Fact check: Tim Walz did not redesign Minnesota’s flag to look like Somalia’s flag

As Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz vaulted to the national ticket this week as Kamala Harris’ running mate, a curious claim started circulating on social media: that the Democrat had recently redesigned the state’s flag to look like the Somali national flag.

The claim, which had been promoted in recent days by conservative podcast host Joe Rogan, originates with misinformation that first appeared late last year as a 13-member commission was in the midst of a major redesign of the Minnesota flag and seal.

“Kamala Harris’s VP choice, Tim Walz, is the governor who just changed the Minnesota flag so it could resemble the Somalian flag,” posted Texas resident Philip Anderson on X. “This man has absolutely ZERO LOYALTY to our country, and he says that socialism is a good thing.”

But Walz was not a member of that commission, nor did he have any role in selecting a final design that would become the basis for the new state flag.

The work was done by a commission of graphic designers, Native leaders and other community members created last year by the Minnesota Legislature, which was responding to decades of criticism that the imagery on the state flag and seal is problematic.

The original state seal, which was at the center of the flag, showed a white settler plowing a field in the foreground while a Native American man on horseback rode into the sunset, appearing to leave the land. Flag designers had pushed for a new look for years, noting Minnesota’s busy design resembled more than a dozen other state flags and was hard to decipher from a distance.

Although Walz signed a broader bill that included language to create the commission, their work was done independent of the executive branch and the Legislature. They had four months late last year and a budget of $35,000 to redesign both emblems, enlisting the public to offer ideas for a new flag and seal.

The winning flag design came from Andrew Prekker, a 24-year-old Luverne resident, who was one of more than 2,000 Minnesotans who created alternatives for the commission.

Prekker’s original design included the state’s shape and a white North Star next to a white, green and blue stripe representing the snow, the land and the state’s waters.

At the time, some social media users, including state Rep. Natalie Zeleznikar, R-Fredenberg Township, compared Prekker’s design to ones from regions of Somalia, including the three stripes.

“Interesting to say the least,” she wrote on X.

Minnesota has the largest Somali population in the United States, with more than 86,610 Somali Americans living in the state as of 2023, mainly in the metro area. Prekker said nothing in his submission about drawing inspiration from Somalia’s flag or any other design.

But a majority of commission members favored eliminating the stripes for a simple solid blue color to strip down the design to its simplest form, one that national flag experts give a high rating. Conservative critics say the final design, with its blue backdrop and white star, still resembles Somalia’s national flag, despite both being frequent features in flag design.

Although he had no role in its design, Walz is a fan of the new flag, frequently sporting a flag pin on his lapel and proudly swapping out the old flag for the new one in a video on social media. The new flag became official in a quiet ceremony on the Capitol steps on May 11.