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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

51:02

631: Back-to-school tax, Trump's Fedorchak...

Plain Talk ·

2025/08/21

Should the voters take their case for covering school lunches for all students to the ballot box with an initiated measure? We discussed the issue on this episode of Plain Talk, and co-host Chad Oban made the case for some populism on this issue. "The legislature has had ample opportunity to pass something that over 70% of North Dakotans support," he said, referring to a North Dakota News Cooperative poll from this spring. "What if school districts start charging parents for books, right? Parents

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34:54

INTERVIEW: ND Insurance Commissioner John Godfread...

Plain Talk ·

2025/08/20

This is the full video version of our August 20, 2025, interview with North Dakota Insurance Commissioner Jon Godfread. The interview is from Episode 630.

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55:06

630: ND insurance commissioner One Big Beautiful Bill...

Plain Talk ·

2025/08/20

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,

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29:56

INTERVIEW: F5 Project Founder Adam Martin from...

Plain Talk ·

2025/08/19

This exclusive interview with F5 Project founder Adam Martin is from Plain Talk episode 629.

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01:06:23

629: 'I think it should be wiped across the board'

Plain Talk ·

2025/08/14

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. After all, as a matter of law, if they aren't convicted of the charges against them, they are innocent. But

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53:51

628: 'I pay people the courtesy of candor'

Plain Talk ·

2025/08/13

"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 that human trafficking is a problem in North Dakota," Wrigley said, describing the complaints. "The

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46:49

627: Jeans, property taxes, scandal, and baseball

Plain Talk ·

2025/08/07

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 convulsed the nation, starting with left-wing critics who claim the ad promotes some master race message

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56:49

626: 'Zip, none.'

Plain Talk ·

2025/08/06

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 quarter of a million people." He called this a "marvel of modern engineering." Next, we tackled the

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01:01:34

Bob & Dan | The $740,000 Question (Episode 3)

Plain Talk ·

2025/08/05

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, Governor Doug Burgum’s administration breaks its year-long silence, reluctantly agreeing to a meeting

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50:46

625: Voters need to be responsible for who they're...

Plain Talk ·

2025/08/01

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 state. The race is officially nonpartisan, but pits two candidates from the far right against two

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51:39

624: 'We need more human-to-human, face-to-face...

Plain Talk ·

2025/07/30

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. Will he seek a seat in Congress for the third consecutive election cycle? "My wife said to make very clear

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29:55

No Comment | The $740,000 Question (Episode 2)

Plain Talk ·

2025/07/25

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 media attention and growing public scrutiny, state officials remain silent. The Governor never replies. The

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54:05

623: Democratic lawmaker says now is a good time for...

Plain Talk ·

2025/07/24

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 legislature, we've tried to educate voters that property tax is a local issue," he said on this episode of Plain

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53:09

622: 'The greasy pole of politics in the Republican...

Plain Talk ·

2025/07/23

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 prison, made it pretty clear that he knows that this initiative would be a non-starter for any

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01:02:17

621: 'We knew this was coming'

Plain Talk ·

2025/07/18

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 Commerce under former Gov. Doug Burgum by untoward means. The Commerce Department ran an odd,

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26:19

Department of Incompetence | The $740,000 Question...

Plain Talk ·

2025/07/18

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 state film office, no tax incentives, and virtually no infrastructure, how did this happen and why? Matt

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58:16

620: 'This panel has represented George Floyd...

Plain Talk ·

2025/07/16

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 crime. In North Dakota, the precentage of criminal defendants represented by a public defender is north

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01:07:57

619: 'Conservation sometimes becomes the dog that...

Plain Talk ·

2025/07/11

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 often find themselves. "Conservation sometimes becomes the dog that everybody can get behind kicking,"

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01:03:01

618:Legislature stepped up with funding to move...

Plain Talk ·

2025/07/09

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 failure" due to a lack of resources, leaving many without legal counsel. But lawmakers stepped up. The

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39:41

617: Rep. Nico Rios didn't show up (REPLAY)

Plain Talk ·

2025/07/04

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 to have a respectful, honest conversation about his words and actions. But just minutes before the

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819 results

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