Minnesota’s Department of Education: The Local Franchise of the Same Federal Grift Machine
By Phillip C. Parrish
2026 Republican Candidate for Governor of Minnesota
Retired U.S. Navy Intelligence Officer & Fraud Whistleblower
Linda McMahon just announced she’s carving up the federal Department of Education like the bloated Thanksgiving turkey it is—handing programs back to states and other agencies so the money stops vanishing into D.C. cubicles and actually reaches kids. Good for her. But let’s be real: in Minnesota, the state-level franchise of that same racket is every bit as rotten, and in many ways worse, because it’s closer to home and harder for parents to see the hands in their pockets.
Start with the greatest hits we already proved in court:
• Feeding Our Future: $250 million in federal COVID child-nutrition money meant for hungry kids during lockdowns. Instead, it bought Lamborghinis, lake houses, and beachfront property in Kenya. The Minnesota Department of Education was the pass-through agency that rubber-stamped every fake meal roster and ghost site. They claimed they were “overwhelmed.” Translation: they looked the other way while the DFL’s favorite nonprofits gorged.
• Daycare fraud: Another half-billion dollars siphoned from CCAP and child-care subsidies through suitcase cash, shell mosques, and fake enrollment lists. MDE’s sister agency (DHS) ran point, but MDE happily kept the “early learning” pipeline wide open because more “providers” = more federal dollars flowing through St. Paul = more administrative jobs for connected bureaucrats.
• Frontier Transportation / Minneapolis Public Schools: A single busing company billed MPS for $3 million above the contract cap in one year alone—thanks to a Walz-era law that guarantees 100% reimbursement for “homeless and highly mobile” students with zero verification. Ghost buses, ghost kids, real money. MDE signed the checks.
• Reading and math scores: Flat or falling for a decade while per-pupil spending went from $12k to nearly $19k. Where did the extra $7,000 per kid go? Not to teachers—starting pay is still pathetic. It went to new assistant superintendents of equity, ethnic-studies coordinators, and six-figure “consultants” who fly in to tell rural districts how to teach Hmong history in towns with zero Hmong families.
• Wilson Tindi: Convicted sexual predator hired by MDE itself as an “equity specialist” at $110k a year. Background check? What’s that? When confronted, the commissioner shrugged and said “mistakes happen.” Yeah, when you’re too busy policing pronouns to police actual criminals.
This isn’t incompetence. This is organized theft wearing the mask of compassion.
Every dollar that disappears into some nonprofit director’s third lake home is a dollar that never bought a reading intervention teacher, a new boiler for a freezing classroom in International Falls, or a single welding rig for a high-school shop class.
The Parrish Plan: Burn the Grift Down and Give the Power Back
When I’m governor, Day One starts like this:
1. Immediate forensic audit of every dollar MDE has touched since January 2020. Not some friendly “review” by the same Legislative Auditor who keeps finding “no issues.” A real outside firm with subpoena power and criminal referral authority. Every fake invoice, every ghost student, every $300,000 “equity conference” in Honolulu gets exposed.
2. Sunset 30% of MDE headcount in the first budget cycle. The bureaucracy that can’t stop $250 million from walking out the door doesn’t get to keep its corner offices. We’ll keep the Title I and special-ed coordinators who actually help kids; the rest can update their LinkedIn profiles.
3. Per-pupil funding follows the child—public, private, charter, or homeschool. No more forcing parents to fund a system that hates them. You want your kid in a classical academy, a trade school, or learning on the kitchen table with a stack of Great Books? The $18,000 currently spent on that child goes with you. Local school boards keep their buildings and their base funding, but the power shifts to families.
4. End the “compliance” racket. No more 400-page ethnic-studies frameworks that require districts to hire $120k coordinators just to check boxes. If a curriculum doesn’t teach kids to read, write, and cipher at grade level, it’s gone.
5. Clawback clauses with teeth. Any nonprofit or contractor caught stealing pays triple damages, and the executives go to prison. No more plea deals where they keep the lake house.
Minnesota parents aren’t stupid. They see the new admin wing at district headquarters while their kid’s algebra teacher is paid less than the guy who fixes the copy machine. They’re done being ATM machines for connected grifters.
Linda McMahon is draining the swamp in D.C. I’m bringing the industrial pump to St. Paul.
The money is there. The kids are there. All that’s missing is the political will to stop the thieves.
In 2026 we give that power back to the people who actually love children: parents, teachers, and local school boards.
Not the parasites who’ve been living off them for far too long.
Phillip C. Parrish
Navy Veteran. Fraud Whistleblower. Farmer. Father.
The next Governor who will make the grifters run.
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