SUMMARY: Amid record-breaking early voting this midterm season, concerns of voter suppression are at the center of some of the country's most contested races. Lisa Desjardins reports on what new voting restrictions mean for voters in Georgia, North Dakota, and Kansas.
SUMMARY: North Dakota is small in terms of population, but its Senate race this fall is attracting major attention. Incumbent Heidi Heitkamp, the only high-level Democratic official left in the state, faces a close contest with Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer, an enthusiastic supporter of President Trump. For the state's farmers, the choice may amount to a referendum on the President's trade war with China.
SUMMARY: At least 140 people were arrested while occupying land in the path of the controversial Dakota Access pipeline in the past week. President Obama has urged peaceful protests and restraint from law enforcement. William Brangham speaks with Lynda Mapes of The Seattle Times about the extreme tension and fear of violence on the ground, reaction to the Oregon standoff acquittals and more.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): In North Dakota, the standoff over the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline keeps growing, as riot police cleared protesters blocking the pipeline's construction.
William Brangham has the latest.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): In the past week, at least 140 people were arrested while occupying land in the pipeline's path, including one woman charged with allegedly shooting at police. No one was injured.
Native Americans and environmentalists say the pipeline will destroy sacred sites and threaten the drinking water of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The 1,200-mile-long, nearly $4 billion pipeline would carry 500,000 gallons of crude oil daily across four states.
Yesterday, President Obama weighed in on the fight in an interview with the Web site Now This News.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: There's an obligation for protesters to be peaceful. And there's an obligation for authorities to show restraint.
And I want to make sure that, as everybody is exercising their constitutional rights to be heard, that both sides are refraining from situations that might result in people being hurt.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: For more on this, I'm joined now by Seattle Times reporter Lynda Mapes, who's just back from North Dakota.
Lynda, thank you so much for being here.
Could you just tell us, what has it been like? You were just there recently. What is it like? What did you see?
LYNDA MAPES, The Seattle Times: Well, it was scary, honestly.
I was there with a Seattle Times photographer, Ellen Banner, and we truly were wondering minute to minute whether someone was going to get killed. We were in camp the night before with tribal members who were singing their death songs. I mean, they were very worried about the possibility of violence.
And who wouldn't be? You have seen law enforcement marshaled from six states, armored personnel carriers, hundreds and hundreds of law enforcement officers with concussion grenades, mace, Tasers, batons. And they used all of it. I mean, it was frightening to watch.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And when you say that they were using this, can you sort of describe the situation in which — we tend to see images of riots or protests, and we think of an equal clash between both sides. What kinds of things did you witness?
LYNDA MAPES: Well, the demonstrators are vastly outnumbered. There's no question about that.
And, in many cases, they were literally sitting, arms locked, praying when they were arrested. This changed as the standoff went on. It all started on Thursday morning around 10:30. It went on all through the day, all through the night, into the next day. And, by the next day, Friday morning, demonstrators had burned two trucks on a bridge and had erected a makeshift plywood barrier. They had a pile of rocks.
Meanwhile, the law enforcement officers had advance more than 100 yards with five armored personnel carriers side by side, hundreds of law enforcement officers advancing on them. And it finally took an [Tribal] Elder to actually walk by himself in between the two lines, stand there, face his people, and say: “Go home. We're here to fight the pipeline, not these people, and we can only win this with prayer.”
SUMMARY: Oil prices have been dropping since the industry's boom in 2014, and with that decline comes economic uncertainty for oil towns like Dickinson, North Dakota. Over 180 rigs drilled at the nearby Bakken oil field two years ago; only 27 remain active today. The slowdown has taken its toll on all sectors of business, from the housing market to hotel occupancy. Inside Energy's Emily Guerin reports.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): But, first: a report on the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota, where employment and the economy are directly affected by the price of oil.
Oil prices have dropped since their peak in 2014, and drilling has slowed, idling rigs and sending the once booming economy into uncertainty.
Inside Energy's Emily Guerin takes us on a tour of Oil Bust Alley, a short stretch of highway where the boom and bust of the oil industry plays out.
EMILY GUERIN, Inside Energy: I have spent two years reporting on the Bakken oil field in North Dakota. I have seen it when it was booming, back in 2014, and now, when it's busting.
There's one highway in the oil field town of Dickinson, Highway 22, where you can see the entire boom and bust story. So we're going on a road trip through Oil Bust Alley to see what we can learn in this five-mile stretch of road about how a community changes when the price of oil crashes.
Let's start with the obvious losers, businesses directly involved in the drilling and production of oil.
So, I'm standing in front a field of stacked drilling rigs. There's about 27 back there. We just counted. And that's actually about the same amount that are actively drilling for oil in North Dakota. Two years ago, when the price of oil was high, there were over 180. And it's really a sign of how much things have slowed down here in the oil field.
Every time a drilling rig gets idled, about 120 people lose their jobs, people like Kaley Haugen's husband, who worked on a drilling rig for over a decade before being laid off last year. Haugen has also seen a huge impact of the slowdown on her business, the Uniform Unit, which is right on Highway 22.
KALEY HAUGEN, Owner, Uniform Unit: We do uniforms for a variety of industries. We do flame-resistant clothing for the oil and gas industry, as well as electrical. We do scrubs, medical uniforms, and then we also have brought in tactical for EMS management services.
EMILY GUERIN: The Uniform Unit just opened last spring, right as oil prices were tanking.
KALEY HAUGEN: If we would've been operating two years ago, three years ago, I would bet 90 percent of our business would have been oil field. Now I would say we're pretty even within the different fields. I mean, I would say 30 percent oil fields, 30 percent tactical, 30 percent scrubs, so definitely different than I thought.
EMILY GUERIN: Hotels have also been hit hard by the slowdown. Over 1,000 new hotel rooms were built in Dickinson in the past 12 years.
Connie Hank and Bill Evans manage and do maintenance in three of those hotels just off Highway 22.
BILL EVANS, Hotel Maintenance Worker: When I got here in March of '14, there were no vacancies. If somebody checked out, you already had somebody's name who was waiting on that room.
CONNIE HANK, Hotel Manager: You would've been paying $80 a night for a single and almost — just about $100 for a double. That was cheap. And now you can get a room for $32 a night. That's a big change.
BILL EVANS: Drastic.
EMILY GUERIN: Now their three hotels are at less than 30 percent occupancy. They end up with a lot of time on their hands.
LEITH, N.D. (AP) — In a tree-fringed grassy lot with a lone picnic bench in the tiny North Dakota farming town of Leith, Craig Cobb sees the perfect venue for a white power music festival.
Across a gravel intersection between two abandoned buildings, he envisions a park — perhaps with a swimming pool — dedicated to a neo-Nazi and white supremacist activist. He pictures the town decorated with fluttering flags and banners bearing the swastika — the symbol of Nazism.
"They would have to be approved by the town council, of course," Cobb said, gazing out over Leith's sparse downtown from his overgrown, weed-infested front yard.
Cobb, 61, a self-described white supremacist, has purchased about a dozen lots in the community about 60 miles southwest of Bismarck. Over the past year he has invited fellow white supremacists to move there and help him to transform the town of 16 people into a white enclave. No one has come.
Still, the community is mobilizing to fight out of fear that Cobb could succeed, and the mayor has vowed to do whatever it takes to ensure Cobb's dream remains just that.
Last week, while news of Cobb's plan was being splashed across the front pages of The Bismarck Tribune and The Forum, about two dozen people — mostly residents of Leith and concerned friends from neighboring towns — showed up for an impromptu meeting in nearby Carson.
"We all share kind of the same concerns that people living in the community of Leith have — just the unknown," said Kathy Hoff, who lives just south of the town and attended the meeting.
Cobb spends his days in his ramshackle two-story home with no running water, posting online comments advocating for white supremacists to join his settlement.
"I only need 17 people," he said with a chuckle. "You have to have a majority to win an election. If we get 22 we've got a landslide."
Cobb's neighbors across a back alley are Sherrill Harper, who is white, and her husband Bobby, who is black. Bobby Harper, a 52-year-old welder, said he has spoken to Cobb only once, and that Cobb's plans don't bother him much.
"The most extreme thing you can do is hate another man because of the color of his skin, (but) I don't think we should get too excited," he said. "I believe right will prevail."
Officials are considering enforcing health codes and ordinances relating to the upkeep of Cobb's run-down property. A proposal to disband Leith's government and turn over control to the county is even on the table.
"He would still own his property," said Mayor Ryan Schock, a 38-year-old farmer and lifelong Leith resident. "But … he can't control the city if there's no city government."
No decisions have been made, but the six-member town council that usually convenes once a month might call a special meeting to discuss the matter soon, Schock said.
Ryan Lenz, a writer with the Alabama-based civil rights nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center, said his organization has long tracked Cobb, who is wanted in Canada for willfully promoting hatred in Vancouver in 2010 via a blog.
"It's a pipe dream for white nationalists to have an entire area in which their neighbors are Aryan," Lenz said.
That's hard to achieve, Lenz said, but Cobb has made strides because he has gobbled up land — even transferring some to Tom Metzger, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and founder of the White Aryan Resistance.
That doesn't mean he's any closer to enacting his plan. Metzger said he likes Cobb but that declared plans for white enclaves never work and that he will not be joining Cobb in Leith.
"I think it's better just to have people move in quietly, have a job, operate a regular daily life and get along with their neighbors," he said. "I wouldn't go into a town pushing my weight around."
Cobb, a native of Missouri, fled prosecution in Canada and chased the promise of high-paying jobs in the booming western North Dakota oil fields. He said he was fired from a job because of a dispute with a co-worker and that he lost a job with a Fargo-based paving company after media coverage of his settlement plans.
Canadian authorities have not approached the U.S. to extradite Cobb. Cpl. Normandie Levas of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the white supremacist can't be extradited because the charge against him in Canada doesn't exist under U.S. law.
Deputy North Dakota Attorney General Tom Trenbeath said authorities are aware of Cobb, and the Grant County Sheriff's Office has increased patrols in the area. But Cobb hasn't broken any laws there, and Schock acknowledges that he has a right to live in Leith, no matter his views.
Cobb's comments and writings indicate he believes in a superior white race, distrusts both Jews and Christians, and questions the intelligence of women. He declines to talk about his upbringing and gives no indication as to why he adopted his supremacist platform.
In an interview outside his house, he was calm, cheerful and even jovial, making comments that raised questions about whether he believes his plan could succeed — or if he's just seeking publicity.
"If I'm the only one in Leith forever, white consciousness has already been raised," he said.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): ..... a woman is attacked and the life of her 13-year-old son, Joe, is altered forever, along with his family. That's the dramatic outline of the new novel "The Round House" by Louise Erdrich, which has been nominated for a National Book Award.
The story is set on a Native American reservation in North Dakota, and it explores clashes of culture and law between tribal and state jurisdictions in investigating a crime.
I talked with Louise Erdrich recently and asked her first how she came to write the book.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Now to our American Graduate series on the high school dropout problem.
Tonight, we explore the pressures on a public school system in a city that's unexpectedly benefiting from economic good times.
Ray Suarez has our story from North Dakota.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): There is no better economic view in the U.S. than the one seen from above Williston, North Dakota. A rapidly expanding oil boom has taken root below, bringing with it widespread prosperity and an unemployment rate that sits at just 1 percent.
This city's fortunes are in stark contrast to most of the nation. Real estate is profitable. Blue-collar jobs are abundant. And much of the globe, including Asia, the Middle East and Europe, is investing in the local economy.
But as opportunities and new residents pour in, it is clear that Williston, home to 12,000 people just a few years ago, is dramatically changing.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): Tonight, we begin a series on the changing landscape of energy in the U.S. and the consequences of ever-increasing development.
Ray Suarez is our guide this week. Tonight, he visits the booming economy in western North Dakota, where new drilling technologies have opened up massive oil reserves.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): In western North Dakota, near the Montana border, there's so much oil around, it almost feels risky to say it: boom -- a 1 percent unemployment rate, heavy traffic in what was once a sleepy town of 12,000, nowhere to live, restaurants that close early because they can't find enough people to work at $15 an hour and others offering signing bonuses to dishwashers and fast food workers.
Geologists say there is a small ocean of oil, hundreds of billions of barrels trapped underground here in North Dakota. So, thousands of workers flocked to Williston to pull it out. Instant towns rose, instead of corn and wheat, as Williston joined a new American energy boom driving growth in parts of the West.
Just two years ago, the United States was importing two-thirds of its oil. Today, imports are down to less than half U.S. oil needs. Oil companies have known about these supplies for decades, but new technology makes the deposit, known as the Bakken, profitable to drill.
