In the Star Tribune Morning Hot Dish newsletter this morning, politics reporter Ryan Faircloth covers Tim Walz’s wild weekend under the headline “Minnesota fraud cases get national attention.” Bill Glahn would translate that as “Producing more news than can be consumed locally.” This is Faircloth’s summary (links omitted):
Good morning. DFL Gov. Tim Walz came under intense scrutiny last week as the national spotlight turned toward Minnesota and the fraud cases that have unfolded during his administration.
A front-page report from the New York Times, “How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Soe cial Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch,” highlighted one of the DFL governor’s top vulnerabilities as he heads into his re-election campaign. The report cites critics of the Walz administration who said “the fraud persisted partly because state officials were fearful of alienating the Somali community in Minnesota.”
Ryan Pacyga, a lawyer who has represented several defendants in the fraud cases, told the New York Times that some “became convinced that state agencies were tolerating, if not tacitly allowing, the fraud.”
“No one was doing anything about the red flags,” he said. “It was like someone was stealing money from the cookie jar and they kept refilling it.”
In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Walz was asked whether he takes responsibility for failing to stop fraud in the state.
“I take responsibility for putting people in jail,” Walz answered. “Governors don’t get to just talk theoretically, we have to solve problems. And I will note, it’s not just Somalis. Minnesota is a generous state, Minnesota is a prosperous state, a well-run state. We’re AAA bond rated. But that attracts criminals. Those people are going to jail. We’re doing everything we can. But to demonize an entire community on the actions of a few? It’s lazy.”
President Donald Trump has launched attacks against the state’s Somali community over the fraud cases.
Faircloth omits any mention of Walz’s failure to “put any people in jail” or any explanation why Trump might have called out Minnesota’s Somali community. I try to tell “the rest of the story” in the adjacent post.
The X post bbelow depicts the Star Tribune team on its way to cover the 2024 Democratic convention that nominated Tim Walz as Harris’s vice-presidential running mate. They were pretty spun up about it. A reminder: the publisher of the Star Tribune is a former Walz administration official.
