The fraud just keeps getting worse for Walz, it’s time for something to be done
By Easton Martin | December 17, 2025
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is facing renewed pressure following a sharp rebuke from U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who has called on him to resign over massive fraud enabled by poor state oversight. The warning centers on a newly disclosed education fraud scheme that federal investigators say should never have been allowed to occur.
According to the Department of Education, investigators uncovered at least 1,834 fraudulent or nonexistent applicants who received roughly 12.5 million dollars in federal student grants and loans through Minnesota colleges. These so-called ghost students were not properly identity verified and in many cases never attended classes, lived out of state, or did not exist at all. Despite these red flags, the funds were approved and disbursed through state administered systems.
Federal officials explained that the fraud worked by exploiting weak enrollment checks and minimal verification standards. Fraudsters enrolled fake students, collected federal aid, and passed a small portion of the money to participating institutions while keeping the rest. The losses were entirely preventable through basic controls that were either ignored or not enforced.
McMahon’s letter directly blamed the Walz administration for allowing Minnesota to become vulnerable to repeated large-scale fraud, citing failures in supervision and accountability. She connected the education scheme to earlier Minnesota scandals involving pandemic food aid and social service programs, arguing that the same pattern of negligence continues.
This latest case adds to a growing record of financial abuse occurring under Walz’s leadership and raises a fundamental question for taxpayers. How many millions must be lost before systemic oversight failures are treated as a leadership issue?
