Free Republic

Ukrainian refugees are filling open job positions in the shale patch of North Dakota, thanks to a humanitarian program, the AP reports, noting 16 Ukrainians have already started work in the shale patch and another 12 are due to arrive later this month.There are some 2,500 job vacancies in the Bakken shale play in North Dakota, which currently produces some 1.1 million barrels of oil daily.The output in the play peaked in 2019 at 1.5 million barrels daily and has been in decline since then.As of June, there were 38 drilling rigs in the Bakken but North Dakota’s mineral resources...

Maksym Bunchukov remembers hearing rockets explode in Zaporizhzhia as the war in Ukraine began. “It was terrible,” he said. He and his wife sent their adult daughter west to Lviv for safety and joined her later with their pets. Now, about 18 months after the war broke out, Bunchukov is in North Dakota, like thousands of Ukrainians who came over a century ago. He is one of 16 new arrivals who are part of a trade group’s pilot effort through the Uniting for Ukraine humanitarian program to recruit refugees and migrants during a workforce shortage. Twelve more Ukrainians are scheduled...

We fought endless wars overseas for two decades, only to bring in record numbers of refugees from the very places from which we sought to protect ourselves. Thanks to mass Middle East migration as the only remaining legacy of the trillions of dollars pumped into the “Global War on Terror,” America’s heartland is just as vulnerable to Islamic terror as New York and Los Angeles. Believe it or not, there was an Islamic terror attack in Fargo, North Dakota, earlier this month, one that local law enforcement believes could have resulted in countless casualties instead of the one police officer...

How one cop with a handgun stopped a heavily armed terrorist’s massacre. Mohamad Barakat packed three long guns, four handguns and a vest with magazines in every pocket, as he drove through Fargo, North Dakota. The Downtown Street fair, which claims over 150,000 visitors, was on its second day and 5 minutes away. The Red River Fair, which recorded nearly as many people, was two days away from ending and 15 minutes away. It’s unknown which of those locations Mohamad might have been headed to use up his 1,800 rounds of ammo and hand grenade, but he never got there....

An officer fatally shot the suspect in the shooting that happened just before 3 p.m. Friday, police in the North Dakota city said. A motive wasn't known. [...] Zibolski identified the suspect as Mohamad Barakat, 37, of Fargo, but provided few details about him or the shooting, citing officials’ desire to protect the investigation. He said he was confident authorities would eventually determine the motive.

The man who allegedly shot and killed a Fargo, North Dakota, police officer and wounded two others has been identified as 37-year-old Mohamad Barakat. NBC News reported that the shooting occurred Friday just before 3:00 p.m. A witness said the shots were fired during a “traffic stop.” ABC News reported that 23-year-old Jake Wallin was the officer killed in the shooting. Wallin joined the Fargo Police Department in April of this year. Officers Andrew Dotas and Tyler Hawes were shot and wounded in the incident and are both in “critical stable condition.” [snip] Barakat, the alleged shooter, was killed by...

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum has said he would vote for Donald Trump again as president, but draws the line at ever conducting business with the man he's now running against for the Republican presidential nomination. Burgum, a former business owner who turned a small software company into a $1.1 billion deal with Microsoft, was asked by "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd in an interview that aired Sunday if he would do business with Trump. "I don't think so," Burgum responded. Asked why, he said, "I just think that it’s important that you’re judged by the company you keep."...

The House Committee on Natural Resources held a legislative hearing on June 15 on HR 3397, sponsored by Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah, to require the director of the Bureau of Land Management to withdraw the proposed conservation rule. In her prepared testimony, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem told the committee that nearly 98% of BLM surface lands in South Dakota are grazed by permittees; her state hosts 76 actively producing oil and gas leases that cover 36,762 acres; and the acres managed by the BLM provide recreation opportunities. Noem said the proposed rule overemphasizes conservation rather than the economic needs...

The Bush Foundation is sending $50 million into a wealth-building program run by Nexus Community Partners directed at American descendants of chattel slavery residing in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. The St. Paul-based organization announced last week that the grant will be used to fund at least 800 applicants with $50,000 during the next eight years. The Bush Foundation is funding this project with money from social impact bonds they issued in 2020. “Essentially, that means we took on debt to put more money into the region during unprecedented times. We didn’t want to reduce our regular grant-making to...

North Dakota's governor talked about his campaign for president of the United States, and touched on other issues including AI.North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" over the noonhour today, Monday, June 12. In the segment with hosts Demarco Morgan and Eva Pilgrim, Burgum talked about his run for president of the United States and why Republicans should consider nominating him to lead the party. Burgum announced his candidacy last Wednesday in Fargo and has since s pent a couple of days campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire, two early caucus and primary states in the...

en. Susan Collins (R-ME) discussed who among former President Donald Trump's 2024 GOP primary challengers she is considering getting behind on Thursday. Collins has said for months that she does not intend to support Trump's 2024 bid for the Republican nomination, but it remains unclear how she'll vote in the general election should he be the party's candidate. Asked at a Punchbowl News event on Thursday morning if she was throwing her support behind any Republican in particular, the Maine senator named five declared candidates she was excited about. "Well, we are very fortunate on the Republican side of the...

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum entered the Republican race for president Wednesday, offering himself as a candidate of "small town values" who can help steer the country in a different direction. "We need a leader who understands the real work that Americans do every day — someone who’s worked alongside our farmers or ranchers and our small-business owners," Burgum said during his announcement speech in Fargo. "Someone who’s held jobs where you shower at the end of the day, not at the beginning." Burgum, 66, is the latest addition to a field that is expanding with GOP hopefuls eager to...

- North Dakota’s two-term Republican Gov. Doug Burgum is expected to announce a run for president in 2024 on Wednesday. - Burgum is a longtime private-sector businessman who founded multiple businesses before overwhelmingly winning the governorship twice. - “Doug Burgum does not get into anything he thinks he can’t win,” Jim Poolman, former state legislator, vice chairman of the state’s GOP and state insurance commissioner, told the DCNF. “I think he genuinely believes he can win, and I genuinely believe he can win.”North Dakota’s governor is among the most popular in the nation, but few outside the state have...

A school district in Fargo, North Dakota, will conceal the gender identities of students from parents in spite of a state law prohibiting the policy. "We will not openly out any student because of one law if we know that that's going to cause harm to that child," said Fargo Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Rupak Gandhi, who is backed in the decision by the school board. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a Republican, signed the bill earlier in May that banned schools from withholding or concealing "information about a student's transgender status from the student's parent or legal guardian." Some...

A North Dakota man accused of mowing down an 18-year-old with his car because he thought the young man was a “Republican extremist” has pleaded guilty to manslaughter after initially being charged with murder. Instead of the prospect of life in prison, Shannon Brandt, 42, now faces a maximum sentence of 10 years behind bars in connection with the death of Cayler Ellingson, KVRR-TV reported. Brandt’s attorney, Mark Friese, told the news station earlier this month that the local prosecutor had dropped the murder charge on her own and that “it was not a part of any plea deal.” Continue...

A left-wing radical from North Dakota has pleaded guilty to manslaughter and faces just 10 years in prison thanks to a sweetheart deal that saw his original murder charge downgraded after he admitted to killing a teenager for having conservative political views. 42-year-old left-wing radical Shannon Brandt, of Glenfield, North Dakota, pleaded guilty on Thursday to a reduced charge of manslaughter in the 2022 politically-motivated homicide of 18-year-old Cayler Ellingson. Though Brandt was initially charged with murder in Ellingson’s death and admitted that he killed the young man for political reasons, his murder charge was reduced in a sweetheart deal...

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper is continuing his abortion barnstorming tour around the state. Cooper is desperately making the case why abortion is a good thing for the Tar Heel State as he hopes to somehow convince one or more legislator not to override his veto of a common sense bill that would ban abortions after 12 weeks. The Democrat governor’s latest argument is one that is sure to turn off many voters: Killing babies is good for the economy. Here’s more: Among his concerns about Senate Bill 20, Gov. Roy Cooper believes the legislation’s restrictions on abortion — limits...

BISMARCK, North Dakota (LifeSiteNews) — North Dakota Republican Gov. Doug Burgum announced Wednesday that he signed a law that makes the state’s college students and prisoners use bathrooms and locker rooms in accordance with their biological sex. According to the provisions of H.B. 1473, jails, prisons, and public colleges must designate bathrooms, showers, locker rooms in a dormitory or living facility owned by the state board of higher education, as well as penitentiaries and correctional facilities for adults and youths, as “for use exclusively for males or exclusively for females.” The legislation further requires special accommodations be given to students...

BISMARCK, North Dakota (LifeSiteNews) – North Dakota Republican Gov. Doug Burgum signed into law Monday a measure forbidding state colleges and universities from requiring students, employees, applicants, and potential hires from being forced to conform to left-wing ideology. SB 2247 prohibits students or employees of public higher-ed institutions from being “[p]enalized, discriminated against,” or otherwise mistreated for refusing to “support, believe, endorse, embrace, confess, act upon, or otherwise assent to or oppose a specified concept”; “[r]equired to endorse or oppose a specific ideology or political viewpoint to be eligible for hiring, tenure, promotion, or graduation”; or asked for their “ideological...

BISMARCK, North Dakota (LifeSiteNews) — North Dakota has become the latest state to prohibit minors from being chemically or surgically mutilated through transgender drugs and surgeries. House Bill 1254, signed on April 19 by Republican Governor Doug Burgum, prohibits medical professionals from performing “castration, vasectomy, hysterectomy, oophorectomy, metoidioplasty, orchiectomy, penectomy, phalloplasty, or vaginoplasty” on minors. It also prohibits a mastectomy and the administration of puberty blockers. There are exceptions for intersex individuals and anyone who has already started one of these medical procedures. Intersex and transgender are not the same thing, as explained here by LifeSiteNews’ Jeremy Williamson. The American...