x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

Plain Talk

Forum Communications Co.

Plain Talk is a podcast hosted by Rob Port and Chad Oban focusing on political news and current events in North Dakota. Port is a columnist for the Forum News Service published in papers including the Fargo Forum, Grand Forks Herald, Jamestown Sun, and the Dickinson Press. Oban is a long-time political consultant.

news politics

All Episodes

01:18:11

596: 'I'm kind of a free speech absolutist'

Plain Talk ·

2025/04/24

Just before Gov. Kelly Armstrong appeared on this episode of Plain Talk, he issued two vetoes for two very controversial bills passed by the legislature. The first was a rejection of Senate Bill 2307, a book ban bill sponsored by Sen. Keith Boehm. "I'm kind of a free speech absolutist," Armstrong said of his decision to spike the legislation, "because nobody's ever figured out who polices the policers." Armstrong criticized the legislation for making librarians and educators subject to potential

en

01:18:52

595: 'I couldn't care less that this comes from...

Plain Talk ·

2025/04/18

Dane DeKrey is a criminal defense attorney with the Moorhead-based lawfirm Ringstrom Dekrey. He recently signed onto an amicus brief in a legal fight over an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, which exacts retribution on a law firm Trump feels has wronged him. It does so by, among other punitive measures, revoking the firm's security clearances and prohibiting its personnel from entering government buildings. In his order, Trump accused the law firm WilmerHale of engaging "in

en

01:03:10

594: 'I hope it's not that I'm some kind of junky for...

Plain Talk ·

2025/04/16

When former Lt. Gov. Brent Sanford accepted the job as interim chancellor of the North Dakota University System, he said a long time colleague contacted him to say he's "proven that you like dysfunction and you like to jump into that." Sanford said he laughed it off. "I hope it's not that I'm some kind of junkie for chaos for goodness sakes, but there's a lot in in in higher ed in general, especially with what's happening at the federal level," he said on this Plain Talk. "I mean, there's a lot of

en

01:24:48

593: Ethics process is 'ready for exploitation and...

Plain Talk ·

2025/04/11

"The way the current process is set up, it is ready for exploitation and weaponization," Rebecca Binstock said on this episode of Plain Talk. Binstock is the executive director of the North Dakota Ethics Commission, and she admits that there are problems with the status quo. For instance, public servants who have a complaint filed against them are prohibited, under threat of criminal penalty, from talking about it, even though the person who filed the complaint is free to say whatever they want. She

en

01:09:45

592: 'We have...lifelong Republicans saying I'm done....

Plain Talk ·

2025/04/09

If you're a Republican on the ballot in North Dakota you're probably going to win. It wasn't always that way, and it won't always be that way, but it is that way now, and it makes a problem within the NDGOP, where a certain faction is playing games with the rules to control which candidates appear on the ballot as Republicans, all the more acute. "What's going on is we have some gamesmanship at the district level where the districts are basically telling the state party that they are autonomous and

en

01:14:46

591: 'We're going to be right back in this position...

Plain Talk ·

2025/04/04

"I think we are for certain going to see another property tax measure if that's the version that we kick out." That's what Minot Republican Rep. Matt Ruby said of the watered-down version of Gov. Kelly Armstrong's property tax plan that the state Senate is currently backing. "I don't think that that measure failing by that amount was because people love paying property taxes," Ruby continued, referring to the Measure 4 proposal to abolish property taxes, which more than 60% of voters voted against

en

01:14:18

590: 'We don't even know who we're supposed to call'

Plain Talk ·

2025/04/02

Gov. Kelly Armstrong is pushing a "bell to bell" ban on cell phones in schools, and his inspiration is a book called the Anxious Generation, which was written by Jonathan Haidt. But it's more than a book. It's also a movement. Casey Mock, the senior policy manager for Anxious Generation, joined this episode of Plain Talk to discuss their initiative. Some are condemning this effort as another teen panic, but Mock says that's not so. "You know what makes it different from a moral panic like the

en

01:37:30

589: 'I think this is an unforced error'

Plain Talk ·

2025/03/28

It's an annual tradition to have Gov. Kelly Armstrong on Plain Talk for a baseball-only episode contemporaneous to MLB's opening day. Unfortunately, we didn't keep our promise this time, since we're in the closing weeks of the legislative session in Bismarck, and there's a lot going on. When you have the governor on in that context, you have to ask some political questions. We asked Armstrong about amendments made to the property tax plan he's backing by the Senate Appropriations Committee at the

en

01:15:24

588: 'Does everything in the library need to be at...

Plain Talk ·

2025/03/26

There is a big debate over criminal justice reform at the legislative session in Bismarck. Attorney General Drew Wrigley suggests the state has been soft on crime, and that's resulted in higher crime rates. He's pushing a bill to keep people convicted of many crimes locked up for longer. But Jonathan Holth, Gov. Kelly Armstrong's Commissioner of Recovery and Re-entry, pointed out on this episode of Plain Talk that, far from being soft on crime, North Dakota's incarceration rates have been climbing

en

01:08:33

587: 'I don't know what President Trump's position on...

Plain Talk ·

2025/03/21

Many North Dakotans are demanding that our state's federal delegation hold town hall meetings to take questions about the extraordinary beginning of President Donald Trump's second term in office. I've called for town halls, too. Congresswoman Julie Fedorchak joined this episode of Plain Talk, and while that's not a town hall, she did take some questions on the topics that are motivating those calls for town halls. Like the administration's antagonistic and mercurial approach to relations with our

en

01:17:57

586: 'The people who ultimately get hurt in...

Plain Talk ·

2025/03/19

MINOT — Our attitudes about health insurance shift, depending on the context we're in. When we're healthy and paying premiums, we want costs to be low. When we're sick or hurt or sitting alongside a family member suffering some malady, we want expansive coverage and not a lot of bureaucracy. Unfortunately, these things are in tension with one another; part of it is the process of prior authorization. What is that, specifically? "When a provider requests a procedure, a prescription, or anything like

en

01:23:59

585: 'We're going to need massive amounts of CO2'

Plain Talk ·

2025/03/14

It's no secret that the oil industry is central to North Dakota's economy. Still, it's surprising even for in-the-know citizens to look back at the remarkable growth of that industry over the last couple of decades. The North Dakota Petroleum Council routinely commissions studies into the economic impact of their industry, and the findings are eye-popping. The first study was conducted in 2005. "At that time, the oil and gas industry, we were producing 92,000 barrels of oil a day. We had 3,300

en

01:31:24

584: 'I just found it disgusting'

Plain Talk ·

2025/03/12

We invited Sen. Kristin Roers to this episode of Plain Talk to discuss the debate over term limits reforms making their way through the Legislature in Bismarck, but before we turned to that topic, I asked Roers about recent comments made by state Rep. Brandon Prichard about her former colleage Rep. Josh Christy. Christy passed away during the current legislative session. He served in Fargo-area District 27 alongside Roers. When the District 27 Republicans approved the appointment of Rep. T.J. Brown

en

01:16:24

583: 'The retaliation is the problem'

Plain Talk ·

2025/03/07

President Donald Trump's announced tariffs against Canada and Mexico and their retaliatory measures have significant economic risks, particularly for places like North Dakota, where so much of our economy is tied up in international markets. But perhaps even more damaging is the uncertainty Trump's mercurial approach to this policy area engenders. One of the first questions we asked North Dakota Farmers Union President Mark Watne on this episode of Plain Talk was whether we know what exactly our

en

01:19:50

582: 'We've got counties in North Dakota where 20,...

Plain Talk ·

2025/03/05

"It's a tragedy what's happening in Texas," Dr. Paul Carson said on this episode of Plain Talk, referring to that state's measels outbreak, which has already claimed the life of one child. Carson is a medical doctor and an emeritus professor of the public health faculty at North Dakota State University. I wrote recently about North Dakota's statewide kindergarten vaccination rates for well-established vaccines for things like measels and chickenpox are worse than in Texas. Dr. Carson said that means

en

01:19:12

581: 'I'm taking the heat for it'

Plain Talk ·

2025/02/28

Rep. Scott Louser, a Republican from Minot, is one of a handful of North Dakota lawmakers who, after casting a vote in favor of a resolution asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn precedent striking down state bans on same-sex marriage, came to regret the decision. "I'm taking the heat for it," Louser said of his change of heart on this episode of Plain Talk. "I don't have a fantastic answer that's going to satisfy everybody," he said when co-host Chad Oban and I asked him about how he came to

en

01:05:02

580: Introducing dozens of bills is 'poor...

Plain Talk ·

2025/02/26

On Tuesday, February 25, lawmakers in the state House of Representatives worked late into the evening to finish work on the hundreds of bills introduced in that chamber this session so that they could be sent over to the state Senate for consideration. This legislative session has seen a lot of bills introduced — the most since the 1990s — and that's put a strain on the process. So much so that state Rep. Landon Bahl, a Republican from Grand Forks, says it's precluding lawmakers from giving

en

01:08:50

579: 'Nobody wanted to listen to Scott Davis the...

Plain Talk ·

2025/02/21

"I got angry," Scott Davis said on this episode of Plain Talk. "I had to walk away." Davis served as the Commissioner of Indian Affairs under three North Dakota governors (John Hoeven, Jack Dalrymple, and Doug Burgum), and now works as a consultant for North Dakota's tribal communities (he has familial roots in both the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the Turtle Mountain Chippewa). What made him angry, and want to walk away, were comments by Sen. Diane Larsen, a Bismarck Republican, suggesting that

en

01:16:25

578: Plain Talk Live! The legislature will have to...

Plain Talk ·

2025/02/20

MINOT — For the first time ever we took the Plain Talk podcast on the road, to famed bar, restaurant, and political hangout Peacock Alley. We interviewed Senate Majority Leader David Hogue and House Minority Leader Zac Ista. We also interviewed a couple of former lawmakers, Jessica Bell and Erin Oban. The theme of the night? The legislature is going to have to change. Bell and Oban talked about how much the Legislature changed, both during their time and since. Things have become more performative

en

01:29:02

577: Will the Legislature pass education savings...

Plain Talk ·

2025/02/14

Lawmakers in Bismarck are considering a number of school choice bills which would, in various ways, make public dollars available for parents to use toward private school tuition. The most important one, perhaps, is Senate Bill 2400, introduced by Sen. Michelle Axtman, and it does a whole lot more than just fund school choice. As currently amended, it would create what's called education savings accounts, making at least $1,000 available for every student in North Dakota who attends a public school

en

819 results

Similar Podcasts

Expres Ráno

Expres FM

PBS News Hour - Full Show

PBS News

CD Voice

China Daily

Israel Today: Ongoing War Report

Noa Levi

Jeffrey Epstein: The Coverup Chronicles

Bobby Capucci