Minnesota faces weight of Trump administration actions on multiple fronts
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Minnesota’s government and its immigrant communities are being put into a vise by President Donald Trump and his federal agencies amid an increasingly ugly rift between him and Democratic Gov. Tim Walz.
Within a short span, at least four federal agencies opened investigations into actions by Walz’s administration or threatened to hold back federal money that would come to the state. Trump used disparaging language while calling for the deportation of people of Somali descent living in Minnesota, despite the fact most have citizenship or other legal status.
Meanwhile, Walz and Trump traded insults over each other’s competency.
"I think that Walz is a grossly incompetent man. There's something wrong with him," Trump said during a White House cabinet meeting Tuesday.
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Walz spoke about Trump just hours earlier in Minneapolis.
“This is a president in spiral doing nothing to make life cheaper for Minnesotans or Americans,” Walz said, calling it a “strange coincidence” that it has followed after calls for the president to release records about recent medical procedures.
What transpired this week?
The Trump administration almost in tandem announced a series of investigations into Minnesota and actions that could impact money flowing to the state.
On Monday, the U.S. Department of Treasury announced it would launch an investigation to determine whether taxpayer money went to terrorist group Al-Shabab. It's a response to unverified allegations raised by a publication associated with conservative think tank.
Walz said he’s open to the probe but questioned its timing.
“We certainly welcome those investigations,” he said at an unrelated news conference. “I think they do an investigation. Find out. But I don't think anybody in here really believes their motive and their timing is about actually doing something about this.”
Also on Monday, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy gave Minnesota 30 days to revoke driver’s licenses from nondomiciled commercial drivers who he said weren’t eligible to have them. He threatened to pull $30 million in federal transportation funding to the state if Minnesota officials failed to comply.
On Tuesday, Kelly Loeffler, administrator of the federal Small Business Administration, said she would investigate the “network of Somali organizations and executives” charged in connection with fraud in the Feeding Our Future program. She said she would probe whether they received other state or federal funding that could’ve been misused.
Tuesday morning, The New York Times reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is sending around 100 agents and officers to the Twin Cities to begin an intensive operation targeting undocumented Somali immigrants.
During a White House Cabinet meeting later Tuesday, Trump and some cabinet officials lobbed criticisms at Walz and his handling of several social services fraud cases in Minnesota. Those comments included his xenophobic remarks about the state’s Somali community.
“They contribute nothing,” Trump said as he repeatedly emphasized, “we don’t want them in our country.”
As part of that meeting, Department of Homeland Security Security Kristi Noem informed Trump she had begun to follow up on his request that she “look into Minnesota and their fraud on visas.”
Noem promised Trump her agency would remove those who might have falsified visa applications and then alluded to the 2026 election where “we only put people in leadership positions in this country that love this country and have its back.”
What led up to it?
Last week, Trump posted on social media saying Somali gangs were taking over Minnesota — and called Walz a derogatory term used for people with intellectual disabilities. The DFL governor reposted an clip of him asking when the White House would release Trump’s MRI results.
In an interview Sunday with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Walz said the president’s comments were harmful. He said the state is taking steps to address and prevent fraud in state government programs.
"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,” Walz said. “But to demonize an entire community on the actions of a few, it's lazy."
What are the stakes?
The reported immigration operation has many on edge and Twin Cities leaders preparing for possible confrontations. The mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul and other civic leaders joined together Tuesday for a press conference seeking to calm fears and advise people of their rights and resources available to them.
State Sen. Zaynab Mohamed, a Minneapolis Democrat, said it was “harassment of peaceful American citizens trying to go about their day” and amounted to demonization of immigrants and Muslims to distract from more-pressing problems in the country.
When it comes to the transportation threat, Minnesota could stand to lose federal funding if it fails to comply with the Trump administration's demands over culling driver’s licenses from some commercial drivers.
And the ongoing spat could have ramifications around how Minnesotans, and people around the country, view Trump and Walz.
How does this fit into the 2026 election campaign?
Minnesota has been a pet political project of Trump going back to 2016, when he came within 2 percentage points of flipping a state with the nation’s longest streak of backing Democrats in presidential races.
Trump put a lot of time and money into Minnesota in 2020 but lost by roughly 7 percentage points. He didn’t focus as intently on the state in 2024, when Walz was on the Democratic ticket as the vice presidential candidate. The ticket of Kamala Harris and Walz defeated Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, in the state by about 4 percentage points.
Walz, for his part, is trying to pull off an unprecedented feat by winning a third-consecutive, four-year term in 2026. He’s got his work cut out for him, with a big field of Republicans sensing opportunity and the fraud issue dogging him at every turn.
Walz is churning out campaign appeals, social media posts and other remarks about how he’s standing up to Trump in hopes of making 2026 a referendum on the president rather than him as the incumbent on the ballot. A campaign fundraising appeal sent Tuesday underscores that strategy: “Donald Trump is coming for Minnesota” reads the subject line.
How are Minnesota Republicans reacting?
Republicans have cheered on the Trump administration actions to diminish Walz. They hope he’ll stir up his base for them next year and perhaps bring a campaign donation windfall to the state as well.
Several Republican candidates for governor have reposted and amplified the administration’s response to fraud in Minnesota and criticism of Walz.
Those responses have included Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, State Rep. Kristin Robbins and businessman Kendall Qualls who wrote, “Under Tim Walz, BILLIONS has been lost to fraud and Minnesotans are footing the bill once again. Tim Walz should resign in disgrace,” in a social media post.
They have said the focus on investigating fraud involving federal pass-through dollars is overdue.
“Minnesotans are fortunate we have a president and a federal government who take claims like this seriously — especially since we know our current governor and his agency heads do not,” Demuth wrote on X late Monday.
