Within hours of Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, being chosen by Kamala Harris to be her Democratic presidential running mate, Donald Trump and team began attacking him as a “dangerously liberal extremist”.
Trump surrogates seized on Walz’s record of expanding voting rights for former felons, combatting the climate crisis, and other measures as proof that Harris-Walz would be the “most radical ticket in American history”.
If you step back from the melee, and look at his gubernatorial acts through a global lens, they appear anything but extreme. From the perspective of other industrialised nations, what Trump denounces as leftwing radicalism looks little more than basic public welfare provisions.
Far from being militant and revolutionary, initiatives such as paid family leave, free college tuition and rudimentary gun controls – all championed by Walz in Minnesota – have long been regarded as middle-of-the-road and unremarkable in large swathes of the world. Through this frame, it is not Walz who is the outlier, but his Republican critics.
Here are how some of Walz’s most impactful reforms compare with the rest of the world.
Free school lunches
Walz’s record: “What a monster! Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn.” That was Walz’s sardonic reply to CNN when he was asked about having introduced free breakfast and lunch for all Minnesota schoolkids. The 2023 measure puts Minnesota among just eight US states that offer school meals at no cost to all children, no matter their family’s income.
Around the world: Several countries provide free lunches for their children nationwide. Sweden, Finland and the three Baltic nations all provide meals at no cost for all schoolchildren irrespective of income, and many more European countries provide targeted or subsidised meals. Even a developing country such as India ensures access to lunch for more than 100 million kids daily.
“The idea of offering free meals to all students during the school day is hardly new – many countries already do so,” said Alexis Bylander at the Food Research and Action Center, a US anti-hunger organisation. “Numerous studies show the benefits, including improving student attendance, behaviour and academic success.”
Combatting the climate crisis
Walz’s record: In February 2023 Walz signed legislation committing Minnesota to having all its electricity produced by wind, solar and other clean energy sources by 2040 – an even more ambitious timeframe than adopted by California, America’s sustainable energy leader. The legislature also passed more than 40 climate initiatives, including expanding charging infrastructure for electric vehicles and introducing a new code for commercial buildings to cut energy use by 80% by 2036.
Around the world: By global standards, Minnesota’s ambitions do not stand out. Some 27 countries have written into law target dates by which they will become net zero – that is, stop loading additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In the developed world, Finland is leading the way, pledging to be net zero by 2035, and to begin absorbing more carbon dioxide than it produces by 2040. In December, almost 200 countries at the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai agreed to call on all countries to transition away from fossil fuels and for global renewable energy to be tripled by 2030.
Child tax credit
Walz’s record: Last year the governor signed into law a child tax credit program for low-income Minnesota families. The measure sought to fill the hole left by a federal scheme that expired in 2021 after Congress failed to extend it. The Minnesota plan is the most generous of its type in the US, offering $1,750 per child and reaching more than 400,000 children.
Around the world: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the forum of high-income democracies, reported in 2018 that 34 of the 35 countries with available information provided their people with some form of family benefit including tax credits. The OECD compared the value of family benefits for two-child families, measured as a percentage of average earnings, across 41 countries and found that the US came in at No 40, with only Turkey being less generous in its support.
Basic gun controls
Walz’s record: The governor identifies as a proud gun-owner and hunter, and he accepted Harris’s invitation to be her running mate wearing a camo hat. That didn’t stop him in May 2023 enacting a slew of gun safety measures, including requiring all private sales of handguns and semi-automatic rifles to go through an FBI background check that looks for evidence of criminal or mental health risks. The changes also introduced a “red flag law” that allows relatives and other interested parties to intervene when someone is in danger of injuring themselves or others with guns.
Around the world: International comparisons show that Americans own vastly more guns than civilians in other rich countries – 121 guns per 100 Americans, compared with five guns per 100 people in the United Kingdom. The number of gun killings per 100,000 people is also vastly higher: 4.12 in the US, 0.04 in the UK.
Other countries also have much tougher gun controls that make those introduced by Walz look weak by comparison. Canada requires gun buyers to have a licence to possess or acquire a firearm and first-time applicants have to wait a mandatory 28 days; it also imposes mandatory safety training and a ban on military-style rifles that does not exist in the US. The UK also bans some semi-automatic rifles and most handguns. Japan tightly restricts gun ownership, banning most guns other than air guns and a few other special categories and even then requiring owners to submit to annual inspections.
Paid family and medical leave
Walz’s record: House File 2, enacted by the governor last year, gave Minnesotans access to up to 20 weeks in every year of partial wages to cover medical leave after a life-changing diagnosis, mental health leave, or time off to care for a new baby. “Paid family and medical leave is about investing in the people that made our state and economy strong in the first place,” Walz said as he signed the bill.
Around the world: The US is the only OECD member country without a national law giving all workers access to paid leave for new mothers. Thirty-seven out 38 OECD countries offer national paid maternity leave – the only exception being the US. France, which holds the top spot, allows mothers and fathers to take paid leave until their child is three years old.
The US is also one of only six countries with no form of national paid leave covering either family or medical leave in the case of a health concern.
Voting rights for former felons
Walz’s record: The governor signed a bill that restores the vote to more than 50,000 Minnesotans who have been convicted of a felony. The Trump campaign denounced the measure as evidence of Walz’s “dangerously liberal agenda”, which is ironic, given that Trump himself, as a convicted felon, will only be able to vote for himself in November thanks to a similar reform in New York.
Around the world: A report released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) in June concluded that the US was an “outlier nation in that it strips voting rights from millions of citizens solely on the basis of a criminal conviction”. In 2022, more than 4 million people in the US were disenfranchised on those grounds. By contrast, when HRW surveyed 136 countries around the world, it found that the majority never or rarely deny the vote because of a criminal record, while those with restrictions tend to be much less draconian in their approach than US states.
• This article was amended on 16 August 2024 because an earlier version said that Canada requires gun buyers to wait 28 days before acquiring a firearm. In fact Canada requires gun buyers to have a licence to possess or acquire a firearm; a mandatory 28 day wait is imposed on first-time applicants.
