The Pilot Independent reports…

Emily Thabes, a Clearwater County resident since March 2020 and executive director of the Beltrami County Historical Society, announced that she is running for the Minnesota House of Representatives in District 2B. She will challenge Republican incumbent Matt Bliss in November.

The article mentions Clearwater County’s current broadband status…

Itasca County ranks among the highest in the state for property tax burden and among the lowest for median household income. Mahnomen County, home to the White Earth Nation, has a 37 percent poverty rate and the 47th-worst broadband coverage of any Minnesota county.

Greater Minnesota is short 42,581 childcare slots. The December 2025 federal funding freeze cut access for an additional 23,000 Minnesota children statewide, in a region where northeast Minnesota already holds the highest job vacancy rate in the state.

And Thabes response to the concerns…

She says tribal and non-tribal communities across the district face the same healthcare, housing, broadband, and workforce shortages, and that the solutions to those problems require working across jurisdictional lines, not around them. Her platform treats the district’s economies, resorts, agriculture, tribal enterprise and outdoor recreation as a system built on the same shared land and water.