{"id":241,"date":"2026-02-26T18:15:29","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T18:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8881\/2026\/02\/26\/walz-slams-trump-admin-for-temporarily-halting-medicaid-funding-to-minnesota-campaign-of-retribution\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T18:15:29","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T18:15:29","slug":"walz-slams-trump-admin-for-temporarily-halting-medicaid-funding-to-minnesota-campaign-of-retribution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flamenet.io\/2026\/02\/26\/walz-slams-trump-admin-for-temporarily-halting-medicaid-funding-to-minnesota-campaign-of-retribution\/","title":{"rendered":"<div>Walz slams Trump admin for temporarily halting Medicaid funding to Minnesota: &#8216;Campaign of retribution&#8217;<\/div>"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz accused the Trump administration of unleashing a &#8220;campaign of retribution&#8221; against his state after Vice President JD Vance announced a temporary pause in Medicaid funding there.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Vance\u2019s announcement was made after President Donald Trump railed against fraud in Minnesota on Tuesday evening in his State of the Union address.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Vance said Wednesday that he is giving Walz\u00a060 days\u00a0to clean up how the state doles out funding, adding, &#8220;We are stopping the federal payments that will go to the state government until the state government takes its obligations seriously to stop the fraud that&#8217;s being perpetrated against the American taxpayer.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is a campaign of retribution. Trump is weaponizing the entirety of the federal government to punish blue states like Minnesota,&#8221; Walz, a Democrat, wrote in response on X. &#8220;These cuts will be devastating for veterans, families with young kids, folks with disabilities, and working people across our state.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>MINNESOTA REMAINS FRONT LINE IN VANCE&#8217;S \u2018WAR ON FRAUD\u2019; WALZ GIVEN 60 DAYS \u2018TO CLEAN UP THE SYSTEMS\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This has nothing to do with fraud.\u00a0The agents Trump allegedly sent to investigate fraud are shooting protesters and arresting children,&#8221; Walz added. &#8220;His DOJ is gutting the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office and crippling their ability to prosecute fraud. And every week Trump pardons another fraudster.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The administration and Congress have zeroed in on rampant abuse of federal taxpayers&#8217; funds since December 2025, when details of Minnesota&#8217;s fraud relating to social and welfare programs stretching back to the COVID-19 pandemic first came into the national spotlight. Investigators have since estimated the Minnesota scheme could top\u00a0$9 billion.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>HEAVILY REDACTED AUDIT FINDS MINNESOTA MEDICAID HAD WIDESPREAD VULNERABILITIES<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services, said Wednesday that the pause marks &#8220;the largest action against fraud that we&#8217;ve ever taken&#8221; at the federal agency, before launching into how the administration is deferring funds to the state.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s going to be $259 million of deferred payments for Medicaid to Minnesota, which we&#8217;re announcing, as I speak, to Gov. Walz and his team,&#8221; Oz said. &#8220;That&#8217;s based on an audit of the last three months of 2025. Restated, a\u00a0quarter\u00a0billion dollars is not going to be paid this month to Minnesota for its Medicaid claims.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have notified the state and said that we will give them the money, but we&#8217;re going to hold it and only release it after they propose and act on a comprehensive corrective action plan to solve the problem,&#8221; Oz also said. &#8220;If Minnesota fails to clean up the systems, the state will rack up $1 billion of deferred payments this year.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz accused the Trump administration of unleashing a &#8220;campaign of retribution&#8221; against his state after Vice President JD Vance announced a temporary&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/flamenet.io\/2026\/02\/26\/walz-slams-trump-admin-for-temporarily-halting-medicaid-funding-to-minnesota-campaign-of-retribution\/\" class=\"read-more\">[more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flamenet.io\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flamenet.io\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flamenet.io\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flamenet.io\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flamenet.io\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flamenet.io\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flamenet.io\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flamenet.io\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flamenet.io\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}