Tag: north dakota

FBI sent several informants to Standing Rock protests, court documents show

Up to 10 informants managed by the FBI were embedded in anti-pipeline resistance camps near the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation at the height of mass protests against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016. The new details about federal law enforcement surveillance of an Indigenous environmental movement were released as part of a legal fight between North Dakota and the federal government over who should pay for policing the pipeline fight. Until now, the existence of only one other federal informant in the camps had been confirmed. 

The FBI also regularly sent agents wearing civilian clothing into the camps, one former agent told Grist in an interview. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA, operated undercover narcotics officers out of the reservation’s Prairie Knights Casino, where many pipeline opponents rented rooms, according to one of the depositions. 

The operations were part of a wider surveillance strategy that included drones, social media monitoring, and radio eavesdropping by an array of state, local, and federal agencies, according to attorneys’ interviews with law enforcement. The FBI infiltration fits into a longer history in the region. In the 1970s, the FBI infiltrated the highest levels of the American Indian Movement, or AIM. 

The Indigenous-led uprising against Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access oil pipeline drew thousands of people seeking to protect water, the climate, and Indigenous sovereignty. For seven months, participants protested to stop construction of the pipeline and were met by militarized law enforcement, at times facing tear gas, rubber bullets, and water hoses in below-freezing weather.

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North Dakota senator Doug Larsen and his wife and two kids die in plane crash

North Dakota senator Doug Larsen, as well as his wife and two kids, have died in a plane crash.

The small plane they were travelling in crashed in Utah, a Senate leader said Monday. Doug Larsen’s death was confirmed in an email that Republican Senate Majority Leader David Hogue sent to his fellow senators.

The plane crashed Sunday evening shortly after taking off from Canyonlands Airfield about 15 miles (24 kilometers) north of Moab, according to a Grand County Sheriff’s Department statement posted on Facebook. The sheriff’s office said all four people on board the plane were killed.

“Senator Doug Larsen, his wife Amy, and their two young children died in a plane crash last evening in Utah,” Hogue wrote in his email. “They were visiting family in Scottsdale and returning home. They stopped to refuel in Utah.”

“I’m not sure where the bereavement starts with such a tragedy, but I think it starts with prayers for the grandparents, surviving stepchild of Senator Larsen, and extended family of Doug and Amy,” Hogue wrote. “Hold your family close today.”

The crash of the single-engine Piper plane was being investigated, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a post on X, the social media website formerly called Twitter.

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‘Self-serving’ North Dakota GOP boosts own meal allowance after axing free school lunch bill

Republicans in North Dakota are facing criticism this week after they voted to boost their own budgets for meal reimbursements, even as they blocked an expansion of a free lunch program for low-income school students.

The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead reports that the Republican-dominated North Dakota Senate voted to ratify the boost to meal reimbursements for lawmakers and state workers just 10 days after the same institution narrowly blocked a bill that would have expanded the state’s free lunch program.

According to the Forum, the legislation had previously passed through North Dakota’s House of Representatives and would have “dedicated $6 million over the next two school years to cover lunch costs for K-12 students with family incomes below double the federal poverty level,” meaning that “children from families of four making less than $60,000 a year would have qualified.”

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North Dakota official says ‘no evidence’ supports suspect’s claim teen was Republican ‘extremist’

A North Dakota official said that there’s “no evidence” supporting Shannon Brandt’s claim that 18-year-old Cayler Ellingson was part of a “Republican extremist group” before he allegedly used his car to hit the teenager, who later died.

Brandt, 41, is being charged with criminal vehicular homicide, as well as leaving the scene of a crash involving a death after the incident in the early Sunday morning hours. He was held in the Stutsman County Jail until Tuesday, when he posted a $50,000 bond and was released.

The incident happened after a “street dance” in McHenry, North Dakota and Brandt told state first responders’ radio that he struck the pedestrian with an SUV because the pedestrian was threatening him,” a probable-cause affidavit states. The document also states that Brandt fled the scene, but later returned and called 911.

Brandt also thought that Ellingson was part of a “Republican extremist group,” and then allegedly hit him, according to the court document. 

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4 Farmers Found Dead in Wheat Field, Throwing Town’s Entire Harvest Season Into Turmoil

A North Dakota farmer and three farm hands, all three from the same family, were found dead on Monday in what law enforcement officials have described as a likely murder-suicide.

In the small town of barely 1,000, in the midst of harvest season, loved ones are living what they’ve called a “complete nightmare.”

Douglas Dulmage, 56, a farmer, husband and father of two, was found shot dead in his combine in his family’s field south of Cando, North Dakota.

Outside of the combine, Justin Bracken, 34, Richard Bracken, 64, and Robert Bracken, 59, also of Cando, lay dead in the field they’d been helping him harvest. A .357 revolver was found near the bodies, according to The Associated Press.

In a statement released via Facebook on Tuesday, Towner County Sheriff Andrew Hillier described what his deputies found.

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THE RESISTANCE: North Dakota Legislators Plan To Nullify Biden’s Executive Orders At State Level

Republican legislators in North Dakota are taking a pro-active – and constitutional – step to push back against unconstitutional executive orders coming out of the Biden administration, and they are doing so with the power of the US Constitution in their corner.

A new bill introduced in the North Dakota State Legislature (HB1164), would instruct the state’s Attorney General to review the constitutionality of each of the executive orders issued by Joe Biden.

Under the proposed law, should the North Dakota Attorney General find that any executive orders are unlawful – or unconstitutional, the executive order would be “nullified,” it would prohibit any state, county, or local agency – or publicly funded organization – from enforcing the order(s).

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