Ruling in beef dispute

By Amy Dalrymple | Editor

By Jack Dura

A North Dakota judge has ruled that the law for nominating people to the panel that promotes the beef industry violates the state constitution because it gives nominating power to specific trade groups and no one else.

“That is arbitrary and unreasonable,” South Central District Judge Jackson Lofgren wrote in his Friday decision.

Three cattlemen – Kenneth Graner, Michael Heaton and Jeremy Maher – who are the directors of the Ranchers Rights Initiative challenged the law last year as unconstitutional. The state sought to have their claims dismissed.

Lofgren said the law “deals out an advantage by name,” granting the named groups “the exclusive power to choose who may be considered for six seats on a public commission.”

By Mary Steurer

A federal appeals court has upheld a North Dakota judge’s decision ordering a Federal Reserve board to change how it regulates debit card transaction fees.

The fees, which apply every time someone makes a debit card purchase, are meant to compensate banks for processing the transactions. 

More than a year ago, then-North Dakota U.S. District Court Judge Dan Traynor ruled that the Federal Reserve Board of Governors regulated the fees in a way that unfairly favored banks at the expense of businesses and consumers.

A panel of three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in a Monday decision unanimously agreed with that finding, and said the board must rewrite its rule governing the fees.

By Ariana Figueroa and Shauneen Miranda

Tens of millions of Americans have already made their way to the ballot box as early voting is underway in a midterm election that will determine control of the House and the Senate, possibly flipping one or both from Republicans to Democrats. 

As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 34 million people have either gone to the polls to cast a ballot or have mailed in their vote, and the current tally is on track to surpass early voting in the 2022 midterm elections, said Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at University of Florida who runs the UF Election Lab that tracks early voting.

More than 47,000 North Dakotans had voted as of 3 p.m. Tuesday, according to the secretary of state. That includes about 36,000 mail-in ballots that have been submitted and more than 11,000 ballots cast at early in-person voting sites.

By Jonathan Shorman

The U.S. Department of Justice plans to send election monitors to every state ahead of Election Day, expanding a longstanding practice that’s spurred concern this year among Democrats and voting rights advocates because of President Donald Trump’s push to influence elections.

The Justice Department for decades has deployed monitors across the country to watch the voting process. During President Joe Biden’s administration, the DOJ sent monitors to 64 jurisdictions across 24 states for the 2022 midterm elections.

The 2026 monitoring program is larger, with the Justice Department announcing it will have a presence in all 50 states. DOJ spokesperson Kiersten Pels told States Newsroom on Monday that about 1,000 monitors will be involved but that the department won’t disclose the full list of monitored locations until Election Day — Nov. 3.

The North Dakota Secretary of State’s Office has not received information from the Department of Justice about federal election monitors coming to North Dakota, Deputy Secretary of State Sandy McMerty said Tuesday.

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