Latest news with #KellyArmstrong
Gizmodo
4 days ago
- General
- Gizmodo
North Dakota Joins Growing League of States Requiring Age Verification for Porn
Moral panic laws have popped up across the United States in the 2025 legislative season. Recently, North Dakota joined the growing league of states requiring age verification for porn. But critics warn that North Dakota's regulations, which won't go into effect until August 1, are another shining example of First Amendment violations. Last month, North Dakota Governor Kelly Armstrong (R) signed Senate Bill 2380 and House Bill 1561 which both introduced age verification requirements for websites containing a 'substantial portion' of 'sexual material harmful to a minor on the internet'. These sites must use 'reasonable' methods, like a digitized identification card or having someone submit a government-issued ID. If a website fails to comply with age verification or deletes data, it can be held liable for damages. What counts as porn is wide under the new regulations. Obviously, actual depictions of sexual intercourse, masturbation, etc, are covered. However, the bill also extends to simulated or animated acts, and it includes depiction of pubic hair, genitals, and the nipple of a female breast, specifically. Beyond that, North Dakota's legislation is aimed at material that 'lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value' and that which the 'average individual applying contemporary community standards' would consider as appealing to the 'prurient interest'. According to the Age Verification Providers Association, over twenty states have passed age verification laws to access pornography. Recently, a woman from Kansas used her state's law to sue multiple porn websites after her teenage son watched porn on her old laptop. Of North Dakota's regulations, Rep. Steve Swiontek (R), chief sponsor of HB 1561, said, 'The thought was there should be some requirement and expectations that these adult' entertainment sites who are getting paid for this…that they should be mandated and required to verify age. I think we have a moral obligation for these kids.' Per the North Dakota Monitor, Swiontek noted that the state's laws are modeled after legislation that Utah passed in 2023. In addition, legislators passed Senate Concurrent Resolution 4017, which requests that the Legislative Management Committee 'consider studying the detrimental impacts of pornography.' The version of SB 2380 and HB 1561 that North Dakota's legislators passed is toned down from its introduction. Originally, the bill required 'covered manufacturers' (which included device manufacturers and app stores) to 'determine or estimate the age of the primary user upon activation of a device'. At the time, Rose Feliciano, executive director of TechNet, said that the bill's requirements were 'vague, cumbersome, and ineffective.' The toned down regulations still raise significant First Amendment concerns, though. As NetChoice's director of state and federal affairs, Amy Bos, wrote, 'While states may (and should) protect minors, states lack, as Justice Scalia memorably put it, 'a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.'' She added that age verification places barriers on 'constitutionally protected speech' that 'cannot survive judicial review.' Per Bos, laws in California, Utah, Ohio, Arkansas, and Mississippi 'have recently failed to withstand legal scrutiny.' In addition, Texas' HB 1181, which is similar to North Dakota's new regulations, is now at the center of a Supreme Court case. Bos warned, 'Implementing such a measure in North Dakota would likely meet the same fate and lead to costly legal challenges without providing any real benefit to the state's residents.' Age verification bills are also a privacy nightmare. Although North Dakota's regulation requires all data collected for age verification to be deleted, companies often hold onto data they shouldn't, and age verification companies still get hacked. Besides, age verification generally isn't effective at blocking access to content. But as the Electronic Frontier Foundation tracked, these laws have spiraled far beyond 'protecting minors from porn'. For example, states have introduced age verification requirements for skincare, dating apps, and diet pills. EFF cautioned, 'While the intent to protect children makes sense, the unintended consequence is a massive erosion of privacy, security, and free expression online for everyone.'
CBS News
23-05-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
North Dakota governor vetoes $35M housing budget ... by mistake
When North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong took up an agency budget bill approved by the legislature, he vetoed a couple of line items. At least, that was his intention Monday. Instead, he accidentally vetoed $35 million for the state's housing budget. Now the state is figuring out how to deal with the unusual problem of a mistaken veto. "I have no recollection of anything like this happening in the 37 years I've been here," John Bjornson, legislative council director, said Thursday. "So, yeah, I'd say it's a little extraordinary." Armstrong wasn't the only governor to possibly flub a line-item veto this week. Late Wednesday, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen announced that he would be striking about $47 million in funding and cash transfers over the next two years from budget bills passed last week by the Nebraska Legislature. Those cuts included about $12 million over two years for the Nebraska Supreme Court. But on Thursday afternoon, the Speaker of the Legislature John Arch announced the body would be sending a letter to Pillen, a fellow Republican, informing him he had missed a 5-day deadline, which came at midnight Wednesday, to properly file the line-item vetoes and that the line items are now law. Pillen's office responded that it handled the veto properly and would consult with the state attorney general about next steps. In North Dakota, the governor's staff called his veto of the housing budget in Senate Bill 2014 a markup error. Armstrong's staff met with the legislative council Thursday morning to discuss options. "This was an honest mistake, and we will fix it," a statement from the governor's office read. Armstrong, a Republican who served three terms in Congress, was elected governor in 2024. The legislative session that adjourned earlier in the month was his first as governor. In a message accompanying the veto, Armstrong wrote he had intended to veto a $150,000 grant to fund a Native American homelessness liaison position. The budget veto would take effect July 1. What happens next is largely up to the governor, Bjornson said, but it is likely that the legislature will need to reconvene in Bismarck for a special session. The governor's office said it will call a special session if needed but hopes to "avoid the expense." If the legislature overrides the veto, that would include funding for the grant Armstrong had wanted to strike. If the legislature wants to only fund the $35 million housing budget, lawmakers may need to pass a new bill, which could take as long as three days, Bjornson said. The Legislature has six days available to use of its 80-day session limit, and a special session could open the opportunity to override other vetoes by the governor. The governor vetoed all or parts of four bills this session.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong brings a hunter's mindset to the governor's office
May 23—When it comes to hunting, North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong leaves no doubt about his passion for the pursuit. "My wife would use the word 'addiction,' " Armstrong said. "And my favorite thing to hunt is ... 'What season is next?' " A first-term governor who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2019 until last year, Armstrong stopped by the Grand Forks Herald office Thursday, May 15. While the purpose of the visit was to talk about the recently wrapped-up session of the Legislature, the governor also discussed hunting, fishing and some of the challenges and opportunities the outdoors faces in North Dakota. "I always say we're not the best at anything, but we're the best at everything," Armstrong said, referring to North Dakota's abundance of outdoors opportunities. "There's still not a lot of places that you can go shoot a limit of pheasant, grouse, partridge, mallards, geese, whitetail, mule deer — all of the above. You can do it 100 miles from the governor's residence." One of the most publicized outdoors-related bills during the legislative session was SB 2137, which prohibits the Game and Fish Department from restricting the practice of baiting for big game hunting on private land in hunting units with confirmed cases of chronic wasting disease. Game and Fish historically has banned baiting for deer on private land in hunting units within 25 miles of a confirmed positive CWD case. The highly contagious brain disease is fatal to deer, elk and moose, and minimizing the chances of bringing animals into close contact has been a standard practice wildlife managers use to mitigate the risk. The "baiting bill," as it was commonly called, passed the House by a 56-34 vote, and Armstrong signed it Thursday, April 17. Baiting remains illegal for hunting on public land. "I think one of the things North Dakota always has to be conscious of is we don't have a lot of public land," Armstrong said. "I always viewed (baiting) as a private property right." Considering only about 9% of North Dakota land is public land, support from private landowners is crucial to the future of hunting and access in the state, he said. That's why he signed the bill. All the "habitat in the world" doesn't mean much without access to private land, Armstrong said. The legislation sunsets in 2029. "We don't have outdoor heritage if we don't have buy-in from landowners because we don't have a lot of federal land, we don't have a lot of state land," Armstrong said. "We'll monitor and watch it. If we start seeing a spike (in CWD), we'll have to sit down and look at it. Game and Fish tested 1,456 animals for CWD during the 2024 sampling season, and 17 tested positive — 15 taken by hunters and two "clinical deer" that were confirmed through diagnostic examination. That brings the total of positive cases to 122 since 2009, when CWD was first detected in North Dakota. In December, the North Dakota Game and Fish Department hosted a Habitat and Hunting Access Summit in Bismarck. Armstrong, just days into his first term as governor, spoke at the summit. Gone are the days when North Dakota had more than 3 million acres of land enrolled in the federal Conservation Reserve Program. As CRP contracts expire, wildlife habitat is less abundant, and wildlife populations — especially white-tailed deer — are struggling and less resilient to severe winters and diseases such as the EHD (epizootic hemorrhagic disease) outbreak that decimated deer numbers in some areas in 2021. North Dakota today has less than 1 million acres of land enrolled in CRP, and 85% of the acreage enrolled during the peak in 2007 could be gone by 2026 if contracts continue to expire at their current rate, Game and Fish biologist Doug Leier reported this week in his weekly "North Dakota Outdoors" column. The summit was the first step in what promises to be a slow, challenging process to address access and the loss of habitat. Whatever direction any potential solutions ultimately take, farmers and ranchers must be on board, Armstrong says. There are no easy answers. "If you don't start with the ag groups and the actual farmers and ranchers about what works for them ... what works for sportsmen and what works for the guy making a living off that land every day of the week aren't always the same thing," Armstrong said. "I think the low-hanging fruit, me personally — youth deer, youth pheasant, youth duck — I think you have to be a pretty (difficult) guy to say no to a 14-year-old kid who wants to shoot his first whitetail doe or her first pheasant or first duck. I think there are opportunities to do this." Game and Fish recently announced it will offer 42,300 licenses for this fall's deer gun season — a near 50-year low — down from more than 100,000 for several years during the peak of CRP. In some ways, North Dakota is losing its "deer camp culture," Armstrong says. CWD and baiting isn't the issue, he says, it's EHD and two bad winters. "We have way too many people chasing inches instead of chasing experience," he said, referring to the size of a buck's rack. "I can tell you, looking back on all of my favorite deer hunts, I don't care how big the deer was. I don't look back 20 years ago and have a more fond experience because it was a 156-inch deer vs. a 142-inch deer." Trapshooting has become one of the fastest-growing high school sports in North Dakota and nationwide, but "less and less" of the kids shooting trap are actually hunting, Armstrong says, a trend that presents both a challenge and an opportunity. "How we can figure out how to (get kids hunting) also happens to be a pretty good workforce recruitment and retention tool," Armstrong said. "If you're 17 years old and love to hunt and fish, the chances of you staying in North Dakota at 35 are higher than if you don't" hunt and fish. While Armstrong says he's not an avid angler, the quality of fishing available in North Dakota is another piece of "low-hanging fruit," in terms of outdoors opportunities. "For as much criticism as Game and Fish gets — and a lot of it isn't deserved — we spend a lot of time talking about Devils Lake, Sakakawea and the Missouri River, but there are tons of the little fisheries out there that are (anglers') secret spots," he said. As for hunting, Armstrong says he looks forward to spending more time in the field as governor than he did as North Dakota's representative in Congress. Regardless, he says, it won't be enough. "No hunter on his deathbed ever said, 'Man, I really wish I would have hunted less,' " Armstrong said.
Associated Press
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
North Dakota governor vetoes the housing budget -- by mistake
When North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong took up an agency budget bill approved by the legislature, he vetoed a couple line items. At least, that was his intention Monday. Instead, he accidentally vetoed $35 million for the state's housing budget. Now the state is figuring out how to deal with the unusual problem of a mistaken veto. 'I have no recollection of anything like this happening in the 37 years I've been here,' John Bjornson, legislative council director, said Thursday. 'So, yeah, I'd say it's a little extraordinary.' The governor's staff called his veto of the housing budget in Senate Bill 2014 a markup error. Armstrong's staff met with the legislative council Thursday morning to discuss options. 'This was an honest mistake, and we will fix it,' a statement from the governor's office read. Armstrong, a Republican who served three terms in Congress, was elected governor in 2024. The legislative session that adjourned earlier in the month was his first as governor. In a message accompanying the veto, Armstrong wrote he had intended to veto a $150,000 grant to fund a Native American homelessness liaison position. The budget veto would take effect July 1. What happens next is largely up to the governor, Bjornson said, but it is likely that the legislature will need to reconvene in Bismarck for a special session. The governor's office said it will call a special session if needed but hopes to 'avoid the expense.' If the legislature overrides the veto, that would include funding for the grant Armstrong had wanted to strike. If the legislature wants to only fund the $35 million housing budget, lawmakers may need to pass a new bill, which could take as long as three days, Bjornson said. The Legislature has six days available to use of its 80-day session limit, and a special session could open the opportunity to override other vetoes by the governor. The governor vetoed all or parts of four bills this session.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
North Dakota governor issues 7 line-item vetoes, including lawmaker ‘immunity' provision
Senate Majority Leader David Hogue, left, talks to Gov. Kelly Armstrong on May 3, 2025, after lawmakers adjourned. (Kyle Martin/For the North Dakota Monitor) Gov. Kelly Armstrong issued seven line-item vetoes on six bills Monday, with many objections focused on policies he felt lawmakers 'shoehorned' into budget bills or encroached on executive authority. One line-item veto was of a section of the Ethics Commission's budget bill meant to protect lawmakers from being prosecuted for conflicts of interest — though he let a similar clause in the bill become law. Both provisions, part of Senate Bill 2004, concerned lawmakers who have a special interest in the outcome of legislation. Under House and Senate rules, lawmakers are supposed to notify their peers when they believe they have conflict of interest with a bill so that their colleagues can decide whether to excuse them from voting. They may also seek guidance from the Ethics Commission. North Dakota lawmakers approve Ethics Commission bill with deadline removed The vetoed clause stated that if a lawmaker voted on a bill they had a conflict of interest with, but followed legislative ethics rules and/or followed informal guidance from the Ethics Commission, they couldn't be prosecuted for any potential crime that stemmed from that vote. In a line-item veto message, Armstrong said the provision 'sends the wrong message to North Dakotans.' 'While transparency and ethical conduct are essential in a representative democracy, this provision elevates internal legislative procedure above state law, effectively shielding lawmakers from accountability under our criminal code,' he wrote. He said the clause would create another blanket protection for lawmakers at a time when the state 'already has opaque campaign finance laws.' The Legislature at the last minute rejected a bill some hoped would increase campaign finance disclosure requirements — a move Armstrong criticized. Armstrong signed the rest of the Ethics Commission budget into law, which included another more narrow immunity clause. The narrower section protects a lawmaker from being prosecuted under a specific statute for voting on a bill they have conflict of interest with if they follow House and Senate ethics rules. The statute, titled 'speculating or wagering on official action or information,' is what Rep. Jason Dockter, R-Bismarck, was convicted of last year. 'Section 4 of Senate Bill 2004 is acceptable and reasonable because it appropriately clarifies that legislators must have the freedom to perform their official duties without fear of prosecution,' Armstrong said in his veto message. Effort to improve North Dakota campaign finance reporting fails The Ethics Commission expressed earlier this month that the immunity provision the governor vetoed would have made it legally more risky for the commission to give informal advice. House Bill 1003, budget for the attorney general: Armstrong vetoed a provision that sought to prevent a district court judge from waiving fees for the 24/7 sobriety program. 'It invites a constitutional challenge and will only increase costs and jail overcrowding for counties,' Armstrong wrote in his veto message. He also noted a standalone bill, Senate Bill 2365, had the same provision but failed in the House, yet the policy was later 'logrolled' the budget bill. Senate Bill 2014, North Dakota Industrial Commission budget: The governor vetoed a $150,000 passthrough grant from the Housing Incentive Fund to a Native American-focused organization to fund a homelessness liaison position. 'Addressing homelessness and housing insecurity requires a comprehensive, sustainable, and statewide strategy, not isolated, one-time allocations to individual entities,' Armstrong wrote in his veto message. Also in that bill, Armstrong vetoed a mandate for the Bank of North Dakota to spend up to $250,000 to study economic development strategies in western North Dakota as oil production decreases. The governor said the Department of Commerce already has the authority to do such a study. House Bill 1019, Parks and Recreation Department budget: Armstrong vetoed a portion of the bill that sought to eliminate the department's ability to rename state parks and require legislative approval for name changes. Armstrong wrote that provision encroaches on the executive branch. It also could complicate matters if federal dollars were contingent on the renaming of a state park, he said. Last November, the department changed the name of the state park in Medora to Rough Rider State Park. Senate Bill 2001, Legislative Council budget: Armstrong vetoed a line in the budget that reserves the 15th floor of the Capitol for legislative staff. The floor is occupied now by the Department of Career and Technical Education. Armstrong said lawmakers did not get input from his administration, the department affected or the public. He said his administration will help identify available Capitol space, but he objected to doing so in state law. Senate Bill 2018, Department of Commerce budget: Armstrong vetoed $350,000 to the State Fair Association for sanitation restoration projects. The governor said that funding should have been included in the State Fair Association's primary budget. He said adding it to the Commerce budget at the end of the session 'is a clear example of logrolling, which undermines transparency, accountability, and the principle of deliberate budgeting.' 'Through limited use of my line-item veto authority, we've reduced spending, protected the integrity of the budgeting process and preserved executive branch authority to ensure that state government remains efficient and transparent,' Armstrong said in a statement Monday. Sen. David Hogue, R-Minot, chair of the Legislative Management Committee, said Monday that while he may disagree with some of the vetoes, he does not believe Armstrong overstepped his authority. 'I don't think they (the vetoes) rise to the level of a situation where we'd want to independently call ourselves into session,' Hogue said. 'If we had another reason, we might take them up, but these vetoes would not be the impetus in my view.' The Legislature, which adjourned earlier this month, does not have to act on the vetoes within a set amount of days, said Emily Thompson, director of the legal division of Legislative Council. She added lawmakers would need to use at least one of their six remaining legislative days to consider a potential veto override. Lawmakers during the 2025 session passed a total of 601 bills. Armstrong signed 597 and vetoed four bills in their entirety: a bill affecting state employee health insurance, a library content bill, a private school voucher bill and a tax credit for prison industries. Budget bills take effect July 1 and policy bills take effect Aug. 1. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
