Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will have to defend draconian decisions and glaring errors he made as a state leader in the COVID pandemic after being selected by Kamala Harris on Tuesday as the 2024 Democratic vice presidential candidate. Walz, 60, was one of several Democratic governors accused of “ massive overreach ” in wielding executive power to shutter schools, businesses and churches during the once-in-a-generation pandemic.
The Minnesota governor in 2020 even set up a hotline through which law enforcement received more than 10,000 emails from residents snitching on neighbors ignoring lockdown measures during that first year of the pandemic, Alpha News reported . In selecting the Minnesota governor, the Harris campaign on Tuesday touted his dedication to countering Republicans who want to “roll back Americans’ rights” — saying he had “stood up for fundamental freedoms” in the past. But that’s exactly what lawmakers and civil liberties groups accused him of not doing during the COVID years.
“From overseeing the largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the country, to asking neighbors to tattle on one another for violating lockdown mandates, to forcing hospitalized COVID patients back in their nursing home facilities — Tim Walz proved during the pandemic he does not have the competency to lead in times of crisis,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) told The Post. “Like the rest of his tenure as governor, Walz’s pandemic response was a complete and utter failure,” Emmer ripped his former House colleague.
The backlash came mostly from Republican lawmakers and conservative groups — but even Democrats in the state legislature were voting against Walz keeping his emergency powers based on his performance close to one year into the crisis. “In 2020, Governor Walz unilaterally closed places of worship, schools, and businesses for several months, infringing on the rights and freedoms of Minnesotans under the guise of emergency powers,” a spokesperson for the Upper Midwest Law Center told The Post in a statement. “His heavy-handed approach during COVID-19 demonstrated a troubling disregard for constitutional freedoms and the rule of law.
” “The federal district court of Minnesota overruled Governor Walz’s shutdown of the churches in the Northland Baptist case and the resulting settlement required him to refrain from any further discrimination against churches in his COVID-related orders,” the spokesperson said of their suit against him, which was later thrown out by an appeals court . “Despite the ruling in our case,” the rep added, “Governor Walz continues his same pattern of overreach, disregard of constitutional protections, and lack of respect toward his fellow Minnesotans.” With classrooms closed, average reading and math scores dropped for fourth and eighth grade students between 2019 and 2022, according to US Education Department data .
There were also hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on various COVID relief efforts — some of which fraudsters abused. The US Department of Labor found that Minnesota overpaid roughly $434 million in unemployment insurance to state applicants from July 2020 to June 2023. A shocking $250 million scheme that also took place on Walz’s watch allowed a Minneapolis nonprofit to pocket federal funds paid to the Minnesota Department of Education, ostensibly for the feeding of the needy children.
Operators of the nonprofit, Feeding Our Future, instead used the taxpayer money for their luxury lifestyle — including buying lavish cars and real estate holdings as far away as Turkey and Kenya . When he tried to shirk responsibility, Walz was swiftly rebuked by a district judge, who determined the state Education Department “voluntarily” funded the fraudsters without taking heed of “serious deficiencies” in its oversight. Like disgraced New York Gov.
Andrew Cuomo, Walz also caught flak for contributing to higher rates of nursing home deaths due to his policies, the Star Tribune reported . Reps for the governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment..
