Stories

The clash over South Dakota’s abortion ban and an attempt to make abortion a voter-approved constitutional right in 2024 have a new battleground: the Minnehaha County Administration Building.

Native American leaders in South Dakota are raising private funds and developing their own schools in an effort to improve educational outcomes for Native students who have trailed their white peers in all academic measures for generations in the state K-12 public school system.

Gov. Kristi Noem was vocal in her support of eliminating the grocery tax during the 2023 legislative session, but now she's against it. That's because she's worried that wording in a ballot initiative could also inadvertently eliminate the tobacco tax.

An open primary constitutional amendment aims to circumvent party primaries with nonpartisan races, but it faces a huge hurdle to passage in a state long dominated by one political party.

Several South Dakota Marines who were stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina decades ago now have cancer and other serious health problems that they believe were caused by contaminated drinking water at the base. Three of them spoke to News Watch about their conditions and pursuit of justice.

A two-year battle over a massive state-run gun range proposed for a site north of Rapid City has pitted ranchers who have worked the land for generations against a coalition of supporters that includes hunters and shooters, the state Game, Fish and Parks Department and Gov. Kristi Noem.

South Dakota News Watch Content Director Bart Pfankuch has won a top national agricultural reporting award for the third time.

“One of the things I brought to the South Dakota Symphony was a conviction that an orchestra should serve its unique community uniquely." Conductor Delta David Gier is transforming what a symphony can be — and getting national attention for it.

A new statewide nonprofit group called the South Dakota Trade Association hopes it can make it far easier for other Rushmore State businesses to break into overseas markets and generate new revenues and jobs along the way.

Roughly two-thirds of the nearly 2,000 railroad crossings in South Dakota are marked only by signposts with “railroad crossing” crossbucks. That was the case on the gravel road where a fatal crash between a truck and train killed two in Harrisburg in December.