Carrie Snyder / The Forum via AP

In this photo from Sunday, pedestrians cross snow-covered Main Avenue in downtown Fargo, N.D.

As the Northeast returned Monday to more seasonable conditions after digging out from a major winter storm, snowy weather that clobbered the Upper Midwest made travel nearly impossible, according to local reports.

Blizzard warnings posted by the National Weather Service continued into Monday morning in areas of South Dakota and North Dakota that already saw record-breaking snowfall over the weekend. It prompted officials to keep closed more than 800 miles of interstate highway, Weather.com reported.

Gusty winds around 30 to 40 mph accompanied the snowfall and reduced visibility, resulting in white-out conditions in some areas, National Weather Service meteorologist Brad Adams said.

More coverage from The Weather Channel

Additionally, 12 to 18 inches of snow and rain combined to create slushy, slick roads, spelling trouble for drivers, according to Greg Fuller, South Dakota Department of Transportation director of operations.

"Vehicles have been getting stuck in the snow, and drivers have been going off the road," Fuller told the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D.

Fuller added that because the snow fell faster than workers could clear streets, he anticipated that roads would remain closed for a significant amount of time.

Carrie Snyder / The Forum via AP

In this photo from Sunday, Ryan Luken clears a sidewalk in north Fargo, N.D.

In Fargo, N.D., more than a foot of heavy, wet snow hampered efforts to open up roads and plows were unable to bust through the cover in some areas, The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead reported.

Meanwhile in Chicago, the National Weather Service issued a wind advisory until 4 p.m. local time, due to gusts between 30 and 50 mph.

The weather service warned that such winds could make driving difficult and cause some property damage, NBCChicago.com reported.

The area could also see some occasional light snow showers or flurries with some minor accumulation possible.

Updated at 12:36 p.m. ET: George McGovern, the unabashedly liberal Democratic senator whose outsider campaign against President Richard Nixon led to a landslide defeat and the eventual reformation of the Democratic Party as a more centrist organization, died early Sunday, his family said in a statement. He was 90 years old.

McGovern died at a hospice in Sioux Falls, S.D., where he had been admitted Monday.

Steve Hildebrand, a spokesman for the family, said in a statement to NBC News: "At approximately 5:15 am CT [6: 15 a.m. ET] this morning, our wonderful father, George McGovern, passed away peacefully at the Dougherty Hospice House in Sioux Falls, SD, surrounded by our family and life-long friends.

"We are blessed to know that our father lived a long, successful and productive life advocating for the hungry, being a progressive voice for millions and fighting for peace.

"He continued giving speeches, writing and advising all the way up to and past his 90th birthday, which he celebrated this summer."

Senior Democrats praised McGovern on Sunday as a visionary whose political sacrifices opened up the party to women and minority groups.

Although McGovern was ridiculed for many years for having led the Democrats to an overwhelming defeat against Nixon, former Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado, his 1972 campaign manager, argued Sunday that McGovern "helped save the Democratic Party."

In 1968, McGovern headed a committee that reformed the party's nominating process. In a column for Politico remembering McGovern on Sunday, Hart wrote:

Those rules were designed to open party participation, especially in nominating candidates, to women, minorities, and young people. The reforms succeeded and the Democratic Party opened itself up to democratic participation. The control of power-brokers and party bosses was broken. Decrepit political machines largely collapsed. ... We will never know the nature of a McGovern presidency. But someday the American Democratic Party will find a way to honor him as it should.

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President Barack Obama called McGovern "a statesman of great conscience and conviction," saying in a statement that "this hero of war became a champion for peace. And after his career in Congress, he became a leading voice in the fight against hunger."

Among the most prominent Democrats to get their political starts on McGovern's insurgent 1972 campaign were former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. In a statement Sunday, they lamented the passing of a "friend" and a "tireless advocate for human rights and dignity":

We first met George while campaigning for him in 1972. Our friendship endured for 40 years. As a war hero, distinguished professor, Congressman, Senator and Ambassador, George always worked to advance the common good and help others realize their potential. Of all his passions, he was most committed to feeding the hungry, at home and around the world. The programs he created helped feed millions of people, including food stamps in the 1960s and the international school feeding program in the 90's, both of which he co-sponsored with Senator Bob Dole.

In 2000, Bill had the honor of awarding him the Medal of Freedom. From his earliest days in Mitchell to his final days in Sioux Falls, he never stopped standing up and speaking out for the causes he believed in. We must continue to draw inspiration from his example and build the world he fought for. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends.

Slideshow: George McGovern

Ed Widdis / AP

The life of former Democratic Sen. George McGovern, who lost the 1972 presidential election to Richard Nixon and gained fame throughout his career for his devotion to fighting hunger and opposing war.

Launch slideshow

George Stanley McGovern was bomber pilot who flew 35 combat missions in World War II, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross. He became a history and political science professor after the war and was elected to Congress in 1958. He won the first of three Senate terms in 1962. 

McGovern became an early critic of the Vietnam War and a leader of the Democrats' liberal wing, propelling him to a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968 as an anti-war candidate.

Four years later, McGovern emerged at the top of the heap after a fractious campaign that divided the party between his corps of young, idealistic supporters and the more establishment organization of Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine, who was the losing vice presidential candidate on the ticket with Hubert Humphrey in 1968.

McGovern lost to Nixon in one of the biggest landslides in history, winning only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia — Nixon even won McGovern's own state, South Dakota. 

Many factors contributed to McGovern's defeat: the dirty tricks of the Nixon campaign, which soon exploded into the Watergate scandal that led to Nixon's resignation in 1974; unresolved differences with key Democratic leaders after the bitter campaign, including Humphrey and Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts; and the successful tarring of McGovern as a far-left fringe candidate by Republicans, which was summed up most succinctly in Vice President Spiro Agnew's dismissal of McGovern as the candidate of "amnesty, abortion and acid."

Particularly damaging was McGovern's failure to win the endorsement of organized labor, despite his strong pro-labor voting record. McGovern publicly feuded with AFL-CIO President George Meany, who strongly supported the war in Vietnam. 

But the biggest blow probably was the Democrats' mishandling of the selection of Sen.. Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as their vice presidential nominee. In a 1986 interview on C-SPAN, McGovern said that party leaders were divided among several higher-profile possibilities, including Kennedy, and that he eventually settled on Eagleton because he was "everybody's second choice."

Within two weeks, it became public that Eagleton suffered from severe depression, having been hospitalized several times and, on at least one occasion, having undergone electroshock therapy. By Juy 31, 1972 — less than three weeks after he had been nominated, Eagleton witrhdrew and was replaced by Sargent Shriver, former director of the Peace Corps and a member of Nixon's administration as ambassador to France.

Nixon walked to victory, collecting 520 electoral votes to McGovern's 17. 

He returned to the Senate, only to be defeated by Republican James Abdnor in the 1980 Reagan landslide. But over time, his reputation was rehabilitated, and he made a creditable showing — finishing fifth — in the 1984 Democratic presidential primaries, in which he ran as a peace candidate. 

Through the years, McGovern insisted that his biggest mistake hadn't been taking such liberal stances — it was not having stuck to his liberal beliefs fiercely enough.

"If anything, I don't think the Democrats have been strong enough in clinging to their principle," he said in a 2011 interview with the Argus-Leader of Sioux Falls, S.D.

"You can say they were too ideological. Well, I don't think you hold political convictions just to be able to spout out a complicated philosophy or ideology. You try to support what you think is in the best interests of the country. My qualms with the Democrats in recent decades is they aren't strong enough in dissenting from policies that they should be able to see are against our best interest."

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brockauction.com

In South Dakota, Sioux tribes have turned to the online community to raise money to buy at least part of 2,000 acres of Black Hills land they say is part of their creation story.

In the pristine Black Hills of South Dakota, the Great Sioux Nation is in a race against the clock to raise money to buy nearly 2,000 acres of ancestral land called Pe’ Sla.

Since 1876, the Battle of Little Big Horn, the land has belonged to the Reynolds, a ranching family that has owned land where the Lakota perform healing ceremonies. But the Reynolds have put the land on the auction block, dividing the 1,940 acres into five tracts to be sold to the highest bidders.

The Sioux tribes – known as Lakota, Dakota and Nakota – have turned to the online community, soliciting money to buy the land.

Their aim: $1 million. But so far, with 57 hours left, they have raised $156,000, one tenth of their goal.

“Once they released the flyer advertising the auction, that’s when reality hit,” Chase Iron Eyes, a member of the Standing Rock and Oglala tribes. The Reynolds Prairie Ranches include most of Pe' Sla, Iron Eyes said. 

Brock Auction Co., based in Iowa, is managing the sale of the Reynolds Prairie Ranches, currently owned by Leonard and Margaret Reynolds. The images of the property show remote, unending grasslands where cowboys and deer roam.  Bruce Brock, the auctioneer, refused to say how much he expects from the sale and said he would not comment on the issue.

Pennington County has assessed the Reynolds’ property at $341,800, according to documents available online, although Iron Eyes said he has heard second-hand that the auction house expects between $4 million and $10 million.

Iron Eyes said the Black Hills have become a tourist destination – in part because of Sturgis, the biker rally that draws thousands to the area. Further, the state has expressed interest in paving a gravel road that goes through most of Pe’ Sla.

“The potential is very real,” Iron Eyes said. “There’s no telling what’s going to happen, what sort of development is going to come along.”

Pe’ Sla is at the heart of the Lakota creation story and is where tribe members believe all life begins. Generations of Reynolds have allowed the Lakota to hold ceremonies on the land, considered one of five sacred pilgrimage sites linked with the arrangement of the stars.

According to the Associated Press, the story goes that the Morning Star fell to earth at Pe’ Sla, killing seven women whose souls were placed in the sky, forming “The Seven Sisters,” or the Pleiades constellation.  

Around the time that the Reynolds homesteaded in 1876, gold was found in western South Dakota, and Congress promptly passed a law seizing the land. In 1980, the federal Indian Claims Commission awarded the Sioux tribes $102 million for the loss of the Black Hills, but they have refused to take the money.

The money, sitting in a U.S. Treasury account, is now worth about $1 billion, according to the Atlantic magazine, but remains untouched.

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“That’s a very touchy subject,” Iron Eyes told NBC News. “That is the only remedy for stealing our land. We want the land back. We’ve been living in grinding, harsh poverty for 100 years or better, and we still won’t take the money. That’s like asking us to sell our own mother.”

As for what will happen at the auction, scheduled for 10 a.m. on Saturday at the Ramkota Inn, Iron Eyes doesn’t know. For now, the tribes are focused on their deadline.

“I don’t have a game plan for what happens after,” he said. “There are a lot of people who are extremely concerned about how this is one of our most sacred places.”

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A federal appeals court has upheld a portion of a 2005 South Dakota law that requires a doctor to tell a woman seeking an abortion that she faces an increased risk of suicide.

In a 7-4 opinion on Tuesday, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals said medical research has shown that the risk of suicide is higher for women who abort compared with women who don’t.

“The statute does not require the physician to disclose that a causal link between abortion and suicide has been proved.  The disclosure is truthful, as evidenced by a multitude of studies published in peer-reviewed medical journals that found an increased risk of suicide for women who had received abortions compared to women who gave birth, miscarried, or never became pregnant,” the opinion said.

“Various studies found this correlation to hold even when controlling for the effects  of other  potential  causal factors  for  suicide,  including  pre-existing depression, anxiety, suicide ideation, childhood sexual abuse, physical abuse, child neuroticism, and low self-esteem.”

The appeals court said the suicide advisory is “non-misleading” and “relevant to the patient’s decision to have an abortion.”

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The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota against former South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds and Attorney General Marty J. Jackley.

The full appellate panel agreed to rehear the case after a three-judge panel upheld U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier's decision to overturn the requirement, The Associated Press reported. The decision by the full 11-member court vacates the permanent injunction against enforcing the provision, according to the AP.

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"On its face, the suicide advisory presents neither an undue burden on abortion rights nor a violation of physicians’ free speech rights," the decision said.  

Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota took issue with the appeals court decision, saying it "allows the greatest intrusion by the government into the patient doctor relationship to date."

"The bottom line is that women don’t turn to politicians for advice about mammograms, prenatal care, or cancer treatments. Politicians should not be involved in a woman’s personal medical decisions about her pregnancy," Planned Parenthood said in a statement.

Leslee Unruh of the Alpha Center pregnancy counseling center in Sioux Falls, which seeks to persuade women not to seek abortions, called the decision a victory for South Dakota women.

“We are thrilled. This has been a long time working from 2005. It’s a long, long haul. We are so excited for the women of South Dakota that they have this victory,” she told the AP.

The suicide advisory was part of a larger 2005 law requiring South Dakota doctors to provide women with certain information before an abortion can be voluntary.

Still entangled in the courts are two sections of a separate 2011-12 law dealing with a 72-hour waiting period for abortions and requirements for "pregnancy help centers," Jackley said.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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Staff Sgt. Stephany Richards / USAF via Reuters

There are eight so-called Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System (MAFFS) planes in the U.S. One of them crashed in South Dakota on Sunday.

Updated at 5:41 p.m. ET: An Air Force C-130 tanker crashed while battling a wildfire in southwest South Dakota, killing at least one of the six crewmembers aboard and forcing officials to ground seven other such aicraft.

The cause of the Sunday evening crash of the aircraft from the North Carolina Air National Guard's 145th Airlift Wing has not been determined, and the U.S. Northern Command released few details about the crash.

"There were casualties, and our thoughts and prayers go out to those who were injured and those who lost their lives," the U.S. Northern Command said in a statement, without saying how many crew members were killed or injured.

Relatives of a North Carolina man said he was killed in the crash. Gracie Partridge told the Charlotte Observer the Air Force confirmed that her son-in-law, Lt. Col.  Paul Mikeal, 42, died. 

A helicopter landed near the crash site and took three crewmembers to Custer to be transported by ambulance to Rapid City Regional Hospital for treatment, The Rapid City Journal reported.

"The cause of the crash has not been determined, and the incident is under investigation," a military statement added. 

The aircraft went down at around 6 p.m. local time (8 p.m. ET), the military said.  At the time, the crew was fighting the White Draw Fire near the town of Edgemont, S.D.

"Our number one priority right now is taking care of the crew," said Pat Cross, a spokesman handling information for the White Draw fire, according to NBC station KNBN.

Slideshow: Homes gutted in Colorado fire

/

The worst fire season in recent history is taking its toll with large fires burning thousands of acres in Colorado while others consume areas in Montana, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming.

Launch slideshow

Seven other firefighting C-130s are being held on the ground because of the crash, which comes as states in the West are grappling with one of the busiest and most destructive wildfire seasons ever.

The C-130 that went down is a military plane refashioned to fight fires. It is one of eight so-called Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System (MAFFS) planes in the country. 

Bringing together the Department of Defense and U.S. Forest Service program, MAFFS aircraft provide additional aerial firefighting resources when commercial and private airtankers are no longer able to meet the needs of the Forest Service.

Residents tour Colorado blaze devastation

The plane disappeared from radar contact earlier on Sunday, Dakota Fire information spokeswoman Julie Molzahn told the Journal. 

Around 180 people were fighting the fire, which had spread to 4,200 acres and was 30 percent contained, the newspaper added. Workers are battling the blaze with the help of four helicopters and three air tankers, it reported.

Firefighters are facing additional hazards including steep terrain and rattlesnakes, officials told KNBN. 

Msnbc.com's F. Brinley Bruton and NBC station KNBN contributed to this report.

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South Dakota legislators this week overwhelmingly approved a law aimed at preventing Islamic law from creeping into its judicial system – a measure that supporters drafted in an effort to ward off the constitutional challenges threatening similar legislation in other states.

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The measure, which is expected to be signed into law in the next two weeks by Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard, attempts to avoid legal shoals by barring enforcement of "religious code" by U.S. courts, rather than focusing on foreign laws as other state laws have done. 

Nonetheless, civil rights advocates are vowing to challenge the bill, saying it violates the First Amendment. Beyond that, critics say the South Dakota bill and similar legislation in other states unfairly stigmatize Muslims by signaling that their religious beliefs are dangerous to society and may gradually undermine American democracy.

Shariah law is a code of conduct that guides observant Muslims on many matters, including prayer, diet, marriage, business transactions and inheritance. Decisions derived from its codes are incorporated in contracts and wills, which can in turn wind up in American courts, as do contracts and wills based on other religious beliefs.  

Supporters of legislation to ban consideration of Islamic law point to what they consider abhorrent and un-American practices — honor killings, limited child custody rights for women, tolerance of domestic abuse and cruel punishments, such as cutting off the hand of a thief — as examples of activities that could be sanctioned if U.S. courts were to consider Shariah law before rendering decisions.

Critics note that these practices are already illegal under U.S. law. 

South Dakota is one of about 20 states to consider legislation that would prevent courts from applying Shariah law.

The highest court to rule on an anti-Shariah law, the 10^th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, in January agreed with a lower court that an Oklahoma law barring state courts from considering or using Shariah law was likely an unconstitutional infringement of freedom of religion and upheld an injunction against its enforcement. The law was approved by more than 70 percent of Oklahoma voters via a November 2010 ballot initiative.

The Oklahoma amendment stated that: "The courts shall not look to the legal precepts of other nations or cultures. Specifically, the courts shall not consider international law or Shariah law."

In the last few years, some states have adopted measures that originally aimed at Shariah but were passed without much notice. Some of these statutes say -- essentially -- that illegal actions are against the law, said Gadeir Abbas, staff attorney for the Council on American Islamic Relations, a nonprofit civil rights group. As a result, while the intent of those laws may have been anti-Islam, they ultimately did not merit legal challenge, he said, because they don't really "do anything.' 

The debate in South Dakota was largely about which version of anti-Shariah legislation would be most apt to stand up to a court challenge, not whether such a law should be adopted. Lawmakers, in fact, were quite blunt that it was Shariah that concerned them.

HB 1253, which passed 29-4 in the state Senate on Tuesday, is about as brief as they come -- one line: "No court, administrative agency or other governmental agency may enforce any provisions of any religious code," it reads.

'Growing demographic concern'
Gov. Daugaard’s general counsel Jim Seward testified that the bill served to "answer the question of the Sharia law" without being unconstitutional or interfering with business interests.

This bill was motivated by a "growing demographic concern in Sioux Falls," Seward said, referring to the influx of immigrants from majority Muslim countries.

"I would be less than fully honest with you if I didn`t also say that part of the purpose of (HB)1253 is to deal with what I am going to say generally has been referred to as Shariah law," Republican Rep. Roger Hunt, who sponsored the bill, said in a judiciary committee hearing.

"I don’t know that there will be anybody who will seek to enjoin it," Hunt told msnbc.com. "It codifies a couple of Supreme Court decisions."

One of the Supreme Court cases that Hunt embraces to bolster his argument involves a recent ruling on a dispute among members of a Hutterite colony in South Dakota.

The Hutterites are a branch of Anabaptists like the Amish or Mennonites who live communally. A lower court had dissolved their corporation, but the high court ruled that the decision required excessive entanglement in religious arguments where courts should not have jurisdiction.

But opponents of the South Dakota bill say that asking courts to judge what is religious code and what is not -- in order to decide what it can and cannot enforce -- is in itself unconstitutional.

"If HB 1253 were signed into law today, it would be a blatant violation of the Establishment Clause" of the First Amendment, Abbas said in a letter to Daugaard on Wednesday. "It would also communicate to the world that South Dakota does not welcome religious minorities."

The South Dakota bill does exactly what that Oklahoma legislation did, "albeit in a slightly more general manner," said CAIR’s Abbas, who was involved in the successful challenge to the Oklahoma measure.

"This law is obviously unconstitutional and a court challenge may be in the offing, if it gets signed," he said.

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Dirk Lammers / AP

Anglers gather on the Missouri River below the Fort Randall Dam for some winter fishing Wednesday in Fort Randall, S.D., where temperatures hit the high 50s.

Record high January temperatures may be nice for the average resident of the Dakotas, but they're worrying for farmers and firefighters alike.

Temperatures in the mid-50s were recorded across North and South Dakota. The record high of 55 Wednesday in Bismarck, N.D., was 32 degrees above normal. In fact, in some parts of the Dakotas, it's warmer this January than it is in many parts of Florida.

Florida oranges survive cold snap

Record warmth was forecast again in many areas. In Minot, N.D., the forecast low temperature Thursday is in the mid-30s. That's 15 degrees warmer than the average daytime high for early January, said Justin McHeffey, weather director at NBC station KMOT.

With highs forecast in the 60s later this week in some areas, following a period of below-average precipitation, authorities warned that the risk for a wildland fire — in winter — is higher than usual.

"The conditions are ripe," said Dennis Gorton, administrator of the Pennington County, S.D., Fire Department.

"If we had 6 inches of snow cover ... it wouldn't be any kind of concern," Gorton told NBC station KNBN of Rapid City. "But we just don't have the snow cover this year."

The lack of snow is also a problem for farmers. While it may seem paradoxical, hardy Northern crops need at least 3 inches of snow cover to keep them warm during the winter months — the snow, which is at or just below freezing, is actually much warmer than air temperatures that routinely drop into double digits below zero. So if a cold snap were to hit now, crops would be at risk.

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Agriculture officials in both states rated snow cover protection for alfalfa and winter wheat as poor. That's because the average snow depth this week is about only two-tenths of an inch; it's usually more than a foot and a half in January.

Lower but still higher-than usual temperatures are forecast across most of the region by the weekend.

NBC stations KFYR of Bismarck, N.D.; KMOT of Minot, N.D.; and KNBN of Rapid City, S.D., contributed to this report by Alex Johnson of msnbc.com. 

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