In late June, terrible storms destroyed millions of dollars worth of property, and took lives in parts of the state around Enderlin, Spiritwood, and beyond. In late July, Gov. Kelly Armstrong issued a disaster declaration, asking President Donald Trump administration to release aid to the state.

Weeks and weeks went by, until North Dakota's Federal delegation -- Senators John Hoeven and Kevin Cramer, and Rep. Julie Fedorchak -- sent their own letter to the Trump administration, indicating that state emergency funds had been depleted, and urging the president to act both on Armstrong's declaration for the June storms, and a more recent one from Sept. 2 related to tornadic storms in August.

The Trump administration has been very slow in responding to these sorts of request, taking over a month on average compared to just a couple of weeks for previous administrations. And the declaration for the Enderlin/Spiritwood storm, in particular, took over 50 days before finally being acknowledged by Trump this week.

"Look, it's absolutely shameful. You have a lot of Republican politicians failing a lot of Republican voters," state Rep. Zac Isa, the Minority Leader for the Democratic-NPL, said on this episode of Plain Talk (which was recorded before Trump finally acquiesced to Gov. Armstrong's request).

"I take the back roads home from Bismarck and I drove through Page ,and Hunter, and the Arthur area. I saw the damage that windstorm did and and I can also look at electoral map," he continued. "I know there's a whole lot of Republican voters in that region. They expect Julie Fedorchak and John Hoeven and and Kevin Cramer to deliver, but those those guys are just rubber stamps for Trump. I mean, do they know there's ways to influence a president beyond kissing his ass all the time?"

Ista argues the delegation could not"rubber stamp his policies until he authorizes a disaster relief for North Dakota."

"It's just an absolute failure of any influence they might have," he continued.

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When Pat Traynor, Gov. Kelly Armstrong's interim Commissioner of the Department of Health and Human Services, said that excessive use of cell phones and other digital devices is "probably the biggest public health threat that we have," I wrote that he was wrong, and accused him of stoking a moral panic.

Traynor came on today's episode of the Plain Talk podcast to talk about it, and said that our devices leave us "continuously distracted." Referring to North Dakota's law law circumscribing cell phone use in public schools, he wondered how studens can be effectively educated when in a "constant distractive state."

Since cell phones aren't going away in our society any time soon, does a ban on their presence in schools help or hinder our ability to teach kids how to deal with them responsibly? Traynor says that part is up to families.

"Remember there's 24 hours in a day. Just from a standpoint of, parents still control the environment within which their kids grow up. Values. Norms," he said. "For instance, when you have a family meal together, are you present? And that goes for us, goes for me, with my kids and everything of the sort. But you're in charge of your family structure, as a parent or with guardians and others that take care of children."

Also on this episode, me and guest co-host Kyler Collom, from The Dakotan, discussed the use of a religious litmus test in appointing state Rep. Kathy Skroch to replace former Rep. Cindy Schreiber-Beck in District 25, and the mounting controversy around a similar appointment process playing out in District 42, where Rep. Emily O'Brien resigned her seat to take a position in Armstrong's administration.

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A new North Dakota law which went into effect on August 1 states that "every regular meeting of a governing body of a city, county, township, school district, district park district, water resource district must include an opportunity for an individual to provide public comment."

Over the last five years or so, school board meetings have become a flashpoint for the culture wars and other political battles, but in North Dakota and nationally. How does the state's school boards feel about this new public comment requirement?

Amy De Kok, executive director of the North Dakota School Boards Association, says she doesn't see it having much impact. "Most of our school boards have little to no, you know, public attendance on at their regular meetings," she said, adding that "a large majority of our local school boards have been providing this opportunity to their community at the regular meetings for several years, some for more than a decade."

While De Kok and her organization feel the legislation wasn't necessary, she argues it does some good in that it sets in law some limits on what sort of comment can take place. "What this bill does do that I think is positive is set some kind of guard rails for local our local boards, our local school boards and cities and counties and and whatnot to make sure that they can properly manage public comment," she said.

The bill allows the government entities to which it applies to set time limits on comment, content limits (comments can be limited to only what's on a meeting's agenda), and it also allows them to prohibit any speech that's harassing or defamatory.

She also said that, while school board meetings have been getting rowdy in recent years, things have "definitely calmed down since the pandemic."

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North Dakota has become a destination for investment in building out America's artificial intelligence infrastructure. Specifically, the massive, power-hungry data centers that enable the sort of cloud computing necessary to make AI work.

Public Service Commissioner Sheri Haugen-Hoffart, who serves on the triumvirate that oversees things like utility proces and power infrastructure, is enthusiastic about this investment. And, despite some critics saying the data centers will drive up utility prices, she's confident they're a good fit for the state.

"AI is here to stay. It's here. So where is their capacity?" she said on this episode of Plain Talk. "North Dakota has a lot of resources to fulfill that. So why not? We have it."

"We have good regulatory oversight," she continued. "I think we work well together, and we want to control that AI versus having someone like China or another adversary control our AI. So let's work together. Let's be good stewards and let's control it, and if we have the capacity, let's use it to serve."

Haugen-Hoffart said North Dakota has the cheapest electrical rates in the country, and she's confident that would remain the case even with AI data centers coming online. She also pointed out that the power consumption for some of the data centers -- at least those built by Applied Digital, which is working on a major investment near Harwood -- is "interruptable."

The first-term incumbent also indicated that she will be seeking re-election next year. "My plan right now, absolutely," she said.

Haugen-Hoffart was first appointed in 2022 to complete the six-year term current Tax Commissioner Brian Kroshus was elected to. That appointment was confirmed on the statewide ballot in 2024, and now that term is up for re-election again in 2026.

On this episode we also discussed North Dakota's gambling boom, which has grown far beyond the state's capacity to regulate it, and whether our state should embrace a new philsophy of promoting from within, as opposed to hiring from outside the state, when it comes to key government leadership positoins.

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North Dakota's public schools are not perfect, but they are very, very good. Sadly, often thanks to national narratives that have little to do with what's happening in our school districts, that's not always the popular perception the public has. People are left with the impression that kids are being indoctrinated, or in extreme cases even groomed, and that's just not the case.

North Dakotans for Public Schools is a new organization aimed at bridging that gap between public perception and reality. Former state Senator Erin Oban is a spokesperson for the organization (and, full disclosure, is also the wife of my co-host Chad Oban). "I don't think our public schools are perfect," she said on this episode of Plain Talk. But she wants the group to drive home the question: "What are we doing to to make them a little bit closer to perfect for the kids in our communities that they serve?"

That doesn't just mean making the case for the state's public schools. It also means helping the schools understand the reasonable concerns parents and the public at large have. The goal is to "build stronger more trusted relationships," Erin Oban said.

Though that will include telling some of the positive stories about education, to try and get them on par with the negative things we hear. "The negative catches on so much more than the positive," she said, "and we need to be people who spread good news, not just bad news."

Both Chad and I agree that there is a need to turn the temperature down in the debate around our public schools. "The adults have to start acting like adults," Chad said, and I think he's right.

We also discussed my recent column about the "tyranny of small rooms," which sees the loud voices of angry people who show up at school board meetings, or on social media, get a lot of attention, even if their views aren't necessarily reflective of the larger public's.

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North Dakota Insurance Commissioner Jon Godfread says North Dakota -- and America, really, since our state is hardly an independent nation -- is on an unsustainable trajectory when it comes to the cost of insurance and health care.

On this Plain Talk, Godfread, who is also the current president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, argued that Congress, with its much-ballyhooed One Big Beautiful Bill Act, has made things worse. "With what happened in the budget reconciliation bill, I'm really worried about this upcoming open enrollment period."

Godread, who is a Republican, argued that some of the provisions in the bill are "really going to harm consumers" and predicts "pretty significant rate increases across the board across the country."

He said there is talk of Congress coming back and fixing some of these issues, but that will be too little too late.

"If they look at doing something, changing it in December, well, at that point, I've already gone on, shopped as a consumer, and realized the price is too high. I'm not going back in the last two weeks of the year to say, 'Oh, well, maybe this time they promise it's going to be better.'"

Pricing healthy people out of the insurance market would narrow the pool and drive up costs, creating what Godfread described as a "death spiral."

"We're on a track right now that is not sustainable, right? I mean, there is no more more to give when you get to health insurance premiums."

On an unrelated topic, earlier this year, the state legislature passed a law merging the state's previously independent Securities Department under Godfread's office after controversial Securities Commissioner Karen Tyler went to work for the state's Industrial Commission. That Godfread's office is now in charge of the inquiry into the high-profile dissolution of Epic Companies.

Godfread said he couldn't comment on that matter, specifically, but said he was surprised to learn that a restitution fund created by lawmakers to help mitigate those financially harmed by fraud was sitting empty.

"Another piece that we found is back in 2019, there was a restitution fund that was created by the legislature for the Securities Department," he said. Under Tyler's leadership, "that fund has never had money put into it. That to me is a big problem."

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