Tim Walz didn’t pick Minnesota’s new flag, and its designer said it wasn’t inspired by Somalia’s

A day before Vice President Kamala Harris chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her presidential running mate, a social media user tried to tie Walz to a new state flag that some have said resembles flags from Somalia.

An Aug. 5 X post said, "Kamala Harris’s VP choice, Tim Walz, is the governor who just changed the Minnesota flag so it could resemble the Somalian flag." It included a video of Walz introducing the new flag and an image of several regional Somali flags from a Wikipedia page.

Minnesota is home to the largest Somali population in the U.S., and Minnesotans elected Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar as the first Somali-born representative in Congress. Of the state’s roughly 5.7 million population, as of 2021, 86,610 were Somali, reports Minnesota Compass, a research project led by Wilder Research. 

A new state flag adopted May 11 has for months been the subject of online misinformation from critics who say it resembles the Somali flag or regional flags from that country. Many of those claims were based on proposed Minnesota flag designs and not on the state flag’s final design.

Since Harris announced Aug. 6 that Walz would join the Democratic ticket, we found multiple social media posts reviving false claims about the new Minnesota flag and its supposed resemblances to Somalia flags.

The Somalia national flag has a light-blue background with a five-pointed white star in the center. The Minnesota state flag features a white, eight-pointed star on a dark blue background on the left, and light blue coloring on the right. 

The Somalia national flag, left, and the Minnesota state flag. (Embassy of Somalia-USA, Minnesota State Emblems Redesign Commission)

Although both flags have stars and similar colors, as do many flags, Somalia’s flag did not serve as an inspiration for Minnesota’s, Andrew Prekker, a Minnesota man whose flag concept inspired the final design, told PolitiFact.

And Walz played no role in the new flag’s design.

Minnesota’s Legislature in 2023 established the State Emblems Redesign Commission to replace the state’s flag and seal. The state flag had been in use since 1957 and featured a Native American riding away on horseback while a white settler plowed his field — a design considered offensive by some of the state’s Native American population because it symbolized their displacement.

The new flag was chosen after a monthslong selection process that drew 2,128 design entries. 

"Governor Walz did not have a seat on the commission and did not have approval over the flag design or adoption," Cassondra Knudson, a spokesperson for Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon — a voting member of the commission — told PolitiFact in an email. 

Walz appointed three of the commission’s 13 voting members, including its vice chair. A Walz spokesperson did not return a request for comment. The governor has criticized the state’s old flag as "problematic." He said of the new flag, "We've evolved into a more diverse state and I think it's more reflective of that," according to a May report by WCCO-TV, a CBS News affiliate..

Simon, in a December commission meeting before the final design was chosen, spoke about complaints about the flag design proposals’ resemblance to other countries’ flags; he noted that Iowa’s state flag bears a resemblance to the French flag and Texas’ state flag is similar to Chile’s. 

Prekker said in a May 19 Instagram post that it’s his "greatest hope that all Minnesotans — including those within our Tribal nations and indigenous communities — feel represented by the flag."

Prekker’s winning design entry included horizontal white, green and light blue stripes to the right of a white, eight-pointed star on a blue background. He said in a statement accompanying his entry that the navy blue on the left was the abstract shape of Minnesota and the star in the navy blue represented the state’s motto: "L'etoile du Nord, meaning "star of the north,"and also represents a symbol of unity above a land of diversity."

A flag from Somalia’s Jubaland state seen in the X post we are checking bears a resemblance to Prekker’s original concept with horizontal green, blue and white stripes, and a five-pointed star in blue on the left side. The horizontal stripes representing snow and agriculture that Prekker proposed were removed in the final design.

Andrew Prekker’s design that was used to create the final version of Minnesota’s state flag. (State Emblems Redesign Committee)

Prekker told PolitiFact that Walz "has nothing to do with the creation of the flag, and Somalia has nothing to do with the flag design."

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Prekker said he submitted three flag designs and used only other U.S. state flags for inspiration, not flags of other countries.

"Somalia had absolutely nothing to do with my flag during any point in the creation process," he said.

Prekker said he and the selection committee, with the help of others, revised the North Star on his design to be a north-facing "selburose star," which has more relevance to the state’s history as it is seen in Indigenous people’s art and is also on the floor of the Minnesota State Capitol’s rotunda.

The white and green horizontal stripes were removed because they cluttered the design, which allowed the flag to better "focus on what's really unique about Minnesota: our waters," he said.

The final design based on Prekker’s concept has an eight-pointed star that represents the North Star, surrounded by a dark blue field that represents the night sky and the state’s shape, the Redesign Commission said in its final report to the governor and Legislature. The right side of the flag is a light blue field that represents the state’s "abundance of water," noting that Minnesota has 11,842 lakes and 6,564 rivers and streams.

"A hundred flags have the color blue and some form of a white star. There is zero connection to Somalia or any other country," Prekker said. "Any similarities people want to see are a coincidence. It is a Minnesotan flag, and that is what I designed it for."

Anita Gaul, the Redesign Commission's vice chair, said the flag design had nothing at all to do with Somalia. 

There is no reference to Somalia or the state’s Somali population in the commission’s report describing what each of the flag’s elements represent. The star "also represents many cultures over time and across the globe," the report said, adding that the star "has been used extensively in quilting by both Indigenous people and some new immigrants."

An X post claims Walz changed the Minnesota flag to resemble Somalia’s flag. But Walz played no role in a state commission’s monthslong process to choose a new design for the state flag and logo, other than appointing three commission members.

The flag’s design was not created with Somalia in mind, according to a state commission's report, its vice chair and the creator whose design inspired the final version.

We rate the claim False.