Minnesota likes to brand itself as a polite, orderly state. Clean lakes. Friendly neighbors. Boring competence. But lately, that brand is crumbling.
Starting with the fraud. Not the petty kind. The industrial kind. Last week’s viral video out of Minneapolis blew the lid off fresh questions surrounding the Quality Learning Center and alleged fraud in Minnesota’s child care programs under Gov. Tim Walz. Fellow RedState contributor Rusty Weiss breaks down the full story here:
Billions of dollars in medical fraud have poured through Minnesota programs in recent years. Not millions. Billions. That alone should trigger wall-to-wall scrutiny, subpoenas, resignations, and long press conferences filled with uncomfortable questions. Instead, we get bureaucratic shrugs and vague assurances that reforms are coming. Someday.
However, unearthing blatant fraud of this magnitude begs for one question to resurface. What really happened to Melissa Hortman? Hortman, the longtime Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, was killed alongside her husband in a fatal shooting at their Brooklyn Park home in June 2025. Authorities described this crime as politically motivated.
READ MORE: Two Minnesota Lawmakers Shot in Their Homes, One Dead, Attacker Still At Large
Melissa Hortman was not a backbencher. She was a powerful Democrat. She was also, notably, the only Democrat to vote against a bill expanding healthcare benefits for illegal immigrants. She killed the bill. Full stop. That vote made her an outlier in her own party, and it made her a problem for activists who treat immigration policy as sacred scripture.
Shortly after that vote, Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered.
Not to be a conspiracy theorist.
— PNW Conservative (@PNWConservative) December 28, 2025
Melissa Hortman was the ONLY Democrat to vote against healthcare for illegals in Minnesota.
She was the deciding vote.
Then she was assass*nated.
Incredible coincidence.
pic.twitter.com/PH3UOD2Vwx
Those are not opinions. Those are facts.
This is the moment where the dots don't connect neatly, but they start lining up.
The accused killer was appointed to the Minnesota Workforce Development Council in 2019 by Governor Tim Walz and referenced Walz multiple times in his own statements, including in a written confession and during arraignment proceedings. Reports indicate "No Kings" protest flyers were found in his vehicle. The man was clearly unstable.
All of that is publicly reported. None of it has been meaningfully addressed.
A spokesperson for Walz said the governor's office appoints thousands of people of all political affiliations to legislature-created, unpaid, external boards and commissions. But here is the question that keeps hanging in the air: Has anyone actually asked Tim Walz, on the record, to explain these connections?
Not a press aide. Not a written statement crafted by lawyers. A real question. A real answer. Cameras on. Follow-ups allowed.
Based on a brief search, Walz hasn't given any direct comment on this affiliation.
Has there been a full, independent investigation into whether political pressure, radical ideology, or state-level relationships played any role in this murder? Not an internal review. Not a box-checking exercise. A real investigation with transparency. Based on independent research, outside of the original criminal investigation, no further review into political, ideological, or state-level factors has occurred.
A standard criminal investigation answers questions like who did this and how. A full independent investigation asks harder questions: why, what systems failed, and whether power or politics played any role at all. Minnesota, it appears, has not done the latter.
When a sitting governor has multiple points of proximity to the accused murderer of a state legislator, silence is not neutral. Silence is suspicious. The media response has been revealing. National outlets barely touched the story. Local outlets treated it like a tragic but isolated event, disconnected from politics, policy fights, or power. The same reporters who can spot “dog whistles” from three states away suddenly lost their hearing.
Flip the parties, and everyone knows how this would have gone.
If a Republican governor had appointed someone who later murdered a Republican lawmaker, after she bucked her party on a major ideological vote, we would still be watching primetime specials about it. Congressional hearings would already be underway. Social media would be a bonfire. Instead, Minnesotans are told to move along. Nothing to see here.
But here is the problem. When a state is already hemorrhaging taxpayer money through systemic fraud, trust is gone. When leadership cannot explain where the money went, who benefited, or why warnings were ignored, credibility collapses. When that same leadership refuses to address serious questions surrounding a political murder, the rot looks deeper.
This is not about declaring guilt. That is not the job of an op-ed, and it should not be the job of the public. This is about demanding accountability. This is about sunlight.
Who vetted the appointee?
What safeguards failed?
What communications existed, if any, between political offices and the individuals involved?
Why has the governor not answered these questions directly?
These are not conspiracy theories. They are the baseline questions a functioning democracy asks when power, money, and violence intersect. Minnesota deserves answers. Not narratives. Not scolding. Not silence.
Dark things thrive in the dark. If nothing improper happened, then transparency is the cure. If something did, then silence is the accomplice.
Either way, the questions are not going away. And the longer leaders refuse to answer them, the louder they become.
