By Two years before the deadly shooting at Annunciation Catholic School, Minnesota’s independent and religious school leaders had warned Governor Tim Walz of mounting threats and urged him to act. Their April 14, 2023 letter, obtained by The Daily Wire, spelled out the “urgent and critical need” to extend state security funding to nonpublic schools. Yet no such action was taken.
The letter, signed by Tim Benz, president of MINNDEPENDENT, and Jason Adkins, executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, pointed to the massacre at a Christian school in Tennessee as evidence that “our schools are under attack.” Representing about 72,000 students across Catholic, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and independent schools, they pressed Walz to ensure that a proposed $50 million Building and Cyber Security Grant Program would cover all schools. Excluding nonpublic institutions, they wrote, was both discriminatory and dangerous.
The letter continued, “Since 2020, nonpublic schools have been advocating to be part of the Safe Schools Program that provides funding to school districts for emergency response training, security upgrades, mental health services, and security resources. The legislation supported by our collective organizations provides state aid to school districts, intermediate school districts, charter schools and nonpublic schools for this program. Unfortunately, this program currently does not cover nonpublic schools, charter schools and intermediate school districts and it is a levy-only program for school districts.
An attack on any school, whether it is a public, nonpublic, charter or another school site, cannot be tolerated or allowed to happen in Minnesota. We want to make sure Minnesota is doing everything it can to ensure that all our students are safe and secure. We ask you include $50 million in the final Education Finance bill and allow nonpublic schools to apply for funding.”
Despite discussions in which Walz expressed general support for safety, the funding never materialized. Adkins later told The Daily Wire that lawmakers’ refusal reflected a “lack of will,” worsened by political opposition to including nonpublic schools. “Minnesota had an $18 billion dollar budget surplus in the 2023-24 session and this was not funded,” he said.
Rather than securing the schools, Walz, along with other Minnesota leaders, focused on making the state a “trans refuge state.”
NPR reported in 2024 that “Walz, from the governor’s mansion, was an active ally in the effort to protect transgender people in the state and not a newcomer to the issues, Finke says. ‘Walz is a teacher and his history includes being the Gay Straight Alliance advisor at Mankato West [high school],’ she points out. ‘People who are around young people and have seen what it means to deny people their authentic fullness — they understand it.’
He was “clear eyed in his support for this all along,” Finke says, and quickly signed an executive order to put some protections in place in case the bill didn’t get through the legislature. Because her party had only a very slim majority, Finke says she spoke to “every single Democrat in the legislature — and some of them for hours and hours,” about the bill and its importance.
The day of the vote in the House, protestors arguing for and against the bill filled the state house. Debate on the floor was contentious and many hours long. “We voted at 5:45 in the morning in the House — it was a filibuster situation — and everybody stayed up and made it happen,” she said. In the end, the bill passed in both the house and the senate, and only two Democrats across the legislature voted against it, she says. “I feel incredibly proud and grateful.”
Walz signed the bill in front of cameras. As he signed, he said “Love wins,” and handed one pen to preteen Hildie Edwards, who had testified in support of the law, and another to Rep. Finke.
Walz’s Lt. Governor has already come under fire for appearing to promote violence to “protect trans rights” during her celebration of passing the bill.
This is the Lt Governor of Minnesota.
She is advocating for violence.
There is a giant knife on her shirt. pic.twitter.com/ly3PzT7eVc
— Jennifer Sey (@JenniferSey) August 27, 2025
School leaders had been warning that security upgrades and emergency training must be accessible to all schools. Their request went unanswered—and now, after a transgender-identifying shooter named Robin Westman carried out the attack at Annunciation, those warnings seem prescient. Benz called the assault “heartbreaking,” noting the school’s century-long presence as a community anchor. “We stand in solidarity and alongside Annunciation by holding them close to our hearts today and in the difficult days ahead,” he said.
Two years earlier, school leaders said the threat was ‘urgent and critical.’ Today, their warning reads like prophecy—and their governor’s inaction like negligence.
Now, one wonders: where’s the mainstream media?
Again, imagine if Planned Parenthood begged a red state governor for an increase in security at their "clinics" after a rash of targeted shootings, and that red state governor refused.
Lead story for a week in the media. https://t.co/JMNkkk9sKs
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) August 28, 2025
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