North Dakota
North Dakota mayor resigns after texting lewd video to city attorney

A North Dakota mayor resigned on Tuesday after an investigation into a lewd video he messaged to the city’s top attorney in January.
Minot Mayor Tom Ross texted City Attorney Stefanie Stalheim a video of him masturbating shortly after the two talked on the phone about a police officer’s suicide, according to a report issued by the Minot City Council. Ross called Stalheim within minutes of sending the video, asking her to delete it without watching it and telling her it was intended for a girlfriend.
The mayor stepped down from office the same day Minot legislators made the report into the incident public.
“As much as I love the City of Minot and where it is heading, for the last, just about 5 years, I have had my priorities misaligned,” Ross wrote in a resignation letter. “While I’ve done my very best to be a good leader, it’s clear that time has come to an end.”
Ross told investigators that he sent the “sexy video” intended for his girlfriend on Jan. 14 when he was home on his lunch break. According to the report, he attributed the snafu to his unfamiliarity with using an iPhone compared to his Samsung S22 phone.
He also said that his girlfriend’s name begins with “C” and Stalheim was saved in his as “City Attorney,” the report added.
Upon hearing the mayor’s description of the video content, Stalheim told investigators she “fell out of her chair.” The reaction, according to Stalheim, was also due to the “combined stress” of receiving news of the police officer’s death, the report added.
The city prosecutor asked another employee in the room to delete the video, who, in doing so, “caused it to play,” according to the report. As a result, the employee, a Human Resources representative, “viewed some or all of the video.”
“The investigator found somewhat credible Ross’s statements that the video was sent to Stalheim unintentionally and that the video was intended for Ross’s intimate partner,” the report added. “Due to Ross’s position as one of increased visibility, responsibility, and trust, and due to his decision to use a personal cell phone to conduct city business, that the fact he would use that device to record and send videos of this nature is in and of itself reckless enough that he knew the risk he was taking by engaging in such behavior.”
Ross was elected mayor in 2022 after serving on the city council since 2020, according to a city profile of the former official. Minot, home to more than 47,000 people, is located about 50 miles south of the Canadian border.
The North Dakota city is known for a nearby Air Force base.
Michael Loria is a national reporter on the USA TODAY breaking news desk. Contact him at mloria@usatoday.com, @mchael_mchael or on Signal at (202) 290-4585.

North Dakota
Roots matter for award-winning regenerative North Dakota ranch family

MADDOCK, N.D. — On any given day, rancher Brian Maddock is out in the drift prairie near the town of Maddock that bears his family name, dropping hay bales on wind-scoured hilltops and hardpan soil where little else will grow.
From there, the cattle do the rest of the work. They eat, they trample, they fertilize.
Green rings begin to form where nothing grew, soft swells of emerald where cattle will graze again after they’re rotated in again from another paddock.
The soil, after years of careful management by the Maddock family, breathes again.
For that work, Brian and his wife Vicki, along with the entire Maddock family, recently received recognition as recipients of the Leopold Conservation Award, making them part of a growing lineage of farmers and ranchers proving that working lands can also heal themselves.
The transformations to the Maddock family’s 4,000 acres of ranchland didn’t come from a one-season fix. They were constructed one fence, one water line and one holistic grazing decision at a time.
For the Maddock family, it has been a way of life since the early 1990s when land they farmed near Devils Lake became inundated, forcing a shift to rotational grazing and other regenerative ranching practices.
The Leopold Conservation Award, administered by Sand County Foundation, is a nationally recognized honor celebrating outstanding voluntary conservation.
Named after conservationist Aldo Leopold, the award is now presented in 28 states. This is the 10th time the award has been given in North Dakota.
“We’re excited about the things we’re doing, raising the cattle the way we do, and we’ve changed so many things over the years,” Brian Maddock said. “In a lot of ways, it’s not more work, it’s easier.”
A pivot born of necessity
After attending a course on holistic land management through the Carrington Research Extension Center around 40 years back, Brian came back home with eyes wide open to a shift the family needed to make away from crops and toward cattle.
“That opened my mind up tremendously,” Brian Maddock said of the course.
The farm was struggling financially at the time, he said.
“He came back from that course and said we need to make changes in how we farm or we’ll have to quit farming,” said his son, Travis Maddock. “He realized, once he started looking at the whole of things, that as a farmer, he was failing to try to raise crops. He wasn’t making any money. It wasn’t going to work out.”
That soul searching led his father to understand where his strengths lay, which was managing cattle and grass, Travis said. The family looked at the land they had and saw a lot of dirt, but not much quality soil left.
“All the tops of these hills are blown right down to the clay. Can we build some soil? Can we look at that? So we start putting a lot of these principles into place,” Travis said.
From there, they started installing cross-fences, developing water systems and rotating cattle through around two dozen paddocks, eventually shifting marginal farmland with soils too thin to support crops to ones that can support cattle. That’s helped restore fertility to the land.
“That land is really designed to support cattle,” Travis Maddock said.
Through practices like livestock impact on the grassland and bale grazing, the family has been able to transform the land, he said.
“You put the bales out there and let the cattle graze them down,” Travis Maddcok said. “That gives you your soil health principles, you’ve got cover, you’ve got living roots in there, you’re increasing your water cycle, your nitrogen cycle. Underneath there, you get your microbes rocking and rolling, and they’ll build soil for you. That’s how you build soil.”
Travis talks about how, as a regenerative rancher, you really have to think about the two herds you need to manage.
“We’re feeding the cows, but we’re also feeding all those microbes in the soil. We need to feed them too, and they need to be thriving,” he said. “As long as we can have symbiosis between those two things, we have the opportunity to create something where good things are happening, whether it’s financially or ecologically.”
Since the first Leopold Conservation Award was given in 2003, the award has spread to recognize the positive things farmers and ranchers were doing across the country in stewarding working lands.
Lance Irving, vice president of Sand County Foundation, calls these recipients “quiet heroes” for the work they put into their farms and ranches.
“This is an opportunity to recognize actual working farms and ranches, where their livelihood is tied to their productivity, and how conservation is a tool in their toolbox to not only make them more environmentally resilient but also economically resilient,” Irving said.
Award winners are chosen by panels within their state designated by local partners that include the North Dakota Association of Conservation Districts, North Dakota Grazing Lands Coalition, and the North Dakota Stockman’s Association.
What stood out about Brian Maddock, Irving said, is that he’s never satisfied and always looking to improve his processes.
“He’s not doing it for himself, he’s thinking, how can I make it better for my kids, how can I make it better for my grandkids,” Irving said. “Folks of his generation willing to change what they’ve done for the last 40, 50 years, to try something new, is not something you see all the time, and that really stands out to me.”
Irving also points out the Maddock family motto of “Soil. Cattle. Family.” sums up their philosophy.
“If you take care of the soil, the soil will take care of the cattle. If you take care of the cattle, the cattle will take care of the family,” Irving said. “But that initial building block is taking care of the soil. You can’t do the others before you take care of the soil.”
Darrell Oswald, district manager for the Burleigh County Soil Conservation District, helped bring the award to North Dakota in 2015.
Judging is done by local leaders from agriculture, conservation, and state agencies.
“One thing I’ve noticed about all of the winners over the years is they all think holistically,” Oswald said. “They’re early adopters. They think outside the box. They’re not afraid to try things.”
The Maddock family is no exception, he said.
“Brian was an early adopter of multi-paddock adaptive grazing systems, and was thinking outside the box,” Oswald said. “They’re in an area where ranching is secondary to farming. They’ve carved out a living there, where annual cropping is generally king.”
As the
10th North Dakota family to receive the award
, the Maddocks join a roster of producers helping to shape regenerative agriculture in the state and region.
Other recent winners include Heaton Ranches in McKenzie, Bartholomay Kattle Kompany in Sheldon, Spring Valley Cattle in Glen Ullin and Sand Ranch near Ellendale.
“These are the elite of the elite of producers, in my mind,” Oswald said. “They’re profitable. They’re putting resources first. They’re in it for the long haul. They’re generational, and in theory, they want to farm and ranch forever and are working towards that. What they’re doing with the soil and resources is allowing them to do that, and that’s important.”
This mirrors national trends. Many Leopold winners began changing practices when their backs were against the wall — financially, ecologically, or both. Once they saw it work, they became advocates, showing neighbors what’s possible.
Irving notes that today’s regenerative ranchers don’t fit old stereotypes.
“The general public’s notion of what a farmer or rancher is not actually indicative of what this next generation is,” Irving said. “These are tech-savvy folks.”
Irving mentioned how they’re adopting GPS grazing collars, innovative water systems, soil sampling and tissue testing, and that there is more of this than ever before.
“In a way, agriculture kind of has its back against the wall, and you have to figure out how to do it, because not only is our food system relying on it, but also our rural communities,” Irving said. “Farms and ranches are the backbones of rural communities, and without them, that’s an entire way of life that becomes harder and harder.”
The North Dakota News Cooperative is a non-profit news organization providing reliable and independent reporting on issues and events that impact the lives of North Dakotans. The organization increases the public’s access to quality journalism and advances news literacy across the state. For more information about NDNC or to make a charitable contribution, please visit newscoopnd.org.
This story was originally published on NewsCoopND.org.
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North Dakota
North Dakota taking steps to ban candy, soda purchases with SNAP benefits

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Some foods such as soda and candy may soon be prohibited purchases in North Dakota through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, officials said Tuesday.
The North Dakota Department of Health and Human Services plans to seek permission from the federal government to prohibit certain foods from being purchased with SNAP benefits. The proposal was mentioned Tuesday to a legislative committee but details are still being developed.
The move is part of an effort to secure more federal funding through the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program. While states are guaranteed at least $500 million from the program, they can get more money if they enact certain policies the federal government favors.
States with pending or approved SNAP waivers that limit non-nutritious food purchases will be considered more competitive applicants, Sarah Aker, executive director of medical services for the North Dakota Department of Health and Human Services, told lawmakers.
The agency plans to apply for the waiver from the U.S. Department of Agriculture ahead of the Nov. 5 application deadline for the rural health funding.
“We’re working out the definitions so that the retail community can have a smooth transition, but we’re eliminating things that cause chronic disease, so candy and soda,” said Pat Traynor, interim Health and Human Services commissioner.
Traynor said the earliest the changes could affect North Dakota SNAP recipients is next year, and the new changes would take months to implement.
North Dakota had about 57,000 SNAP recipients in May, according to USDA data.
At least 12 states have received federal approval to restrict SNAP recipients from using their benefits to buy foods such as soda and candy, Stateline reported. Some states have restricted only soda, while others have included energy drinks, prepared desserts and other sugary drinks. The trend is related to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s push to “make America healthy again.”
Sen. Jeff Magrum, R-Hazelton, remarked during Tuesday’s legislative committee meeting that the government’s definition of what food is and isn’t healthy seems to differ over time.
“What if they ever classified beef as non-nutritious, or something to that effect?” he asked. “When they base the money on non-nutritious, that’s kind of a moving target.”
Aker said the state has control over how it defines non-nutritious food under the waiver.
Emily O’Brien, deputy commissioner for Health and Human Services, said the department is still working out which soda and candy products will be included in the waiver.
“We’re fine-tuning what the definitions look like,” O’Brien said. “We want to have buy-in, too, from our partners on implementation.”
John Dyste, president of the North Dakota Grocers Association, said he’s been in contact with state officials about the SNAP waiver and plans to meet with the department.
Dyste said he does not think prohibiting candy and soda from SNAP purchases would be difficult for grocery stores to implement, though may be more challenging for smaller stores without a point-of-sale system.
Senate Minority Leader Kathy Hogan, D-Fargo, said eliminating soda and candy from the SNAP program is a “fine idea,” and hoped it would give North Dakota’s application for the Rural Health Transformation Program a boost.
She also said she wants to be certain the state’s rural grocery stores are able to make the changes effectively without burdening their businesses.
“If the points of sale all have to be changed and it’s going to change the operations of the benefits, then they’ll get pushback for doing it,” Hogan said.
North Dakota Monitor is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
North Dakota
Obituary for Ryan Allen Boyd Chennault at Thomas Family Funeral Home

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