will not allow you to take from Minnesotans in need. I’ll see you in court.”
  • The USDA’s announcement coincides with a federal ruling that the Trump administration cannot block federal money for childcare subsidies and other programs aimed at supporting low-income families with children from reaching five Democratic-led states, including Minnesota. The Trump administration has targeted Minnesota over the past year over allegations of fraud, specifically going after the state’s Somali population. Federal prosecutors estimate as much as $9bn has been stolen across schemes allegedly linked to the state’s Somali population. Trump ended legal protections for Somali immigrants in the state in November 2025, claiming that “Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing. Send them back to where they came from.”
    Shortly thereafter, Trump went off on both Somalis and Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota congressional representative who is from Somalia and is a US citizen, in a xenophobic rant during a cabinet meeting. “They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you,” the president said. He called Omar “garbage” and said “we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country”.
  • A month later, in December 2025, the FBI announced that it was deploying additional investigative and personnel resources to “dismantle large-scale fraud schemes exploiting federal programs” in the state, according to its director, Kash Patel. Patel said the agency had already dismantled a $250m fraud scheme that stole federal food aid meant for vulnerable children during the Covid pandemic in a case that led to 78 indictments and 57 convictions.
    Last week, Walz announced that he would not run for a third term as Minnesota’s governor, as his handling of the fraud has fallen under intense scrutiny from Trump and Republicans. In his announcement, Walz acknowledged that the president and his political allies have taken advantage of the crisis to sow further division in the state.
    “I won’t mince words here,” Walz said. “Donald Trump and his allies – in Washington, in St Paul and online – want to make our state a colder, meaner place.”
  • Tim Walz addressed the ongoing fraud scandal in Minnesota after a viral video showed an empty daycare center with a misspelled sign that received millions in federal funding. The Minnesota governor claimed he was taking strong action against the alleged fraud, just hours after FBI boss Kash Patel revealed the crisis runs far deeper than initially thought. 'The governor has worked for years to crack down on fraud and ask the state legislature for more authority to take aggressive action,' a spokesperson for Walz told Fox News. 'He has strengthened oversight - including launching investigations into these specific facilities, one of which was already closed.'
    Walz also 'hired an outside firm to audit payments to high-risk programs, shut down the Housing Stabilization Services program entirely, announced a new statewide program integrity director, and supported criminal prosecutions.'
    The governor has been inundated with criticism from concerned Americans questioning how he intends to respond to allegations of widespread fraud within the state. Initial reports emerged earlier this month of a massive Covid-era scheme involving the federally funded nonprofit group Feeding Our Future. At least 78 people, 72 of whom are Somali, have been charged in connection with the illicit plot.
  • Walz, who ran as Vice President on the Democratic ticket alongside Kamala Harris in 2024, defended his state on Sunday on X and shared four photographs of him interacting with members of the Somali community. He wrote about Minnesota: '#8 state for safety. #5 state to live in. #3 state for jobs. #2 state to raise a family, and #2 state to retire. 'We've made progress, but there's more to do to deliver security, opportunity, and freedom to every Minnesotan. I won't quit fighting until we're #1.'
    His post came after outrage over the alleged fraud grew on Friday when independent journalist Nick Shirley shared footage of an apparently empty Minnesota daycare, which reportedly received millions in taxpayer funds.
    Footage of the facility, featuring a misspelled sign as 'Quality Learing Center', sparked outrage among lawmakers and allegations state authorities allowed the 'largest fraud in US history' to go unchecked. In response, FBI Director Kash Patel said the FBI has long been aware of fraud allegations in the state and threatened action against perpetrators. 'The FBI believes this is just the tip of a very large iceberg,' Patel wrote. 'We will continue to follow the money and protect children, and this investigation very much remains ongoing.'
  • 'Furthermore, many are also being referred to immigration officials for possible further denaturalization and deportation proceedings where eligible.' Addressing the allegations made in Shirley's video, Patel said the 'FBI is aware of recent social media reports in Minnesota.' He claimed that the bureau has moving to 'dismantle large-scale fraud schemes exploiting federal programs.' 'Fraud that steals from taxpayers and robs vulnerable children will remain a top FBI priority in Minnesota and nationwide. According to Shirley, the childcare center pocketed $1.9 million from Minnesota's Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) in 2025, bringing the total to $4 million.
    Shirley, in his investigation, arrived at the doorsteps of several daycare centers, claiming to be a father looking to enroll his child, but said he never saw any children at the facilities. He said it was 'potentially the largest fraud scandal in US history.'
  • In his announcement, Patel emphasized that the FBI has been aggressively targeting a massive fraud network that stole COVID-era food scheme. 'The FBI has toppled a $250 million fraud network that targeted vulnerable children and exposed a 'large-scale money laundering' operation,' Patel said. 'The investigation exposed sham vendors, shell companies and large-scale money laundering tied to the Feeding Our Future network,' he wrote. 'The case led to 78 indictments and 57 convictions.'
    Prosecutors alleged that most of the meals intended for low-income children during the pandemic never existed. Instead, the taxpayer's money went to luxury homes, cars, jewelry, and real estate abroad. 'These criminals didn't just engage in historic fraud, but tried to subvert justice as well,' Patel wrote.
    President Donald Trump criticized Governor Tim Walz for allowing Minnesota to become 'a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity.' He said the perpetrators should be 'sent back to where they came from.' Later, he said he would be revoking the temporary protected status of the roughly 700 Somali nationals who have it, which prevents them from being deported. On Thanksgiving, Trump called Walz 'seriously retarded' and also attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar and Minnesota's immigration policy.
  • Republican operatives concede that the focus on Walz, the former running mate of Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, is easy political fodder after an election cycle spent portraying him as an inept and radical governor. And in an election season in which Walz is seeking a rare third term in office, the attacks could prove fruitful in a blue state where Republicans are hoping to make inroads. Still, Republicans believe that “even Democrats” don't want Walz as a candidate in future general elections, and that Democratic politicians such as Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), a possible 2028 contender for president, or New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an avowed socialist, will prove the most useful in this and future cycles.
    “Let’s be honest. This is a guy who made Kamala Harris seem like an expert debater,” said one out-of-government adviser to the president, a veteran of all three of his presidential campaigns. “We’ll have our fun, but I’m not sure that even an expert brander like President Trump can just wish this one into reality.”
    A second Trump veteran, who previously worked in the White House but has since grown frustrated with the president’s performance in office, said Trump’s focus on Walz and “the past” will eventually wear on voters’ nerves, considering Trump's declining approval ratings.
    “America elected President Trump in 2024 to save us from the economic disaster that a Harris-Walz administration would inflict,” the former Trump staffer explained. “But that was over a year ago, and we’re more or less in the same place. We’re still dealing with crazy inflation, and all the economic growth we’ve seen this year is propped up by just a handful of tech companies, which the administration is heavily subsidizing by the way. He needs to actually deliver some real results and fix these problems, not just b**** and moan about how much worse things would’ve been if he hadn’t won.”
  • The revelation of widespread fraud committed by members of Minnesota’s Somali community is a political gift for President Donald Trump, allowing him to elevate Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) as a sorely needed foil for Republicans ahead of the midterm elections. But veteran campaign operatives for both parties expect that Walz's status as a Democratic boogeyman will be short-lived, and that Republicans will inevitably look back to California or New York, where bigger-name figures are dominating GOP claims of socialism and incompetence.
    Trump has heaped attacks on Walz in the weeks after the fraud became a national news story, with the president and Republicans more broadly questioning how hundreds of millions in federal dollars were squandered under Walz's watch. The fraud represents the latest misuse of pandemic-era funds and has become a ballooning case for the Justice Department, which has prosecuted dozens of alleged conspirators.
    But the story also has a political dimension that ties together the GOP's emphasis on fiscal responsibility with the hard line it has drawn on immigration. FBI Director Kash Patel said that his agency is working with immigration authorities for "possible further denaturalization and deportation proceedings.”
    Walz has defended his handling of the fraud allegations, telling Fox News that his office "strengthened oversight" once the schemes came to light. But that defense has not quieted the criticism, as the Trump administration and its congressional allies expand investigations into suspected misconduct and even begin to withhold federal dollars.
    Meanwhile, Trump has blamed Democratic policies for an influx of immigrants he says are "completely taking over" the country, and has hurled insults at Walz, drawing controversy for calling him a dated slur for intellectually disabled people.
  • Multiple senior Democratic officials, one of whom staffed Walz on the 2024 campaign trail, told the Washington Examiner that the Minnesota fraud scandal plays into the GOP’s electoral strengths but doubted that it would help Minnesota Republicans win next year’s gubernatorial election or resonate with voters beyond the state like Trump’s immigration rhetoric did while running against Harris.
    “The thing about the border security issue was it was so present. People see ‘fraud’ and Somalian immigrants, but it’s not like the images of people running across the border or through the Rio Grande,” the former Walz aide said. “I’m always worried about the misuse of public dollars, but this is a little in the weeds.”
    A second senior Democratic official welcomed Trump’s attacks on Walz, saying the president’s focus could solidify support from the “anti-Trump” crowd around the incumbent.
    “No Democrat is running against Gov. Walz because we, and the voters, know the truth: He is a good man, and Trump’s attacks are more rooted in racism than reality,” the official assessed, noting that Republicans, by contrast, have not yet landed a strong recruit for the governor's race.
    “On the other side, you’ve got basically a dozen Republicans all trying to out-Trump each other, and they’re all probably going to lose to Mike Lindell," they added. "Minnesota hasn’t voted a new Republican into a major office since Trump stepped off the golden escalator, and I seriously doubt the My Pillow guy is going to change that."
  • A third Democratic staffer laughed that Trump “can’t even keep the plot straight” on who to blame for the Minnesota scandal, pointing fingers at both Walz and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who is a Somali immigrant.
    Still, the fraud scandal continues to be an unwanted firestorm for the Democratic Party that, beyond politics, could jeopardize millions in federal funding. Kelly Loeffler, Trump's Small Business Administration chief, sent a letter to Walz before Christmas, alerting him that the administration would be halting some $5.5 million in funding previously allocated for the state while the federal government continues to investigate additional fraud cases.
    New reporting that surfaced over the weekend suggests that multiple Minnesota daycare operations were recipients of taxpayer subsidies, despite currently having no children enrolled in the programs.
    Patel reacted to those reports on Sunday by announcing plans to surge "investigative resources" to expand the federal government's inquiry, adding that the indictments handed out so far represent "just the tip of the iceberg."
    Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem similarly offered up ICE agents on Monday to conduct investigations of alleged fraud sites.
  • It is the honor of a lifetime to serve the people of Minnesota with my friend and favorite coworker, Governor Tim Walz. The Governor asked me last year, if I knew everything that we know now – would I have signed up? My answer was, and is, absolutely. Let’s get back to work.
    • Peggy Flanagan in her inaugural speech after being reelected as 50th Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota, 2 January 2023[2]
  • Roberta Sloan, 66, a retired nurse who drove from Rochester, Minnesota, to join the protest in the park on Minneapolis’s south side, said she was frustrated that Omar’s effort to enter the ICE facility was challenged, but glad the congresswomen tried. “They have every right to be there to see these detention places and how people are being treated,” she said. Sloan was also pleased with how Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis’s mayor have spoken out against the ICE operation and shooting. “They are standing up for what Minnesota stands for,” she said, and that’s why she felt compelled to protest: “To stand up for those who don’t have a voice.”
    Standing on a nearby snow covered sidewalk, amid a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd, health care worker Peter Prou, 33, of St. Paul, said he was outraged by the shooting and came to fight for justice. “They’re taking away all our rights and freedoms. They know it’s murder and they’re trying to cover it up,” he said of ICE, but added, “There’s strength in numbers. There’s more of us than them.”
  • Civil liberties and migrant-rights groups called for nationwide rallies on Saturday to protest the fatal shooting of an activist in Minnesota by a U.S. immigration agent, as state authorities opened their own investigation of the killing. Protest organizers said more than 1,000 weekend events were planned across the country demanding an end to large-scale deployments of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents ordered by President Donald Trump, mostly to cities led by Democratic politicians.
    Minneapolis became a major flashpoint of the Republican president's militarized deportation roundups on Wednesday, when an ICE officer shot and killed a 37-year-old mother of three, Renee Good, behind the wheel of her car on a residential street. The violence came soon after some 2,000 federal officers were dispatched to Minneapolis in what ICE's parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, called the "largest DHS operation ever." Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, condemned the deployment as a "reckless" example of "governance by reality TV."
  • Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, pointed to bystander video he said directly contradicted the federal government's "garbage narrative." Civil liberties advocates said the video showed federal agents lacked any justification for using deadly force.
    Amid the sharply differing accounts of the shooting, Minnesota and Hennepin County law enforcement authorities said on Friday they were opening their own criminal inquiry of the incident separate from a federal investigation led by the FBI. Some Trump administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, asserted state prosecutors lack jurisdiction to charge a federal officer with a crime, though legal experts say federal immunity in such cases is not automatic.
    The crisis atmosphere led Walz - a prominent Trump antagonist who branded Trump and his Republican allies as "weird" during his own run for vice president last year - to put the state's National Guard on alert.
    Federal-state tensions escalated further on Thursday when a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Portland, Oregon, shot and wounded a man and woman in their car after an attempted vehicle stop. As in the Minneapolis incident, DHS said the driver had tried to "weaponize" his vehicle and run over agents. DHS on Friday identified the wounded driver and passenger as suspected gang associates from Venezuela who were in the U.S. illegally. The agency said the woman had been involved in a prior shootout in Portland but provided no evidence of its allegations against the pair.
  • The deployment of agents to Minneapolis follows Trump's recent denunciations of Walz and his state's large population of Somali immigrants over allegations of fraud dating back to 2020 by some nonprofit groups administering childcare and other social-service programs. Good was shot dead just a few blocks from where George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer crushing his neck into the pavement with his knee during a videotaped arrest in May 2020. Floyd's death sparked months of nationwide racial-justice protests during Trump's first term in office.
    Bystander video of the Minneapolis incident showed masked officers approaching Good's Honda SUV while it was stopped at a perpendicular angle to the street, partially blocking traffic. One agent is seen ordering her out of the car and grabbing onto the driver-side front door handle as the car pulls forward and steers away from the officers, one of whom jumps back and fires three shots into the front of the vehicle as it rolls past.
  • He packaged himself as a moderate from Day One, built an office centered on constituent service and carved out a niche as a tireless advocate for veterans.
    • James Hohmann on Walz's first election to Congress, as quoted in Politico, 14 October 2010
  • Minnesota Governor Walz served for 24 years in the Army National Guard, a military force that is usually deployed within the US to respond to events such as natural disasters, but is also part of the US Army reserve. In August, Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance accused Walz of "stolen valour". Vance referred to a video promoted by the Harris campaign which featured a comment made by Walz in 2018, while he was advocating for gun control. In the clip, Walz said he had "carried weapons in war".
    This was not true. Walz went to Italy with the National Guard in 2003 as part of support for the US war in Afghanistan but he was never deployed to an active war zone. On 9 August, the Harris campaign issued a statement saying that “in making the case for why weapons of war should never be on our streets or in our classrooms, the Governor misspoke”.
  • In August Vance claimed: “When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the army and allowed his unit to go without him.” Several former National Guard colleagues have previously publicly voiced frustrations at Walz’s decision to leave their unit before deployment to Iraq but others have rejected assertions that he retired to avoid combat duty. In February 2005, while he was still in the National Guard, Walz filed an application to run for election as a member of Congress from Minnesota.
    The following month it was announced that there would be “a possible partial mobilisation of roughly 2,000 troops from the Minnesota National Guard” to Iraq within the next two years, according to a 2005 press release from Walz’s congressional campaign. In the statement, Walz said: “I do not yet know if my artillery unit will be part of this mobilisation.” He added: “I don’t want to speculate on what shape my campaign will take if I am deployed, but I have no plans to drop out of the race."
    Walz retired from the National Guard in May 2005, which he later said was so he could focus fully on running for Congress. His National Guard unit received orders to mobilise for Iraq in July 2005, and was sent there in March 2006, according to the battalion’s history page.
    On 13 August 2024, Mr Walz responded directly to his critics, recalling that he'd joined the National Guard aged 17: "I served for the next 24 years for the same reason all my brothers and sisters do, we love this country. Then in 2005 I felt the call of duty again, this time giving service to my country in the halls of Congress."
  • Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) likened President Trump’s immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities to the barbaric Nazi occupation chronicled by Anne Frank. “We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside,” Walz declared during a fiery press conference on Sunday. “Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank.” “Somebody’s going to write that children’s story about Minnesota.” Frank famously chronicled her harrowing time in hiding during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands for over two years before her capture. Ultimately, she died in a concentration camp.
    Taking a somber tone, Walz vowed to be defiant in the face of Operation Metro Surge and re-upped his well-worn demands for the Trump administration to end the surge of federal law enforcement personnel to the state.
  • “If it was the intention of Donald Trump to make an example of Minnesota, then I’m damn proud of the example that the world is seeing,” the governor added. Tensions in Minneapolis have soared in the wake of a Border Patrol agent’s shooting of Alex Pretti, 37, an ICU nurse, on Saturday. Footage showed multiple officers pinning Pretti to the ground and removing his 9mm handgun, the gun slide of which appeared to move. Officers then opened fire on Pretti. Attorney General Pam Bondi penned a letter to Walz on how to end the chaos in Minnesota but the governor shrugged that off. “There’s 2 million documents in the Epstein files we’re still waiting on. Go ahead and work on those,” Walz snapped back on Sunday.
    “We cooperate. We don’t do their job,” Walz later contended when pressed about the Trump administration’s demands that it can get more access to the state’s jails. “It’s their job to do immigration.” The shooting of Pretti came some two weeks after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot Renee Good, also 37, after she accelerated her SUV in his direction. An investigation into Pretti’s death is ongoing, according to top officials, including Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.
  • In Judi Agustin’s freshman year at Mankato West High School, her teacher instructed her to wear a yellow star. It was part of a Holocaust curriculum at the school, located in a remote area of Minnesota with barely any Jews. For a week, freshmen were asked to wear the yellow stars, which were reminiscent of the ones the Nazis made the Jews wear. Seniors played the part of the Gestapo, charged with persecuting the “Jews.”
    Unlike everyone else in her class in the 2001-2002 school year, Agustin was Jewish. The experience “was incredibly hurtful and offensive and scary,” she recalled on Tuesday. Her father complained to the district, and wrote a letter to the local paper decrying the lesson. In response, she recalled, the head of the department put a stop to them. The teacher who intervened, according to her recollection was the current vice presidential nominee Tim Walz.
    “When Tim Walz found out about it, he squashed it real quick, and as far as I understand they never did it again,” Agustin told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “So he was an advocate for my experience, as one of four Jewish kids in the entire school district. And I always felt like he had our back.”
    Walz is on the campaign trail this week with Vice President Kamala Harris, his running mate, and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. JTA could not independently verify that he was the teacher who stopped the Mankato West lesson.
    But it’s clear that how to teach the Holocaust well has occupied Walz for decades. In 1993, while teaching in Nebraska, he was part of an inaugural conference of US educators convened by the soon-to-open US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Eight years later, after moving to Minnesota, he wrote a thesis arguing for changes in Holocaust education. And as governor, he backed a push to mandate teaching about the Holocaust in Minnesota schools.
    Through it all, Walz modeled and argued for careful instruction that treated the Holocaust as one of multiple genocides worth understanding.
  • “Schools are teaching about the Jewish Holocaust, but the way it is traditionally being taught is not leading to increased knowledge of the causes of genocide in all parts of the world,” Walz wrote in his thesis, submitted in 2001. The thesis was the culmination of Walz’s master’s degree focused on Holocaust and genocide education at Minnesota State University, Mankato, which he earned while teaching at Mankato West. His 27-page thesis, which JTA obtained, is titled “Improving Human Rights and Genocide Studies in the American High School Classroom.” In it, Walz argues that the lessons of the “Jewish Holocaust” should be taught “in the greater context of human rights abuses,” rather than as a unique historical anomaly or as part of a larger unit on World War II. “To exclude other acts of genocide severely limited students’ ability to synthesize the lessons of the Holocaust and the ability to apply them elsewhere,” he wrote. He then took a position that he noted was “controversial” among Holocaust scholars: that the Holocaust should not be taught as unique but used to help students identify “clear patterns” with other historical genocides like the Armenian and Rwandan genocides.
  • Walz was describing, in effect, his own approach to teaching the Holocaust that he implemented in Alliance, Nebraska, years earlier. In the state’s remote northwest region, Walz asked his global geography class to study the common factors that linked the Holocaust to other historical genocides, including economic strife, totalitarian ideology and colonialism. The year was 1993. At year’s end, Walz and his class correctly predicted that Rwanda was most at risk of sliding into genocide.
    “The Holocaust is taught too often purely as a historical event, an anomaly, a moment in time,” Walz told The New York Times in 2008, reflecting on those Alliance lessons. “That relieves us of responsibility. Obviously, the mastermind was sociopathic, but on the scale for it to happen, there had to be a lot of people in the country who chose to go down that path.”
  • Last year, as Minnesota’s governor, Walz returned to Holocaust education, and supported and signed a law requiring the state’s middle and high schools to teach about the Holocaust. The law, initiated and championed by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, also encourages schools to teach about other genocides. A working group for the curriculum hit snags earlier this summer when a pro-Palestinian activist was removed from the committee amid debates on whether Israel’s conduct in Gaza constitutes genocide. The mandate is still anticipated to go into effect in the 2025-2026 school year.
    “This is going to work out, this is going to be good, because the governor and his staff are highly attuned to the concerns and sensitivities of the Jewish community,” Ethan Roberts, the JCRC’s deputy executive director, told JTA.
    Speaking at a JCRC event in June, Walz said he had been “privileged and proud” to have participated in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum training early in his career. But he said more needed to be done, and he emphasized that the curriculum chosen to accomplish the requirement would determine its success. “We need to do better on Holocaust education. We need to do better on ethnic studies,” he told the crowd. “And I tell you this as a teacher and as governor, too, we don’t need test scores or anything to tell us that we’re failing.” It was the kind of message that former Mankato West students said they came to expect from him. “He is what you hope a great teacher is,” said Solo, “which is someone who’s not only teaching, but also learning at all times.”
  • Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, has emerged as a prominent figure in American politics, known for his dedication to creating an inclusive and equitable society for all and his unwavering support of LGBTQ+ rights and commitment to social justice.
    Serving since January 2019, Walz’s political career spans over a decade, including his tenure as a U.S. Representative for Minnesota. His background as a retired Master Sergeant in the Army National Guard and a former high school teacher uniquely positions him as a leader who understands the values (and shortcomings) of military, educational, and governmental realms. Recently, his strong leadership and progressive values have placed him among those being considered as a potential vice presidential pick for Kamala Harris, further elevating his national profile and influence.
  • Born on April 6, 1964, in West Point, Nebraska, Tim Walz grew up in the state’s rural northwestern area of Valentine. He entered the Army National Guard in 1981 at the age of 17, serving 24 years and retiring as a Command Sergeant Major in 2005. In 1989, he earned a bachelor’s in social science education from Chadron State College, and In 2001, he earned a master’s in educational leadership from Minnesota State University, Mankato.
    Walz was a high school teacher and coach. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006, representing Minnesota’s 1st congressional district and winning re-election every two years until he became governor in 2018. In the House, he focused largely on veterans issues and became known for his bipartisanship. As governor, he focused on police and firearm reform, cannabis legalization, and educational funding. He won re-election as governor in 2022.
  • When running for the House in 2006, Walz ran on a platform expressing support for same-sex marriage, which Minnesota banned in 1997. In 2011, he announced his support for the Respect for Marriage Act, which aimed to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and ensure federal and state recognition of same-sex marriages. The act became law in December 2022.
  • While working as a 35-year-old social studies teacher at Mankato West High School in 1999, Walz advised the school’s first gay-straight alliance (GSA) supporting LGBTQ+ students. On May 17, Gov. Walz signed legislation that stops libraries in the state from removing books “based solely on the viewpoint, content, message, idea, or opinion conveyed,” including LGBTQ+ themes. On the day of the law’s signing, Walz wrote, “Censorship has no place in our libraries,” Walz posted to X. “As a former teacher, I’m clear: We need to remember our history, not erase it.”
    While delivering his State of the State Address last April, Walz seemed to make a thinly veiled criticism of Florida’s “Don’t say gay” law banning classroom instruction on LGBTQ+ issues in schools. “Look, I’m only the governor of this great state. It’s not up to me how folks in places like Florida go about their business,” Walz said. “But I have to tell you, I’m pretty glad we do it our way and not their way. They’re banishing books from their schools. We’re banishing hunger from ours.”
  • In 2023, Walz signed a statewide bill banning so-called conversion therapy, the widely discredited and disavowed practice of attempting to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
    The conversion therapy ban forbids any medical or mental healthcare practitioner from offering such therapy to minors and “vulnerable” adults. It also forbids any entities from publishing advertising that refers to LGBTQ+ identities as “a mental disease, disorder or illness” or promises to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Practitioners who break the law could face discipline from the state’s health licensing boards.
    During the law’s signing ceremony, Walz stated, “Minnesota says, ‘Welcome to a state who values who you are and protects you for who you are.’”
  • The late ‘90s and early 2000s were a rough time to be a gay teen. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was still in effect, the U.S. was many years away from the Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage, Mathew Shepard was murdered in a horrific anti-gay hate crime that made national headlines in 1998, homophobic jokes were the norm on TV, and LGBTQ+ students were being harassed at schools all across the country.
    Today we are living through a moment when history is being made by a woman of color becoming the Democratic nominee for president of the United States for the first time — and by Kamala Harris' side is Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz, who has been breaking down barriers and standing up for the rights of the LGBTQ+ community since his days as a high school teacher in the '90s.
  • It was during this turbulent period that gay attorney and LGBTQ+ rights activist Jacob Reitan attended Mankato West High School in a Minnesota suburb where Walz taught social studies and coached the football team. “I did receive a fair bit of bullying,” Reitan told PRIDE. “My house was egged, my car window was smashed in the school parking lot, gay epithets were chalked in my driveway, a brick was thrown through my dad’s office window.”
    Born out of his “activist spirit” and his desire to come out of the closet and stop the bullying, Reitan founded his school’s first Gay Straight Alliance in 1999 with the help of the man who is now delivering stump speeches alongside presidential hopeful Harris.
  • When Mankato West High School principal John Barnett suggested Walz for the role of GSA faculty advisor, Reitan knew he’d be the right fit because of how accepting both Walz and his wife Gwen — who was also a dedicated high school teacher at the time — had always been. In fact, Gwen Walz was the third person Reitan ever told he was gay after first coming out to his sister and a close friend. “Gwen was my teacher in the 10th grade, and [she] started her 10th-grade class by saying, ‘This is a safe space for LGBTQ+ people.’ I’d never heard a teacher say positive things about gay people from the front of the classroom,” he said. Starting a group for LGBTQ+ students and their allies in a small city in the Midwest during the late '90s was no easy feat, but choosing the ultimate All-American teacher to lead it turned out to be a brilliant decision.
  • With Walz at the helm and the support of the well-respected school principal, the GSA didn’t face as much hate as they expected, but there were still detractors. Reitan recalls that every time the GSA put up posters advertising the group or one of their events, they would get pulled down and ripped up. Not to be deterred, the high school senior always picked up the pieces and eventually turned them into a mural emblazoned with the words, “Symbols of our hate.”
    The group also faced backlash when it came time for them to organize a Human Rights Week for the school, which focused on a different form of discrimination each day for a week, including gender identity, race, religion, sexual orientation, and disability.
    Both the school and Reitan’s parents received angry letters and phone calls from disgruntled parents who threatened to keep their teens home on the day sexual orientation would be highlighted, but Walz refused to back down and kowtow to closed-minded parents.
  • Minnesota has been the white whale for Republicans in the Trump era. And 2026 could be the year they finally break through — if President Donald Trump and one of the most prolific peddlers of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election don’t sink their chances.
    Republicans are growing optimistic about their chances of unseating Democratic Gov. Tim Walz next year, as he seeks a historic third term. But Trump’s increasingly caustic attacks on Walz and disparagement of Minnesota’s Somali community — and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s entrance into the gubernatorial race — could hurt Republicans’ chances of regaining ground in the state, some party strategists argue.
    “When the president comes in with a flamethrower and just throws that type of rhetoric, there’s no oxygen, and there’s no space for the Republican to offer suggestions and to be thoughtful in that space, because the rhetoric of the president just paints them into a corner,” said Michael Brodkorb, a former deputy chair of the Minnesota GOP who backed the Democratic ticket in 2024.
    Republicans have insisted they can be competitive statewide in the blue-leaning Minnesota ever since Trump lost Minnesota by less than 2 points in 2016. But since then, winning the state has beguiled both the president — who faced a 7-point loss in 2020 and a 4-point loss in 2024 — and Republicans in other statewide races, including two fairly comfortable wins for Walz in 2018 and 2022.
  • Still, Republicans see an opportunity to win back the Minnesota governor’s seat for the first time since 2006 by hammering Walz, who is running despite scrutiny into his oversight of state benefits and a star turn as the Democratic vice presidential nominee that put him in the crosshairs of Republicans across the country. At the same time, Trump has also used the arrests of some Somali immigrants in federal fraud cases to broadly characterize the state’s Somali population as criminals — leaning on his trademark use of divisive rhetoric that some Republicans worry will fall flat. That risk, insiders warn, could be exacerbated if Lindell, a Trump ally, wins the Republican nomination.
    “We’d be cooked,” said Dustin Grage, a Minnesota Republican strategist. “I’d be moving to Florida very shortly. We would lose pretty badly if Mike Lindell were to get the nomination.”
    Those close to the president strenuously disagree, arguing the state remains on the map. House GOP Whip Tom Emmer, the most high-profile Minnesota Republican and an ally of the president, said he’s spoken to Trump about the governor’s race and is confident that any of the 13 Republicans seeking the party’s nomination could defeat Walz.
  • In recent weeks, Trump has ramped up his efforts to link Walz to the abuse of government programs — while using incendiary rhetoric directed at the governor and the Somali community. In a social media post on Thanksgiving, he called Walz “seriously retarded” and accused Somali refugees of seeking to “prey” on Minnesotans. And at an early December rally in Pennsylvania, he again denigrated the Somali community while discussing “the great big Minnesota scam with one of the dumbest governors ever in history.”
    Emmer, who said he spoke with Trump about the governor’s race as early as July, said he believes the president recognizes an opportunity in Walz’s vulnerability. “I think the president knows that Tim Walz is the weakest he’s ever been in his political career,” Emmer said.
    Former Minnesota House Speaker Kurt Daudt, a Republican, said the fraud investigations are part of the risk for Walz in seeking a third consecutive term. “If you can lay out a case that, ‘Well, you’ve been elected now for eight years, and you haven’t fixed these problems,’ or ‘You haven’t accomplished what you said you were going to’ … it kind of makes it an easier case to say, ‘Maybe it’s time for someone new,’” Daudt said.
    But the rhetoric Trump is using to highlight the fraud may reframe the issue to the detriment of Walz’s Republican opponent, said Brodkorb,the former party official. He believes Minnesotans are eager to weigh ideas on immigration policy and how to tackle abuse of public programs.
    “The problem is when the president comes in and says things like, ‘Everyone in the entire Somali community is garbage,’” Brodkorb said.
  • In response to a request for comment to a Walz spokesperson, Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chair Richard Carlbom said in a statement that Walz “heads into reelection with a record focused squarely on working people and kitchen-table issues.”
    “While the GOP clown-car primary remains consumed by infighting and loyalty tests for Donald Trump, Minnesota families are falling behind as Republicans unleash higher grocery prices, skyrocketing health care bills, and giant tax breaks for billionaires,” Carlbom said. “Minnesotans see the difference — a governor delivering for working families, or Republicans delivering loyalty to Donald Trump and a Washington agenda that puts billionaires first.”
  • Walz has emerged as a vocal critic of the second Trump administration, prompting a feud between the two. After a Democratic lawmaker was killed by a gunman and a second was seriously injured earlier this year, Trump said he would not “waste time” calling the “whacked out” governor. Walz’s growing national profile both makes him a high-profile target in the 2026 midterms worthy of trying to defeat, GOP strategists say — but Trump’s intense focus on the race could also backfire given the state’s political makeup.
    “Having Donald Trump being active in the race for a particular Republican may not be helpful, but it would be extremely helpful to raise the attention on Tim Walz and his record here in the state,” Daudt said. And if Trump ends up throwing his weight behind Lindell — who conspired with Trump in 2020 to advance false claims that the presidential election was stolen — Republicans worry that could give Walz a clearer path to reelection.
  • Effective July 2025, teacher licensing rules passed last year in Minnesota under Democrat Gov. Tim Walz will ban practicing Christians, Jews, and Muslims from teaching in public schools. Walz is now the presidential running mate of current U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. His resume includes a stint as a high school social studies teacher who sponsored a student queer sex club in 1999. Starting next July, Minnesota agencies controlled by Walz appointees will require teacher license applicants to affirm transgenderism and race Marxism. Without a teaching license, individuals cannot work in Minnesota public schools, nor in the private schools that require such licenses.
    The latest version of the regulations requires teachers to “affirm” students’ “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” to receive a Minnesota teaching license:
    "The teacher fosters an environment that ensures student identities such as race/ethnicity, national origin, language, sex and gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, physical/developmental/emotional ability, socioeconomic class, and religious beliefs are historically and socially contextualized, affirmed, and incorporated into a learning environment where students are empowered to learn and contribute as their whole selves."
  • Walz’s first executive order as governor was to install a “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or DEI, council. Former Minnesota state legislator Allen Quist notes that “The radical Walz administration Department of Human Rights has also forced school districts to report student discipline by race and require equal outcomes (equity) in discipline. The results have been horrific chaos and violence.”
    During Walz’s governorship, student achievement in Minnesota has gone from among the best in the nation to declining more sharply than anywhere else in the nation, according to the Minneapolis-based Center for the American Experiment. The most recent scores show Minnesota fourth graders dipping below the national average in reading for the first time ever recorded on the well-respected Nation’s Report Card.
    Research has found for decades that there is no link between teacher certification and student achievement. People who enter teaching with a degree other than in education tend to have significantly higher personal and student academic performance.
  • Minnesota’s teacher requirements therefore force Christians, Muslims, Jews, and adherents to other religions to violate their faith and endanger their hopes of eternal life in order to work in government-run schools.
    Forcing people to testify to beliefs they don’t hold, often called compelled speech, is clearly unconstitutional, he said: “They’re essentially requiring people to affirm these ideas that they don’t really believe, in many cases, as a condition of being a public school teacher or being part of a program to be a licensed public school teacher. You can’t force that kind of speech, you can’t require adherence to ideas that aren’t believed.”
    The 13-member board that made these changes is appointed by the governor, whom for the last six years has been Walz. So, Walz is poised to make similar bigoted, totalitarian, and unconstitutional policies across the United States should he be elected vice president.
  • Mr. Walz brought passion every day. He loved to coach. He loved to teach. [As for football,] if you don’t do your job, there’s literally a hole there for them to run the ball through. Tim, he just had a way of not making you feel bad but making you want to do better.
  • In an apparent swipe at Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the recipients said they believe that "fabricating military service is beneath the dignity of a veteran and demeaning to those who have served honorably in the Armed Forces." Walz had come under fire for his service in the Minnesota National Guard. He retired in 2005 after 24 years of service ahead of his battalion being deployed to Iraq. He’s been faced with accusations of "stolen valor," with some saying he retired early and did not complete trainings.
    The recipients also said they believe that "the enemies of freedom must be defeated," and that "the flag is a powerful symbol of freedom."
    "We believe the United States of America is the greatest nation the world has ever imagined. We believe in mutually pledging to every American our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor," they wrote. "We believe in Donald Trump."
    Meanwhile, the Harris-Walz campaign touted in September the endorsements from "a bipartisan group of more than 700 national security leaders and former military officials."
    The Harris-Walz campaign declined to comment on the Trump endorsements when reached Friday by Fox News Digital.
  • Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota announced on Monday that he's dropping his bid for a third term as governor amid stinging criticism of the unsuccessful 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee's handling of his state's massive welfare assistance fraud scandal. "The political gamesmanship we’re seeing from Republicans is only making that fight harder to win," Walz charged in a statement. "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," the governor added. "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," the governor announced.Walz launched his bid for a third four-year term as Minnesota governor in September, but in recent weeks has been facing a barrage of incoming political fire from President Donald Trump and Republicans, and some Democrats, over the large-scale theft in a state that has long prided itself on good governance.
  • More than 90 people — most from Minnesota's large Somali community — have been charged since 2022 in what has been described as the nation's largest COVID-era scheme. How much money has been stolen through alleged money laundering operations involving fraudulent meal and housing programs, daycare centers, and Medicaid services is still being tabulated. But the U.S. attorney in Minnesota said the scope of the fraud could exceed $1 billion and rise to as high as $9 billion.
    Prosecutors said that some of the dozens that have already pleaded guilty in the case used the money to buy luxury cars, real estate, jewelry and international vacations, with some of the funds also sent overseas and potentially into the hands of Islamic terrorists.
    "This is on my watch, I am accountable for this and, more importantly, I am the one that will fix it," Walz told reporters last month, as he took responsibility for the scandal. The governor took actions to stop some of the suspected fraudulent payments, and ordered an outside audit of Medicaid billing in the state. But Trump repeatedly blasted Walz as "incompetent" and, during Thanksgiving, used a slur for developmentally disabled people to describe the governor.
    The scandal, which grabbed plenty of national attention over the past two months, went viral the past few weeks following the release of a video by 23-year-old YouTube content creator Nick Shirley, who alleged widespread fraud at Somali-run daycare centers. Days later, the Trump administration froze federal child-care funding to Minnesota.
  • Reactions quickly began to pour in following the Walz announcement. "Good riddance," Republican House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who represents Minnesota's 6th Congressional District, said in a statement. Minnesota Republican state Rep. Kristin Robbins, a candidate for governor, released a statement saying, "Tim Walz and his staggering fraud could not outrun our investigations and the momentum we have in this race. He knows he will lose in November, and would rather give up than take responsibility. Anyone Walz handpicks to run for governor will own the fraud and failures of this administration. Our campaign is building the coalition necessary to stop the fraud, protect our kids, and make Minnesota prosper. As Governor, I will dismantle the years of fraud Democrats allowed and ensure our tax dollars work for Minnesotans."
    Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, another leading Republican gubernatorial candidate, took to social media to argue, "If Democrats think they can sweep Minnesota’s fraud scandal away by swapping out Tim Walz, they are wrong." "We need transformational change across state government that only comes with a Republican governor. I will deliver that no matter who the Democrats decide to run," Demuth emphasized.
    But Democratic Governors Association (DGA) and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said in a statement, "No matter who decides to run or how much national Republicans want to spend, the DGA remains very confident Minnesotans will elect another strong Democratic governor this November." And Besehar praised Walz, a former DGA chair, as "a true leader who has delivered results that will make life better for Minnesota workers and families for years to come."
  • The 61-year-old Walz was raised in rural Nebraska and enlisted in the Army National Guard in 1981, soon after graduating from high school. Walz returned to Nebraska to attend Chadron State College, where he graduated in 1989 with a degree in social science education. He taught English and American History in China for one year through a program at Harvard University before being hired in 1990 as a high school teacher and football and basketball coach in Nebraska. Six years later, he moved to Mankato, Minnesota, to teach geography at Mankato West High. Waltz was deployed to Italy to support Operation Enduring Freedom in 2003 before retiring two years later from the National Guard at the rank of command sergeant major. He was elected to the House in 2006 and re-elected five times, representing Minnesota's 1st Congressional District, a mostly rural district covering the southern part of the state that includes a number of midsize cities.
    During his last two years on Capitol Hill, he served as ranking member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. Walz won election as governor in 2018 and re-election four years later. But Walz was unknown to many Americans when then-Vice President Kamala Harris chose the Minnesota governor as her running mate in the summer of 2024, soon after she replaced then-President Joe Biden as the Democrats' presidential nominee. Walz, during his three months as running mate, visually and vocally embraced the traditional role of political attack dog that has long been associated with vice presidential nominees. But Harris and Walz fell short, losing the November 2024 election to Trump and now-Vice President JD Vance, as the Democratic Party ticket was swept in all seven crucial battleground states.
  • Federal prosecutors unveiled charges Thursday against another six people, accusing them of defrauding public assistance programs in Minnesota — including two men they allege traveled to the state for that express purpose.
    The latest indictments add fuel to a scandal that has now led to charges against more than 90 people who have been accused, and in many cases convicted, of bilking hundreds of millions of dollars from the Midwestern state, putting Gov. Tim Walz's administration in the hot seat and drawing attacks from President Trump. Thursday's charges focus on housing assistance and autism services. And the pandemic-era food aid fraud case that set off the scandal is still brewing.
  • Minnesota is far from the only state that has grappled with allegations of public assistance fraud, especially scams targeting pandemic aid funds. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said Minnesota faces a particularly large problem, pointing to 14 different Medicaid programs that the state has flagged for "significant fraud problems." He suggested total losses could reach into the billions.
    "The fraud is not small. It isn't isolated. The magnitude cannot be overstated," Thompson said at a press conference Thursday. "What we see in Minnesota is not a handful of bad actors committing crimes. It's a staggering, industrial-scale fraud."
    Walz, whose administration has faced scrutiny for its handling of the issue, has vowed to crack down. Meanwhile, Mr. Trump has sharply criticized Minnesota — and he's lashed out at the state's large Somali-American community as most, but not all, of the defendants are of Somali descent.
  • Walz launched a new fraud prevention program on Dec. 12, led by a former FBI agent. He applauded the new federal charges on Thursday. "This is exactly the type of strong action we need from prosecutors to ensure fraudsters are put behind bars," Walz said in a statement. "We will not tolerate fraud, and we will continue to work with federal partners to ensure fraud is stopped and fraudsters are caught."
    James Clark, inspector general of the Minnesota Department of Human Services, said in a statement Thursday the agency "has been moving more aggressively than ever to suspend payments where we see evidence of fraud." He also urged federal officials to share information with the agency, which oversees many of the programs that were hit by fraud allegations. "If there is evidence of Medicaid fraud, the state should be given the information so DHS can slam the door shut on payments to those individuals and businesses," Clark said.
  • A straight, football-coaching national guardsman wasn’t the LGBT+ ally that Seth Elliot Meyer expected. But Meyer, who came out as queer in his freshman year of high school in 2000, admits he was wrong about Tim Walz. “I just sort of naively believed that someone who was a big, masculine dude with a deep voice was never someone who’s going to be on my side,” Meyer says.
    “As much as those younger students who were courageous enough to be out in those years, it was just as important to have those very kind of ‘normal,’ strong, straight, masculine allies backing us up.”
  • Before he was governor of Minnesota, before he was a member of Congress, and before he was a candidate for the next vice president of the United States, he was “Mr Walz,” a geography teacher at Mankato West High School, roughly 80 miles south of Minneapolis.
    In 1999, Walz agreed to be the faculty adviser for the school’s first ever gay-straight alliance (GSA). Walz and his wife Gwen, who also taught at the school, were a refuge for their LGBT+ students, alumni tell The Independent. Dozens of those former students are now campaigning for him to reach the White House.
  • Like, I think that Tim Walz is a great guy and I think he's got a lot of good political instincts, and I think he did the best he could, given the situation he was in. But there is a huge difference between being an outsider who steps in to offer a populist message to the American people and being a, like, friendly Midwestern left-leaning governor Democrat who gets picked as a VP, but is still ultimately beholden to the messaging and policies of your neoliberal President-- or, Presidential candidate.
  • Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota has faced fresh scrutiny over his military service, and how he has characterized his record, in the weeks since he was selected as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate.
    The attacks, spearheaded by his rival for the vice presidency who himself is a veteran, JD Vance, have dogged him since he first ran for Congress nearly two decades ago. Mr. Walz has forcefully defended his time in the Army National Guard. “I am damn proud of my service to this country,” Mr. Walz said this month. “And I firmly believe you should never denigrate another person’s service record.”
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