After losing his bid for the vice presidency late in 2024, Minnesota’s far-left governor is ditching his reelection efforts for his current office in the face of allegations of widespread fraud and corruption.

In September, Tim Walz (D) announced he would be running for a third term as governor of Minnesota, but reversed course in a press conference Monday, admitting that the Somali fraud scandal in his state has effectively ended his political career. “For the last several years, an organized group of criminals have sought to take advantage of our state’s generosity. And even as we make progress in the fight against the fraudsters, we now see an organized group of political actors seeking to take advantage of the crisis,” Walz said, faulting President Donald Trump and his administration for shining a light on the billions of dollars of fraud committed by Somali immigrants in Minnesota. “They want to poison our people against each other by attacking our neighbors. And, ultimately, they want to take away much of what makes Minnesota the best place in America to raise a family.”

“Make no mistake: We should be concerned about fraud in our state government. We cannot effectively deliver programs and services if we can’t earn the public’s trust,” said Walz, who was the failed Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2024. “A single taxpayer dollar wasted on fraud is a dollar too much to tolerate. And while there’s a role to play for everyone — from the legislature to prosecutors to insurance companies to local and county government — the buck stops with me,” he continued.

Previously, a coalition of nearly 500 employees from Minnesota’s Department of Human Services reported that Walz “systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports. Instead of partnership, we got the full weight of retaliation by Tim Walz” and other state Democrats. The state employees further alleged that Walz rewarded officials for covering fraud and discrediting fraud reports. “These same leaders are not qualified for their jobs, instead getting leadership jobs via Tim Walz’s friendship so state government were left floundering.”

In his Monday statement, Walz claimed that he was withdrawing his reelection bid due to Republicans’ politicization of the fraud scandal, rather than the allegations that he himself had enabled said fraud. “We’ve got the President of the United States demonizing our Somali neighbors and wrongly confiscating childcare funding that Minnesotans rely on. It is disgusting. And it is dangerous. Republicans are playing politics with the future of our state. And it’s shameful,” he said, referring to the Trump administration’s decision to withhold federal child care funding until Walz complies with a federal investigation into the fraud, particularly the fraudulent operation of nonexistent day care centers. “I cannot abide the actions of the political leadership in Washington — these opportunists who are willing to hurt our people to score a few cheap points,” the retiring governor continued. “They and their allies have no intention of helping us solve the problem — and every intention of profiting off of it.”

“Which brings me to this: 2026 is an election year. And election years have a way of ramping up the politics at a time when we simply can’t afford more politics. In September, I announced that I would run for a historic third term as Minnesota’s Governor,” Walz stated. “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. 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,” he continued. “So I’ve decided to step out of the race and let others worry about the election while I focus on the work.”

Walz’s announcement comes on the heels of a 42-minute video exposé by independent journalist Nick Shirley examining the fraud perpetrated by Minnesota’s Somali community. Shirley claimed to have uncovered over $110 million of fraudulent payouts in one day, largely going to Somali-run day care centers, as well as health care centers and other “ghost” businesses. According to Shirley’s videos, Somali immigrants in Minnesota set up numerous “day care” centers, some of which were merely empty buildings, in order to defraud millions of dollars in meal funding, either artificially inflating the number of meals administered or outright falsifying numbers in order to claim reimbursements. Some of the “day care” centers, Shirley reported, were actually empty.

Vice President J.D. Vance praised Shirley’s reporting, saying that the “dude has done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the” Pulitzer Prize in 2024. The vice president, who has long linked issues like unaffordable cost of living or a crippled housing market to mass immigration, further commented, “What’s happening in Minnesota is a microcosm of the immigriation [sic] fraud in our system. Politicans [sic] like it because they get power. Welfare cheats like it because they get rich. But it’s a zero sum game, and they’re stealing both money and political power from Minnesotans.”

The Minnesota Star Tribune investigated the 10 Somali-run “day care” centers featured in Shirley’s video and reported that they only found children in four of the centers. Furthermore, seven of the eight facilities with publicly available records have been “cited by the state for violations over the past four years, with some cited dozens of times,” the local outlet reported.

Over the past several months, multiple reports have surfaced detailing fraud committed by Somali immigrants. Welfare programs have been raided for hundreds of millions of dollars, with Trump estimating that Somali fraud has siphoned as much as $19 billion from American taxpayers. “The Somalians are ripping off our country to the tune of — it looks like $19 billion,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One over the weekend. “But that’s only what they can find. So usually, when you’re looking at $19 [billion], that would mean it could be $50 [billion], but the numbers are astronomical.”

One of the largest of the Somali fraud schemes uncovered so far has been the Feeding Our Future program, which defrauded the federal government of nearly a half billion dollars in COVID-19 relief funds. According to the New York Post, Somali fraudsters convicted in the Feeding Our Future scam spent their ill-gotten millions purchasing luxury apartment buildings, vacation resorts, and real estate in Kenya and Turkey. The “mastermind” behind the scheme, Aimee Bock, would spend millions on her then-boyfriend, a Somali immigrant who goes by the name Empress Malcolm Watson, Jr. Watson was paid a $1 million annual salary for a fake job at a fake firm and the pair sank hundreds of thousands of illegally-obtained taxpayer dollars on vacations to places like Las Vegas and renting luxury vehicles such as Rolls Royces and Lamborghinis. Watson, who was charged with multiple tax crimes in September, reportedly spent nearly $700,000 on jewelry, designer clothes and bags, and cars.

“It’s almost not even believable,” Trump said of the scale of fraud in Walz’s Minnesota. In a Truth Social post responding to news that Walz will not seek reelection, the president said that Walz’s political career was ending because “he was caught, REDHANDED … stealing Tens of Billions of Taxpayer Dollars.” He continued, “I feel certain the facts will come out, and they will reveal a seriously unscrupulous, and rich, group of ‘SLIMEBALLS.’ Governor Walz has destroyed the State of Minnesota…” The president further faulted Governors Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.), J.B. Pritzker (D-Ill.), and Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.) for contributing to the decline of the U.S. in recent years.

The president has also implicated Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a Somali immigrant representing much of Minneapolis, in the widespread Somali fraud. Speaking to reporters, he described the foreign-born congresswoman as “a total crook,” adding, “She’s one of the leaders of it.”