Liberty & Prosperity Blog

A frequent reader of this blog sent me a picture showing gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson surrounded by Somalis following a November 2017 St. Cloud City Council meeting. This is that picture: Recently, a different frequent reader of this blog sent me a letter highlighting Jaylani Hussein's paranoia of white people: We are asking every member of our community to stay vigilant. If you see threats, harassment, or hateful content online, especially targeting Somali or Muslim communities in Minnesota, please report them immediately to CAIR-Minnesota and local authorities. We are tracking these developments closely. What’s happening: Our community is under coordinated attack In the last 48 hours, former President Donald Trump announced that he will immediately end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somali immigrants in Minnesota, a move that could tear families apart and send people back to a country they haven’t seen in decades. He justified this dangerous decision using false, I...

This morning, Minnesota's fraud fiasco just got more interesting. I wrote what essentially is Part I to this series. There's more to this than meets the eye in the initial reading. Further, President Trump just put more white gas on this fire last night by revoking Minnesota Somalis' Temporary Protected Status effective immediately. Trump wrote "Minnesota, under Governor Waltz, is a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity. I am, as President of the United States, hereby terminating, effective immediately, the Temporary Protected Status (TPS Program) for Somalis in Minnesota. Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing. Send them back to where they came from. It’s OVER! President DJT" That's harsh. Then again, what some Minneapolis Somalis have done is pretty nasty. What should be noted is that 3 figures are consistently interlinked throughout this fiasco: Tim Walz, Jodi Harpstead and Jeff Johnson. At t...

The Walz administration is getting nationwide attention, though it isn't the type of attention political administrations typically seek. Sohrab Ahmari didn't bury the lede when he wrote "There is no whitewashing this scandal: segments of the Somali community in Minneapolis have been engaged in systematic welfare fraud, and used some of the proceeds to fund the Al-Shabaab terror group in their homeland." Imagine the Outrage If... Imagine the outrage if "Hassan and her alleged co-conspirators recruited Somali parents’ children into autism therapy services — even if a child did not have an autism diagnosis — facilitating fraudulent claims. Parents reportedly received monthly kickbacks ranging from $300 to $1,500 per child, with some allegedly threatening to go to other fraud networks unless their rates were increased." It doesn't end there: Sure enough, both the number of autism providers and the rate of diagnosis have ballooned, with Somali activists insi...

I don't think that Gov. Tim Walz is all there mentally. How can someone think that it doesn't matter who's using the urinal next to you still have the mental wherewithal to make the decisions that keep Minnesota functioning properly? According to the article, "Gov. Tim Walz defended his state’s designation as a 'trans refuge' during a Nov. 13 appearance at the Texas Tribune Festival , saying Minnesota’s state policy allows people to 'live the life they want to'— including in shared restrooms." At the Festival, Gov. Walz said "We're a trans refuge state, which basically means people get to live the life they want to. And you don’t have to worry about it because you never had to worry about it before and it doesn’t matter who’s using the urinal next to you. They’re living their life accordingly." Oh Really? Check this out: The Loudoun County student convicted of two sexual assaults appeared in court on Wednesday, now that he is 18. Th...

Saying that Leigh Finke isn't normal is understatement. He's now started making character assessment, saying that an ICE raid used "Gestapo tactics" . Further, he's issued a statement about the legal arrests, saying "As your representative, I will always stand with our community. I’ll never stop fighting to protect all of our neighbors, no matter where they come from or why they are here. Today’s federal action is a reminder of why we must not give no quarter to ICE and must loudly oppose the Gestapo tactics they employ to abduct our neighbors and friends." Saying that he'll "never stop fighting to protect all of our neighbors, no matter where they come from or why they are here" is quite the statement. They aren't neighbors. They're illegal aliens by legal definition. They allegedly came into the U.S. illegally or they came in legally on some sort of visa, then overstayed their visa. Either way, they're here illegally. Sue Him...

After reading this Alpha News article . it's evident that Gov. Walz doesn't know the definition of capitalism. Alpha News quoted Doug Loon, the CEO of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, as saying "Our state has fallen behind on nearly every measure of growth. From 2019 to 2024, Minnesota ranked 33rd in GDP growth, 39th in job growth, 40th in labor force growth and 46th in growth of (real median) household income ." States don't get those ratings by following the teachings of capitalism or Milton Friedman. Those are the results of a socialist economic model. I'm stunned to read "Minnesota's long-heralded economy is losing steam according to a new report released Wednesday by the Minnesota Chamber Foundation which showed Minnesota’s GDP per capita has grown by just 1.0% annually since 2019, ranking 38th among states – well below the national average of 1.8%." Remember that most of those years were during the Biden administration. This will catch y...

When I read Kendall Qualls' op-ed , the first thing I thought was whether Alpha News have offered the same opportunity to each of the other GOP gubernatorial candidates. As Jeff Johnson's campaign manager, I have more than a passing interest in Alpha News's decision. I'm intensely interested in everyone getting treated evenly. Though I'm not a legal expert, I can't help but wonder if that's an in-kind campaign contribution. While I don't totally disagree with Kendall Qualls, I vehemently disagree with him when he wrote "Republicans’ most promising candidates didn’t lose because of ideology; they lost because they ignored the issue hitting every household: affordability. Meanwhile, Democrats like Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey dominated by making the cost of living their north star. While Republicans skirted around groceries, utility bills, and the housing crunch, Democrats addressed them head-on—and voters noticed....

The message sent to Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and the DFL couldn't have been clearer. Protesters gathered outside MCF-Shakopee made it clear when they said "men are not, and never can be, women." That quote is attributed to Kerri Bruss , one of the co-organizers of the event. Bruss also is quoted as saying "There are areas of life where the physical and biological differences between the two sexes must be recognized and respected to assure the safety, privacy, and dignity of women and girls, with sex-segregated prisons topping that list." Men who identify as women shouldn't be allowed in women spaces. End of sentence. Full stop. I don't care if biological males identify as the cow that jumped over the moon. XY = Male. Full stop. Every DFL legislator voted to make Minnesota a trans refuge state. Tim Walz signed that bill into law. It's time the party that told us to "follow the science" during the pandemic is allergic to...

After reading Kevin Warsh's WSJ op-ed , I'm left wondering if the Federal Reserve Bank is ineffective because their theories are antiquated or just wrong-headed? The reason I ask is because Warsh wrote "When I was a college student, I spent hours wandering the stacks at the library to find answers to homework. For the next few decades, my counterparts and I looked for answers to our questions by rummaging the internet. Today, immediate access to documented and synthesized information is limited only by one’s imagination." Warsh also wrote "What’s to be done? Four things. First, the Fed should discard its forecast of stagflation in the next couple of years, as if subpar growth and inflation 40% above target is the best that can be done. AI will be a significant disinflationary force, increasing productivity and bolstering American competitiveness. Productivity improvements should drive significant increases in real take-home wages. A 1-percentage-point increase in...

Sophia Tesfaye's Salon article is difficult to take seriously, especially after reading "Conservative criticism of the president is becoming widespread following a Democratic sweep of off-year elections across the country. From Capitol Hill to MAGA media, the pushback signals a major rupture in the ideological pact between Trump and his base, suggesting he may finally be losing credibility where it counts." Apparently, Tesfaye hasn't noticed that President Trump is a controversial figure. If I got a dollar for each time President Trump has been written off, I'd be wealthy. Tesfaye wrote "Tucker Carlson, for example, once a staunch Trump ally, released his latest video on Friday that challenged FBI Director Kash Patel over the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt. The former Fox News host alleged that Patel’s FBI is covering up critical details of the attempted assassination, a charge that immediately drew a direct response from the agency’s head....

A strong case can be made that Democrats hate President Trump far more than they love the U.S. of A. They didn't think twice when the military went without pay if not for the contribution of a Trump billionaire. Democrats didn't think twice when they let SNAP benefits expire. In fact, there's reason to think that they'll shut the government again on Jan. 30, 2026. The economy will be the biggest issue for Congress in 2026. If Democrats don't disrupt the Trump economy, the Trump Boom will happen. It's already happening. Once the middle class tax cuts kick in, once the immediate expensing kicks in for small businesses and once oil production jumps from 14,000,000 barrels per day today now to 16,000,000 barrels per day by Independence Day, 2026, affordability won't be the high priority it is right now. Further, wages will keep going up. On top of that, we'll get a real Fed chair installed and perhaps a pair of new Fed governors who don't think that gro...

Apparently, the St. Paul City Council isn't interested in law and order. The foundation for U.S. law is the U.S. Constitution. According to this Alpha News article , "The St. Paul City Council unanimously approved a sweeping gun control ordinance that will ban 'assault weapons, large-capacity magazines, and binary triggers within city limits.' The ordinance is expected to be signed by Mayor Melvin Carter." While St. Paul is definitely safer than Minneapolis, that isn't exactly a high bar to clear. That's akin to saying you're the most moral man on death row. Besides the constitutionality question, there's another hurdle for St. Paul to climb. "Since the August shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, elected officials in Minnesota cities have expressed a desire to enact firearm regulations at the local level. However, Minnesota state law explicitly preempts local jurisdictions from passing their own firearm regulations. In fact...

Thank God in Heaven. The Schumer Shutdown has officially ended. President Trump signed the clean CR late this evening . Fox is reporting that "President Donald Trump signed legislation to fund the government again, putting an end to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. Trump signaled Monday the government would open soon, as consequences of a lapse in funding continued to snowball, including missed paychecks for federal workers and airline delays stemming from air traffic controller staffing shortages." Also according to the article, "The bill keeps funding the government at the same levels during fiscal year 2025 through Jan. 30 to provide additional time to hash out a longer appropriations measure for fiscal year 2026." Rest assured that Democrats will be tempted to pull the same stunt in January as they pulled this time. I don't think they'll pull the same stunt because shutting down government twice in the same fiscal year would be political...

Thank God for Bill Glahn's research. For instance, Glahn's article, titled Land of 10,000 frauds , quotes Bloomberg columnist Patricia Lopez as saying "In a state that once prided itself on clean government, fraud allegations have been turning up in an array of nonprofits the state depends on to carry out programs related to housing, nutrition assistance, childcare and more. The total cost to taxpayers could exceed $1 billion, according to the US Attorney’s Office in Minnesota." Bill noted that "There isn’t a single word in the above paragraph that couldn’t have been written three years ago." Further, the $1,000,000,000 figure is lightyears too low. While attending the Center for the American Experiment's 2025 Patriot Party in St. Cloud, I heard Rep. Walter Hudson, R-Albertville, say that Joseph Thompson, the acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota, told him that the figure would hit $8,000,000,000 . Hitting $1,000,000,000 in fraud is something worthy of bein...

It's now official. The House Democrats' so-called solution to the UNAffordable Care Act subsidies is to extend it . According to the Hill, "House Democratic leaders on Tuesday will propose a three-year extension of the soon-to-expire Obamacare subsidies at the center of the shutdown fight." Hakeem Jeffries, the embattled House Minority Leader, is pushing for the extension as an amendment during the House Rules Committee meeting. Prior to the hearing, Jeffries said "House Republicans: Welcome back from your taxpayer-funded, seven-week vacation. You now have an opportunity to actually take some action in an area of this health care crisis by working with Democrats, before the Rules Committee this evening, to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits." It shouldn't be lost on voters that Jeffries is acting like the Speaker, not the Minority Leader. Soon, he won't be either, though who would replace him as Minority Leader is still a question. This is pr...

Last night, I had the good fortune of attending the Center for the American Experiment's 2025 Patriot Party . As expected, I ran into some good friends: It was fantastic seeing my original blogging teacher, too: As enjoyable as those conversations were, and they were enjoyable, the biggest bit of information of the night came from Keynote Speaker Walter Hudson. Any well-informed Minnesotan has heard about the Medicaid fraud here in audience that he'd been briefed by Joseph Thompson, the Acting US Attorney for Minnesota, that Thompson expected the total amount of Medicaid fraud in Minnesota to exceed $8,000,000,000. That's a staggering amount! That's almost half the size of the projected surplus for FY2023. That year's projected surplus was over $17,500,000,000. I'd hate to call that a highlight but it was in the sense that it's important information that we didn't have before. It isn't good news but it's certainly important news. Gov. Walz has d...

Year-after-year, Amy Klobuchar proclaims herself as a moderate and bipartisan senator. Tina Smith doesn't pretend to be a bipartisan legislator, though she's willing to accept the title of moderate. Last night, Klobuchar and Smith voted against reopening the federal government . With that vote, they both voted against funding the SNAP program, aka the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Further, they voted to not fund law enforcement (think ICE and Border Patrol), the military and agencies like the DEA and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Isn't it nice to know that Sen. Klobuchar and Sen. Smith care so much about starving children and our military? The article reports "U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, both Democrats, voted against a bipartisan measure to reopen the federal government. Advanced by the U.S. Senate in a 60-40 vote last night, the proposal is expected to end the longest government shutdown in history." The artic...

Saturday afternoon,former St. Cloud City Councilman Jeff Johnson sat down with Mitch Berg on Mitch's radio program on the NARN, aka the Northern Alliance Radio Alliance radio network. Mitch is fond of saying that NARN is "the wind beneath the right wing, a shiny spot of red in a sea of dismal blue." While it technically was an interview, it felt more like a conversation between neighbors in their back yards. While they had a substantive conversation on a variety of topics, the thing that stood out to me was the feel of the conversation. The podcast of the interview is found here . Click on the link titled "Jeff Johnson lays out his plan for Minnesota if elected governor." As Jeff's campaign manager, I was pleased to hear Jeff talk about Jeff's solutions to Minnesota's pile of probnlems. While Tim Walz has settled on a plan of telling Minnesotans whoppers about how good they have it, the truth is quite the opposite. If life is so good here in Minnesot...

If anyone needed proof that they were married to the UNAffordable Care Act, this vote should prove that Democrats don't care about American government workers. The article opens by saying "Senate Democrats again blocked a plan by Republicans to ensure that federal workers and the military would receive a paycheck as the shutdown back and forth revs into high gear. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., again tried to advance a modified version of his 'Shutdown Fairness Act' bill that would see federal workers and the military paid now and during subsequent government shutdowns. However, the bill failed 53-43 with 3 Democrats defecting to support the bill. Georgia Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, and Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico voted for the bill." The Democrats made a counterproprosal that includes a 1-year extension of the UNAffordable Care Act subsidies. It's been highlighted that the vast majority of the subsidies go to insurance companies, not people. Real peopl...

Is Tim Walz incompetent? Is Tim Walz corrupt? Is Tim Walz a little of both? I'm voting C -- a little of both. As Jeff Johnson's campaign manager, I'll admit that I'm a little biased. That said, Tim Walz called himself a knucklehead during the Vice Presidential debate. Further, it's difficult to say that a DFL governor who's had more than $1,000,000,000 paid out in fraudulent Medicaid claims isn't corrupt. It's important to remember that he hired Pam Wheelock as his Commissioner of Minnesota's Department of Human Services only a couple months into his administration. Walz did that shortly after Tony Lourey resigned as commissioner of Human Services . It's difficult to prove that someone who let fraud happen for 5+ years isn't corrupt and/or incompetent. Tim Walz's administration is famous for virtually no fraud prevention controls. That's how more than $1,000,000,000 in fraudulent Medicaid payments were paid. I wrote here about a repo...

It's indisputable that Nancy Pelosi is an historic figure. It's equally indisputable that her 'accomplishments' will be treated harshly by historians. At the top of her list is the passing of the UNAffordable Act and the 2 impeachments of President Trump. The UNAffordable Care Act is still getting subsidized 15 years after it passed. Count the ACA a spectacular failure for the American people. Of course, ABC wrote a puff piece article without a single dissenting opinion. The article quotes President Obama as saying "No one was more skilled at bringing people together and getting legislation passed -- and I will always be grateful for her support of the Affordable Care Act. She made us proud to be Democrats, and will go down in history as one of the best speakers the House of Representatives has ever had." Pelosi will be remembered as an impactful speaker. History won't be kind, though, in measuring whether her legislative victories improved people's l...

Thank God that Minnesota conservative taxpayers finally have a fulltime watchdog that's watching where their tax dollars are going. The name of this taxpayer watchdog is Alpha News. Thank God for Alpha News's vigilance. According to Alpha News's reporting , "Rep. Pam Altendorf, R-Red Wing, recently took to social media to highlight how Minnesota saw a 174% increase in SNAP issuance between fiscal years 2020 and 2021, the largest one-year jump of any state in the nation, according to federal data. 'Granted, this happened during the year of Covid, however no other state has seen anything close to an increase like this,' Altendorf said in a press release." Later in the article, Rep. Altendorf said "No one wants people to go hungry who truly need assistanced. But we also cannot turn a blind eye to potentially massive fraud happening through the SNAP program." That isn’t the only aggravating part about the SNAP program. This is: The USDA found one gu...

Jacob Frey did something that people thought was impossible. Frey won a third straight term as Minneapolis's mayor. Actually, Frey did 2 things that people didn't think were possible. He won a third stright term as Minneapolis's mayor and he defeated Omar Fateh, the so-called Midwest Mamdani. According to Alpha News's reporting , a third amazing thing happened Tuesday night. Alpha reported that "On election night, results from the first round of Minneapolis’ ranked-choice voting system showed Frey with 41.7% of the vote to Fateh’s 31.6%. After the other mayoral contenders were eliminated from the ballot in the second round, ballots were recounted and showed Frey had won with 50.03% of the vote." I didn't see that coming. First off, I didn't know who'd win. Next, I thought that Sen. Fateh would be the one to win early if anyone won early. The chief takeaway is that the Midwest's Mamdani met with a harsh outcome, as did St. Paul's Melvin Car...

According to the NY Post, the exodus from NYC to Dallas has officially started . The NY Post reports "Dallas, whose grab bag of major business moguls has included Ross Perot, Mark Cuban and Jerry Jones, has more recently become a major draw for big financial firms that were born and raised in the Big Apple. Goldman Sachs is building an 800,000-square-foot, $500 million campus in Dallas. It’s set to open in 2028 and consolidate over 5,000 employees. Last year, the mega bank hired Robert Kaplan, the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, as its vice chairman." If you're thinking that's just a single firm, that's true...until you add this information: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new $3 billion headquarters on Park Avenue last month. The bank has 7,000 more employees in Texas, than in New York.JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new $3 billion headquarters on Park Avenue last ...

In a stunning announcement, The Minnesota Office of Legislative Auditor didn't pay attention to state policies . According to the article, "According to the OLA’s report, state auditors conducted a performance audit of the Office of the Governor and Lieutenant Governor that examined 18-months of operations from July of 2022 through December of 2024." The article continues, saying "During that audit, the OLA 'focused on whether the office had controls to ensure that it appropriately collected receipts and reimbursements from events held at the governor’s residence, appropriately spent state funds, accurately paid its vendors and employees, and safeguarded state resources.'" Ultimately, state auditors found Walz’s office did not adequately follow policies relating to property management and receipt management. Additionally, the OLA identified numerous vendor payment problems, found that the office lacked proper documentation to support various employee rei...

Barack Obama didn't accomplish much in his time in office. Despite quantitative easing from the Fed, economic growth was pathetic. Perhaps, the better way of putting it is to say 'because of quantitative easing, economic growth was pathetic.' These days, Democrats shut the government down to extend tax subsidies to rich insurance companies, to buy down insurance premiums on the ACA, Obama's "signature accomplishment." Worse, President Obama seems allergic to the truth. For instance, Obama ran into that 'allergy' on the campaign trail yesterday. He said "Meanwhile, the government is shut down, and the Republicans who are currently in charge of Congress are not even pretending to solve the problem. They have not even been showing up to work. Not in session. Where are you? What are you doing?" John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, told Jake Tapper " Democrats really need to own the shutdown. I mean, we’re shutting it down. I know...

There was a time when the Democrat Party was filled with strong leaders. That time has passed. Today's Democrat Party is afraid of its own shadow. Bill Clinton is best known for his Sister Soljah moment, where he stood up to cultural 'leaders' who were dragging the Democrat Party to the left. The last time that Democrats were relevant was during the Obama administration. Even then, Democrats' "signature accomplishment", aka the ACA, still is a major failure. The reason I bring this up is because this article tells the story about Ilhan Omar changing the "subject when asked whether Democrats have weak leaders." The truth is that the DFL have weak leaders. From Timid Tim Walz to Chuck Schumer to Hakeem Jeffries to Zohran Mamdani to Omar Fateh, Democrats are exceptionally weak. There's only one way to fix that, which I'll outline shortly. Let's first dig into KSTP's Eric Chaloux's report that " Minnesota Department of Human Se...