The Trump administration has placed intense pressure on Minnesota due to ongoing scandal regarding fraud in its Medicaid programs. The majority of those arrested in connection to the scandal have been Somali American, which the White House cited when launching Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota.
The immigration operation in Minnesota, which resulted in the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, has been unpopular, with 61 percent of voters saying in January that enforcement had gone too far.
To further address the Medicaid fraud scandal, Vance announced last week that the administration was pausing funding to Minnesota.
"We have decided to … temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding that are going to the state of Minnesota in order to ensure that the state of Minnesota takes its obligation seriously to be good stewards of the American people's tax money," he said.
According to Maddie Twomey, communications director for the Democratic-aligned health advocacy group Protect Our Care, attacking health care is rarely a politically sound move.
"Trump's own pollsters have said this again and again, and yet they continue to chip away at vital programs like Medicaid and in a midterm election year," Twomey said. "It's kind of shocking that this would be something that they're trying to continue to attack when people are so clear that they are concerned about health care."
But according to GOP strategists like Preya Samsundar, while it might "hurt in the short term," the ultimate message of rooting out fraud remains popular.
"Even when you look at polling whilst Operation Metro Surge was happening, there's a very specific dichotomy that voters are straddling," Samsundar noted. "They do not like how the administration chose to handle Operation Metro Surge; they don't approve of the tactics, but they still support the core message."
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