Hamida Dakane says she was "disappointed" but "not surprised" by President Donald Trump's comments insulting Somalians and calling on them to leave the country.

But it hurt.

"You know, this comment, it hits deeply on personal level, and what makes it worse is it's coming from the president of the free world," she said. "It's not just offensive. It is dehumanizing. It shakes your sense of belonging. Even if you lived here 5 days or decades, you call America or Minnesota or North Dakota home, and then the people who represent you demonize you to the point that they call you garbage. It's just very hurtful."

Dakane, who was born in Kenya and is of Somali heritage, is a former state lawmaker who represented Fargo-area District 10 as the first black woman, and first Muslim, elected to that chamber. She's a Democrat, but pointed out that many Somali's vote for Republicans, and cast their ballots for Donald Trump. She was defeated for re-election in the 2024 election cycle by Rep. Jared Hendrix, who is an outspoken Trump supporter but ran a campaign focused on outreach to the Somali and larger immigrant communities.

She said this situation Trump has created has hit particularly hard on children.

"Kids will ask you 'why are we called garbage,'" she said.

"They know this as their home," she continued, pointing out that many of them were born in America, "and they're being called garbage. They question and they ask, 'where are we going to go? Where is our home if America is not our home?'"

Dakane praised North Dakota and Minnesota as a region that has welcomed her people. She came to North Dakota alone to attend North Dakota State University, and chose to stay because "North Dakota has been good to me and the neighbors have been good."

Still, Dakane says her community isn't looking for victimhood. "I personally, I refuse to let those words define who we are or who the community is," she said. "And we are not victims. We are visionaries. Not the president calling them garbage or any other person just hating on them will stop them. They will keep being visionaries and not victims."

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"I think sometimes we forget that every community in the country has a whole bunch of people that wake up every morning, and the baseball bat that is called life cracks them across the head," Gov. Kelly Armstrong said on this episode of Plain Talk.

"They're the people serving food in a diner, working behind a gas station counter. Sometimes they're sitting in your office right now, anywhere you're at. And if you don't recognize that, then you're not really the governor for everybody. And I want to be the governor for everybody."

Armstrong was responding to a question about his administration's efforts to address homelessness and addiction, as well as his family's individual efforts on the same front. He also responded to a question about President Donald Trump's recent comments denigrating people of Somali heritage. He called Rep. Ilhan Omar "garbage" and called on Somalis to "go back to where they came from."

"I think kind of a pox on everybody's houses in this space," Armstrong said. "We've conflated legal immigration and illegal immigration in a way that has made this stuff...I don't like all of it."

Ther governor spoke at length about controversy surrounding bonuses at the state's Retirement and Investment Office. The governor says he "doesn't love" the way the bonuses are structured, but also doesn't want the state to go back on whatever commitments it made to those employees. But upstream from that issue, Armstrong said he'd like to see structural reforms to the way the state's investments (which he notes have grown substantially over the last decades) are managed.

Also, Armstrong spoke about the special session he'll be calling in January next year and said his administration has begun the budgeting process for the next regular legislative session to commence in January 2027. He aid this will be the first time he's "really got to show off my fiscal conservative chops."

"I've told my agencies that you guys have had 20 years of real substantial growth and I wouldn't think you're going to have 21 years of real substantial growth," he said.

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Farmers are having a tough time of it. Tariffs are driving up costs, and trade wars are driving down crop prices. North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring talked about those things on this episode of Plain Talk, but he also pointed out another problem. Labor shortages, which not only leave positions unfilled, but also drive up wages for those who are available for hire.

"You can't get anybody to come out and want to work on a farm," he said.

Contributing to the labor shortage is problems with the H2A visa program for temporary agriculture workers. "H2A is specific to skilled labor that we can bring into the country to help us do the work, because you can't find anybody anymore to do it," Goehring said.

"And sometimes when you talk about that, people are like, 'Yeah, you're just trying to get free cheap labor.' No. On the contrary, in fact, if you bring in an H2A worker from South Africa or from South America or Central America, you're required to have housing for them. You're required to pay for their transportation. You're required to pay them, no matter what, when they're here," he continued.

Asked if the Trump administration's hostility to immigrants was contributing to labor shortages, Goehring admitted it's having an impact "to some degree," but also pointed to complexities in the visa program, as well as the oil industry's competition for workers.

Goehring also discussed the Industrial Commission's $400 million in loan programs to help farmers grappling with tough times. "We're lucky, you know, North Dakota has the only state-owned, sovereign bank in the entire country," he said. "We aren't FDI insured. We're insured by and the backing of the state of North Dakota. So, with that being said, it gives us the ability to develop some programs and be the banker's bank, help them manage and mitigate risk better for our multiple industries out there. This just happens to be agriculture right now because there's been several several areas that have been hard hit in our economy."

Also on this episode, co-host Chad Oban and I discuss the national fight over immigration, the challenges of selling and buying locally-produced foods, and the case for harm reduction programs like needle and pipe exchanges in our communities.

If you want to participate in Plain Talk, just give us a call or text at 701-587-3141. It's super easy — leave your message, tell us your name and where you're from, and we might feature it on an upcoming episode. To subscribe to Plain Talk, search for the show wherever you get your podcasts or use one of the links below.

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