Over the last couple of months, the Minnesota fraud scandal has exploded from a local news story to perhaps the number one story in the national (and even international) news. We at American Experiment have been in the middle of the storm. One tweet we did about the Feeding Our Future scandal that was retweeted by Libs of TikTok, Chris Rufo, Elon Musk and many others got 47 million views on X alone.

The scandal has now expanded far beyond Feeding Our Future. Joe Thompson, the Assistant U.S. Attorney who has prosecuted the fraud cases, has said publicly that at least half of all spending on Minnesota Medicaid programs is fraudulent. That would be around $9 billion. And there are other welfare programs that are neither Feeding Our Future (administered by the Department of Education) nor Medicaid. Child care centers, for example.

The latest fraud bombshell is a video by a young YouTuber named Nick Shirley. Shirley travels around doing interviews of various kinds; he has been to Paris and New York, and probably other places, as well as Minnesota. I don’t know Shirley, but I have no reason to doubt that his videos are genuine:

Prosecute @GovTimWalz https://t.co/oSQprdo292

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 27, 2025

Shirley went to one Minnesota child care center after another, all of them Somali-owned. From public records, he would point out that a particular day care center had gotten, say, $3 million in state funding, and supposedly was caring for 90 kids. But one after another “day care center” turned out to be more or less deserted. No kids in sight, and Shirley and his companion being threatened if they didn’t go away. Even when Shirley said he was looking for a day care in which to enroll his son. Shirley’s video has gotten many millions of views across the country and around the world.

So in a sense, we are back where we began. At least a decade ago, there were criminal prosecutions arising out of child care fraud among Minnesota Somalis. The dodge was simple, and it has never changed: a Somali would purport to set up a day care center and would put in for state funding. He or she would claim to have a certain number of children enrolled, most or all of whom were fictitious. A number of Somalis went to prison, years ago, but it didn’t deter others from carrying out similar frauds, on a grander scale, across the entire spectrum of state welfare spending. The total stolen on Tim Walz’s watch surely exceeds $10 billion.

With the incompetence (or worse) of Tim Walz’s administration being the number one news story in the country, my non-Minnesota friends ask me: “Tim Walz couldn’t possibly be re-elected. Could he?”

Let’s first dispose of any criminal issue. Elon Musk, in the tweet embedded above, urges that Walz be prosecuted. But there is no evidence that he, or other members of his administration, have committed crimes. Rather, they have perpetrated the dodge that has been a mainstay of the Democratic Party for going on 100 years: buying votes with other people’s money. They have pumped billions of dollars into Minnesota’s relatively small (100,000-150,000) and insular Somali community, and by doing so have created a solid and reliable voting bloc that has helped to swing one election after another their way. Why should they care if half or more of those billions of dollars were fraudulent? Criminal or not, the spending bought votes.

Did Tim Walz know the frauds were going on? Of course. Even Walz isn’t that stupid. But absent taking bribes, of which there is zero evidence, he has not committed a crime.

That said, Walz’s standing with Minnesota voters is teetering on the edge. Conventional polling has shown him around even in approval/disapproval, with approval a little under 50%. Not great, but not hopeless. I think the most meaningful poll is the one that was conducted for American Experiment by Meeting Street Insights and published here. We found a very high level of awareness of the frauds among Minnesota voters, and also a high level of concern: 68% said that fraud would play a role in their vote for governor in 2026, with 50% saying it would play a major role.

As for Tim Walz, 56% said he did not do enough to prevent fraud, while 34%–loyal Democrats!–said he has done enough. More significantly, by 61% to 39%, suburban voters–in Minnesota as in most states, where elections turn–say Walz hasn’t done enough to prevent fraud.

We did that polling in September, before Minnesota turned into a national and international joke. Walz’s numbers would undoubtedly be worse today.

So what are his prospects for re-election? To begin with, he is running for a third term, which is always hard and is unprecedented in Minnesota. Even before the scandals went nuclear, most Minnesotans were telling pollsters that they preferred that Walz not run again.

So will he get the DFL nomination, or will he be forced out, like Joe Biden? Both the New York Times and the Washington Post ran articles on the frauds that were severely critical of Walz. That was taken by many as a sign that national Democrats would like to see him go. It could happen, especially because the DFL raises most of its money outside of Minnesota. JB Pritzker, the Governor of Illinois, is the DFL’s number one donor. If he and some other national Democrats (George Clooney, maybe?) leaned heavily on Walz to withdraw, it might work.

One problem is that the Democrats don’t have a great candidate waiting in the wings. Walz’s lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan, is running for our open Senate seat. And of course, she is tarred by the scandals as much as Walz. Who else is there? Maybe Steve Simon, our colorless Secretary of State, who has devoted his term in office to facilitating voter fraud. Republicans would probably like to see voter fraud added to the issue mix along with all the other scandals. The Democrats’ strongest candidate would be Representative Angie Craig, who has the reputation of being a moderate, even though she votes the same as all other House Democrats. But she is not popular with the DFL base that will choose the nominee.

I estimate that there is a 40% chance that Walz will either opt not to run again–i.e., if his own polls are looking hopeless–or will be forced out of the race against his will.

What if the Democrats decide they don’t have a better option, the polls aren’t looking so bad, and they conclude they may as well try to run the rapids with Walz? Many observers around the country assume it is inconceivable that he could win, but they likely are not familiar with Minnesota voters. The loyalty of most Minnesota Democrats to their party is fanatical. There is nothing Walz could do to lose their votes. His strategy will be to run against Donald Trump, and say as little as possible about his own eight years in office. Is that too lame to work? We will see.

A lot depends, of course, on whom the Republicans nominate for governor. There are quite a few hopefuls on the Republican side, of whom perhaps five are serious candidates. I think there are at least two who would probably beat Walz. Sadly, however, Minnesota Republicans do not have a good track record when it comes to nominating their best candidates.

We should not overlook the fact that, scandals apart, Tim Walz’s record in office has been horrific. Under his leadership, Minnesota has become, for the first time in its history, an economically below-average state. Crime has spiked. The downtowns of both Minneapolis and St. Paul are largely abandoned. Our schools have declined badly, with a majority of students no longer able to either read or write at grade level. (These issues are getting some attention, too. A video that American Experiment released last week exposing the anti-American, racist content of the Walz administration’s Ethnic Studies curriculum, retweeted by Elon Musk among others, has gotten tens of millions of views.) And on top of those issues we can now add the multi-billion dollar frauds that have occurred while Walz was, at best, asleep at the switch.

All of that considered, I think that if Walz does run for re-election, and if the GOP nominates a strong candidate–a big if–there is a 60% chance the Republican will win.

Putting those numbers together, I estimate there is around a 24% chance that Tim Walz will be elected to a third term. If Minnesota Republicans don’t screw it up.