Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz holds a news conference at the Minnesota State Capitol on Monday, Jan. 5, 2026, in St. Paul, Minn.Kerem Yucel/Minnesota Public Radio/AP

Minnesotans who lost years of access to state-administered social services amid a series of fraud scandals under Gov. Tim Walz’s watch are now facing federal cuts to many of those same services by the Trump administration.

Trump has made Walz the face of Minnesota’s fraud, boosting unsubstantiated conspiracy theories on Truth Social—one which accuses Walz of being behind the murders of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, last summer.

While the conspiracies are false, Minnesota is being investigated for real fraud. The first case was over Feeding Our Future, a Minnesota nonprofit that claimed to be distributing meals to schoolchildren during the Covid pandemic. Instead, a federal investigation found that the group defrauded the government out of hundreds of millions of dollars, spending money that was meant for children on cars, houses, and real estate projects outside of Kenya and Turkey.

The investigation also uncovered fraud in programs assisting people at risk of homelessness and therapy for children with autism.

According to prosecutors, 78 of the 86 people........

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