Minnesota Republicans are accusing Democrats of keeping lawmakers in the dark for months about a state-commissioned Medicaid assessment that flagged more than $52 million in improper payments, arguing the delay denied them a chance to act on the report’s specific findings during the legislative session before the election.

«Fraud here has exploded under the Walz administration,» Minnesota Republican Speaker of the House Lisa Demuth told Digital. «Governor Walz has held no one in his entire administration accountable for the level of fraud. It definitely brings into question what is in that report and why are they hiding it?»

The Walz administration hired Optum to conduct a third-party review of Minnesota’s Medicaid program, scrutinizing 14 high-risk services. The report identified more than $52 million in improper payments but cautioned that improper payments do not necessarily constitute «fraud, waste or abuse.» The Department of Human Services released a heavily redacted version to the public in February, prompting calls from Republican lawmakers to make the full version available so they could address the risks raised during the legislative session.

«Our election here in Minnesota is 29 days away. We’re just four weeks out, and you really have to wonder why they are refusing to do this,» Demuth, who is the GOP gubernatorial candidate, told Digital.

WALZ ADMINISTRATION IGNORED FRAUD WARNINGS AS BILLIONS VANISHED, HOUSE OVERSIGHT REPORT ALLEGES

Minnesota currently has a divided state legislature, with the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) holding a slim 34-33 majority in the Senate and a rare 67-67 partisan tie in the House.

Democratic Gov. Tim Walz announced the audit in October 2025, months before allegations of widespread fraud involving members of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora drew national attention. Mounting scrutiny of the Walz administration’s handling of alleged fraud in Minnesota’s social services programs contributed to growing political pressure before Walz ended his re-election campaign in January.

WALZ’S ‘EXIT INTERVIEW’ REFLECTING ON HIS TENURE SPARKS LAWMAKER DEBATE ABOUT HIS LEGACY: ‘NEVER SERIOUS’

Republican state Sen. Jordan Rasmusson is also accusing the Walz administration and his Democratic counterparts of seeking to «minimize» the fraud issue in the state.

«I think it’s really hard for Democrats, elected Democrats in Minnesota, to admit that we have a fraud problem of this scale, and to take accountability for those failings,» Rasmusson told Digital.

The Department of Human Services said the report was heavily redacted to protect Optum’s trade secrets and prevent the release of sensitive security information that could provide criminals a «roadmap» for committing fraud.

Rasmusson introduced an amendment in April to make the full Optum report public, but it failed along party lines. A version of Rasmusson’s provision was later passed in May as part of a broader budget package.

MINNESOTA’S ANTI-ICE AID FUND BECOMES LATEST CASUALTY OF STATE’S EMBARRASSING FRAUD PROBLEM

Under the law, DHS must provide the initial Optum reports to members of a legislative committee with «jurisdiction over human services policy and finance» following a joint request from the committee’s chair and ranking minority member. Lawmakers may review the report but cannot publicly release protected nonpublic information it contains.

Rasmusson said he issued a request for the full report in June. State Rep. Mohamud Noor, DFL co-chair of the Human Services Finance and Policy Committee, and former GOP House co-Chair Joe Schomacker requested the report in May. The report did not become available to a select group of lawmakers until last week.

«I’m grateful that it’s out, but it’s very disappointing we couldn’t have returned to St. Paul to address it,» Republican state Rep. Dawn Gillman told Digital, noting that lawmakers will have to wait until January to address the report.

«The broader takeaway is that the Walz administration could have given us more access to those months ago,» Rasmusson told Digital. «Legislative Democrats could have joined Republicans and got access to this information months ago during session.»

However, state Sen. John Hoffman, who now has access to the report, pushed back on the notion that lawmakers needed full access to enact meaningful changes.

«This is a report about vulnerabilities in public programs,» Hoffman said in a statement to Digital. «Why would we release that to the public before we fixed them? We wouldn’t publish a report about which banks don’t lock their doors, either.»

EXPLOSIVE SLEEPER ISSUE COULD FUEL MIDTERM SHAKEUPS, TOP REPUBLICAN PREDICTS: ‘YOU’RE GONNA SEE SURPRISES’

«The rest of us got to work passing legislation to ensure high-quality services, continuity of care for people in need and safeguards to protect against fraud,» Hoffman continued. «Having reviewed the report, I can tell you it is already outdated, and the gaps and weaknesses it raises have already been addressed by laws we passed this year.»

But Rasmusson, who also has the report, disagreed with Hoffman.

«After reviewing the unredacted Optum report, my main takeaway is that it underscores the systemic failures of the Walz administration and Minnesota Democrats to protect Minnesota from fraud,» Rasmusson told Digital.

«Whether it is issues with determining the eligibility of program recipients, determining whether providers are actually providing real services or not, or even some of the basic analytics that would catch fraud, Minnesota is very far behind where it should be in program integrity initiatives,» Rasmusson continued.

Digital reached out to DHS, which confirmed that select lawmakers now had the report.

SIGN UP TO GET THE POLITICS NEWSLETTER

«We appreciate legislators’ interest in receiving a copy of the unredacted initial Optum report from February 2026,» Minnesota Department of Human Services Temporary Commissioner John Connolly said in a statement. «In alignment with the law passed by the Legislature last session, the Minnesota Department of Human Services released the Optum reports last week.»

Digital reached out to Walz’s office for comment.

minnesota fraud exposed, state and local, investigations, tim walz, senate, hearings house of representatives politics

Newly released documents reveal the extent of the FBI’s monitoring of President Donald Trump’s now-chief of staff Susie Wiles, showing investigators tracked phone metadata reflecting her contacts with attorneys, journalists, campaign officials, Trump Organization personnel and Secret Service contacts.

Documents released Monday by the White House detail «Plasmic Echo,» the investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents and other presidential records that led to the FBI’s 2022 search of Mar-a Lago and later included possible obstruction of the investigation.

The records show the FBI tracked Wiles’ phone activity from at least February through May 2023, cataloging who called her, whom she called, when the calls occurred and how long they lasted.

The documents show Wiles was in contact with at least 21 attorneys, along with campaign personnel, Trump Organization contacts, Secret Service contacts and journalists, offering a fuller account of the reach of the bureau’s monitoring.

TODD BLANCHE EXPOSES HOW AGGRESSIVE BIDEN DOJ TARGETED LOW-LEVEL MAR-A-LAGO EMPLOYEES

Reuters first reported in February that FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau had subpoenaed phone records belonging to him and Wiles while they were private citizens as part of federal investigations involving Trump.

The newly released documents provide a more detailed picture of the scope and scale of the monitoring, revealing how investigators mapped Wiles’ phone contacts across Trump’s legal, political, business, media and security circles over several months.

Some entries name the contacts swept into the FBI’s monitoring of Wiles, including journalists associated with CNN, The Washington Post and Politico, while dozens of others are identified only by labels such as «Lawyer,» «Campaign» and «USSS.»

Monday’s document dump revealed the FBI’s monitoring also swept in Wiles’ contacts with two separate Secret Service officials, identified only as «USSS 1» and «USSS 2,» extending the bureau’s mapping of her phone activity into Trump’s protective orbit. The records do not reveal what investigators were seeking to establish through those contacts, what was discussed or provide reliable durations for the calls.

A March 24 entry from that year shows investigators logged a 41-second call from «Lawyer 7» to Wiles and then examined earlier calls between the two, illustrating how investigators were not simply capturing isolated contacts but tracing patterns across her network. The documents do not explain what prompted that scrutiny or what investigators believed those contacts could reveal.

In another example, a March 9 log shows investigators cataloging a series of Wiles’ calls with at least six contacts identified as campaign personnel, recording when the communications occurred and how long they lasted, but not the substance of the conversations.

JACK SMITH’S TRUMP PROBE SWEPT UP NEWS, OTHER MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS AS INVESTIGATION WENT BEYOND LAWMAKERS

The probe was launched by the FBI and Justice Department in March 2022, with then-FBI Director Christopher Wray seeking authorization and Attorney General Merrick Garland approving the full investigation. The probe was later placed under special counsel Jack Smith, whom Garland appointed in November 2022 to oversee the ongoing investigation.

Wiles was running Trump’s political operation and serving as a top campaign adviser at the time, and later became his White House chief of staff.

«Jack Smith’s surveillance operation was a disgraceful abuse of government power. Spying on political opponents is weaponization of law enforcement, plain and simple,» White House spokesperson Lauren Bis told Digital. «Those responsible must be held accountable.»

Heritage Foundation foreign policy expert Victoria Coates told Digital the tracking into Wiles is «unprecedented, dangerous and should be illegal.»

«The Biden FBI was following the precedent of the Obama FBI in 2015, when they used their authorities to surveil then-candidate Donald Trump and his campaign at Trump Tower as well as other candidates, notably my then-boss, Senator Ted Cruz. It’s the ultimate political dirty trick,» said Coates.

Coates argued that the breadth of the FBI’s tracking raises concerns about investigative overreach, pointing to what she characterized as a stark contrast with the Justice Department’s handling of President Joe Biden’s classified-documents case.

«No, particularly by the Justice Department’s own very low standards in dealing with President Biden’s classified-document violations from his time as vice president, which were far more egregious than anything retained at Mar-a-Lago,» Coates said.

She also warned that tracking Wiles’ communications with attorneys and journalists carries broader implications for future presidential campaigns.

«In our increasingly digital world, it raises the grim specter of future campaigns where an incumbent can weaponize the private communications of not only a candidate and his family, but also his staff,» Coates said.

The declassified documents also show agents gathering details about the travel of Melania Trump and her son, Barron, as the FBI planned for a potential search of Mar-a-Lago.

Operational planning emails included pre-raid checklists directing agents to «finalize FBI understanding of FPOTUS/FLOTUS/minor son’s travel,» including the type of aircraft and specific travel timeline, as investigators worked to determine when the warrant would be executed.

The FBI executed the search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, on Aug. 8, 2022. Agents entered the property shortly before 9 a.m. and began searching around 10:30 a.m., according to records previously reported by Digital.

Digital’s Stepheny Price and Alec Schemmel contributed to this report.

fbi, donald trump, white house, corruption

Un modelo biogeográfico estima que los antepasados de los ictéridos, la familia de aves que reúne a oropéndolas, zanates, tordos y pechos amarillos, llegaron a la cuenca amazónica hace unos 6,1 millones de años, antes de que se completara la conexión terrestre entre Panamá y Sudamérica. La estimación surge de un estudio de la Universidad de Wurzburgo, en Alemania, publicado en la revista Frontiers of Biogeography.

De acuerdo con Earth.com, el análisis se basó en la distribución geográfica y las relaciones evolutivas de 104 de las 106 especies reconocidas de la familia Icteridae, desde América del Norte hasta Tierra del Fuego. Los investigadores no utilizaron restos fósiles, por lo que las fechas corresponden a estimaciones de un modelo y presentan un margen de incertidumbre superior a un millón de años.

El modelo ubica el origen de la familia en el Norte

El estudio fue desarrollado por Axel Arango García y Chaitanya Gokhale, de la cátedra de Biología Computacional y Teórica de la universidad alemana.

Para reconstruir la expansión de la familia, el equipo combinó los mapas de reproducción con un árbol evolutivo publicado en 2015 y dividió el continente en 6 zonas: América del Norte; México, América Central y el Caribe; la Amazonía; los Andes; el sur de Sudamérica, y la Patagonia.

Luego compararon tres hipótesis sobre las rutas de desplazamiento entre esas regiones. El modelo que mejor se ajustó a los datos describe una expansión gradual, con una dirección predominante de norte a sur.

El principal punto de paso

Bajo el modelo seleccionado, los antepasados de estas aves vivieron inicialmente en América del Norte. La primera expansión hacia México, América Central y el Caribe habría ocurrido hace aproximadamente 7,5 millones de años, antes de que los linajes avanzaran hacia territorios sudamericanos.

La llegada a la Amazonía se calcula en torno a 6,1 millones de años atrás, mientras que el ingreso a los Andes habría sucedido poco después. El sur de Sudamérica habría sido ocupado hace cerca de 4,8 millones de años y la Patagonia, última región colonizada, unos 2,7 millones de años atrás.

Las primeras regiones ocupadas funcionaron como los principales corredores de esta dispersión. Desde allí, los grupos se desplazaron tanto hacia la cordillera andina como hacia la cuenca amazónica. En cambio, la Patagonia recibió aves casi exclusivamente desde el sur del continente.

El análisis incluyó 1.000 simulaciones de la historia evolutiva de la familia. Solo en 4 de ellas se formó una especie nueva en la Patagonia, un resultado que indica que el asentamiento en una zona distinta no implicaba necesariamente la aparición inmediata de nuevos linajes.

Las aves pudieron cruzar agua o conexiones terrestres parciales

La formación del puente terrestre de Panamá suele ubicarse entre hace 3 millones y 2,7 millones de años. Si los ictéridos llegaron a Sudamérica alrededor de 6 millones de años atrás, debieron utilizar otra vía para atravesar la separación entre ambos continentes.

Los científicos plantearon 2 posibilidades: que los ejemplares cruzaran extensiones de mar abierto o que aprovecharan islas y conexiones terrestres incompletas existentes antes de la unión definitiva. Sin embargo, el estudio no determina cuál de las opciones ocurrió.

La cronología coincide con un cambio ambiental registrado en el norte de Sudamérica: entre hace 9 millones y 6 millones de años, el levantamiento de los Andes favoreció la expansión de paisajes abiertos y cubiertos de pastos. Los pechos amarillos y sus parientes, el primer grupo que se separó dentro de la familia, viven en ese tipo de hábitat.

Los autores aclararon que la coincidencia temporal no demuestra que la expansión de los pastizales haya causado el desplazamiento de las aves. Sin embargo, el trabajo identifica que ambos procesos ocurrieron durante un período similar.

La diversidad de especies requiere otras explicaciones

La familia reúne más de un centenar de especies, pero la geografía no explica por sí sola esa variedad. La mayor cantidad de nuevas especies se habría originado en México y América Central, seguidos por la Amazonía y América del Norte, con ritmos de formación semejantes en las 2 grandes masas continentales.

Los autores explicaron que hay rasgos que el modelo nunca midió, entre ellos figuran la especialización en ciertos alimentos o hábitats, la conducta social y la elección de pareja.

Estudios posteriores podrían integrar esos rasgos para establecer por qué algunos grupos de oropéndolas, zanates y tordos originaron más especies que otros.

bienteveo,Pitangus sulphuratus,fauna tropical