Plain Talk

A new law that just took effect here in North Dakota  seals court records in concluded cases that don't result in a conviction. That would mean instances where the defendant was acquitted, or when the charges were dismissed, or any other outcome that's not a guilty plea or verdict. The argument in favor of the law is that it's not fair to the defendants to have those cases in the public record. Af...

"There are currently three ethics complaints against my office," Attorney General Drew Wrigley said on this episode of Plain Talk. It's a startling admission, but Wrigley says the complaints are spurious, and that the state Ethics Commission, which he has been outspokenly critical of, is hording complaints like those, instead of clearing them, for political purposes. "Somebody lodged a complaint t...

I spent a little time on this episode of Plain Talk bemoaning the horrendous performance of my beloved New York Yankees. Poor roster construction and poor fundamental play are difficult things to watch. Co-host Chad Oban ate it up, as you might imagine, but baseball isn't all we discussed. We touched on the baffling controversy over Sydney Sweeney's jeans commercial. For some reason, this has conv...

Today on Plain Talk, we had the pleasure of speaking with US Senator John Hoeven, and began our conversation with a pretty historic event: the rerouting of the Red River for the Fargo-Moorhead Flood Control Project. Senator Hoeven, who has been working on this project since he was governor, highlighted how it will "permanently change part of the route of the uh Red River" and "protect more than a...

NOTE: The $740,000 question is a podcast from Plain Talk producer Matt Fern. In the conclusion of this three-part series, filmmaker Matt Fern investigates the two men at the center of North Dakota's film grant controversy: longtime legislator Rep. Bob Martinson and Canticle Productions founder Dan Bielinski. As an ethics complaint regarding the film grants finally moves into a formal investigation...

On this episode of Plain Talk, my co-host Chad Oban and I talk about the crazy Minot mayoral race, evidence of extremism in the North Dakota Young Republicans, and the controversy over bonuses paid to Commerce Department employees. The Minot race, in some ways, is an important bellwether for North Dakota politics, taking place as it is in one of the most partisan Republican communities in the stat...

Minot-area Democrat Trygve Hammer has run for the U.S. House of Representatives in the last two election cycles. More recently, he's organizing a town hall event in Minot — which he's branded the People's Town Hall — as a clapback to Rep. Julie Fedorchak holding only digital town halls. He was on this episode of Plain Talk to promote that event, but I started him off with the obvious question. Wil...

NOTE: The $740,000 question is a podcast from Plain Talk producer Matt Fern. After sending a letter to Governor Doug Burgum and receiving no response, a coalition of 27 filmmakers from across North Dakota hold a press conference outside the Attorney General's office to demand transparency and accountability in how one filmmaker received $740,000 from the Department of Commerce. But despite the med...

Even as some local governments claim that a new, 3% cap on property tax increases will cause chaos in their budgets, Sen. Josh Boschee, a Democrat from Fargo, says he and his colleagues felt it was important to implement. He says lawmakers see it as a way of putting the responsiblity for property taxes back on local governments. "In the last decade, or my 12 years of service in the state legislatu...

Is Doug Burgum, who is currently serving as Secretary of the Interior under President Donald Trump, a happy man right now? I posed that question in a recent column occassioned by Burgum's visit to infamous island prison Alcatraz at Trump's behest to assess it for use as a detention facility. Burgum has to know that this is a fantastically stupid idea. His face, during a Fox News interview from the...

This episode of Plain Talk is a little unusual, because the guest we interviewed for the show is actually our own producer, Matt Fern. Matt, in addition to producing Plain Talk, is also a filmmaker by trade. A couple of years ago he organized a dozens of his colleagues from around the state to object to hundreds of thousands of dollars in film grants being issued by the North Dakota Department of...

The $740,000 question is a podcast from Plain Talk producer Matt Fern. Making movies in North Dakota is hard. Unless you're one company with powerful connections. In the premiere episode of The $740,000 Question, filmmaker Matt Fern unpacks how a single production company, Canticle Productions, received $700,000 in taxpayer-funded film grants from the North Dakota Department of Commerce. With no s...

Public defenders working in the federal system representing indigent defendants aren't getting paid. The federal government ran out of money, as my colleague April Baumgarten reported recently. That's a big problem. Every American accused of a crime has a right to counsel, and while you might think that public defenders are just for poor people, they actually represent most people accused of a cri...

One proposal in the recently passed "big, beautiful bill" that didn't make it to the finish line was an amendment from Utah Sen. Mike Lee, which would have jump-started a sell-off of federally owned lands. On this episode of Plain Talk, John Bradley, executive director of the North Dakota Wildlife Federation, talked about that victory, and also discussed the place in politics conservation issues o...

The criminal justice system is often where public policy debates, from civil rights to addiction, converge. It's also critical for ensuring accountability when the government oversteps. North Dakota's Commission on Legal Counsel for Indigence, led by Director Travis Finck, headed into this year's legislative session facing a "perilous situation," that was dangerously close to a "constitutional fai...

In this replay episode, we revisit a conversation that didn't go as planned. We had scheduled Rep. Nico Rios to appear on Plain Talk to discuss his recent controversies; from bigoted and homophobic remarks during a DUI arrest, to a social media post invoking the CIA and antisemitic language, to a constitutionally questionable resolution declaring Jesus Christ "King over all the world." We wanted t...

In this special replay episode, Rob Port and Chad Oban revisit a timely conversation with former North Dakota Republican Party Chair Bob Harms. With infighting and censures making headlines again, Harms' perspective on internal party dynamics, district-level power struggles, and the long-term risks to the GOP brand hits even harder today. The discussion dives into how party rules, legislative over...

President Donald Trump joined Israel's attacks against Iran's nuclear program, and so far the operation seems to have been a success. That's certainly Sen. Kevin Cramer's view of it, as he explained on this episode of Plain Talk. He also praised Trump's willingness to repudiate some of the isolationists in the MAGA movement. "I've often said, and people have quoted me saying, 'Donald Trump likes p...

Recently, Congresswoman Julie Fedorchak sent out an email seeking to debunk what she describes as myths when it comes to proposed changes to the Medicaid program. She argues that the program isn't being cut, but rather just being slowed in its growth. But wherever you come down on that debate, the fact that she's prompted to make these arguments is politically significant. On this episode of Plain...

In a recent column, I argued that the concept of "baby bonds" — a verison of which is included in "big beautiful bill" President Donald Trump is backing in Congress — is something North Dakotans should implement whatever the federal government might do. We have hundreds of millions in revenue from the Legacy Fund's investments, and we have the Bank of North Dakota to administer the program. A roug...

The North Dakota Republican Party censured Republican Gov. Kelly Armstrong at a recent meeting. And yes, despite what some party leaders are now saying, Armstrong does see it that way. "It was a censure," he said on this episode of Plain Talk, going on to expand on his immediate reaction to the censures which was "I don't care." The censures expressed disapproval in Armstrong's property tax plan,...

Andrew Loftesnes is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. Specifically, he served with the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division, which is the same unit that President Donald Trump has, controversially, deployed to Los Angeles to, as Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem put it recently, "liberate this city from the socialist and burdensome leadership" elected by local citizens. The d...

When former Congressman Earl Pomeroy looks at the protests today against the Trump administration and the so-called "big, beautiful bill" in Congress, he sees echoes of the 2009 protests that ended his tenure in elected office. "There's going to be an election day reckoning," Pomeroy, a Democrat who represented North Dakota in the U.S. House from 1993 to 2010, said on this episode of Plain Talk. W...

Artificial intelligence continues to dominate conversations worldwide, sparking both optimism and deep concern. On this replay episode of Plain Talk, hosts Rob Port and Chad Oban revisit a compelling discussion with the late Rep. Josh Christy, an influential North Dakota lawmaker and expert in artificial intelligence who tragically passed away during the legislative session. Throughout the convers...

At the beginning of this episode of Plain Talk, Attorney General Drew Wrigley took exception to my recent reporting suggesting that he and Gov. Kelly Armstrong are at odds over sentencing legislation and the performance of state prison officials. Based on what would follow, I think the conflict between two of North Dakota's top elected officials is positively overt. According to Wrigley, the North...