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Letters to the Editor

$300M mistake: Stop the asylum

Madison Hanson Fargo The North Dakota Legislature is on the verge of making a costly mistake – pouring $300 million into reviving the outdated asylum model instead of building a modern, community-based mental health system. Key stakeholders have referenced the article “Bring Back the Asylum,” while legislators eagerly discuss whether the new hospital can be expanded later. They are trying to repeat history. For less than half the cost, North Dakota could make meaningful progress in developing a system that helps people recover where they live instead of isolating them in an ...

It’s time to choose

Greg Gallagher Mandan When such manifest chaos, corruption, and cruelties are thrust upon the American people by this Administration, when its efforts are spearheaded by an unelected, unconfirmed, self-serving oligarch itching for power, and when it positions itself beyond the independent review of Inspectors General, Congressional oversight, and a now-kneecapped Department of Justice, you stand in the thick of a full-fledged constitutional crisis. When any member of Congress remains silent amid the harms being perpetrated upon people within their charge, whether it be from implied ...

Who Killed HB 1373?

Andrew Allis Granville North Dakota House Bill 1373, known as the “Prenatal Equal Protection Act,” or the “Personhood Bill,” which would have afforded the same rights to those human beings within the womb as those without, was effectively killed, as similar bills have been in Oklahoma, Louisiana, and in other states, by no other than pro-life groups who strongly weighed in opposition to the bill, effectively discipling Republican lawmakers to vote it down. Confused? You thought pro-life organizations existed to eliminate abortion and and protect the life of the unborn child? ...

Administration overreach creates constitutional crisis

BadAss Grandmas Leadership Team; Dina Butcher, Ellen Chaffee, Kathy Tweeten, Sarah Vogel, Bismarck; Lyn Dockter-Pinnick, Moorhead, Minn.; Barb Lang, Jamestown; Lynnell Simonson Popowski, Warsaw; Jane Williams, Fargo And all 356 members of BG4D The BadAss Grandmas for Democracy, a non-partisan group who have fought for public integrity in government in North Dakota since 2018, wish to publicly express our deep concern over the current constitutional crisis and the alarming overreach of Elon Musk in his role within the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The recent actions ...

Highest vote getter should win

Barbara Headrick, League of Women Voters ND, president, Fargo The North Dakota Legislature is considering a resolution (SCR 4013) proclaiming support for the Electoral College, our system for electing the US President. Under this system, a candidate doesn’t need to get the most votes to win. Indeed, five times in our country’s history, the presidential candidate with the most votes didn’t take office. Their opponent won with fewer votes, but a majority of the Electoral College. When you vote in the presidential election, you are voting for a slate of “Electors,” usually ...

State’s education investment should be in public schools

Ashley Gaschk, Bismarck North Dakota’s 69th Legislative Assembly is nearly halfway over, and lawmakers will soon decide whether to create Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), which would use taxpayer money to cover tuition at private schools. For most North Dakotans, the prospect of spending public money on private school tuition solicits a resounding “No.” These schools are not required to open their budgets or board meetings to the public, and in a largely rural state, most families won’t even have the option of using an ESA. Public dollars from rural taxpayers should go ...