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Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has put Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on notice. She sent him a detailed letter decrying education fraud in his state and calling for his resignation.
Dear @GovTimWalz: pic.twitter.com/6VbvrcNdiY
— Secretary Linda McMahon (@EDSecMcMahon) December 16, 2025
McMahon posted the document on X, noting that fraudulent college applicants called “ghost students” have been scamming the state for years without proper oversight. “In Minnesota, 1,834 ghost students were found to have received $12.5 million in taxpayer-funded grants and loans,” she wrote. “They collected checks from the federal government, shared a small portion of money with the college, and pocketed the rest—without attending college at all. “
She noted that new federal fraud controls are preventing further abuses, but that Walz and every other top Minnesota official have “turned a blind eye” to the fraud and even aided money-laundering schemes.
McMahon decried Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s own history of supporting student loan cancellation after Omar “borrowed tens of thousands of dollars to attend college as a politics major that she now does not think she should have to repay.”
She demanded that Walz “Stop defrauding American taxpayers” and then asked for his resignation.
The request comes as the Department of Health and Human Services is carrying out a massive investigation into Minnesota’s social programs to determine whether taxpayers have been defrauded to fund mass illegal immigration.
According to the New York Post, Minnesota was awarded $690 million for its social programs and over $8.6 billion in grants between 2019 and 2025 under the HHS Administration. 130,000 illegal immigrants live in Minnesota, a large increase from the just 40,000 who were recorded in the state in 2019. Assistant Secretary of HHS’ Administration for Children and Families (ACF) Alex Adams sent a letter to Walz and the Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, regarding suspicions of fraud.
He noted that the amount of federal fraud prosecutions in the area is concerning and that “The Trump Administration has made clear its commitment to rooting out fraud, protecting taxpayer dollars, and ensuring program integrity across all federal benefit programs.”
Minnesota officials now have until Dec. 26 to provide a comprehensive list of state entities that received taxpayer funding between 2019 and 2025 to help HHS with the investigation.