Minnesota’s Department of Human Services is pausing new provider enrollments in 13 Medicaid-funded services administered by the state as the agency works with the federal government to address fraud concerns in high-risk programs.

The agency announced the new step on Thursday. It comes at the order of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which threatened last month to cut off Medicaid funding to the state unless it did more to address widespread fraud. Provider enrollment is the process to establish reimbursement from the government for services.

“This action is one more step we are taking to disrupt fraudulent billing,” temporary Human Services Commissioner Shireen Gandhi said in a news release. “We must safeguard Medicaid resources, always mindful that access to these programs is a lifeline for so many Minnesotans.”

State officials haven’t set a start date for the freeze, but it is supposed to last for up to six months, according to department officials. Existing providers can continue to operate and the freeze does not stop new clients from enrolling in services.

Adult day care licenses

In December, CMS Director Mehmet Oz demanded that the Human Services Department place a six-month freeze on enrollments in high-risk providers and confirm existing providers’ legitimacy.

Soon after, Human Services said it would stop accepting license applications for adult day care providers from Feb. 1 to Jan. 31, 2028. The move came amid allegations of fraudulent activity and allegations of kickback schemes in the program. Licensing is the process of getting authorization to operate.

Adult day services is one of 14 programs undergoing a third-party audit after being deemed high risk by state officials in the fall of 2025.

State Human Services officials stopped issuing licenses for new home and community-based services providers on Jan. 1, a pause that also will likely extend for two years.

Programs deemed high-risk

The expanded freeze announced Thursday will apply to the rest of the operating Medicaid-funded state programs deemed high-risk.

They include: Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention Services for Autism; Integrated Community Supports; Nonemergency Medical Transportation; Peer Recovery Services; Adult Rehabilitative Mental Health Services; Adult Day Services; Personal Care Assistance/Community First Services and Supports; Recuperative Care; Individualized Home Supports; Adult Companion Services; Night Supervision; Assertive Community Treatment; Intensive Residential Treatment Services; and Housing Stabilization Services.

One of the 14 high-risk programs, Housing Stabilization Services, is no longer operating. Human Services ended the program in October after learning of a federal investigation into allegations of significant fraud.

Third-party audit underway

A third-party audit of those high-risk programs is already underway. Human Services flagged 14 programs as high-risk based on evidence of fraudulent activity, suspicious patterns and general vulnerabilities. They are also subject to stricter oversight, such as “enhanced fingerprint background studies,” initial screening visits and unannounced visits.

Results of the third-party audit are expected later this month, according to department leaders.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office has said there is significant fraud in federally funded programs in Minnesota, though the exact amount remains up for debate.

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Assistant Minnesota U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson in December said fraud in the 14 high-risk Medicaid programs could top $9 billion since 2018, though Gov. Tim Walz has pushed back against that figure, calling it “defamation” of the state as it has not been backed by hard evidence.

A report released by the nonpartisan Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor this week found weak oversight and fraud risk in the Department of Human Services’ Behavioral Health Administration, which administers grants in programs for mental health and addiction treatment.

Minnesota employers added 8,900 jobs between September and November, according a release Thursday from the Department of Employment and Economic Development.

Minnesota also added nearly 8,500 people from September to November to the labor force, which accounts for the rise in the unemployment rate despite the addition of more jobs. The state’s labor force participation rate was 68.2%. This measures the percentage of people either working or actively seeking work, and is used to calculate the headline unemployment rate. As more people enter the work force, the unemployment rate rises eve as jobs are added.

Minnesota’s unemployment rate was 4% in November, compared with 4.6% nationally, rising by 0.3 percentage points since September as the state added more job seekers

“Minnesota’s employers are continuing to hire even as national trends point in an uncertain direction,” said DEED Commissioner Matt Varilek in the release. “Minnesota employers are adding jobs while the national labor market stalls out, which is good news for our state. We are monitoring our unemployment rate and working hard to connect workers to good jobs.”

DEED will release monthly data for December on Jan. 22 as the jobs numbers reporting schedule returns to normal.

The federal government shutdown last fall delayed the release of jobs numbers for the months of September through November. Due to the shutdown, some labor force data was not collected for October, and therefore, over-the-month change from October to November is not available for some parts of this report.

As of November, Minnesota gained more than 40,700 jobs over the year, up 1.3%, with the private sector gaining 40,500 of those jobs, up 1.6%. Both rates are faster than the nation’s: overall, national employment grew 0.5% over the year with the private sector up 0.7%.

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By MICHELLE L. PRICE

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President JD Vance on Thursday blamed a federal immigration officer’s fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman on “a left-wing network,” Democrats, the news media and the woman who was killed as protests related to her death expanded to cities across the country.

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The vice president, who made his critiques in a rare appearance in the White House briefing room and on social media, was the most prominent example yet of the Trump administration quickly assigning culpability for the death of 37-year-old Renee Good while the investigation is still underway. Good was shot and killed by an ICE officer while she tried to drive away on a snowy residential street as officers were carrying out an operation related to the administration’s immigration crackdown.

Vance said at the White House that he wasn’t worried about prejudging the investigation into Good’s killing, saying of the videos he’d seen of the Wednesday incident, “What you see is what you get in this case.”

Vance said he was certain that Good accelerated her car into the officer and hit him. It isn’t clear from the videos if the vehicle makes contact with the officer. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said Wednesday that video of the shooting shows arguments that the officer was acting in self-defense were “garbage.”

The vice president also said part of him felt “very, very sad” for Good. He called her “brainwashed” and “a victim of left-wing ideology.”

“I can believe that her death is a tragedy, while also recognizing that it’s a tragedy of her own making and a tragedy of the far left who has marshaled an entire movement — a lunatic fringe — against our law enforcement officers,” Vance said.

His defense of the officer, at times fiery, came as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and President Donald Trump likewise said the officer’s actions were a justified act of self-defense. Trump said Good “viciously ran over” the ICE officer, though video footage of the event contradicts that claim.

Trump has made a wide-ranging crackdown on crime and immigration in Democratic cities a centerpiece of his second term in office. He has deployed federal law enforcement officials and National Guard troops to support the operations and has floated the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act to try to stop his opponents from blocking his plans through the courts.

Trump officials made it clear that they were rejecting claims by Democrats and officials in Minnesota that the president’s move to deploy immigration officers in American cities had been inflammatory and needed to end.

“The Trump administration will redouble our efforts to get the worst of the worst criminal, illegal alien killers, rapists and pedophiles off of American streets,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday before Vance spoke.

She called Good’s killing “a result of a large, sinister left-wing movement.”

Vance was selected as Trump’s running mate last year partly for his ability to verbally spar, especially with the media. He opened his remarks by condemning headlines he saw about the shooting, at times raising his voice and decrying the “corporate media.”

“This was an attack on law and order. This was an attack on the American people,” Vance said.

He accused journalists of falsely portraying Good as “innocent” and said: “You should be ashamed of yourselves. Every single one of you.”

“The way that the media, by and large, has reported this story has been an absolute disgrace,” he added. “And it puts our law enforcement officers at risk every single day.”

When asked what responsibility he and Trump bore to defuse tension in the country over the incident, Vance said their responsibility was to “protect the people who are enforcing law and protect the country writ large.”

“The best way to turn down the temperature is to tell people to take their concerns about immigration policy to the ballot box,” he said.

Vance also announced that the administration was deputizing a new assistant attorney general to prosecute the abuse of government assistance programs in response to growing attention to fraud in childcare programs in Minnesota. The position “will be run out of the White House under the supervision of me and the president,” Vance said. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to questions about the new role.

Vance said the prosecutor will focus primarily on Minnesota, and will be nominated in coming days. Vance added that Senate Majority Leader John Thune told him he’d seek a prompt confirmation.

Associated Press writers Konstantin Toropin, Will Weissert, Jonathan J. Cooper and Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension on Thursday released the identity of a man who recently died at Renville County Jail.

Percy Lee Strother, of Roseville, has been identified as the man who had a medical emergency at Renville County Jail and later died on Jan. 1, according to the preliminary investigation by the BCA.

Correctional officers found 53-year-old Strother unconscious and unresponsive in his cell just before 7:30 a.m. on Jan. 1, per the BCA. Staff immediately removed him from his cell and provided medical aid.

Emergency medical personnel transported Strother to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead shortly after arriving, according to the BCA.

The preliminary investigation did not find any obvious signs of trauma on Strother and his cause of death is pending, according to the BCA.

The investigation is ongoing.

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