Today in Minot

BISMARCK, N.D. — The North Dakota Department of Transportation (NDDOT) has selected the winners for the fifth annual Name-A-Plow contest, in which North Dakota citizens submitted snowplow name ideas. North Dakota citizens submitted more than 800 snowplow name ideas that were considered in the contest. Names...

Roughly 50,000 North Dakota households will pay nothing in property taxes for the 2025 tax year, but some county officials are concerned about how limiting property taxes will affect their budgets. This year's Primary Residence Credit program offers up to $1,600 per household in property tax...

OMAHA — Critical that Nebraska has “stepped back” from its award-winning focus on economic development, Omaha area business leaders have launched an offensive plan to regain a competitive edge. The Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce today released a 24-page “Omaha Competes” report that urges major updates...

Times are tight, and North Dakotans know it. Groceries cost more, gas costs more, and holiday budgets shrank this year. But when it comes to giving, most people in the state haven’t pulled back. A new poll finds nearly 8 in 10 North Dakotans still call charitable giving important—and they’d rather send that money down the street than across the country. What’s driving that impulse, and is it enough to keep local nonprofits afloat? Michael Standaert with North Dakota News Cooperative has the full story.

In the America most business leaders grew up in, you competed on products, prices, and ideas. The government set the rules; the market picked the winners. But something has shifted. This year, CEOs have lined up at Mar-a-Lago with gold plaques and donation checks, while the White House has started taking stakes in private companies. Critics across the political spectrum are using words like “crony capitalism” and “state capitalism” to describe what’s happening. What does it mean when schmoozing becomes a business strategy? Maria Aspan with NPR has the full story.

If you run a company, you know who owns a piece of it. Your investors, your co-founders, maybe some early employees. But what about the federal government? A New York Times analysis finds the Trump administration has quietly poured more than $10 billion into equity stakes across private firms—mining companies, nuclear power, semiconductors. The logic is national security. The irony is that it’s coming from a party that usually preaches free markets. Whether it pays off for taxpayers is another question entirely. Brian Contreras with Inc. has the full story.

Before a county planner can write a single word of a staff report, they often spend hours just gathering the basics—old decisions, existing laws, planning documents buried in filing systems. It’s the kind of tedious groundwork that eats up days. In Washoe County, Nevada, officials helped build an AI tool to do that digging for them. The platform, now used by nearly 50 local governments, pulls from an agency’s own records to draft reports in minutes. It’s not flashy. It just gives people their time back. Kaitlyn Levinson with Route Fifty has the full story.