Stipulated in advance: this next thing is my theory. You can call it a "conspiracy theory" if you'd like. You would be right; it's a theory, and it involves a conspiracy.
Technically, it's two theories. We'll come back to that.
If you're not in Minnesota, what's your impression of Minneapolis for the past three months?
The hubbub over ICE, right? The law enforcement surge, and the counter-surge of protests (and money from Big Left to support those protests) in response?
Remember Nick Shirey? "Quality Learing Center"? Up to inne billion dollars in Medicare fraud and counting? Wave after wave of scandals?
They've probably fallen off your radar, what with all the brouhaha over ICE - right?
That's theory number one - that's why Minnesota's "progressive" establishment called in all these people, all that money, and did all that organizing - to deflect publicity and attention away from all that fraud.
Put a pin in that. We'll come back to that.
This past week, Vice President Vance and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid chief Dr. Mehmet Oz announced that the Feds were going to withhold $259 million in Medicare funding until MInnesota cleans up its act.
JD Vance announced on Wednesday that the Trump administration would “temporarily halt” more than a quarter-billion dollars in Medicaid reimbursements to the state of Minnesota, escalating Donald Trump’s newly announced “war on fraud”.
Vance said the action was to ensure Minnesota was “a good steward of the American people’s tax money”, part of its crackdown on the state following a fraud scandal linked to residents of the Somali community in Minneapolis, which prompted the administration to send thousands of federal immigration agents into Minneapolis and that resulted in the deaths of two US citizens and widespread protests.
“What we’re doing is we are stopping the federal payments that will go to the state government until the state government takes its obligations seriously to stop the fraud that’s being perpetrated against the American taxpayer,” the vice-president said at a press conference in Washington, where he was joined by Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid.
I have to admit - after this past four years of watching ever-escalating fraud estimates here in Minnesota, I saw a figure like $259 million and thought "that's it? Get back to me when we're talking real money". Which is exactly why scandals like Minnesota's are so corrosive to public trust; the bar for corruption even getting noticed just keeps getting higher and higher.
But the response from the Minnesota DFL (Democrats) was interesting - and speaks to my second theory (or "conspiracy" theory) above; the DFL is going to try to conflate the ICE protests and the investigation of fraud in the minds of Minnesota voters.
Evidence for this theory? Governor Walz's speech last Thursday:
The Trump administration's Medicaid funding freeze in Minnesota is not only cruel, it's not even a real solution to fighting fraud.
— Minnesota House DFL (@mnhouseDFL) February 26, 2026
We saw them use false pretenses to launch Operation Metro Surge, and now they're doing it again to take health care from children and the elderly. pic.twitter.com/kyKVdAqzVm
The skills the Minnesota DFL lacks in enforcing laws or managing money, they make up for in logrolling low-information voters into making stupid comparisons. In 2012, they managed to link voting against voter ID to voting for same sex marriage; both were popular measures, both would likely have passed if the election were held in a vacuum - but the DFL and its various non-profits (including one led by Richard Carlbom, who is now the DFL's executive director) managed to get a majority of Minnesota voters to mentally equate voting against voter ID - a measure with supermajority popularity nationwide, even among Democrats - with voting for same sex marriage.
And I think they're trying to do the same here: equate immigration enforcement (nationally popular, but a flash point locally) with dealing with fraud, and get Minnesota's infamously gullible voters to throw the baby out with the proverbial bathwater.
Those are my theories. I'm sticking by 'em.
