Of Squids, Ink, and Minnesota's Corrupt Machine

Tim Walz, et al., try to change the subject, even at the expense of supporters' lives.

A frightened squid pumps out a cloud of ink as a distraction so it can zip away from danger.

That’s a big part of what’s happening in Minnesota right now.

The state’s Democratic political machine is reacting like a spooked squid to revelations that the machine and its clients are complicit in multi-billion-dollar frauds against the federal government.

And the “ink” being squirted is the not-at-all spontaneous wave of riots erupting against federal authorities in Minneapolis.

This image depicts a similar action by the Trusts at the turn of the last century. (Library of Congress, via Claude AI).

The surge came after series of exposés by independent journalist Nick Shirley exposed rampant childcare and Medicaid fraud in Minnesota, focusing public outrage on the abuse of federal funding as an estimated $9 billion of aid meant to educate autistic children and care for the poor went instead into fraudsters’ pockets.

The Treasury Department is probing banks linked to the scandals, the Homeland Security Department launched an investigation of fraudulent refugee applications, and the Small Business Administration has suspended thousands of Minnesota borrowers for suspected COVID-relief loan fraud worth hundreds of millions.

The squid’s tentacles were everywhere.

The House Oversight Committee this month found that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and state Attorney General Keith Ellison were not innocent bystanders to the fraud, but actually took part in the cover-up, taking active steps to silence whistleblowers.

And it all centered on communities of illegal immigrants and refugees, some of whose members siphoned money from federal taxpayers and in turn gave campaign contributions and political support to state Democrats — a self-licking ice cream cone of graft.

The revelations made Walz cancel his plans to run for reelection, and led to tough questions about how Kamala Harris’ campaign could possibly have missed these problems when she chose him as her running mate.

The squid was frightened, so we got the ink: Increasingly violent “protests”-cum-riots explicitly aimed at blocking ICE operations with the stated goal of forcing federal authorities out of Minnesota entirely, while generating maximum media attention.

These are not spontaneous uprisings of the aggrieved, but organized actions featuring out-of-state actors and organizations, detailed training programs for demonstrators, and large amounts of intentionally murky funding from organizations like Indivisible, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and others.

They’re coordinating their anti-ICE operations — identifying, chasing and blocking agents to keep them from arresting illegal-immigrant criminals — through highly organized chat groups on Signal, a secure communications platform, Fox News reported.

And Minnesota government officials are proudly touting their involvement in this coordination.

Sen. Bernie Sanders made much of Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s role in a fundraising email this weekend, praising her for “playing a key role in mobilizing grassroots opposition to Trumpism.”

That’s making these often violent, deliberately obstructive demonstrations look less like a civil rights sit-in and more like a government-backed insurrection.

Tragically, this aggressive and confrontational strategy has produced martyrs who can now be exploited for political purposes.

“Two things can be true at the same time,” Fox News’ Asra Nomani posted Monday.

The death of Alex Pretti, the armed demonstrator who got into a fatal tussle with ICE agents Saturday, “is a real and devastating tragedy, and there are several investigations appropriately occurring into the circumstances behind his killing.”

But also, “A far-left organizing network put Pretti in harm’s way and then turned him into a martyr . . . to sow the perception of chaos in America.”

Whatever investigators determine about how Pretti’s death unfolded, the fact remains that a cynical and corrupt political machine has fostered for its own purposes a situation that’s dangerous for its own supporters, and for the political future of our nation.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Mayor Paul Young of Memphis, Tenn., a Democrat, chose to cooperate with ICE efforts in his city.

Agents arrived, collected many of their targets from local jails, and quietly moved to arrest the rest, leaving town after a short time.

There were protests, but no riots — and violent crime in Memphis took a nosedive.

Houston, Tex., also led by Democrats, has followed a state law instructing local cities and counties to assist ICE operations.

The Harris County Jail leads the nation in immigration holds, keeping illegal-immigrant criminals locked up until ICE can safely remove and deport them.

That’s what happens when the leaders of a state or city care more about their citizens than about saving their own skins.

What Walz, et al., have done is disgraceful and criminal. I hope that they will have to face the music for their actions. Pam Bondi, are you listening?