A group of Democratic, Farmer, Labor Party lawmakers in the Minnesota House introduced a bill on Monday that would slash funding by 10 percent to any city that declines to fly the state's new flag, a design that has drawn sustained backlash from communities across the state since Minnesota adopted it in 2024.
The bill landed on the same day the Inver Grove Heights City Council approved a resolution to fly the old flag instead of the new one. That city is only the latest to reject the redesign. Elk River, Champlin, Zumbrota, Crosslake, and Plainview have all voted not to fly the new banner. Champlin made its decision in February. And the list keeps growing.
So the DFL's response to a grassroots revolt against a flag nobody asked for is not persuasion, not compromise, and not a second look at the design. It is a threat: fly it or lose your money.
Rep. Mike Freiberg, one of the DFL members behind the proposal, told KSTP he was frustrated with the municipalities pushing back. He framed the resistance as manufactured outrage rather than genuine public sentiment.
"I've been a little bit irritated with some of the cities that are, I mean, in my mind, they're kind of manufacturing this culture war."
Freiberg added: "We followed the process; the state legislature is in charge of adopting state symbols. Cities should be focused on real issues." That line, cities should focus on real issues, is striking from a lawmaker who just introduced a bill to dock city budgets over a piece of cloth on a pole.
The mayors on the receiving end of the threat did not mince words. Champlin Mayor Ryan Sabas told Fox News the proposal was "ridiculous" and pointed to the growing momentum behind the old-flag movement.
"It's just an absolutely ridiculous bill that Democrats are signing on to because they're scared that this has gained traction. Not that it is, it has gained attraction. Every week there's another city or two or three that are passing the same resolution, that are moving forward, not staying silent anymore."
Sabas also cut to the core of the funding question. "The simple fact that they say they're going to withhold any kind of funding from a city is absolutely ridiculous," he said. "That's the people's money. That's the people's taxes."
Crosslake Mayor Jackson Purfeerst took to Facebook to challenge the bill's premise directly, calling it an overreach that contradicts the state's own traditions of local governance.
"Punishing local governments for exercising their right to choose, on something that is supposed to be voluntary, does not reflect Minnesota values. It is an overreach of power, plain and simple."
Purfeerst went further: "In Minnesota, local control, fiscal responsibility, and giving people a voice still matters, and they should be respected." That sentiment, local control, fiscal responsibility, giving people a voice, reads like a checklist of principles the DFL claims to support until those principles become inconvenient.
The broader pattern is familiar. When communities push back against decisions made in the state capital, the capital's instinct is not to listen but to punish. The internal fractures within the Democratic Party over leadership strategy and grassroots discontent are not limited to Washington. Minnesota's DFL is offering a local version of the same dynamic: top-down control dressed up as process.
Minnesota replaced its previous flag, a design dating to 1893, with the new one in 2024. The redesign came out of the State Emblem Redesign Commission, a body created by legislation that Tim Walz signed into law. The commission selected the winning design, an eight-point star on a new field.
Inver Grove Heights Mayor Brenda Dietrich captured the public mood when her council voted to reject the new flag on Monday.
"While change can be inevitable, the public reaction to the new flag has thus far been overwhelmingly negative and underwhelmingly accepted, with many residents feeling a meaningful connection has been lost."
"Overwhelmingly negative and underwhelmingly accepted" is about as diplomatic a way as an elected official can say the state imposed a change that voters never wanted and still don't.
The design has drawn pointed comparisons to Somalia's flag, which features a white, five-point star on a light blue background. Minnesota is home to more than 80,000 people of Somali origin, a community that includes Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Minnesota House Majority Whip Tom Emmer celebrated Elk River's vote to restore the old flag on social media, writing that the old design "is a much better representation of our state than woke Tim Walz's flag that resembles that of a certain East African country."
The flag's designer, Andrew Prekker, has denied any foreign inspiration. "I looked at other US state flags for inspiration, but did not look at other countries or territories," Prekker said. "Any similarities people want to see are a coincidence." Whether or not the resemblance is coincidental, the comparison has stuck, and it has fueled the resistance that DFL lawmakers now want to crush with budget cuts.
Emmer, who has been a vocal critic of prominent DFL-aligned figures in Minnesota's congressional delegation, has made the flag a rallying point for Republicans in the state. The flag debate has become one more front in a broader argument over who gets to define Minnesota's identity, and whether ordinary residents have any say in the matter.
There is one piece of good news for the cities in the crosshairs. Speaker of the Minnesota House Lisa Demuth wrote on Facebook that the bill is going nowhere.
"Let me be clear, this Democrat bill has NO path forward in the Minnesota House of Representatives."
If Demuth is right, the bill will die without a vote. But the fact that DFL members introduced it at all tells you something about the party's instincts. When six cities and counting reject a state symbol, the DFL's first move is not to ask why. It is to reach for the budget axe.
The bill also raises a basic fairness question that Sabas identified plainly: the money at stake belongs to the taxpayers who live in those cities. Cutting their funding because their elected councils made a decision the legislature dislikes is not governance. It is retaliation, funded with the very dollars those residents sent to St. Paul in the first place.
The DFL has faced its own internal battles over funding disputes at the federal level, where party members have openly acknowledged blocking agency budgets to extract policy concessions. The Minnesota flag bill is the same tactic applied downward, using the purse strings to override local decisions that embarrass the party.
What makes the DFL's bill especially tone-deaf is the trajectory of the resistance. As Sabas noted, "every week there's another city or two or three" passing resolutions to fly the old flag. The movement is not shrinking. It is accelerating. And the harder the legislature pushes, the more cities seem inclined to push back.
The questions that remain unanswered are telling. No bill number or formal title has been made public. The names of the DFL members who co-sponsored the measure, beyond Freiberg, have not been disclosed. Whether Minnesota law currently imposes any penalty on cities that decline to fly the new flag is unclear. And nobody has explained what happens if more cities pass old-flag resolutions before the bill, if it ever advances, could take effect.
The scrutiny around prominent Minnesota DFL figures and their accountability records only deepens the skepticism that residents in these cities already feel. When the people who represent you respond to your objections with financial threats instead of answers, trust erodes fast.
Minnesota's old flag flew for more than 130 years. The new one has been around for roughly a year, and city after city is voting to take it down. That is not a culture war manufactured by small-town councils. That is a verdict, and the DFL would rather punish it than hear it.