The Swan Song of Senator Kathy Hogan
Kathy Hogan is an impressive and compassionate civil servant who offered 16 years of her life to the North Dakota lawmaking body and will be retiring at the end of this year. While that journey to retirement should have been uneventful, a special session was called to create regulations around Kratom.
The governor banned the substance entirely on August 5th, which some people thought was a slap in the face to the untold number of North Dakotans struggling with addiction and were given virtually no heads-up, sympathy, or support beyond generic numbers they could call. That said, regulation was absolutely a needed remedy and the special session warranted.
A special session functions as micro sessions of the legislative assembly and allows any lawmaker to propose any bill they see fit. 20 different bills were suggested, with a key focus on Kratom, data centers, and various questionable topics such as “English Only” driver’s tests and a controversial clemency case, where ultimately only 5 bills moved forward.
Regrettably, one such bill that did not make it was Senator Kathy Hogan’s final bill to add 9 million dollars in funding as emergency relief to almost 2000 households. The need for which was made even more clear with ND Compass’s monthly data highlight from Avram “Avi” Slone and their piece titled, “Child Care In North Dakota: Capacity Constrained, Over-Enrolled, and Costly”
One bill that did advance was 35 million dollars to consider for a Military Museum, which Rob Port writes an elegant piece about the shaky priorities we find when we consider how to honor our Veterans. It is an important bill to consider in contrast to Senator Hogan’s bill for 25% of the price tag to critically help families in need.
The Childcare Bill for Senator Hogan will be the last bill she sponsors, at the end of a career of helping lead with compassion for the people who need it. It deserves to be heard, if nothing else for respect for her service and the intense need for families in our state to find relief. Especially as things appear to just be getting more critical and worse.
This is something truly worthy of our special session’s time and I encourage people talk to their representatives to ask them to find a way to see some relief comes to families this special session. And I encourage everyone to thank Senator Hogan for her service across these years.
Actions
Thank Kathy Hogan for her service - khogan@ndlegis.gov
Share the various links across social media to start conversations (My Post)
Email Your Legislators to encourage we hear this bill anyways
Write letters to the editor for your local paper on the need for families (Google search paper and letter to editor)
Detroit Lakes and the Damage Done
On July 27th, the Detroit Lakes School Board unleased a surprise motion to ban Pride flags within their school. They pretended insisted it was a neutral action to not take political sides and assure all flags were simply celebrations of the United States.
Such assertions fall apart when even casual scrutiny of argued intention involves directly naming pride flags as things to ban and examination of the historical and cultural stigma, prejudice, and discrimination local administration have shown to queer people across two decades.
Further complicating arguments of neutrality are obvious parallels with national efforts pushing a similar agenda, such as a move in 2025 by a Tennessee school board to only allow Tennessee and United States Flags.
This effort invites a basic question about the fundamental purpose and objective the school board hopes to achieve with the ban. Queer youth make up 20% of school youth and are, by the data, significantly more likely to be dealing with bullying, depression, suicidality, and lack safe trusting adults in their lives. They need help and support.
When they don’t feel safe at school, this impacts retention, attendance, grades, and general student well-being and belonging. Pride flags serve politically neutral administrative goals and accomplish making these students feel safter and lead to improving academic and social outcomes for these students by the data. While removing them achieves no academic goal nor improves student well-being. It does provide some comfort to individuals with anti-queer prejudice, which is not a known academic goal.
On August 24th, there was a board meeting to address the backlash to this ban, with a room full of individuals advocating for LGBTQ+ youth. Talking to individuals who were there, the general sense of the room was confusion about exactly what the board was even voting on. There was some clear desire to put at least a temporary hold on the ban, but the board voted 3-3, resulting in the ban being carried forward for now.
Keep in mind this ban doesn’t represent all the students, teachers, staff, or other administrators feelings. Most people who work in public education see and care about the youth they serve, as evident by a passionate comment from the principal at Detroit Lakes High.
Actions
Ask this board or your local school board what they’re doing to achieve queer youth safety — If they imply they’re doing anything, ask how they’re measuring their success.
Share on social media your love and support of queer youth.
Donate, follow, share, and support community groups and efforts like Detroit Lakes Area Pride
If you’d like to help North Dakota Queer Youth - Sign up for the LGBTQ+ Safety Taskforce
No Left Turns in North Dakota
Rob Port may be the current most influential man in North Dakota by measurement of how often key leaders across our state appear on his show and his prolific capacity to write consistently to papers across the state about virtually every topic.
Often well respected from both sides of the political establishment due to opposing some contentious culture war topics, while having clear fiscally conservative views. His reporting has also leaked several high profile stories or put light to a number of key issue in the state with countless examples across the years. With important spotlights at times to key issues like those impacting veterans, libraries, suicide prevention, or free school meals.
Notably, Port has been an avid critic of what he calls Populist Republicans, typically presumed to be more MAGA/President Trump-aligned conservatives. He has long documented their take over of the local traditional republican party, which he is quick to remind readers of the traditional parties thirty year golden age of solid policy.
The 2026 primaries featured 19 out of 20 candidates endorsed by traditional conservative Governor Armstrong winning their race. Port has taken this to indicate the power struggle between Populist and Traditionalists as effectively over and decided. He has been claiming across the last few years that Populists were largely winning, not through public opinion or popular ideas, but through taking over the republican parties at the district level. Something given merit by a 2026 ND Republican Convention ghosted by most big name republican candidates and the previously mentioned Armstrong candidates.
With this fight receding and popularity around democratic socialists growing across the nation, Port has started putting significant effort into attacking leftist policies, such as defining socialism in interesting ways, presenting DSA endorsements as toxic, and warning democrats not to make the same mistake of embracing populism.
While he is entitled to do so and likely genuinely holds the beliefs he has, it should be understood he has a very clear political bias and agenda to uphold his conservative values.
Reasonable people can disagree, but I believe it remains disingenuous to paint big tent politicians, members of the Democratic Socialists of America, or people politically further left as the equal and opposite movement from the conspiracy-laden grievance politics of many MAGA-aligned politicians. Port also has compared those against data centers to a prominent local anti-vax group as a means of discrediting all anti-data center sentiment, which he continues to refer to as “hysterical.”
Where these groups do align is often individuals who feel the current establishment is not answering their needs. Traditional conservatives may be the next golden age of North Dakota, but one can reflect on why so many folks gave up on it in the first place if it was so successful or why voter turnout keeps shrinking. I think voters need to be accurately informed on what people represent and hope each person in the state has someone they can believe in as they cast their vote.
Actions
Did I Inspire You to Do Something?
What I type here means very little if it doesn’t inspire folks to do something. Anything. Talk to a lawmaker, share a post on social media, advocate for a friend or family member. If you close this being more informed about the world, that’s great, but doesn’t often lead to the world being a better place. Please tell me if you took action. You don’t need to say what, but let me know, so I can tell others there are people out there doing something.
Future Story Help
I’m looking for folks in education or those who recently graduated high school to share experiences being queer in school. This can be on or off the record
What stories need more spotlight?
I Also Do Another Things
Public Speaker on Hope, Resiliency, or Activism, or Queer Experience
Professional Trainer on LGBTQ+ Topics in Healthcare and Suicide Prevention
(Articles above may be shared and distributed by local papers and publications under CC BY 4.0)