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A decade ago, folks in northern states such as Minnesota, South and North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho were watching large swaths of their pine forests die off due to invasive pine beetles. The pine beetles bored beneath the bark of pine trees and introduced a fungus and larvae which weakened and then killed the trees.

On January 31, 2019, Governor Kristi Noem signed her first bill into law. The bill was SB47, South Dakota Constitutional Carry. From sd.gov: Governor Kristi Noem today signed her first bill into law. SB47, which Noem signed today, will further protect the Second Amendment rights of South Dakotans by allowing constitutional carry. The bill will go into effect July 1, 2019.“More than 230 years ago, the Founding Fathers of our country penned the Constitution that has since laid the framework for centuries of policies. They so firmly believed in the importance of the freedom to bear arms that they...

President Barack Obama is coming to Rapid City, at least a bronze likeness of the 44th president. The City of Presidents announced the statue will be completed and unveiled in July 2019. We now know the Obama statue will be standing and waving, but co-founder for the City of Presidents, Dallerie Davis said the statue will be more interesting. "We found out that a standing guy who is waving is rather boring and the one thing we don't want to do is have a boring statue on the street, particularly someone like President Obama. He deserves a statue that isn't...

The South Dakota legislature has passed a bill allowing residents to carry concealed handguns without a permit, sending the measure to Gov. Kristi Noem (R) for a signature. The state House passed the Senate legislation in a 47-23 vote on Tuesday to allow for the so-called “constitutional carry,” The Argus Leader reported. Noem has vocalized support for the measure before but said she will consider the language in the bill before signing it into law. "We are pleased to see constitutional carry pass the state Senate and House of Representatives. Hopefully Gov. Noem will see the benefit in providing law-abiding...

Five Republican Senators reintroduced the WALL Act Tuesday, a bill to fully fund a wall along the U.S. southern border. “Their legislation, first introduced last December, is also the first bill that will fund the wall by identifying specific funding sources,” read a Tuesday announcement from the five senators. The five are Senators are Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Mike Rounds (R-SD), John Kennedy (R-LA), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Bill Cassidy (R-LA)

Where do the most white people live in America? We looked at the last 10 years of demographic data to find out the answer.

The House Majority Leader in South Dakota has sponsored a bill to allow concealed carry in the South Dakota Capitol and any county courthouse, with an enhanced pistol permit. It is part of a movement to restore the exercise of the Second Amendment to mainstream status. According to a study done at the Crime Prevention Research Center in 2017, 16 state capitols have arrangements for the legal carry of firearms in the Capitol, generally for those who have a concealed carry permit.  Six states only allow legislators and/or staff to legally carry.The 16 states are: Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Iowa,...

Anchor Neil Cavuto asked, “Are you of the mindset that reallocating funds from another department, let’s say Defense, is a wise strategy, or would that be rejected out of hand?” Thune responded, “I’m not a big fan of moving money. I think Defense ought to — we ought to be building airplanes and ships and all the things that we need to do to defend the country. But there are always dollars in budgets that you can move around, and in the Homeland Security budget, for example. And that’s the way that the appropriators came up with a mechanism that...

South Dakota is a deep red state. It should have passed Constitutional Carry years ago. Constitutional Carry is a reform of gun laws restrictions to approximate the restrictions in place when the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791. Actually, it did. More than once. But Republican governor Dennis Daugaard vetoed a Constitutional Carry bill on March 17, 2017.  This wasn't the first time.  It was a long-standing performance. Governor Daugaard vetoed his first Constitutional Carry bill in 2012.  In between, Daugaard was certain to lobby against Constitutional carry and get it killed with legislative maneuvers.A Governor does not...

She’s not a senator, but Cynthia Nance plays an enormous role in shaping the debate over some of President Trump’s judicial picks. Ms. Nance, former dean of the University of Arkansas School of Law, handles the American Bar Association’s judicial ratings for nominees to federal courts in North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas, which make up the federal 8th Circuit. The ABA’s role is one the more opaque parts of the process, but Republicans are pushing it into the light, accusing her of allowing personal bias, particularly a fealty to abortion rights, to color her ratings....

November 19, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – It’s November 7 in South Dakota. The night is well below freezing. The Augustana University Republican and Life Runners clubs have teamed up and spent the evening chalking the sidewalks with messages defending the right to life. These messages included Bible verses, statistics, and blunt proclamations in the hopes of stirring up a discussion on the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) campus. A discussion was what they got, but not before things began “slipping” toward madness and mayhem. The pro-life messages were meant to be seen, and they were. Unfortunately, pro-abortion students didn’t respond with principled...

Former FBI Director James Comey said Monday he took inspiration from a visit to Mount Rushmore in a brief message sent amid a chaotic day of headlines that included an order from President Trump to declassify Comey's text messages related to the Russia investigation. "Enjoyed today’s visit: An inspiring reminder that we always emerge stronger from hard times," Comey tweeted along with a photo in front of the memorial in South Dakota. Comey, who was fired in May 2017 and regularly tweets both subtle and overt criticisms of Trump, sent his latest message a short time after the president ordered...

3rd speech in two days = Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota

President Trump has a lot on the line in this fall’s midterm elections. So, he’s decided to turn for help to the man he trusts the most — himself. In the remaining 75 days until ballots are counted, Trump will invest at least 40 of them in campaigning for Republicans in both House and Senate races. He will spend additional time on fundraising for candidates and the party .And you may have noticed, this president is quite comfortable with spur-of-the-moment decisions. So, it’s likely he will add even more campaign days along the way as races and political needs develop....

Senate Republicans are warning President Trump that it would be a serious mistake to pardon his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was convicted late Tuesday on an array of fraud charges. “It would be an enormous mistake and misuse of his power to pardon,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a prominent moderate, told reporters. Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (Texas), the second-ranking Senate GOP leader, said that pardoning Manafort “would be a mistake.” Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune (S.D.), the third-ranking member of the GOP leadership, said he is not aware of any mitigating circumstances related to Manafort’s case...

Sioux Falls Police arrested an apparent antifa radical on Tuesday after finding a "concerning" number of illegal firearms and bomb-making materials in his apartment while serving a search warrant in connection with three area burglaries. Police also found antifa-related items during their search, including an antifa jacket and an anti-police manifesto. Authorities reportedly evacuated the surrounding area and called the Sioux Falls Police bomb squad.

One question before the Supreme Court this term was a big one: As technology evolves, how do our laws governing commerce evolve with it? The answer, issued in the ruling held in a 5-4 decision on Thursday, is a bad one for taxpayers. Many proponents of an online sales tax have argued that we must completely revisit what we know about interstate commerce, and create illusory tax regimes to contemplate a brave new order of online transactions. In reality, none of this is true. For one, while it has been 26 years since the Supreme Court visited the issue in...

A dozen House lawmakers have introduced legislation to remove President Trump's tariffs on Canadian newsprint so a study can be done on how much those tariffs are crushing local newspapers around the country. The bill, introduced by Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., is a response to the 22 percent tariff that the Trump administration has imposed on some Canadian newsprint since the beginning of this year. Noem said that tariff has led to rising costs for local newspapers, and are a threat to their survival. "In recent years, new tariffs on Canadian newsprint have increased paper prices by 20 to 30...

Vulnerable senators up for reelection have adopted a strategy of silence in response to the president’s avalanche of putdowns. Jon Tester was on his farm in rural Montana when his phone rang with the news: It was his chief of staff, informing him that the president of the United States had just called for his resignation on Twitter. The Montana Democrat briefly considered President Donald Trump’s latest attack on him, then fired up his tractor and went on his way. Tester wasn’t going to get into it with Trump over the senator’s role in bringing down the president’s Veterans Affairs...