MINOT, N.D. — The fight for control of the North Dakota Republican Party continues to play out in district party reorganizations across the state. Activists aligned with the Bastiat Caucus in the Legislature have been trying to take over district leadership positions and then use those positions to censure Republican lawmakers who voted against Bastiat-backed bills, and…
Our Campuses Are a Place Where Minds Narrow
MINOT, N.D. — Mark Kennedy, who for a short time was the president of the University of North Dakota, is having some problems at his new job as president of the University of Colorado system. The former Republican congressman had problems before he even got the gig, really, but they’ve only intensified during his time on the job. The issue?…
Ballot Measures Just Got Even Harder for Actual Grassroots Groups
MINOT, N.D. — North Dakota law allows citizens to legislate at the ballot box, whether it’s a statute or even the state constitution. Initiated measure campaigns need only collect the requisite number of petition signatures from North Dakota citizens and their issue goes on the ballot for an up or down vote. For statutory measures,…
There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
MINOT, N.D. — Our nation’s decades-long campaign of economic interventionism, turned up to extraordinary levels during the COVID-19 pandemic, was not a free lunch. There’s a bill coming due, and I’m not just talking about our exploding levels of national debt, which is up more than 41% from January 2017 when former President Donald Trump took office, according to…
A Double Standard for Vandalism?
MINOT, N.D. — Moorhead, Minnesota, made national headlines recently in a way that no community wants to make national headlines. A mosque, the Moorhead Fargo Islamic Community Center, was vandalized with spray-painted racial slurs, bigoted statements, and allusions to Nazism. A 22-year-old Dickinson man has been arrested for the crime, thanks to the detective work of a Walmart loss…
We’re Lowering the Flags Too Often
MINOT, N.D. — What does lowering the flag mean, as a symbol, if you can’t keep track of why they’re lowered in the first place? If you’re going past a school or a bank or a courthouse, and you see the flags lowered, and you have to ask the people you’re with why what are…
Food Fight Over Primary Process in the Waning Days of the Legislative Session
MINOT, N.D. — There is a lot to dislike about the way North Dakota goes about selecting partisan nominees for elected office. I’m not talking about who ultimately gets elected to office, but rather how the parties choose which candidates will represent them in any given contest on the ballot. Right now, the political parties…
North Dakota’s Delegation Gets Surprisingly Good Grades From Anti-Trump Group
MINOT, N.D. — Based on public polling and voting trends, North Dakota is widely seen as one of the most pro-Donald Trump states in the union. Despite that, North Dakota’s congressional delegation performed surprisingly well in a rating by a Republican anti-Trump group. Or surprisingly bad, I suppose, depending on your point of view. The group…
On Doug Burgum and Conservatism
MINOT, N.D. — Gov. Doug Burgum is a sellout. A secret liberal. A camouflaged progressive. A closeted Democrat who, when he first ran for office in 2016, only affiliated himself with the Republican Party and Donald Trump because that’s the sort of thing you have to do to get elected in North Dakota. Or maybe he’s exactly the sort…
That Ban on Mask Mandates Isn’t Really a Ban at All
MINOT, N.D. — Rep. Jeff Hoverson, a member of the Bastiat Caucus from Minot, has had exactly one legislative victory this session, and it came yesterday when the state House and Senate overrode Gov. Doug Burgum’s veto of his bill banning statewide mask mandates. I wonder how Hoverson’s constituents in District 3 feel about their representative introducing 11 bills this…