Plain Talk

A group of hardcore supporters of Donald Trump have gotten approval to begin circulating a petition to recall North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and his running mate Lt. Governor Brent Sanford. Will they be successful? Chad Oban, former executive director of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL, joins this episode of Plain Talk Live to discuss it. Also, a federal judge has dismissed the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's lawsuit against the Dakota Access Pipeline, marking the end of an era of North Dakota politics, and at the national level Democrats suffered a defeat in their efforts to implement national election reforms. Is that issue over?

Critical race theory. You've no doubt been hearing a lot about it. It's in our headlines. It's grist for the ceaseless mill of cable news outrage. It's a topic of debate in our school districts. Do you know what it is? Is it valid curriculum? A worthy avenue for scholastic endeavor? Or is it an ideology? Political doctrine dressed up as academics? Perhaps it's a bit of both. Dr. Dan Conn, a professor teacher education at Minot State University, joins this episode of Plain Talk Live to talk about it.

Since 2007, the City of Fargo has had an ordinance making it illegal for federal firearms license holders to conduct transactions out of their homes. Only, nobody really paid attention to it until federal officials became aware of it and informed FFL holders in Fargo operating that way that they couldn't renew their licenses. There aren't many people in Fargo who do this. There were just seven in May of last year when then-Fargo Police Chief David Todd said there hadn't been any complaints about them. Still, Fargo's city leaders have refused to back down from this restrictive ordinance, so the Legislature stepped in. During their 2021 session, they passed a state law pre-empting Fargo's ordinance. But at a recent meeting, city commissioners tabled a motion to bring their ordinance into compliance with state law, opting instead to explore a lawsuit against the state over the law. Edward Krystosek, a Fargo resident and past candidate for the city commission who has followed this issue closely, joins this episode of Plain Talk Live to talk about the city's actions.

Earlier this year North Dakota's lawmakers passed a bill requiring full legislative approval of any interim appropriation of federal money that exceeds $50 million in a biennium. Now lawmakers don't want to follow their own law. Former North Dakota Governor Ed Schafer weighs in on that situation on this episode of Plain Talk Live. Also, there's drama at the State Investment board, with revelations that a consultant, paid by the state to manage its money managers, has also accepted payments from the managers it recommends for hire. Is this pay for play? What steps can the board take to address this situation?

If you can name me a North Dakota community that wasn't built around a railroad stop, or at least had rails running through it at one point in its history, I'll buy you lunch. Rail infrastructure has been important to North Dakota for as long as our state has been a state. Longer, really, so when one of the companies providing rail service in our region is seeking out a merger with another American rail line, it matters to us. John Brooks, Chief Marketing Officer for Canadian Pacific Railway, joins this episode of Plain Talk Live to talk about his company's efforts to merge with Kansas City Southern, and why that transaction is a better outcome for North Dakota than a rival merger bid from Canadian National.

With the vigorous demonstrations against the Line 3 pipeline, the upper midwest is getting another front-and-center look at the often vicious politics of energy infrastructure. Left-wing activists train to be arrested, the plot conflict with law enforcement, all to produce media coverage that is sympathetic to their cause. Meanwhile, every single one of us, including the most ardent and extreme of pipeline protesters, is using the oil moved by pipelines every day. Jay Thomas from WDAY AM970 in Fargo joins this episode of Plain Talk to talk about the Line 3 protests and pipeline politics in general.

A big name in power is coming to North Dakota to invest in hydrogen energy, and it's a big deal for our state in a lot of ways. It's a new industry, for one, in a state that desperately needs economic diversification. The proposed hydrogen hub will be a new customer for North Dakota natural gas, a commodity produced as a byproduct of oil exploration here. We produce so much a lot of it gets burned off as excess in the Bakken oil fields. It will also be a shot in the arm for North Dakota's nascent efforts with carbon capture. The hydrogen plant will be carbon-neutral because what carbon it produces will be captured and stored here in the state. On this episode of Plain Talk Live, Bakken Energy CEO Mike Hopkins will discuss this new project and the specifics of North Dakota, from public policy to geology, that are making it possible.

The Administrative Rules Committee approved a ban on LGBT conversion therapy asked for by the North Dakota Board of Social Work Examiners, which oversees licensing for social workers. Some Republican lawmakers resisted the change. Was it the right move? I'll talk about it with former Democratic-NPL executive director Chad Oban on this episode of Plain Talk. This episode of Plain Talk will also feature, prominently, two of the most fun political words. Gerrymandering. Filibuster. Now that the census is completed, the task of redistricting lays before North Dakota's lawmakers. Since North Dakotans mostly vote for Republicans, that means the process will be controlled by Republicans Already, some of the state's Democrats are suggesting that the Republican plan will be an exercise in gerrymandering (whee!) which should be referred to the ballot and defeated by voters who would then also vote to approve a Democratic plan which could only be introduced at the ballot box because, again, North Dakotans mostly don't vote for Democrats. Sound convoluted? It is. Also, at the national level, Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, is the lone vote standing in the way of much of the Democratic agenda, including ending the filibuster (whoo!) and advancing sweeping election reforms. Is he taking a stand for the wellbeing of our country? Or is this an exercise in self-serving politics?

"Rural America gets bad vibrations from Big Wind," Robert Bryce wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal. He notes that President Joe Biden's administration is pushing for "tens of thousands of wind turbines," but asks, "where, exactly, will all those turbines be built?" It's a good question. Many Americans, even those who support the concept of wind energy, may not realize just how thoroughly we will need to carpet-bomb our landscape with wind turbines to reach some of the goals set for wind production. Remember, too, that all those turbines will also need to be serviced by transmission lines to carry that energy to market. While a coal plant or a nuclear plant generally sits in one location, wind turbines are dispersed across the landscape, and the transmission lines that serve them end up covering a lot of ground. Bryce, who has authored a report on this problem for the Center of the American Experiment, a Minnesota-based think tank, joins this episode of Plain Talk Live to talk about wind turbines and the challenges of not-in-my-back-yard attitudes. You can read Bryce's WSJ article here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/rural-am... You can read his report for the Center of the American Experiment here: https://files.americanexperiment.org/...

Coal Creek Station is North Dakota's largest coal-fired power plant and, for a while, it was slated for closure, thanks to a long-running political campaign to tilt the energy markets away from coal, with environmental activists and political partisans cheering its demise. Then, a reprieve. Current owner Great River Energy is close to a deal with a buyer that would continue to operate the plant. Yet there are forces working to undermine that deal - some for political reasons, others because they just don't want to compete with coal-fired power anymore. At the center of this vortex of politics and energy is McLean County and State's Attorney Ladd Erickson who want the power plant to remain open. The closure of Coal Creek Station would be economically and culturally devastating for central North Dakota. McLean County and Erickson have shown a willingness to fight the anti-coal political winds. On this episode of Plain Talk, Erickson joins to discuss the pending deal.