LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – Thirty-two Nebraska state senators joined Sen. Brad von Gillern’s letter calling on the Nebraska Board of Regents to delay a vote on the proposed $800 million acquisition of Nebraska Medicine.

The letter, dated Thursday and bearing a total of 33 signatures from state senators, shared concerns about the proposed acquisition, including the lack of transparency to the public and the Legislature.

According to the letter, the regents’ Jan. 9 meeting agenda item summary indicates that the Board has “negotiated the final agreement over a series of meetings in the past 18 months”.

The regents will consider a proposal in which Clarkson Regional Health Services would give up its 50% membership in Nebraska Medicine. The deal would give full control of the health system to the University of Nebraska.

However, the letter said the public and Legislature have had little time to understand the proposal, its impact and any financial implications of the transaction.

“The University of Nebraska and Nebraska Medicine are two institutions of tremendous significance to our state, and any major changes to the existing structures must be carefully considered,” the letter stated.

Senators are asking the Board to delay the vote to “ensure all viable alternatives have been considered and until all stakeholders understand the impact of the proposal for the state” and the two institutions.

The Board of Regents meeting, previously set for Friday, will now be held Thursday, Jan. 15 at 9 a.m.

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MINOT — Minot’s District 3 is home to Reps. Jeff Hoverson and Lori VanWinkle, two of the most controversial members of the Legislature, but maybe not for much longer.

District 3, like all odd-numbered districts in our state, is on the ballot this election cycle, and the House incumbents there

have just drawn two serious challengers.

Tim Mihalick and Blaine DesLauriers, each with a background in banking, have announced campaigns for those House seats. Mihalick is a senior vice president at First Western Bank & Trust and serves on the State Board of Higher Education. DesLauriers is vice chair of the board and senior executive vice president at First International Bank & Trust.

The entry into this race has delighted a lot of traditionally conservative Republicans in North Dakota

Hoverson, who has worked as a Lutheran pastor, has frequently made headlines with his bizarre antics. He was

banned from the Minot International Airport

after he accused a security agent of trying to touch his genitals. He also

objected

to a Hindu religious leader participating in the Legislature’s schedule of multi-denominational invocation leaders and, on his local radio show, seemed to suggest that Muslim cultures that force women to wear burkas

have it right.

Hoeverson has also backed legislation to mandate prayer and the display of the Ten Commandments in schools, and to encourage the end of Supreme Court precedent prohibiting bans on same sex marriage.

VanWinkle, for her part, went on a rant last year in which she suggested that women struggling with infertility have been cursed by God

(she later claimed her comments, which were documented in a floor speech, were taken out of context)

before taking

a weeklong ski vacation

during the busiest portion of the legislative session (she continued to collect her daily legislative pay while absent). When asked by a constituent why she doesn’t attend regular public forums in Minot during the legislative session,

she said she wasn’t willing to “sacrifice” any more of her personal time.

The incumbents haven’t officially announced their reelection bids, but it’s my practice to treat all incumbents as though they’re running again until we learn otherwise.

In many ways, VanWinkle and Hoverson are emblematic of the ascendant populist, MAGA-aligned faction of the North Dakota Republican Party. They are on the extreme fringe of conservative politics, and openly detest their traditionally conservative leaders. Now they’ve got challengers who are respected members of Minot’s business community, and will no doubt run well-organized and well-funded campaigns.

If the 2026 election is a turning point in the

internecine conflict among North Dakota Republicans

— the battle to see if our state will be governed by traditional conservatives or culture war populists — this primary race in District 3 could well be the hinge on which it turns.

In the 2024 cycle, there was an effort, largely organized by then-Rep. Brandon Prichard, to push far-right challengers against more moderate incumbent Republicans.

It was largely unsuccessful.

Most of the candidates Prichard backed lost, including Prichard himself, who was

defeated in the June primary

by current Rep. Mike Berg, a candidate with a political profile not all that unlike that of Mihalick and DesLauriers.

But these struggles among Republicans are hardly unique to North Dakota, and the populist MAGA faction has done better elsewhere. In South Dakota, for instance, in the 2024 primary,

more than a dozen incumbent Republicans were swept out of office.

Can North Dakota’s normie Republicans avoid that fate? They’ll get another test in 2026, but recruiting strong challengers like Mihalick and DesLauriers is a good sign for them.