News

War on women’s health

December 19th, 2018

FARGO – Women’s health is on the frontlines in the war for healthcare dominance. On the side to repeal the Affordable Care Act led by President Donald J. Trump, nearly 70 attempts offering little to no alternatives have been made against current healthcare law.

No attacks succeeded until December 14, when a district court judge in Texas ruled that the Affordable Care Act was unconstitutional because Congress eliminated a penalty for those who forgo health insurance. The federal…

One Congressman blocks Savanna’s Act, North Dakotans outraged

December 19th, 2018

Jessica Perez and her son Malachi after signing the letter to Congressman Kevin Cramer urging him to help Savanna's Act pass - photograph by C.S. Hagen

FARGO – While a lone Virginian Congressman blocks passage of Savanna’s Act, people across North Dakota are applying pressure to the state’s representative in Washington, D.C. to help push the bill forward.

On Wednesday, dozens of concerned people in Fargo, Minot, Bismarck, and Grand Forks contacted the office of current Congressman Kevin Cramer to demand his verbal support to push the act through the U.S. House of Representatives. The FM Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women –…

Savanna’s Act passes U.S. Senate

December 7th, 2018

Savanna LaFontaine Greywind - Facebook

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Savanna’s Act passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate on Friday and will move to the U.S. House of Representatives.

The bill, S. 1942, is named for Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota, who was killed by Brooke Lynn Crews on August 19, 2017 during a fetal abduction described during legal proceedings as one of the state’s most “diabolical” acts. Crews’s former live-in boyfriend and accomplice, William…

Is China using a Native American front to build a state-owned oil refinery?

December 5th, 2018

TRENTON – An oil company with deep ties to Chinese state-owned enterprises is attempting to quietly set up a refinery near a historical site in western North Dakota, raising red flags with locals about more than the possibility of water contamination.

According to Williams County Planning and Zoning Application records filed on November 13, 2018, John F. Melk, President of AIC Energy Corporation, a subsidiary of AIC Solutions Group Inc., announced plans to build a bio-diesel oil…

City Hall open for business

December 4th, 2018

FARGO – City Hall may have taken a little more taxpayer money than originally expected, but it is now fully operational and ready for business.

Although the 215 office workers began moving in following a ribbon-cutting ceremony in September, the City of Fargo officially opened to the public on Tuesday. Initially projected to cost $22 million, the 150,000 square foot city center ended up costing close to $30 million.

Newly completed City Hall’s location was chosen to defy the Red…

As the world faces mass extinction from climate change, it’s business as usual in oil-rich North Dak

November 29th, 2018

On the busiest shopping day of the year the federal government published an eye-opening report on climate change, saying that warming temperatures could soon imperil the American way of life and harm the health of nearly every citizen.

Another report published earlier and conducted by independent scientists called for radical changes in the energy, transportation, food, and housing sectors, if the world is to survive.

The federal government’s version of the Intergovernmental Panel on…

‘Do yourself a favor and don’t come to jail’ for Christmas

November 15th, 2018

Captain Andrew Frobig at his desk at the Cass County Jail - photograph by C.S. Hagen

FARGO – Early Tuesday morning Captain Andrew Frobig seated himself at his office desk, quickly discovering that the jail count was up. About 76 people had been incarcerated over the long Veterans Day weekend bringing the total inmate population at the Cass County Jail up to a number he wasn’t happy with, 305.

Frobig’s overall goal to reduce inmate population and lengths of stays is beginning to work, however, with the implementation of the Cass County Community Supervision Unit…

FEMA refuses to help Natives in state of emergency

November 14th, 2018

Hail damaged homes including windows, doors, roofs - video screenshot by Charles Banner

OGLALA, South Dakota – Hundreds of Natives at the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation face life threatening danger after the Federal Emergency Management Agency refused to assist the tribe still suffering from a devastating summer hailstorm.

Approximately 550 houses, trailers, many of which are FEMA houses that were set up in and around Oglala after an earlier tornado, suffered collapsed roofs, smashed in windows and doors, and little to no protective siding after the July 27 storm that…

A Battle Lost, A War Not Won

November 7th, 2018

by Jacques Harvieux
jacquesthejock@gmail.com

At first, optimism filled the air on Election Day at the Fargo Billiards and Gastropub. Earlier, Cole Haymond, the political strategist and campaign adviser for Legalize ND, expressed his optimism.

Here's a rundown of what we've done in the last week:
1. Direct mail - mailed to households in Bismarck and Minot
2. David Crosby radio ad - Bismarck/Minot/Grand Forks
3. $14k in Digital ads targeting women under 40 statewide
4. Digital Ads IP address…

A ‘Democratic bloodbath’ in North Dakota

November 7th, 2018

Democrats react to outcome in the heated Heidi Heitkamp and Kevin Cramer U.S. Senate race early in the evening - photograph by C.S. Hagen

FARGO — The promised blue tide didn’t sweep North Dakota; the state is redder than before. Across the nation, however, Democrats won majority of the U.S. House and Congress is now split. Republicans increased their hold on the U.S. Senate as one of the nation’s most watched races featuring Heidi Heitkamp fell to her opponent Congressman Kevin Cramer.

Cramer is now one of two Republican U.S. Senators in North Dakota, and attorney Kelly Armstrong took Cramer's seat, the only U.S.…