Federal Gov’t to Withhold $260 Million in Aid to Minnesota Until Tim Walz Cleans His State Up

Until Minnesota learns to get fraud under control, it can count on getting a whole lot less Medicaid funds.

In an announcement that tracks with President Donald Trump’s promise to stop needless fraud from sapping taxpayer money in the State of the Union — and his appointment of Vice President J.D. Vance to lead the fight against it — Vance said Wednesday night that the administration would be withholding roughly $260 million in federal funds from Minnesota.

The state was at the center of a massive affinity fraud scheme which likely cost taxpayers billions of dollars and revolved around the Somali community in the state.

“We have decided to temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding that are going to the state of Minnesota in order to ensure that the state of Minnesota takes its obligations seriously to be good stewards of the American people’s tax money,” Vance said at a media briefing.

“What this means is that, first of all, the providers on the ground in Minnesota have actually already been paid,” he said.

“What we’re doing is we’re stopping the federal payments that are going to the state government until the state government takes its obligations seriously to stop the fraud that’s being perpetrated against the American taxpayer.”

HUGE: JD Vance announces $260 million Medicaid funding freeze for Minnesota.

The freeze targets the MN government, not providers, and will remain in effect until the state “takes its obligations seriously to stop the fraud.”

H/T: @nicksortor pic.twitter.com/uzlRe2Cpeq

— The Western Journal (@WesternJournalX) February 26, 2026

Minnesota Democrat Gov. Tim Walz, whose run for a third term was effectively dismantled by the fallout from the Medicaid fraud scandal in his state, said that Vance’s move “has nothing to do with fraud” and instead accused the administration of “shooting protesters and arresting children” instead of dealing with it.

“This is a campaign of retribution. Trump is weaponizing the entirety of the federal government to punish blue states like Minnesota,” Walz said in a social media post.

“These cuts will be devastating for veterans, families with young kids, folks with disabilities, and working people across our state.”

This is a campaign of retribution. Trump is weaponizing the entirety of the federal government to punish blue states like Minnesota.

These cuts will be devastating for veterans, families with young kids, folks with disabilities, and working people across our state.

— Governor Tim Walz (@GovTimWalz) February 25, 2026

If Walz cared enough about this, of course, he and other politicians in power in his blue state had every opportunity to stop this fraud themselves.

Keep in mind that the cascade of entitlement scandals that engulfed his state in chaos wasn’t just flagged beginning late last year.

As early as 2020, the Minnesota Department of Education flagged the biggest offender in the social services fraud — Feeding Our Future — for implausibly high new invoices. The charity effectively cowed the state by threatening to sue on discriminatory grounds.

This more or less held investigations at bay until a 2022 whistleblower started the dominoes falling. Even then, state Democrats didn’t do a whole heck of a lot. In fact, it’s only when this started going viral late last year that anyone seemed to even want to address the issue, in no small part because people were getting outraged.

And even then, Walz’s priorities were misplaced. He seemed more concerned that Donald Trump had called him “seriously retarded” in a social media post than actually staunching the fraud bleeding out taxpayer dollars.

Now, he’s calling this “a campaign of retribution.” I think the word he was looking for was “responsibility.”

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