Is the other shoe about to drop?

How the mighty have fallen.

From the top of the Democratic Party presidential ticket to dropping his reelection bid for Minnesota Governor, Tim Walz hasn’t had a good run recently.

The full scale of the already massive Minnesota fraud scandal of 2026 has yet to be revealed but one thing is certain: If your state attracts a fraud tourism industry, you aren’t doing a good job as governor.

As such, Tim Walz announced this week that he will not be seeking reelection. Many Democrats are celebrating this news, if cautiously.

“Walz did the right thing,” Rochelle Olson breathed a sigh of relief for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “Gov. Tim Walz started the new year Monday by ending his bid for a historic third four-year term, a wise and selfless decision that reshapes the 2026 governor’s race and improves DFL chances at holding the office.”

Olson seems concerned that she might meet Walz at a future cocktail party, in which case all the following flattery makes a certain amount of sense: “His departure wasn’t a shock, but it was still surprising because it’s not easy for anyone to reconsider and retreat, especially from a powerful position in the public eye. Walz read the temperature of the room correctly and did the right thing.”

And then, contradicting the “wise and selfless” leader narrative: “In backrooms and none-too-quietly, the most loyal and influential DFLers had escalated discussions about how to coax the governor from the race.”

Ah. And yet:

“Tim Walz’s exit gives Minnesota Democrats a much-needed reset,” echoed Ed Kilgore for New Yorker Magazine yesterday. “Some political campaigns just look doomed. That was the case with Minnesota governor Tim Walz’s previously announced bid for a third term. Yes, he might have survived and won. But a burgeoning scandal involving fraud in pandemic-era child care and Medicaid initiatives in Minnesota had become a huge national GOP talking point, reinforcing MAGA narratives of criminal immigrants entering the U.S. to rip off taxpayers and prey on law-abiding citizens.”

“It guaranteed a 2026 gubernatorial campaign fought on exactly the wrong grounds for Walz and his party, offering a big blue-state upset opportunity for Republicans,” lamented Kilgore. “Already wounded by his and Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential loss and the controversy surrounding his bid for an unprecedented third consecutive four-year term, Walz wisely folded his campaign today.”

Some media outlets were less deferent to Walz.

“Tim Walz drops reelection bid. Goodbye and good riddance,” wrote a thrilled Nicole Russell for USA Today, noting that, “Minnesotans still deserve to know what Gov. Tim Walz knew and didn’t know about the fraud allegations happening under his watch.”

“Walz made Minnesota a worse place to live and, perhaps even worse than that, the Democratic Party elevated Walz to the national stage in 2024 when Vice President Kamala Harris chose him to run alongside her on the Democratic presidential ticket,” lamented Russell. “A mistake we will not soon forget.”

Despite the damning scandal, and even after dropping out of the gubernatorial race, a defiant Walz is still refusing to resign.

“It seems absolutely outrageous and a gap to me,” said a barely-controlled and obviously embattled Walz in a press interview this week. “The only people who are not subject in state government to state practices are the Legislature.”

When confronted about his lack of stewardship as governor, Walz had trouble staying on topic:

“We have had a pedophile in the state Senate we got no information about. We have credible accusations of one Republican representative, against another Republican representative that they committed fraud. We have a requirement that the House run an audit, which they did not do.

You are the gatekeepers on this. Demand that there are data practices. And if they have emails showing that I have committed fraud, you should get those. Why aren’t they putting them out there? Why aren’t they turning them over to prosecutors?

Right now they are hiding behind a veil of innuendo. They are protecting the biggest fraudster in the White House. They are unwilling to acknowledge that January 6 was an insurrection. They are unwilling to stand with Melissa Hortman’s children.

And for those legislators who went and shed crocodile tears at her funeral, shame on you. Shame on you. Her children are asking you to do one thing in her name: tell the president to stop doing this. That should not be that difficult.

Look, for Republicans here, I have more energy than I have ever had. I am committed to the state more than I have ever been. I love this state with every fiber of my being. I believe we are the best state.

Have I been perfect in this? Goddang no. I wasn’t perfect as a teacher, I wasn’t perfect as a coach, I wasn’t perfect as a soldier, but I was pretty damn good.

Game’s over for them now. It was all me, I was the bad guy or whatever. Put up or shut up now and tell us what you are going to do to make this state better. Answer these tough questions. Quit hiding behind us.

And expect for the next 11 months for me to ride you like you have never been ridden, to make sure that you are doing your job.

I am asking for your help. We need data practices with the Legislature right now. You need to expect to get every one of my emails, just like you have when you asked for them. Every one of my commissioners, you should be able to ask for those — which you can do — and we need to do that.

Here’s the thing I am going to ask all of you. Republicans want to tear this state down. Republicans want to tell you it is too dangerous to walk down the streets. Republicans want to tell you that nothing good comes out of Minneapolis, St. Paul. Republicans want to tell you everyone with brown skin is stealing money or that they are not welcome here.

They want to do nothing to improve this state. Their idea of improving this state is being a parrot for Donald Trump, agreeing to everything he says.

That ain’t happening. I’m not going anywhere, and you can make all your requests for me to resign. Over my dead body will that happen.

I will fight this thing to the very end to make the state better. When does the guy in the White House resign? When does he take accountability for what he did? Because it is not going to happen here in terms of us shying away from making the state better.

So you will get to see me more. The news on this is that I’ve got no election to look forward to. I have been in front of you. I will call on who I want to call on, and I will watch what the press gets written.

And we will make sure that in this state there is full accountability for everybody, because the buck stops with me. I am accountable for this.

And because of that accountability, I am not running for office again. But I have a year to continue to improve on a record that I think will stand up against anybody’s — a record that has made Minnesota better, a record that makes people want to come here, and a record that has respected not only the dignity of people, but the idea of rule of law and camaraderie.

The one thing I hate is anytime I get dragged into being next to Donald Trump. God help me, I don’t want to be judged against that guy. Judge me against an average Minnesotan being decent to their neighbors.”

Walz may have good reason to be so defensive — and for working so hard to change the subject. The massive scale of the fraud uncovered in his state is already a millstone around the neck of the Minnesota Democratic Party and is likely to hurt the party badly in the elections to come.

And the investigations aren’t over yet. Not even close.

“BOMBSHELL: Minnesota auditor report just dropped and it confirms Tim Walz’s Department of Human Services FABRICATED RECORDS and did not verify grant recipients, tried COVERING THEIR TRACKS, enabling massive fraud It just got 10,000X worse,” reported Eric Daugherty for Right Line News today. “WALZ MUST RESIGN. “Perhaps the most EXPLOSIVE revelation is that managers within DHS tried to cover their tracks by backdating and creating NEW DOCUMENTS.”

“Sent millions of dollars out the door in grants without making proper checks into who was receiving them,” reported Daugherty. “And that is not even the most jaw-dropping finding! One outrageous example, the auditors found a grantee that was paid $672,000 for one month of work WITHOUT ANY INFO on what they do! And the audit says the grant manager who paid it then left DHS a couple days later and became a paid consultant for that company!”

“TO ME, THAT’S CRIMINAL,” wrote Daugherty. “During the audit multiple DHS managers backdated or created new documents to try to cover their tracks. WOW. THIS IS BAD.”

Daugherty is right: More revelations, and more damning allegations, are emerging daily and this scandal isn’t going away.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)