The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to hear Iowa Pork Producers Association’s case against a California law that mandates the amount of space livestock animals, in particular hogs, have while being raised.
The Supreme Court has ruled on a previous case in favor of upholding the California law, which opponents argue puts an unfair burden on pork producers by impacting their ability to sell to the state.
The IPPA lawsuit argued Proposition 12, which voters approved in 2018, imposed excessive burdens on interstate commerce and discriminated against out-of-state farmers.
The case was heard in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which ruled in June 2024, in favor of California. IPPA filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to review the decision, which is the petition the court denied Monday.
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird led more than 20 attorneys general from other ag-producing states on an amici curiae in support of the IPPA appeal to the Supreme Court.
Bird said in a statement Monday she was disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision.
“Laws like this hurt Iowa’s rural communities and make it more difficult for Americans to enjoy the world-class pork products they have come to love and expect out of our state,” Bird said.
Bird said she would continue to fight against similar laws, including a Massachusetts law against which the attorney general also led an amici curiae with other states, urging for an appeal.
“States like California and Massachusetts should not dictate Iowa farming practices,” Bird said.
The California law, which went into effect in 2024, stipulates that regardless of where an animal was raised, it must comply with the state regulation on animal confinement in order to be sold in California. The law stipulates sow enclosures must have at least 24 square feet of room. The law, which passed as a state referendum, was supported by animal rights organizations that say this spacing would give the animals enough space to turn around freely.
The west-coast state is a major pork consumer, meaning its laws have a big impact on pork production across the country and in states like Iowa, which produces the most pork in the nation.
Pork producers said the law would disrupt the pork supply chain and raise costs at the consumer level, as producers retrofit their facilities to comply with the law.
Eldon McAfee, counsel for IPPA, said the organization was “disappointed, obviously” by the decision and that many pork producers “don’t understand” how a California law “can be enforced here in Iowa.”
McAfee said producers believe this should be a marketplace decision driven by consumer and producer choice, not an enforcement.
“We do not believe it can be mandated by law, we believe it is unconstitutional,” McAfee said. “But the court disagreed in the NPPC case and declined to accept this case.”
McAfee referenced a Supreme Court decision against the National Pork Producers Council’s petition of the California law.
He said while the court did not issue an explanation of the decision, the docket entries show justices discussed the case seven times before eventually declining the petition, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh dissenting.
McAfee said the next step forward is legislative action.
“The courts have stated the basic premise that it is the federal government, Congress, that regulates interstate commerce,” McAfee said. “We believe the best option is federal legislation … to prevent this type of law.”
U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra, a Republican from Iowa, has also been a vocal opponent of Proposition 12, working with other Republicans in Iowa and other states to advance legislation the past several years that would supersede the state law.
“This mandate on Iowa hog farmers increases pork prices for families, makes hog farming needlessly more expensive, harms our rural communities, and threatens our food security,” Feenstra said in a statement Monday. “I remain committed to getting a new, five-year Farm Bill signed into law that repeals Prop 12 and delivers certainty and clarity for our hog farmers.”
Photo: Photo by Kent Becker, U.S. Geological Survey/ via Iowa Capital Dispatch.
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In 2023, while Kristi Noem was governor of South Dakota, she supplemented her income by secretly accepting a cut of the money she raised for a nonprofit that promotes her political career, tax records show.
In what experts described as a highly unusual arrangement, the nonprofit routed funds to a personal company of Noem’s that had recently been established in Delaware. The payment totaled $80,000 that year, a significant boost to her roughly $130,000 government salary. Since the nonprofit is a so-called dark money group — one that’s not required to disclose the names of its donors — the original source of the money remains unknown.
Noem then failed to disclose the $80,000 payment to the public. After President Donald Trump selected Noem to be his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, she had to release a detailed accounting of her assets and sources of income from 2023 on. She did not include the income from the dark money group on her disclosure form, which experts called a likely violation of federal ethics requirements.
Experts told ProPublica it was troubling that Noem was personally taking money that came from political donors. In a filing, the group, a nonprofit called American Resolve Policy Fund, described the $80,000 as a payment for fundraising. The organization said Noem had brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
There is nothing remarkable about a politician raising money for nonprofits and other groups that promote their campaigns or agendas. What’s unusual, experts said, is for a politician to keep some of the money for themselves.
“If donors to these nonprofits are not just holding the keys to an elected official’s political future but also literally providing them with their income, that’s new and disturbing,” said Daniel Weiner, a former Federal Election Commission attorney who now leads the Brennan Center’s work on campaign finance.
ProPublica discovered details of the payment in the annual tax form of American Resolve Policy Fund, which is part of a network of political groups that promote Noem and her agenda. The nonprofit describes its mission as “fighting to preserve America for the next generation.” There’s little evidence in the public domain that the group has done much. In its first year, its main expenditures were paying Noem and covering the cost of some unspecified travel. It also maintains social media accounts devoted to promoting Noem. It has 100 followers on X.
In a statement, Noem’s lawyer, Trevor Stanley, said, “Then-Governor Noem fully complied with the letter and the spirit of the law” and that the Office of Government Ethics, which processes disclosure forms for federal officials, “analyzed and cleared her financial information in regards to this entity.” Stanley did not respond to follow-up questions about whether the ethics office was aware of the $80,000 payment.
Stanley also said that “Secretary Noem fully disclosed all of her income on public documents that are readily available.” Asked for evidence of that, given that Noem didn’t report the $80,000 payment on her federal financial disclosure form, Stanley did not respond.
Before being named Homeland Security secretary, overseeing immigration enforcement, Noem spent two decades in South Dakota’s government and the U.S. House of Representatives, drawing a public servant’s salary. Her husband, Bryon Noem, runs a small insurance brokerage with two offices in the state. Between his company and his real estate holdings, he has at least $2 million in assets, according to Noem’s filing.
While she is among the least wealthy members of Trump’s Cabinet, her personal spending habits have attracted notice. Noem was photographed wearing a gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch that costs nearly $50,000 as she toured the Salvadoran prison where her agency is sending immigrants. In April, after her purse was stolen at a Washington, D.C., restaurant, it emerged she was carrying $3,000 in cash, which an official said was for “dinner, activities, and Easter gifts.” She was criticized for using taxpayer money as governor to pay for expenses related to trips to Paris, to Canada for bear hunting and to Houston to have dental work done. At the time, Noem denied misusing public funds.
Noem’s personal company, an LLC called Ashwood Strategies, shares a name with one of her horses. It was registered in Delaware early in her second term as South Dakota governor, around 1 p.m. on June 22, 2023. Four minutes later, the nonprofit American Resolve Policy Fund was incorporated in Delaware too.
American Resolve raised $1.1 million in 2023, according to its tax filing. The group reported that it had zero employees, and what it did with that money is largely unclear.
In 2023, the nonprofit spent only about $220,000 of its war chest — with more than a third of that going to Noem’s LLC. The rest mostly went toward administrative expenses and a roughly $84,000 travel budget. It’s not clear whose travel the group paid for.
The nonprofit reported that it sent the $80,000 fundraising fee to Noem’s LLC as payment for bringing in $800,000, a 10% cut. A professional fundraiser who also raised money for the group was paid a lower rate of 7%.
In the intervening years, American Resolve has maintained a low public profile. In March, it purchased Facebook ads attacking a local news outlet in South Dakota, which had been reporting on Noem’s use of government credit cards. Noem’s lawyer did not answer questions about whether the group paid her more money after 2023, the most recent year for which its tax filing is available.
The nonprofit has an affiliated political committee, American Resolve PAC, that’s been more active, at least in public. Touting Noem’s conservative leadership under a picture of her staring off into the sky, its website said the PAC was created to put “Kristi and her team on the ground in key races across America.” Noem traveled the country last year attending events the PAC sponsored in support of Republican candidates.
American Resolve’s treasurer referred questions to Noem’s lawyer. In his statement, Noem’s lawyer said she “did not establish, finance, maintain, or control American Resolve Fund. She was simply a vender for a non-profit entity.”
While Noem failed to report the fundraising income Ashwood Strategies received on her federal financial disclosure, she did provide some other details. She described the LLC as involving “personal activities outside my official gubernatorial capacity” and noted that it received the $140,000 advance for her book “No Going Back.” The LLC also had a bank account with between $100,001 and $250,000 in it and at least $50,000 of “livestock and equipment,” she reported.
The fact that Ashwood Strategies is Noem’s company only emerged through the confirmation process for her Trump Cabinet post. South Dakota has minimal disclosure rules for elected officials, and Noem had not previously divulged that she created a side business while she was governor.
Noem’s outside income may have run afoul of South Dakota law, according to Lee Schoenbeck, a veteran Republican politician and attorney who was until recently the head of the state Senate. Thelaw requires top officials, including the governor, to devote their full time to their official roles.
“There’s no way the governor is supposed to have a private side business that the public doesn’t know about,” Schoenbeck told ProPublica. “It would clearly not be appropriate.”
Noem’s lawyer said South Dakota law allowed her to receive income from the nonprofit.
Do you have any information we should know about Kristi Noem or other administration officials? Justin Elliott can be reached by email at [email protected] and by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240. Josh Kaplan can be reached by email at [email protected] and by Signal or WhatsApp at 734-834-9383.
Photo:When she was a governor, Kristi Noem supplemented her income with funds routed to her company Ashwood Strategies, a Delaware LLC that shares a name with one of her horses.Credit:Photo by Chris Elise/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images.
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A group of Republican lawmakers, who have opposed carbon sequestration pipelines in Iowa, penned a letter to U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst this week asking her to remove a tax credit incentivizing carbon sequestration from the budget reconciliation bill.
“Repeal 45Q now!” the letter read, naming the section of tax code.
The budget reconciliation bill, known as the “one big beautiful bill,” has removed or substantially altered a number of clean energy credits for things like wind power or solar projects, but it has retained the 45Q tax credit, which was initiated in 2008 and expanded under the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act.
The Senate has not finalized its version of the bill yet, but is aiming for a Fourth of July deadline.
Iowa lawmakers from both the House and the Senate have been opposed to 45Q credits and to the Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline project, which plans to lay nearly 1,000 miles of pipeline in Iowa alone to transport carbon dioxide captured at ethanol facilities to underground storage in North Dakota.
Six GOP lawmakers from North Dakota also signed on the letter. A similar letter that circulated earlier this month was headed by lawmakers in South Dakota.
The opponents in the Iowa-led letter said the federal tax credit “bankrolls private corporations” to “bulldoze our land, intimidate our communities, endanger lives, and bury opportunity.”
Carbon sequestration pipelines have brought about arguments surrounding private property rights. Summit was granted the right of eminent domain by the Iowa Utilities Commission last year. The Iowa House passed a bill to ban carbon sequestration pipelines operators from using eminent domain, and the state Legislature passed a bill significantly limiting a CO2 pipeline’s ability to operate.
The bill was vetoed by Gov. Kim Reynolds June 11, and House lawmakers have submitted a petition to return for a special session to override the veto, but the effort will likely not be picked up by the Senate.
“For four years, we have fought a grueling legislative battle to defend the constitutional property rights, safety, and economic vitality of our constituents—80–90% of whom reject the 45Q,” the letter read, referencing a survey from the fall conducted by a group opposed to the pipeline.
In addition to opposing the use of eminent domain, opponents of the CO2 pipeline worry about potential safety issues associated with the project and damage to cropland.
“Why would we bulldoze our way through some of the best farmland in the world to bury CO2 into formations with unknown consequences and deprive the Corn Belt of adding value and purpose to one third of each bushel of corn in the form of methanol and other fuels?” the letter read.
Summit has said it will restore cropland impacted by the pipeline to its original condition and holds that it is “going above and beyond” federal standards to ensure safety.
According to its website, the Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline would have the capacity to put more than 18 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually into storage. 45Q credits carbon sequestration projects of this kind at $85 per metric ton of CO2, meaning Summit could receive around $1.5 billion in the tax credits annually.
The letter said federal lawmakers have “dismissed” the pipeline and 45Q issue as a state matter.
“This is no state issue —it’s a federal travesty, with 45Q’s unlimited borrowed billions fueling corporate aggression,” the letter read.
A 2023 report on the tax credit from the Congressional Budget Office estimated by the 2030s the expanded use of carbon sequestration and companies claiming the credits could result in federal revenue loss between $30 billion and “well over” $100 billion.
The letter from lawmakers said the cost was “staggering.”
Carbon capture and sequestration would allow the Iowa biofuels industry to enter the ultra-low carbon fuel market, which it says would be hugely beneficial to struggling farmers and the state.
The CBO report also projected that if all of the projected carbon capture and sequestration projects across the country were brought online, it could remove close to 3% of the nation’s annual CO2 emissions.
The letter argues if the industry attempts to reach “net zero” emissions, the cost of these tax credits to the federal government, and taxpayers, would be even higher.
“Repealing 45Q in (the budget reconciliation bill) would halt this federally funded nightmare, save trillions of additional debt, and empower our farmers and ethanol plants to lead a new renewable fuels revolution,” the letter said. “Our constituents demand it, our farmland deserves it, and our future depends on it.”
Ernst’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the letter.
A draft of the bill from a Senate committee shows some changes to the 45Q tax credit, like standardizing the credit across project types and prohibiting foreign entities from claiming the credit.
View the full letter and signees at the link FILE_1192
Photo: Iowans opposed to carbon dioxide pipelines handed out buttons that read “No CO2 pipelines” at the Iowa State Capitol Mar. 18. (Photo by Cami Koons/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
I may be best-known for my battles with pipeline companies, both Summit Carbon’s proposed carbon dioxide pipeline and the Dakota Access oil pipeline. I had the distinction of being named first in the landowners’ lawsuit against Summit’s efforts to force their way onto our land, which wound its way to the state Supreme Court, where we prevailed last year.
It’s well-established that many South Dakotans do not care for the carbon dioxide pipeline, but the U.S. House’s budget reconciliation bill fails to repeal a massive handout to carbon companies with 45Q tax credits. This corporate welfare is why companies like Summit persist in pushing projects we don’t want. Our lone representative, Congressman Dusty Johnson, voted yes on the bill. It’s now under consideration in the Senate.
He touted all the reasons this “big, beautiful bill” will be good for South Dakota, but good for whom, exactly? He doesn’t mention billions of dollars in 45Q tax credits at all, but cheerfully explains reductions to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid. He seems quite proud of the cuts and work requirements that will leave more South Dakotans hungry and lacking in health care. Not to mention the negative impacts on our grocery stores and small health care facilities.
As a pipeline fighter, folks may be surprised at my concern over cuts to food assistance and health care access, but I taught for over 30 years in our public schools, so I understand how budgets affect people’s lives. I also have direct experience with helping disabled people acquire that designation, and let me tell you, that is a difficult and lengthy process. It may take years for people who are not able to work to be recognized as disabled by the government. These cuts will be devastating for them.
So when I hear that these budget cuts will help reduce waste and fraud, I call foul. Currently over 75,000 South Dakotans utilize SNAP, so these cuts will be felt everywhere. The work requirements may sound like common sense until you dig in. The cut-off age for a dependent child is 7 years; what this means is that if you are a parent on SNAP, you must work 20 hours per week if your youngest child is 7 or older, whether or not you have child care or how far you have to drive to get to that job. Or even if there is a job to be had.
We all know people’s budgets are tight, and this is reflected by Feeding South Dakota, which has reported a 15% increase in usage over last year. They are already struggling to meet people’s needs, so what will happen if these cuts are implemented? Hunger is what will happen.
Next, let’s consider our state budget, which had to be trimmed this past legislative session. The U.S. House version of the budget reconciliation bill would make South Dakota absorb a reported $9 million to $18 million in costs shifted to the states as early as 2028 in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP. Can we tighten our belts that much?
If all this weren’t enough, let’s look at how health care would be hurt by the Medicaid cuts. Nearly 150,000 South Dakotans are enrolled in Medicaid, and many of these folks are senior citizens and people with disabilities. If fewer people can be covered, our health care facilities will feel the pinch immediately because even though people may not have coverage, they still get sick and injured.
As for how this will impact hospitals and clinics, this quote from Shelley Ten Napel in South Dakota Searchlight on May 29 says it best: “The proposed cuts will be especially harmful to rural South Dakota. When coverage rates fall, rural health centers lose critical funding – putting access to primary care, maternal care, dental services and behavioral health at risk for everyone in those communities.”
Thousands of South Dakotans already travel considerable distances for a doctor’s visit, and these cuts will make a bad situation worse if closures start. Plus, those are jobs lost from communities, another blow.
I don’t think this bill is as beautiful as Rep. Johnson makes it out to be. The pipeline companies got a rosy deal, but it looks pretty ugly for the rest of us.
Photo: The U.S. Capitol pictured on March 25, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom).
Between birding excursions here in South Dakota, I watched the livestreaming of the private funeral Mass at The Basilica of Saint Mary in Minneapolis for Melissa and Mark Hortman. Watching wild birds seemed to be a way to honor them.
Here's the Minnesota Department of Public Safety's archive of the service:
Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman’s life embodied the American dream. She was raised in a family that owned a junkyard, became a lawyer but declined a life of comfortable wealth for public service, emerging as among the most influential legislators in Minnesota history.
Now she’s an emblem of the American nightmare, another victim — along with husband Mark Hortman and their golden retriever Gilbert — of the political violence that’s consumed America in the past decade, adding Brooklyn Park to Buffalo, El Paso and other grim signposts of a damaged democracy.
The Hortmans were remembered at their funeral Mass at The Basilica of Saint Mary in Minneapolis Saturday as kind, generous and driven by a common set of values to make the world just a little bit better.
The funeral was mostly light on politics, despite the hundreds of politicos in attendance. Father Daniel Griffith in his homily, however, highlighted the injustices that Melissa Hortman tried to ameliorate.
“In Minnesota we have been the ground zero place, sadly, for racial injustice — the killing of George Floyd just miles from our church,” Griffith said. “And now we are the ground zero place for political violence and extremism. Both of these must be decried in the strongest terms, as they are, respectively, a threat to human dignity and indeed our democracy.”
Sophie Hortman, Colin Hortman, and Gov. Tim Walz stand behind the caskets of Melissa and Mark Hortman during funeral services for Mark and Melissa Hortman at The Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, Minn., on Saturday, June 28, 2025. Mark and Melissa Hortman were shot and killed in their homes on June 14, 2025. Photo by Alex Kormann/Minnesota Star Tribune pool photo
Gov. Tim Walz, who was both friend and governing partner to Hortman, was visibly shaken while serving as a pallbearer alongside the Hortman children. The packed Basilica was filled with Hortman’s family, friends and vast political network that Melissa Hortman built over decades by way of her effectiveness at the Legislature and down-to-earth charm. Former President Joe Biden — who hosted the Hortmans at the White House — Vice President Kamala Harris, former Gov. Mark Dayton, Democratic and Republican lawmakers and state commissioners also memorialized the lives of Hortmans.
Melissa Hortman served in the Minnesota Legislature for two decades. The Democratic-Farmer-Labor legislator was beloved around the Capitol and is known for scoring major legislative victories including free school lunch for K-12 students, a new paid leave program and a mandate that Minnesota utilities use 100% carbon-free energy sources by 2040.
The Hortmans were killed on June 14 in their Brooklyn Park home in a politically motivated assassination. Their deaths have roiled Minnesota politics.
Hortman was a Catholic Sunday school teacher whose politics were shaped by Catholic social teaching. She was a devotee of the Golden Rule, from Matthew, “Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.” So she would have endorsed the choice of Gospel reading Saturday, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which is a fundamental text of Christianity.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God,” Griffith said. “Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.”
In his sermon, Griffith highlighted Melissa and Mark Hortman’s service and community, which he called, “the antidote to our present afflictions” and a stark contrast to the “idol of autonomy” that has ravaged America’s political landscape.
Melissa and Mark Hortman met in Washington D.C. when they were both mentoring a student. Colin and Sophie Hortman, their adult children, released a statement in the days after their killings, calling for people to honor their parents’ legacy by standing up “for what you believe in, especially if that thing is justice and peace.”
Walz during his five-minute eulogy encouraged Minnesotans to find common humanity and “build a state equal to (the Hortmans’) aspirations and a politics worthy of their example.”
“Melissa was an extraordinary legislator, and Mark was her proudest supporter,” Walz said. “It’s easy sometimes to forget, for all of its significance, politics is just people. That’s all. It is just a bunch of human beings trying to do their best. Melissa understood that better than anybody.”
Robin Ann Williams, a close friend of Melissa and Mark, eulogized them at the request of the children. She remembered the Hortmans as anything but a stereotypical political family, just as focused on their children and dog and card nights and monthly dinners for law school friends as on the latest political flareup.
Williams also captured the dynamic between Melissa and her supportive husband.
“I always saw her as a balloon bouncing around, but still tethered to the earth by Mark,” Williams said.
Williams remembered the many dinners she shared with the Hortmans, including their last together on June 6 at an Italian restaurant in Robbinsdale. Walz had just called for a one-day special session, and Melissa was often getting up from the table to take calls from the governor or her DFL caucus members. No one at the table, including Mark Hortman, minded the disruption.
Gov. Tim Walz, left, walks with Melissa Hortman’s casket as it is processed through the aisle in the sanctuary at the Basilica of St. Mary during funeral services for Mark and Melissa Hortman in Minneapolis, Minn., on Saturday, June 28, 2025. Mark and Melissa Hortman were shot and killed in their homes on June 14, 2025. Photo by Alex Kormann/Minnesota Star Tribune pool photo
Even though many are grieved by the Hortmans’ deaths, Williams said that the couple would have wanted people to remember them with joy, citing Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet:”
“Some of you say joy is greater than sorrow, and others say, nay, sorrow is the greater. But I say unto you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.”
“We are buried in sorrow right now, but I do believe that we will experience joy again,” Williams said. “Mark and Melissa would not want it any other way. Goodbye, my friends.”
Colin Hortman ended the service with a prayer of St. Francis, which Melissa Hortman carried in her wallet.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
The procession departed in silence, except for the massive bell of The Basilica of St. Mary tolling, tolling.
The caskets were loaded into two hearses.
Walz handed Sophie and Colin Hortman American flags in the traditional 13-fold, for the Hortmans.
When the Hortmans were lying in state at the Capitol Friday, Rep. Michael Howard, DFL-Richfield, wondered aloud what Melissa Hortman — who was famously blunt and unimpressed with grandeur — would have thought about all the pageantry.
“I think she would have said, ‘It’s a bit much.’”
Attendees take their seats before funeral services for Mark and Melissa Hortman at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, Minn., on Saturday, June 28, 2025. Mark and Melissa Hortman were shot and killed in their homes on June 14, 2025. Photo by Jeff Wheeler/Minnesota Star Tribune pool photo.
Photo, top: The caskets of Melissa and Mark Hortman sit at the back of the sanctuary before funeral services for Mark and Melissa Hortman at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, Minn., on Saturday, June 28, 2025. Mark and Melissa Hortman were shot and killed in their homes on June 14, 2025. Photo by Alex Kormann/Minnesota Star Tribune pool photo/via Minnesota Reformer.
This Minnesota Reformer article is republished online under under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
If you appreciate Bluestem Prairie, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen, 600 Maple Street, Summit SD 57266) or use the paypal button in the upper right hand corner of this post.
A Friday decision by the U.S. Supreme Court set the stage for a law restricting access to online pornography to take effect Tuesday in South Dakota, but the ruling doesn’t shield the state from lawsuits.
In Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, the nation’s high court ruled that a Texas law requiring adults to prove their age to access adult-oriented websites is constitutional.
Under the Texas law, websites where one-third or more of the content is pornographic would have to collect information like photo identification or credit card information before allowing access.
The Free Speech Coalition, an adult entertainment industry group, argued the law placed an unconstitutional burden on adults.
The justices disagreed in their 6-3 decision, authored by Justice Clarence Thomas. The court’s three liberal justices dissented.
“Obscenity is no exception to the widespread practice of requiring proof of age to exercise age-restricted rights,” Thomas wrote, citing laws restricting alcohol use or handgun purchases.
South Dakota lawmakers passed, and Gov. Larry Rhoden signed, an age verification bill this year, but its language is more broad than that of the Texas law.
For the law set to take effect Tuesday in South Dakota, age verification would be required of any site that hosts adult material “in the regular course of the website’s trade or business.”
Lawmakers were cautioned during the session that such broad verbiage could draw First Amendment challenges regardless of the outcome in the Texas case. Some argued explicitly for an age verification law that mirrored the one in Texas.
South Dakota’s law requires websites to delete proof of age information immediately after an adult provides it. Adult websites that fail to perform age verification would be subject to criminal fines.
The Supreme Court’s Friday ruling drew lines around any free speech arguments that might be deployed about South Dakota’s law.
At issue in the Texas case was not just the constitutionality of age verification laws, but how courts are meant to review them.
Texas wanted the Supreme Court to give it – and other states, by extension – broad authority to write laws restricting minors’ access to online pornography. The Free Speech Coalition said age verification laws ought to be minimally restrictive because they affect First Amendment rights.
Neither side prevailed on that issue. Instead, the justices said the Texas law stood up to what it called “intermediate scrutiny.”
The state’s strictures amount to an “incidental” burden on adults’ free speech, but adults can still get the content, the majority ruled.
A law that only requires age verification for sites on which one-third or more of the content is obscene is narrowly tailored enough to achieve Texas’ goal of targeting pornography, the court ruled.
“It is reasonable for Texas to conclude that websites with a higher proportion of sexual content are more inappropriate for children to visit than those with a lower proportion,” Thomas wrote.
In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan said the state of Texas ought to have tailored its law more narrowly “to ensure it is not undervaluing the interest in free expression.”
Restrictions on free speech, she said, should be viewed with the courts’ most critical eye.
“Many reasonable people, after all, view the speech at issue here as ugly and harmful for any audience,” Kagan wrote. “But the First Amendment protects those sexually explicit materials, for every adult. So a state cannot target that expression, as Texas has here, any more than is necessary to prevent it from reaching children.”
Future for South Dakota law
Unlike the Texas version, South Dakota’s age verification law does not apply to sites with a certain proportion of adult content.
It’s more sweeping language applying it to sites that host porn in their “regular course” of business was a cause of concern for some lobbyists and lawmakers, as well as for Attorney General Marty Jackley.
Lobbyist Doug Abraham told the Senate Judiciary Committee in February that age verification for any site with adult material would be akin to carding anyone who enters a shopping mall because a store in the mall sells alcohol.
Sen. David Wheeler, R-Huron, who’s since been appointed as a circuit court judge, was among the lawmakers who argued on behalf of a bill with a one-third content standard nearly identical to the Texas law. That bill failed.
Jackley told lawmakers that he supports age verification for porn sites, but told them he’d rather defend a law that looks like the one passed by Texas.
Rep. Bethany Soye, R-Sioux Falls, sponsored the version of the bill that’s set to become law on Tuesday.
Soye told her colleagues that the one-third standard was “made up” by the Louisiana lawmakers who were the first to move on age verification.
A cutoff line for adult content creates a loophole, she said. To avoid adherence to the law, sites could make sure that their adult material represents just under one-third of its content.
Soye also said that legal battles sparked by a strong moral stance are worth the investment of the state’s time and treasure.
As of Friday afternoon, the state had not been sued in federal court over the law. The American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota argued against the bill in Pierre. Janna Farley, spokesperson for that organization, said Friday that its legal team is reviewing the Paxton ruling before offering a comment.
The Free Speech Coalition did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the South Dakota law.
“As it has been throughout history, pornography is once again the canary in the coal mine of free expression,” Alison Boden, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, said in part in a statement on the Paxton ruling posted to social media. “The government should not have the right to demand that we sacrifice our privacy and security to use the internet.”
Photo: The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. (Seth Tupper/South Dakota Searchlight).
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Westerman is a professor in the English department at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and an enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota Oyate through her father. She is also a citizen of the Cherokee Nation through her mother, whose family is from the Flint District.
I live within the historic boundaries of the Lake Traverse Reservation, home of the Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota Oyate.
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Down column in the South Dakota Searchlight article republished below is the sum of federal dollars lost to South Dakota under the Trump regime:
The finance bureau’s newest spreadsheet lists $23.7 million in total federal funding lost across various state agencies and projects since the start of the Trump administration.
Click through for to learn the details of that larger number.
The South Dakota Department of Corrections has lost access to more than $25,000 in federal funding meant to aid in the investigation and prevention of sexual assaults in prisons and jails.
The state Bureau of Finance and Management publishes a rundown, updated weekly, of dollars lost to the state through Trump administration cuts. The latest list includes a loss of $25,332 in “strategic support” money for compliance with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act.
The act requires prisons and jails to document sexual assaults behind bars, protect victims who report incidents and ensure adequate safeguards are in place to prevent assaults.
The lost money would have been a second-year award in a two-year grant. The state already received $28,419.
The finance bureau’s newest spreadsheet lists $23.7 million in total federal funding lost across various state agencies and projects since the start of the Trump administration.
DOC: State facilities in compliance
The DOC says it doesn’t actually need the lost federal dollars to comply with the federal law on sexual assaults in prisons. As of this week, the agency hadn’t spent all the money from the first grant award.
Corrections spokesman Michael Winder told South Dakota Searchlight that the agency spent about $16,000 from the first year’s funding for “educational literature and training.”
That material included wall posters instructing prisoners on how to report sexual assaults, which listed addresses for anonymous reporting and the number to dial from inmate tablets to report an assault. The department also printed “no means no” posters, six-step staff procedure cards outlining what to do when an inmate reports a sexual assault, and pamphlets on the rape elimination act for inmates and their friends and family members.
The grant was awarded to help the department comply with the law, and Winder said it now does. He said South Dakota’s facilities are “continuously audited” for compliance with the federal statute. The remaining $12,000 from 2023, he said, will be used “to provide continued training and advancement for staff who respond, investigate, and provide continued care for victims of sexual violence within the correctional facilities.”
The state penitentiary’s most recent federal audit was finalized in January. The report found no deficiencies. Audits of each state correctional facility since 2019, as listed on the department’s website, showed no deficiencies.
That was 22 out of 148 investigations tied to the Prison Rape Elimination Act. The department declined to offer details on the substantiated incidents, citing exemptions in South Dakota open records law for law enforcement records or records that could endanger others, as well as a provision in the act that bars the release of information on individual incidents.
That most recent annual report notes that the department “began tracking and reporting investigations in a consistent and efficient manner” in 2023.
Broader impact of federal funding cuts
The loss of the remaining $25,332 for South Dakota was part of the fallout from a decision by the Trump administration to cancel a host of grants related to the Prison Rape Elimination Act Resource Center.
The cuts effectively shut down the resource center for a short period of time. Until the change, the nonprofit organization had dozens of employees, laboring under a collaborative agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice.
Many of them worked to review the audits required of every correctional facility in the U.S. every three years, and served as a resource to connect prisons and jails nationwide with partners who could help them do things like train officers on how to handle sexual assault reports.
A California-based nonprofit called Just Detention International is among the organizations that relied on and worked with the resource center. Its mission is tied specifically to sexual assaults and harassment in correctional settings.
In South Dakota, the group worked with the Rosebud Sioux Tribe to build a compliant sexual assault prevention and reporting framework for a juvenile detention facility. It’s also listed as a resource for victims in the most recent penitentiary audit for South Dakota.
Linda McFarlane, Just Detention’s executive director, told South Dakota Searchlight that some staff at the resource center have returned since April, when the grants for states and the resource center were rescinded.
All the audits conducted across the U.S. since 2022 remain archived on the resource center website, but McFarlane worries the pared-down staff won’t be able to review them. She’s also troubled that the funding cuts removed the staff that trained investigators and connected local coordinators with resources.
“Part of the problem was that this message was sent, that PREA is no longer taken seriously,” McFarlane said. “I think people misunderstood the defunding of the PREA Resource Center to mean the law was no longer in effect. And that is absolutely not true.”
McFarlane was glad to hear that South Dakota intends to continue adhering to the law, but she worries that jailers who may have never taken the law seriously will feel empowered to ignore it.
“We heard from survivors and from currently incarcerated people that this felt like a huge slap in the face, that the government was signaling that they no longer take their safety seriously,” McFarlane said. “And from within the corrections departments, the people who take it seriously were panicked.”
The former director of the resource center, Dana Shoenberg, posted on LinkedIn that the funding cut had “scattered” its team into different jobs around the country, but said she hopes they or others continue to work “to fulfill PREA’s promise of eliminating sexual abuse in confinement.”
Graphics: Educational materials on sexual assault in prisons, produced by the South Dakota Department of Corrections and paid for by federal grant funding. (Photo illustration by John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight).
This South Searchlight article is republished online under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
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South Dakota's Senator Mike Rounds makes an appearance in this story from the States Newsroom's D.C. Bureau, republished in North Dakota Monitor and Iowa Capital Dispatch.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration’s request to claw back $9.4 billion in previously approved spending on foreign aid and public media ran into significant opposition Wednesday, potentially dooming its path forward in the Senate.
Numerous GOP lawmakers on the Appropriations Committee, including Chairwoman Susan Collins, expressed concern at how the proposed rescissions would affect American “soft power” as well as local radio and television stations that rely on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — many in rural America.
Collins, R-Maine, highlighted opposition to cutting already approved funding for CPB, which goes toward National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting Service and hundreds of local stations outside the nation’s larger metropolitan areas.
“The vast majority of this funding, more than 70%, actually flows to local television and radio stations,” Collins said. “In Maine this funding supports everything from emergency communications in rural areas to coverage of high school basketball championships and a locally produced high school quiz show. Nationally produced television programs such as ‘Antiques Roadshow,’ ‘Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,’ are also enjoyed by many throughout our country.”
Collins said she understands objections to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting providing funding to national NPR operations, given what she called its “discernibly partisan bent.”
“There are, however, more targeted approaches to addressing that bias at NPR than rescinding all of the funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” Collins said.
Effect on Alaska
Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski appeared to signal she also opposes cancelling funding that Congress previously approved for public media and told White House budget director Russ Vought that she wanted him to understand the ramifications on her home state.
“I hope you feel the urgency that I’m trying to express on behalf of people in rural Alaska, and I think in many parts of rural America, where this is their lifeline, this is where they get the updates on that landslide, this is where they get the updates on the wildfires that are coming their way,” Murkowski said.
“And so how they will be able to not only get the emergency alerts that they need, but also the weather reporting to make sure that fishermen … can go out safely. So that these communities can be connected when a deadly landslide has come through,” she said.
Rural radio in South Dakota, Nebraska
South Dakota GOP Sen. Mike Rounds pressed Vought to ensure uninterrupted federal funding to local radio stations in rural areas of his home state, even if Congress rescinds the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s appropriation.
“First of all, we have Native American radio stations in South Dakota. They get their funding through NPR – 90 some percent of what they use. They will not continue to exist if we don’t find a way to take care of their needs,” Rounds said. “It’s not a large amount of money, but would you be willing to work with us to try and find a way for these places where, literally, they’re not political in nature?
“These are the folks that put out the emergency notifications. They talk about community events and so forth. But they’re in very, very rural areas where there simply isn’t an economy to support buying advertising on these stations.”
Vought appeared to agree to work with Rounds, before saying that if Congress approves the rescissions request for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the administration wouldn’t pull back funding until the next fiscal year, which starts on Oct. 1.
Vought also pledged to work with Nebraska Republican Sen. Deb Fischer to ensure people in rural areas will have a way to learn about emergency alerts if the rescissions request is approved.
“I am very concerned also about the emergency alerts that come to many places in Nebraska only through that rural radio,” Fischer said. “We’re a state of vastness, very sparsely populated areas that don’t receive cell service in many cases. It’s difficult even with landlines in many areas of my state.”
Reductions to AIDS relief
Chairwoman Collins also said during the nearly three-hour hearing that cutting funding on certain global health programs, including the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, “would be extraordinarily ill-advised and short-sighted.”
“PEPFAR has saved more than 26 million lives and enabled 7.8 million babies to be born HIV-free to mothers living with HIV,” Collins said. “This program remains a bipartisan priority of Congress. After years of commitment and stable investment the finish line is in sight. The United States has the tools to fulfill PEPFAR’s mission and get the job done while transitioning HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention to country ownership by the year 2030.”
Collins argued that the Trump administration is unlikely to spend foreign aid dollars on the same “questionable projects” that were part of the Biden administration.
“Unless the current administration plans to continue these controversial projects that it has identified — which I very much doubt — those projects alone cannot be used to justify the proposed rescissions,” Collins said.
Just before Vought began giving his opening statement to the committee, a group of protesters in the room stood up and began to yell in an attempt to preserve PEPFAR funding. They were escorted out by U.S. Capitol Police.
Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, chairman of the Defense spending subcommittee and former majority leader, appeared to reject some of the proposed foreign aid cuts, arguing they eroded American influence around the world.
“There’s plenty of absolute nonsense masquerading with American aid that shouldn’t receive another bit of taxpayer funding. But the administration’s attempt to root it out has been unnecessarily chaotic,” McConnell said.
“In critical corners of the globe, instead of creating efficiencies, you’ve created vacuums for adversaries like China to fill. Responsible investments in soft power prevent conflict, preserve American influence and save countless lives at the same time. So if we’re concerned about spending, and we should be, it’s important to remember what wars cost.”
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, however, announced that he will vote for the rescissions package, arguing that some ways the Biden administration spent funds in the PEPFAR account deserved rebuke.
“No more preaching to me. I’m going to vote for this package. And do you know why I’m going to vote for this package? Just as a statement that PEPFAR is important but it’s not beyond scrutiny,” Graham said. “That how you run the government has consequences. Don’t lecture me about being mean or cruel.”
How rescissions work
The Trump administration sent Congress the $9.4 billion rescissions request in early June, allowing the White House budget office to legally freeze funding for the various programs included in the proposal for 45 days while lawmakers decide whether to approve or reject it.
The request called on lawmakers to zero out funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting during the next two fiscal years, a total of $1.1 billion in previously approved spending.
It proposed more than $8 billion in cuts to numerous foreign aid accounts run by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, including health programs, initiatives that promote democracy, economic development, peacekeeping activities and refugee assistance.
One of the rescissions proposed lawmakers claw back $500 million of the $4 billion that Congress previously approved for “activities related to child and maternal health, HIV/ AIDS, and infectious diseases.
“This proposal would not reduce treatment but would eliminate programs that are antithetical to American interests and worsen the lives of women and children, like ‘family planning’ and ‘reproductive health,’ LGBTQI+ activities, and ‘equity’ programs.”
The House voted mostly along party lines in June to approve the request in full, sending it to the Senate, where it has been on the sidelines for weeks as Republicans instead work toward an agreement on the party’s “big, beautiful bill.”
The rescissions bill isn’t subject to the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, so it only needs the support of 50 Republicans and Vice President JD Vance’s tie-breaking vote to become law. That, however, must happen before the 45-day clock runs out on July 18.
If Senate leaders do not schedule a floor vote, or that vote does not get the necessary support, the Trump administration would have to spend the funding as previously planned. And the White House budget office would be blocked from sending up a rescissions request for the same accounts for the remainder of President Donald Trump’s time in office.
Senate floor consideration also comes with unlimited amendment debate, giving senators from both parties the chance to call for votes on whether to keep or eliminate each proposed rescission.
Any changes to the bill would require it to go back across the Capitol for a final vote in the House before the deadline.
Photo: The National Public Radio headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, May 27, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom).
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Family plans will prevent me from making the trip to the state capitol to honor the Hortmans and Gilbert, but I encourage readers to pay their respects.
And to plant a tree. I'm getting a red maple for a neighbor.
Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark and their golden retriever Gilbert will lie in state on Friday at the Capitol. Rep. Hortman and her husband were killed on June 14 in a “politically motivated assassination.”
Hortman will be the first woman to lie in state at the Capitol. The public may pay their respects from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, the office of Gov. Tim Walz announced Tuesday.
A private funeral will be held on Saturday, but it will be livestreamed.
Melissa Hortman served in the Minnesota Legislature for two decades. The Democratic-Farmer-Labor legislator was beloved around the Capitol and is known for scoring major legislative victories including free school lunch for K-12 students, a new paid leave program and a mandate that Minnesota utilities use 100% carbon-free energy sources by 2040.
Sophie and Colin Hortman, the children of Melissa and Mark Hortman, issued a statement calling on people to honor their parents’ legacy by doing “something, whether big or small, to make our community just a little better for someone else.”
“Our parents touched so many lives, and they leave behind an incredible legacy of dedication to their community that will live on in us, their friends, their colleagues and co-workers, and every single person who knew and loved them,” the Hortman children said.
Hortman enters a distinguished group of fewer than 20 Minnesotans to lie in state at the Capitol; the ceremony is a high honor for Minnesotans who have dedicated their lives to public service.
Photo: A memorial for Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark grows outside of the House chambers at the Minnesota State Capitol Tuesday, June 17, 2025 in St. Paul. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer).
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From MinnPost, more about the Minnesota legislative community's response to the assassination of Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, and the attempted murder of the Hoffmans.
After DFL Rep. Melissa Hortman’s assassination, policy fixes to protect legislators are in short supply.
It was two days after Melissa Hortman was assassinated that state Rep. Erin Koegel felt compelled to flee her home.
“Somebody thought it would be a really funny joke to send a bunch of pizzas to my house,” said Koegel, DFL-Spring Lake Park. “A Domino’s pizza guy pulls into my driveway with two cop cars parked there. So, I went to my mom’s house. No one knows where she lives.”
Police later told Koegel that pizzas kept getting delivered to her residence Monday night.
“I don’t know why people think they can terrorize us,” Koegel said.
On June 14, Hortman, the House DFL leader, and her husband, Mark Hortman, were found shot dead in their Brooklyn Park home. State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman, were shot in their Champlin home that day but survived.
Also, Sen. Ann Rest, DFL-New Hope, and Kristin Bahner, DFL-Maple Grove, each were informed by police that the suspect in the shootings, Vance Boelter, went to their homes on June 14. Boelter faces state and federal murder and stalking charges.
The slayings have prompted grieving Minnesota lawmakers to discuss their fear of violence. One former lawmaker, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of continued fear for her and her family’s safety, said that she did not run for reelection precisely because she was afraid of physical harm.
“For years, many of us were concerned,” she said. “We were just waiting for something bad to happen.”
These worries are backed by national research. A report last year from the Brennan Center for Justice found that more than 40% of state lawmakers surveyed were threatened with violence in the last three years.
At the same time, Hortman’s murder has not led to a barrage of calls for new safety measures.
Legislators say they are careful about discussing what to shore up, partly for fear of revealing security weaknesses. Afraid their words will be misconstrued and go viral, lawmakers speak in general terms, expecting policy discussions to unfold gradually over time.
“We’re in a new era here,” said Sen. Nick Frentz, DFL-Mankato. “I think the events of the last few days are going to cause people to evaluate and say that while accessibility is a virtue, it’s time to be more safety conscious.”
Here is a look at what has already changed in how state lawmakers are protected, and what else may shift.
Scrubbing home addresses
Enacted into law in 1973, many provisions of the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act “can be described as unclear, complicated and confusing.”
That is (seriously) the state of Minnesota’s own summation of this law, as can be found on the Minnesota Department of Health website. So, there are gray areas.
On the day of Hortman’s killing, Steve Simon, secretary of state since 2015 and a former Minnesota House member, made the executive decision that the Data Practices Act does not forbid him from erasing the home addresses of state legislative candidates from the Secretary of State’s website.
“Our analysis is that it does not require us to put the addresses on the website,” Simon said in an interview.
But, since the addresses count as public data under the Data Practices law, any individual can still request that information.
(There are circumstances, such as temporary restraining orders, where a candidate can fill out a form and request their address stay private, Simon noted.)
Also, some addresses remain available in the Minnesota Legislative Manual, better known as the blue book. That is a biannual who’s who of lawmakers that may include “not only home addresses, but spouses and children’s names and the workplace location of their company,” Simon said.
There are reasons to keep home addresses public. It lets anyone double-check if someone really lives in the district they run in. In December, a federal judge nullified the election of Curtis Johnson to the Minnesota House after determining Johnson did not reside in the suburban district he won.
But there appears momentum to stop publicizing addresses. Other states, including California and Oregon, let lawmakers not share where they live, according to Shannon Hiller, executive director the Bridging Divides Institute at Princeton University, which studies threats made to lawmakers.
Did I mention scrubbing home addresses?
After the low-hanging fruit of removing home addresses (and personal cell phone numbers, which lawmakers do not have to make public), violence prevention ideas spin into feverish debates over political division, the mental toll of social media, and gun laws.
One practical limitation is that the state government does not protect lawmakers at their homes, besides encouraging cooperation from local law enforcement. Only the governor and lieutenant governor get security away from the Capitol.
“I don’t think it is practical to provide a security detail for 201 people,” Simon said, referring to the total number of House and Senate legislators.
Lawmakers interviewed suggested that a State Patrol officer could audit the safety of their homes.
But most proposals relate to safety at the Capitol (which, of course, is not where Hortman was killed).
Minnesota is one of 11 states to not have metal detectors at their Capitol building, according to a 2021 report by the Council of State Governments. The Land of 10,000 Lakes is one of 19 states to not have X-ray screenings at the Capitol.
(After the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, Minnesota’s Capitol did erect a short-lived security fence.)
The Minnesota Senate Building does not have a metal detector. But the Centennial Building, where House members have offices, does. The Centennial Building security detectors are “kind of a pain in the butt, but it has made the building more secure,” Koegel said.
Capitol safety falls upon the Capitol Security Division, an arm of the State Patrol mostly consisting of civilian officers and state troopers.
In turn, Capitol Security works with point people from the House and Senate called the sergeant-at-arms. If a lawmaker fears for their safety, they contact the sergeant-at-arms.
Capitol Security’s 2025 annual report illustrates its modest budget and aims.
It noted that Capitol card readers can now decipher encrypted badges and that 43 cameras were “upgraded from the original standard definition IP cameras to full HD with analytics over the past year.”
The report states a vision to “ensure that processes of government remain accessible to all citizens.”
What about this Capitol gun debate among lawmakers?
There is the larger issue of state gun control laws and their enforcement. But there is also the matter of guns at the Capitol.
At a 2021 Republican gubernatorial candidate forum, Paul Gazelka, a state senator at the time, revealed that he routinely brought his gun to the Capitol.
“Frankly, I wish I didn’t have to carry at the Capitol,” Gazelka said. “But the fact is I’ve had death threats.”
Gazelka’s comment focused attention on a 2015 Minnesota law that wiped out restrictions on bringing a gun into the Capitol. The law remains on the books. A DFL bill this year to make possessing a gun in the Capitol a felony went nowhere.
Minnesota is one of 16 states to permit guns at the Capitol, according to the Council of State Governments.
Hiller, at the Bridging Divides Institute, said that other states, such as Virginia, tolerate guns. But, unlike Minnesota, those states reserve the right to ban them for specific occasions, like lobbying days or at a contentious hearing, Hiller said.
The lawmaker who retired because of safety threats said guns at the Capitol made her fear not just members of the public, but fellow legislators.
“I never felt safe at work,” she said. “I’ve been screamed at by my colleagues. I once had a male legislator upset about my vote on the House floor. He took me into another room and punched a table and started screaming at me.”
For some, though, those frightening moments demonstrate the need to have a gun. Sen. Rich Draheim, R-Madison Lake, said that he does not bring a gun to the Capitol but knows legislators who do.
“It’s their lifestyle and what they believe in so more power to them,” Draheim said.
Instead of restrictions on guns, Draheim would like to see more armed state troopers at the Capitol. But Gov. Tim Walz last week said lawmakers should reconsider allowing firearms in the Capitol.
And what about political divisions and social media?
“There is a pervasive climate of hostility that creates an environment for violence,” Hiller said. “Security changes have to be hand-in-hand with a broader climate to get rid of vitriol.”
As a reporter wanting to know how the Minnesota state government can reduce the chances that another one of their own will be murdered, Hiller’s response is somewhat maddening. There is no bill a legislature can pass or statute the governor can enforce to end hostility and vitriol.
But it is also what lawmakers themselves say they want the most. From her interviews with local lawmakers across the country, Hiller noted that security measures like metal detectors cannot take away the visceral anxiety of being anonymously harassed or threatened, whether on email, Facebook, X, at their legislative office, or in their own home.
That anxiety can make lawmakers retreat from their very calling of serving the public.
“As evil as people sometimes think we are, the whole reason I got into this is because I wanted to help,” Koegel said.
MinnPost reporter Brian Arola contributed to this report.
Photo: Colin Hortman leaves a candle at the memorial to his mother, Rep. Melissa Hortman, during the candlelight vigil to honor Melissa and Mark Hortman at the Capitol. Both after and before the Hortmans' deaths, Minnesota lawmakers have feared for their safety. Credit: MinnPost photo by Tom Olmscheid.
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Robert County, South Dakota, home to Bluestem Prairie's World Headquarters, was visited by flash flooding last week, although Summit's high ground spared us.
And as the South Dakota Searchlight article republished below reminds me, it could be worse.
McCOOK LAKE — Morgan and Malcom Speichinger still live in a house that was damaged in a flood one year ago, because they have no better option.
“If we could afford to move, we would,” Morgan said.
Three days of rain last June 20-22 in southeast South Dakota surpassed 17 inches in some locations. Local and state authorities implemented a half-century-old diversion plan to handle record-high water that was flowing down the Big Sioux River toward Sioux City. They built a temporary levee across Interstate 29 that tied in with permanent levees to divert water into McCook Lake.
The water was supposed to flow through the lake and drain toward the nearby Missouri River. Instead, on the night of June 23, it overwhelmed the lake and inundated many of the homes around it. Many residents said the flood surge came suddenly, after they’d received little to no warning.
The water carved deep ravines into the land, undercutting trees and power lines. The Speichingers’ home was one of more than 100 near the lake that were damaged. Twenty homes were destroyed.
The gutted basement of a McCook Lake home on June 11, 2025. (Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight)
While the family received the maximum $42,500 of assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, they estimate they’ve spent about $100,000, and work on the home remains.
“We got a Bobcat and did what we could,” Malcom said, referring to a popular brand of skid-steer loader. “But our yard’s still a trench. It’s not that safe for the kids.”
Their mortgage lender granted a six-month forbearance after the flood, but they’ve had to make payments since then on a house that was barely habitable.
“There was a stretch where we met with a bankruptcy lawyer,” Morgan said. “We didn’t think we’d make it. If FEMA hadn’t come through, we would’ve walked away like our neighbors did.”
Three nearby homes were either abandoned or demolished.
In interviews with flood victims and volunteers, a picture emerges one year after the flood: a community still deeply wounded, still struggling with limited resources, and still lacking the kind of assistance that many assumed would follow such a large-scale disaster.
Renae Hansen of the local Izaak Walton League helped lead local recovery efforts.
“When a flood like that happens, you expect some official to show up with a megaphone and a plan,” Hansen said. “Instead, it was us — neighbors helping neighbors. We did it because nobody else was.”
The sense of abandonment still runs deep. The feeling began the night of the flood, after then-Gov. Kristi Noem conducted a press conference that afternoon and did not advise McCook Lake residents to evacuate. She said they should protect their personal property, “because we do anticipate that they will take in water.”
“That’s what we’re preparing for,” Noem said. “If we don’t, then that’s wonderful that they don’t have an impact, but they could see water flowing into McCook Lake.”
(Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight. Map data from OpenStreetMap.)
After the press conference, Noem flew to a political fundraiser in Tennessee, which is where she was when the flood surge hit McCook Lake and sent people fleeing. During the aftermath, Noem refused to deploy the National Guard to help clean up the area, after she’d sent Guard troops multiple times to help Texas secure its border with Mexico.
Noem later resigned to become secretary of the federal Department of Homeland Security, which includes oversight of FEMA. New Gov. Larry Rhoden recently visited North Sioux City as part of his “Open for Opportunity Tour.”
“Our new governor went to a business in town and called it a success story,” Hansen said. “He didn’t come to see the disaster zone. It’s like we don’t exist. We were sacrificed to protect those businesses.”
Like the Speichingers, Hansen said the maximum $42,500 of help from FEMA is hardly enough to replace a foundation, much less an entire home.
“There are families paying mortgages on homes that no longer exist,” Hansen said. “One woman had moved in 11 months before the flood. Her last furniture delivery was two weeks before the water came. It’s all gone.”
Hansen said some neighbors are walking away from their mortgages, renting a new place, and choosing a damaged credit score over paying for a destroyed home.
Multiple residents worked with a lawyer and sent the state a notice of a potential lawsuit, alleging an unconstitutional taking of private property for protection of other areas, but no lawsuit has been filed so far.
‘Every time it rains, you wonder’
Kathy Roberts, who owns a home on Penrose Drive, calls herself one of the “lucky ones.” With a partner who had construction experience and support from friends, she has nearly finished rebuilding.
“But I’m still having nightmares,” said Roberts, who works in mental health. “And I know my neighbors are, too. There’s PTSD all over this community. Every time it rains, you wonder.”
A McCook Lake home sits abandoned on June 11, 2025. (Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight)
Malcom Speichinger can attest to that.
“I’ve had dreams where the house floods again. It’s hard not to go there.”
He’s certain the area will have severe flooding again.
“And we’re still not ready for it,” he said.
New government, new plan
In the wake of the disaster, residents petitioned to overhaul the North Sioux City government. Voters replaced the eight-member alderman system with a new mayor-commission format. That allowed voters to elect an entirely new commission and mayor in one election. And in April, a new mayor and commissioners were sworn in.
“There’s some hope there now,” Hansen said. “We’ve already seen more engagement from the new commission. But the fact that it took a total government reset to get basic attention should tell you how bad things got.”
At the heart of residents’ frustration lies the emergency flood plan last updated in 1976 — one that sent floodwaters into the McCook Lake neighborhood intentionally, in an effort to divert it from the more heavily populated areas of North Sioux City and Dakota Dunes.
And so, two months into his term, North Sioux City Mayor Chris Bogenrief said implementing a new mitigation plan is at the top of his agenda.
Bogenrief said the county and the Army Corps of Engineers envision a diversion farther upstream on the Big Sioux River. But he said that effort is still in the early study stages and could take a decade or more to materialize.
“We don’t feel like we can wait that long,” he said. “People are trying to rebuild.”
A boat in the mud along the shores of McCook Lake on June 11, 2025. (Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight)
So, the city commissioned Stockwell Engineers to explore three short-term plans.
“We’re applying for hazard mitigation grants from FEMA to help cover the cost,” Bogenrief said. “But one way or another, we can’t sit around and wait.”
McCook Lake is an oxbow — a horseshoe-shaped former segment of the Missouri River that became a lake when the river cut a new, straighter path. The first two short-term concepts would use a new channel and culvert system to better route water into McCook Lake and out through one end or the other of the lake. The third would reroute floodwaters to the west prior to reaching McCook Lake, and into undeveloped Goodenough and Mud lakes before draining into the Missouri River.
Bogenrief said the cost estimate for implementing a short-term plan is up to $20 million. The design cost of the projects is about $1.7 million, he said, with North Sioux City expected to cover about 10% and FEMA covering the rest.
The state has drafted a $15.4 million plan to help communities recover from the 2024 flooding. The plan would utilize federal Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery funds to rebuild infrastructure in areas hardest hit.
The plan proposes spending more than $12 million on infrastructure projects like road repairs, stormwater systems, and improvements to McCook Lake. The rest is for future planning and administration.
The plan says the unmet recovery need in the state still totals more than $63 million. That includes $3.1 million categorized as owner-occupied damage, with the rest dealing with infrastructure.
Bogenrief hopes the city can free up local money to start a homeowner recovery fund as those infrastructure dollars come in.
Many residents lacked flood insurance, Bogenrief said, because FEMA did not classify the area as a floodplain.
“The only way it floods is if the emergency flood plan is executed and the interstate is shut down, which is what happened,” he said.
A lake full of everything
The state Department of Game, Fish and Parks awarded a $1 million contract to Three Oaks Inc. to remove debris and sediment from the lake, said the department’s Kip Rounds. The department is tasked with managing the lake cleanup effort because it manages the waters of the state.
Using an excavator on a floating barge, the company is three weeks into a project scheduled to finish by Aug. 1. Rounds said the contractor is nearly halfway though removing an estimated 20,000 cubic yards of sediment.
An excavator sits on a floating barge, cleaning sediment and debris from McCook Lake on June 11, 2025. (Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight)
McCook Lake Association President Dirk Lohry said there’s other work to do. He said local residents hope to raise $250,000 to extend Three Oaks’ work, but that campaign hasn’t launched. A funding request to extend the contract with state money failed during the recent legislative session.
Lake resident Kathy Roberts said the road to healing is a long one, but she sees one clear takeaway.
“This flood taught me how important your neighbors are,” she said. “When the worst happens, it’s not FEMA or the state that shows up — it’s the person living next door.”
Photo: Malcolm and Morgan Speichinger stand in the backyard of their McCook Lake home on June 11, 2025. (Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight)
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A list of donors to a state-owned shooting range under construction north of Rapid City includes $2 million from gun-industry companies or organizations.
The $20 million, 400-acre complex will be one of the largest public shooting ranges in the nation when it opens this fall, according to the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish & Parks. The complex will host recreational shooters, safety programs, marksmanship competitions and law enforcement training. It will include rifle, pistol, shotgun and archery ranges.
About $6 million of the project’s funding has been given or pledged by donors. The rest is from the state’s Future Fund for economic development.
The department announced last month in a news release that the range will be named the Pete Lien & Sons Shooting Sports Complex, but the release did not disclose the amount of the company’s donation, or include a full list of donations.
“We are extremely pleased with all of the support and excitement for the shooting sports complex and our Second Amendment rights in South Dakota,” Department Secretary Kevin Robling said in the press release.
List initially withheld
South Dakota Searchlight requested a list of donors with names and amounts. The department’s initial response said only that donors gave more than $6 million, including $2 million for naming rights from Pete Lien & Sons, a mining, concrete and construction aggregate company based in Rapid City.
When Searchlight asked again for a full list of donors, a spokesman for the department directed the request to the state’s online records request portal. Searchlight submitted a letter including a legal argument that the donation list is a public record. A lawyer for the department provided the list 15 days later.
Three donors on the list who gave or pledged a combined $6,100 are referenced only as “private donation”; Searchlight asked for those names or a justification for withholding them. The department’s lawyer replied that the names are covered by exceptions in the state open records law to protect personal privacy and to prevent the “unreasonable release of personal information.”
The project has been controversial with state legislators, who refused to fund it. Some were angered last year when they learned that then-Gov. Kristi Noem gave the project $13.5 million from the governor-controlled Future Fund for economic development.
The donations from the gun industry are another concern for Rep. Erik Muckey, D-Sioux Falls. He said that as a gun owner and hunter himself, he wants to ensure South Dakota’s sporting and hunting traditions continue. But he is uneasy about the Legislature being successfully lobbied for fewer restrictions on firearms while some of the entities connected to those lobbyists — including the National Rifle Association — are helping to fund a state-owned shooting range.
“Private funding for state-owned facilities is not a new concept; in fact, several examples of public-private partnerships make this state better each day, like the combination of public and private funds to support the Build Dakota scholarship,” Muckey said, referencing a full-tuition program for technical college students. “But this case should give South Dakotans pause.”
The Republican-dominated Legislature routinely considers and passes pro-gun legislation. Last winter, lawmakers and Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden lifted concealed-handgun bans on college campuses and in bars.
The shooting-range donor list includes $6.3 million from 43 sources, with nearly half of the money in hand and the rest pledged. Donations from the gun industry account for nearly one-third of the total:
Smith & Wesson, a Tennessee-based gun manufacturer, donated $150,000 and pledged $600,000, for a total of $750,000.
Glock, an Austrian gun manufacturer, donated $150,000 and pledged $600,000, for a total of $750,000.
Aimpoint, a Swedish gun optics manufacturer that bills itself as the inventor of the red dot sight, donated $50,000 and pledged $200,000, for a total of $250,000.
Luth-AR, a Minnesota company that sells custom stocks and other components for AR-15 rifles, donated $25,000 and pledged $100,000, for a total of $125,000.
Lane Silencers, a Rapid City manufacturer, donated $3,000.
Sturgis Guns, a seller of firearms and accessories, donated $3,000.
Some other donations came from companies that sell shooting-related accessories, but not guns or gun parts. Donations also came from various other individuals, businesses and hunting and conservation groups.
Bitter feelings among lawmakers
Some legislators on both sides of the political aisle remain upset about Noem’s unilateral decision to provide state funding for the project.
“Unfortunately, her actions have severely damaged trust in otherwise effective institutions, which may cost much-needed projects funding and support in the future,” said Muckey.
In response, the Legislature passed and new Gov. Larry Rhoden signed into law a bill from Senate President Pro Tempore Chris Karr, R-Sioux Falls, that says Game, Fish and Parks projects over $2.5 million must receive legislative approval.
“The shooting complex is the reason I brought that bill,” Karr said. “The appropriations process was circumvented.”
House Assistant Majority Leader Marty Overweg, R-New Holland, said lawmakers feel their will was ignored.
“Now, the government has to be the one that ensures this shooting range continues to run,” he said. “We voted no, but now we have to run it. Without any choice.”
Robling, the head of GF&P, said in November that the complex will require three full-time employees who will be reallocated internally, as well as seasonal staff and volunteers. Robling said the range will not be profitable and will require help from federal firearm tax revenue allocated to the department.
Department spokesperson Nick Harrington told South Dakota Searchlight recently that the shooting range will cost an estimated $355,000 annually to operate and maintain, including the three full-time employees.
A two-page list, supplied by the state Department of Game, Fish and Parks, of donations toward the construction of a state-owned shooting range is viewable at the bottom of the South Dakota Searchlight article
Photo: A rendering of a state-owned shooting range under construction north of Rapid City. (Courtesy of South Dakota GF&P).
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South Dakota legislative leaders recently ordered the removal of lawmakers’ home addresses from the Legislature’s website in response to the shootings of two lawmakers and their spouses in Minnesota.
The decision is about personal safety, said state Senate President Pro Tempore Chris Karr, R-Sioux Falls.
Legislative staff removed addresses, cities of residence and ZIP codes from lawmakers’ profile pages and from a downloadable list of legislators. Lawmakers’ cities of residence are still viewable on the “historical listing” section of the website, and Karr said the cities of residence could eventually be restored on the profile pages.
With so many other modern methods of communication, Karr said he doesn’t see a reason why a constituent needs home addresses of legislators. He views that removal as permanent.
“Access is important to us, and I believe in our citizen legislature,” Karr said, “but I think there are plenty of points of access that are easier than knocking on my door and scaring my family just in the hope that I’m here.”
Other state legislatures have taken similar actions since the shootings. North Dakota, Idaho and Maine are among the states that have removed lawmaker addresses from their legislative websites. Colorado temporarily took down its public campaign finance database after dozens of elected officials requested their information be removed.
Some states, including Georgia and Louisiana, passed laws in recent years preventing their secretary of state from publishing residential addresses of people involved in political campaigns. Oregon lawmakers passed a bill the day before the Minnesota shootings to conceal addresses of elected officials and candidates.
South Dakotans can reach lawmakers by calling their Capitol phone number, by emailing their legislative address, by sending them mail at the Capitol address, or by personal phone for those that include their number on their profile page. About one-third of lawmakers don’t list a personal phone number.
Karr said he has had angry constituents visit his home. Other lawmakers have had constituents approach their families or children, sometimes with verbal attacks, he said.
People who take the initiative to knock on a lawmaker’s door about an issue are “usually upset and not the most conducive to conversing, discoursing and solving a problem,” Karr added.
“We deal with people who get very upset and angry at us and like to blame us,” Karr said. “I think you have to be aware and cognizant of that and not naive. There are people who take it too far.”
Photo: The Senate floor at the state Capitol during the 2024 Legislature. (Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight).
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I gather I'm not the only one criticizing federal tax credit profiteers. A group of officials from Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming want 45Q tax credits gone.
Over 100 state and local officials from the Midwest and West, including South Dakota, are asking the U.S. Senate to eliminate tax credits for carbon capture and sequestration as part of a federal budget reconciliation bill.
Established by Congress and then-President George W. Bush in 2008, the 45Q tax credits incentivize companies to capture carbon dioxide from processes such as ethanol production and sequester it underground, so it won’t contribute to climate change by acting as a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. The carbon can also be sequestered as part of enhanced oil recovery, in which pressurized gas is used to push more oil to the surface.
Opponents say the credits don’t work as intended.
“The 45Q tax credits really only make sense to the industries that are poised to make billions of dollars from them,” said North Dakota state Sen. Tim Mathern, D-Fargo. “They are supposedly intended to reduce carbon emissions, but in fact, 45Q tax credits pay polluters for polluting and subsidize private oil production at the expense of the taxpayer.”
Companies receive up to $85 per metric ton for regular sequestration and up to $60 per metric ton for sequestration via enhanced oil recovery — though there is a provision in a draft portion of the Senate reconciliation bill that would raise the maximum oil recovery credit to $85.
The repeal effort includes officials from Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. A few of those officials held a virtual press conference Wednesday.
South Dakota state Sen. Joy Hohn, R-Hartford, described the tax credits as wasteful spending.
“We are concerned about preserving taxpayer dollars, and I guess that’s the main gist of our conference today,” Hohn said.
Mathern said repealing the tax credits would put projects like Summit Carbon Solutions’ proposed five-state carbon dioxide pipeline “in dire danger.”
“And that’s really positive,” he said.
Summit’s project alone could qualify for more than $1 billion annually from 45Q credits. It aims to capture some of the CO2 emitted by dozens of ethanol plants and ship the carbon via pipeline to a sequestration area southeast of the oilfields in western North Dakota.
Earlier this year, South Dakota’s legislators and governor adopted a law banning the use of a legal process known as eminent domain to acquire land access for carbon dioxide pipelines. South Dakota regulators also rejected Summit’s project application, saying there was no path forward for the project under the eminent domain ban.
Those moves came after several years of anti-pipeline activism by landowners focused on property rights and the danger from potential leaks of toxic carbon dioxide plumes. The project has permits in other states, but some of those are being challenged in court.
Congressional Republicans are using the complex reconciliation process to move a budget package through Congress with simple majority votes in each chamber, avoiding the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster. The House recently passed its version of the bill without a repeal of the 45Q tax credits. U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-South Dakota, voted for the bill.
A spokesperson for Johnson sent a statement when asked via email if the congressman supports repealing the tax credits: “While Dusty wished the reconciliation bill was more conservative, he voted in favor of it when it passed the House. We’ll see what the Senate passes.”
A spokesperson for U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota, said Rounds met with a group of South Dakota lawmakers when they traveled to D.C. to voice opposition to the 45Q tax credits.
“Senator Rounds has long held the belief that many industry specific tax credits should not be perpetual, a belief which this group of landowners shares,” the statement said. “However, he has not had a chance to hear details of President Trump’s interest in this program. While many in South Dakota may oppose 45Q, it has been a popular proposal for other states for almost two decades and was included in the House-passed reconciliation bill.”
The office of Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, did not respond to South Dakota Searchlight’s request for his position.
Photo: State Sen. Joy Hohn, R-Hartford, listens to debate on the South Dakota Senate floor on Feb. 10, 2025. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight).
This South Dakota Searchlight post is republished online under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
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South Dakota regulators will take six months to study Otter Tail Power Company’s proposed 12.5% electric rate increase, which the company says would cost a typical residential customer an additional $14.39 per month, or $172.68 per year.
The proposal would generate an additional $5.7 million in annual revenue for Otter Tail, which delivers electricity to about 11,500 northeastern South Dakota customers.
The company applied for the rate increase on June 4. The state Public Utilities Commission voted Tuesday to delay the rate increase from going into effect for six months, giving the commission’s staff time to assess the request, which is a typical procedure for the commission.
The commission also voted Tuesday to charge Otter Tail up to $500,000 for costs associated with reviewing the request.
The company argues rising operational costs and infrastructure investments necessitate the increase. The current rates were set in 2019.
“This increase is needed for the company to continue providing high-quality, reliable, and safe electric service,” Otter Tail wrote in a letter to the commission.
Otter Tail also increased fees in September, raising the typical resident’s electric bill by $4.14 monthly. It was part of a rate adjustment mechanism that allows utilities to adjust customers’ bills for specific projects. Those projects for Otter Tail include buying a natural gas plant in Deuel County, building a wind farm in North Dakota, and replacing and upgrading turbine blades and parts to increase the efficiency and lifespan of multiple wind farms.
Photo: A sign displays the names of South Dakota’s three elected public utilities commissioners outside of their Pierre office in January 2023. (Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight)
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The Iowa House of Representatives Tuesday secured the necessary two-thirds majority on a petition calling for a special session to override the governor’s veto of a bill pertaining to eminent domain and carbon sequestration pipelines.
Seventy representatives signed the petition in favor of returning to the state Capitol to override the veto on House File 639, but two-thirds of the Senate will also have to sign on for a special session to be called.
House Speaker Pat Grassley called for the petition immediately following Gov. Kim Reynolds’ veto of HF 639, which would have restricted the use of eminent domain for carbon sequestration pipelines and added a slew of additional requirements for pipelines and the regulator.
“This veto was a major setback for Iowa landowners and the tireless efforts of the House to safeguard property rights,” Grassley said in a press release Tuesday. “With 70 members of the House standing united, we’ve met the constitutional threshold to move forward. We now call on our colleagues in the Senate to join us by securing the necessary signatures so we can convene a special session, override this veto, and deliver the protections Iowa landowners deserve against eminent domain for private gain.”
Members of the House have pushed forward similar bills over the past several years. The 2025 session was the first time the Senate took up the issue, but only after a group of 12 Republican senators said they would not vote on budget bills until HF 639 was debated.
The bill is tied to opposition of the Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline which was granted a permit, and the right of eminent domain, by the Iowa Utilities Commission in June 2024. Landowners opposed to the pipeline feel the privately owned project should not have the power of condemnation and fear the impact of the pipeline on their land.
The pipeline would connect to biorefineries in the state and transport captured carbon dioxide through the state and up to underground storage in North Dakota. This would give ethanol facilities and corn farmers access to the ultra-low carbon fuel market, which industry leaders say is needed to fuel the agricultural economy in the state.
The debate on the issue, and HF 639 in particular, has created rifts within the Republican Party of Iowa, with those in favor of the bill alleging their colleagues, including Reynolds, abandoned GOP values.
Those against the bill said it reached beyond its intended targets and would have caused unintended consequences to agricultural and energy infrastructure in Iowa.
A press release from Iowa House Republicans about the petition said Reynolds’ veto denied “critical protections” against eminent domain, was an “undermining” of years of legislative efforts and represented a “significant setback” for those who have fought for “fair treatment” in carbon capture projects.
House Republicans also urged the Senate to “act swiftly” to meet the petition requirements to call a special session.
Senate Republican leadership did not respond to requests for comment on the latest news, but Sen. Jack Whitver, R-Grimes, said last week the majority of his caucus would “not be interested” in pursuing a special session override.
Sen. Kevin Alons, R-Salix, who was one of the 12 holdouts on the Senate floor for debate on the bill, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Of the 30 representatives who did not sign the petition, 10 were Republicans and 20 were Democrats.
Photo: Iowans gathered at the Iowa State Capitol to rally against carbon dioxide pipeline projects March 18, 2025. (Photo by Cami Koons/Iowa Capital Dispatch).
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After learning of the death of Melissa and Mark Hortman and the attack on the Hoffmans, I was devastated, seeking comfort in a No Kings protest in Watertown SD, then traveling on the back roads to the Big Stone Wildlife Refuge, a public place that area residents worked together years ago to protect from expansion of nearby quarrying.
I climbed on the big stones, admired the rare cacti, and prayed for the Hortmans and Minnesota.
It's some comfort to know their children understand and support these healing impulses. I gave my neighbors a cake yesterday, and will soon plant another fruit tree here in Summit, South Dakota.
Sophie and Colin Hortman, the children of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, issued a statement Monday calling on people to honor their parents’ legacy by doing “something, whether big or small, to make our community just a little better for someone else.”
The Hortman children are grieving following the Saturday killing of their parents, in what has been called a political assassination. Rep. Melissa Hortman was a longtime Democratic-Farmer-Labor legislator beloved around the Capitol even as she scored major legislative victories.
“We are devastated and heartbroken at the loss of our parents, Melissa and Mark. They were the bright lights at the center of our lives, and we can’t believe they are gone. Their love for us was boundless. We miss them so much,” the release said. “We want everyone to know that we are both safe and with loved ones. We are grateful for the outpouring of love and support we have received, and we appreciate your respect for our family’s privacy as we grieve.”
The Hortman children thanked law enforcement for their efforts, which led to the arrest of suspect Vance Boelter on Sunday night. Boelter also wounded Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, though they are on a path to recovery.
The Hortman children emphasized the legacy that their parents will leave behind.
“Our parents touched so many lives, and they leave behind an incredible legacy of dedication to their community that will live on in us, their friends, their colleagues and co-workers, and every single person who knew and loved them,” the release said.
The Hortmans asked that people do an act of kindness in the memory of their parents’ commitment to service, sharing a list of suggestions.
“The best way to honor our parents’ memory is to do something, whether big or small, to make our community just a little better for someone else.”
They suggested planting a tree, telling a dad joke, and baking something to share — “bread for Mark or a cake for Melissa”.
“Pet a dog,” was on the list “A golden retriever is ideal but any will do.”
The Hortman family’s dog, a golden retriever named Gilbert, was euthanized after he was injured in the shooting. Hortman originally trained him as a service dog before he became a permanent member of the family.
Sophie and Colin Hortman ended the statement with a call to action.
“Hope and resilience are the enemy of fear. Our parents lived their lives with immense dedication to their fellow humans. This tragedy must become a moment for us to come together. Hold your loved ones a little closer. Love your neighbors. Treat each other with kindness and respect.”
Bluestem Prairie footnote: One of many shares of the statement on the X platform
Statement from Sophie and Colin Hortman, children of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark:
"The best way to honor our parents' memory is to do something, whether big or small, to make our community just a little better for someone else.” pic.twitter.com/XF4GGbdDOe
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Some fine investigative reporting from the South Dakota Searchlight. It's not as if Rhoden can get work done, like appointing a new state representative here in District One.
Excluding the money he loaned himself, Reid Rasner raised less than $35,000 for his failed attempt to unseat a U.S. senator last year.
This year, the 41-year-old Wyoming Republican says he’s assembled more than a million times that amount to buy the social media app TikTok and potentially move its operations to South Dakota.
South Dakotans following the story on his $47.45 billion bid since mid-April, through traditional media channels or on social media outlets like Instagram or TikTok, have likely seen the term “billionaire” attached to Rasner’s name.
South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden speaks during a press conference with Reid Rasner, who says he’s made a bid for TikTok, on May 23, 2025, at Dakota State University in Madison. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight)
But his background offers no definitive proof to support that descriptor. Instead, disclosures filed during his Senate campaign show a self-employed financial adviser who owns some real estate, sells used goods on eBay for a sizable portion of his income, and is more than $1 million in debt due to a loan he received from a family trust.
Even so, he’s won over South Dakota Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden, who’s sung Rasner’s praises in press releases and television appearances.
Rhoden appeared with Rasner on May 23 at Dakota State University in Madison, where Rasner said South Dakota is the “front-runner” for the U.S. headquarters of TikTok.
“South Dakota is lucky to have such a visionary governor,” Rasner said.
Meanwhile, the Cowboy State Daily news outlet in Wyoming reported earlier this month that Rasner “has maintained he would bring the company to Wyoming.” The outlet quoted Rasner saying “I’m from Wyoming and have always championed Wyoming.”
Wyoming lawmaker calls effort ‘self-promotion’
TikTok’s Chinese parent company is under congressional order to sell the app or be banned from the United States, due to concerns about the Chinese government’s potential access to Americans’ data. President Donald Trump has delayed the ban and is encouraging a sale, while reportedly considering another extension beyond Thursday’s deadline.
South Dakota Searchlight messages sent to TikTok on its interactions with Rasner Media — or lack thereof — were not returned.
Rhoden and his lieutenant governor are the only high-level politicians in South Dakota to have publicly voiced support for Rasner so far, but some other officials outside of the political sphere have followed the governor’s lead. The Board of Regents, South Dakota Retailers Association, and South Dakota Chamber of Commerce and Industry have each endorsed Rasner’s vision.
Rasner has gathered less support for his TikTok bid in his home state.
A spokesperson for Wyoming Republican Gov. Mark Gordon told South Dakota Searchlight that the governor wants to “respect the president’s deliberative process to procure the organization he feels is best-suited to operate the platform.”
John Bear, a Republican state lawmaker from Gillette and a leader of Wyoming’s Freedom Caucus, said he doesn’t think Rasner’s bid is legitimate.
“It seems to me that this is a publicity stunt, just like his last run for Senate was,” Bear said. “I went and listened to him speak one time, and I didn’t get a feel that he was doing anything other than self-promotion.”
Little information forthcoming on TikTok bid
Rasner calls his TikTok bid the most Trump-friendly, pointing to a post on Trump’s Truth Social as proof. In it, Trump, without offering any comment, shared a link to a story about Rasner from a site called JustTheNews.com with the headline “TikTok’s highest bidder is also its most Trumpian.”
Rasner Media, the company Rasner says will buy TikTok, was founded on Feb. 17, exactly one month after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law forcing the social media site to be sold. Two days later, the Rasner Media website announced the $47.45 billion bid. Rasner posted his first video to his personal TikTok account in early March.
His media company’s website posted a press release in mid-April headlined “South Dakota Leaders Back Rasner Media’s TikTok Deal, Urge Trump Administration Support.”
Rasner has disclosed little about who his investors are but said during his Madison visit that he’s lined up “more than” $50 billion.
He’s also still asking for money.
Rasner’s FoundersTok website — which recently still said an American TikTok would be headquartered in Wyoming — sells hats and T-shirts, and asks people to invest in advance of the sale at differing support levels.
Pledge $12,000 a year, and you’ll be a “Founding Father” who gets content boosts, early access to new features, discounts on premium features and a blue verification badge.
“No payment will be requested until after Rasner Media acquires TikTok,” the site promises.
Rasner Media has also issued a press release about a “major financial and strategic partnership” with a company called Adaly, which was founded last year.
The press release calls Adaly “a leading organizational intelligence platform.” But in reality, Adaly appears to be in its formative stage.
When reached via text message, Adaly co-founder Kyle Csik did not respond to questions and referred South Dakota Searchlight back to the Rasner Media press release on the partnership.
Rasner Media also recently announced support for its TikTok bid from “a coalition of over 50 conservative content creators with a combined audience of more than 15.5 million followers” who say they’ve had their voices silenced on the platform.
Neither the press release on the influencers’ support nor a TikTok video announcing it mention a financial commitment from the influencers.
Questions about billionaire status
When asked in Madison about the gulf between his fundraising clout on the campaign trail and the multibillion-dollar offer he’s presented for TikTok, Rasner told South Dakota Searchlight that the bid is “business, not politics,” while declining to disclose details.
Earlier, in a mid-April phone interview, Rasner said “it’s called ‘private equity’ for a reason.”
A press release on the Rasner Media website about Trump’s Truth Social post refers to Rasner as a “Wyoming billionaire,” and several media outlets have referred to him as a billionaire since. Dakota State University’s marketing office referred to him as a “Wyoming billionaire” in a press release on his visit to the school with Gov. Rhoden.
When asked in April if he is a billionaire, Rasner told South Dakota Searchlight “I guess you’ll have to get my financial statements.”
“Everything’s going to be disclosed soon, who the investors are and how much the investments are,” Rasner said. “I will certainly provide all of that very soon, as soon as we get the deal taken care of.”
U.S. Senate candidates are required to file financial disclosure statements with the Select Committee on Ethics. In one of the reports he filed during his failed Senate campaign, Rasner reported $108,000 of self-employment income from Omnivest Financial, the company name under which he offers wealth management services. He reported earning another $70,000 through eBay, an auction site on which he sells goods such as vintage police badges, cowboy boots and aluminum beach chairs under the name “Omnisellers.”
Rasner’s disclosure forms also list commercial real estate, from which he collected between $15,001 and $50,000 in rent, a mutual fund worth less than $100,000, and unimproved land in Casper, Wyoming, worth less than $15,000.
Owes more than $1 million to a family trust
Rasner additionally disclosed a liability of between $1 million and $5 million, due to a loan he received from a family trust at a rate of 5% interest over a 20-year term.
Meanwhile, his reports to the Federal Election Commission show that he loaned $1.2 million to his own Senate campaign.
A September letter from the commission to the Rasner campaign approved a request to terminate the 2024 campaign committee, but noted the campaign treasurer had failed to submit the required letter from Rasner signaling forgiveness of the loan.
Rasner’s Senate financial disclosures divulge little about the trust that loaned him the money, listing it only as a “family trust” in Casper, Wyoming. South Dakota Searchlight found public records of trusts registered under Rasner’s name and his mother’s name, but the values of the trusts are not public records.
Both trusts are listed as owners of property in Natrona County, Wyoming, according to the county assessor’s office.
The trust under Rasner’s name owns a dental office whose address appears on his Senate financial disclosures as his rental property.
The trust under his mother’s name is listed as the owner of a handful of properties in the county. The properties include the building that once housed her former family business, Wyoming Glass, and properties owned by her deceased former husband, who was a gravel contractor.
South Dakota politicians skeptical
Multiple South Dakota state lawmakers either declined to speak on the record about Rasner, or did not return calls and texts seeking comment.
Rep. Erik Muckey, D-Sioux Falls, said he’s unfamiliar with the details of the TikTok pitch from Rasner, but said he has his doubts. Efforts to bolster employment opportunities for Dakota State graduates who’ve developed and honed high-tech skillsets are welcome, he said, but he’d want to see a firmer business plan to be convinced the Rasner deal is a real opportunity.
“Until we see an actual plan and some actual investment, I’m not holding my breath,” Muckey said.
Former longtime lawmaker Lee Schoenbeck, a Watertown Republican who retired as president pro tempore of the state Senate, told South Dakota Searchlight that his knowledge of Rasner’s TikTok bid is limited. Schoenbeck suggested that Rasner’s position as a maker of promises in the economic development sphere, however, is not a unique one in South Dakota history.
He pointed to examples including a hoped-for aquaculture facility in the city of Madison that received state assistance in 2019 but has never been constructed. While he can’t speak to Gov. Rhoden’s motivations or level of due diligence in the TikTok bid, Schoenbeck said economic development work requires a governor and his team to do the necessary homework to avoid too-good-to-be-true pitches.
“These kinds of people are all over,” Schoenbeck said.
Wyoming politicians ‘incredulous’ about Rasner claims
Rasner’s U.S. Senate campaign wasn’t his first run for public office. In the 2010s, he ran unsuccessfully for the Las Vegas City Council. He and his then-husband — they’ve since divorced — were living in the city at the time. Rasner sold real estate.
As an 18-year-old, Rasner ran unsuccessfully for city council in Casper, Wyoming, which is his hometown.
His Senate campaign website’s biography says he “landed his first job sweeping floors at Wyoming Glass” at age 13 — without mentioning that the company was his family’s business — and that he began investing at age 16.
“These formative experiences laid the groundwork for his entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to financial independence,” the website reads.
Bear, the Wyoming state lawmaker, said he hasn’t spent time looking into Rasner’s background because “he was never a serious candidate.”
In the U.S. Senate primary last year, Rasner presented himself as the most conservative option on the ballot. He said incumbent Republican Sen. John Barrasso wasn’t a strong enough supporter of Donald Trump.
On the way to his Senate primary loss, Rasner was served a cease-and-desist letter by Wyoming Republican U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman. The letter asked that he remove photos he’d taken with her from his campaign social media sites, because according to Hageman, the photos erroneously suggested she’d endorsed him. Rasner told the Cowboy State Daily it was an attempt to stifle his free speech.
A representative from Hageman’s office did not respond to Searchlight requests for comment. Barrasso’s office also did not respond.
Bryan Miller was recently elected chairman of the Wyoming Republican Party, and said he couldn’t comment for the party. That said, he personally was “not impressed” with Rasner during their interactions last year, when Miller led the Sheridan County GOP.
Miller said he asked Rasner who was funding his U.S. Senate campaign, but Rasner wouldn’t tell him.
“I said, ‘Well, because you can’t tell me, you’re not likely to ever get my personal support, or anyone else I know’s support, because we want to know where money comes from,’” Miller said.
The situation with the Hageman photograph turned Miller off, as well.
“The thing he did with Harriet, trying to get pictures, he tried to do that with me at the state convention, but I wouldn’t do it,” Miller said.
From where Democratic state Rep. Mike Yin sits, it appeared that the opposition party got “annoyed” with Rasner’s efforts on social media.
Yin said a lot of people in Wyoming were “utterly incredulous” when Rasner first announced his TikTok bid, especially after he raised so little for his U.S. Senate campaign from sources beyond his family.
“So the idea that he could convince people to give $50 billion?” Yin said. “It seems like he’s trying to raise his own profile.”
Rasner hasn’t announced his intention to challenge Wyoming’s other Republican U.S. senator, Cynthia Lummis, in 2026. Rasner has created a new fundraising committee, though, and loaned it a little more than $48,000. His disclosure forms identify it as a U.S. Senate campaign committee.
South Dakota comes along for the ride
It’s unclear how much South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden knows about Rasner.
Rhoden’s spokesperson, Josie Harms, confirmed that Rasner reached out to South Dakota first, not the other way around, about the TikTok bid. Rasner told South Dakota Searchlight he’d done outreach with governors from all the surrounding states.
Rhoden has since appeared on news segments with Rasner, which Rhoden has shared on his own X (formerly Twitter) page. After the press conference at Dakota State University, Rhoden said on The Scouting Report podcast that Rasner’s team is “ready to go,” but that South Dakota may need to offer incentives to data centers if it hopes to land technology companies.
Lawmakers rejected a bill that would have offered tax breaks to data centers during this winter’s session of the South Dakota Legislature. Rhoden could offer assistance in other ways without needing legislative approval, such as offering a grant or loan from the Future Fund for economic development, which is under the governor’s control.
Among Rasner’s other supporters, the Retailers Association and Chamber offered their support at the same time as Rhoden first did, in mid-April. Nathan Lukkes, head of the state Board of Regents, sent a letter of support for the Rasner bid just over a week later.
“We are ready to position South Dakota as the launchpad for the next generation of secure, ethical, and impactful digital media,” the letter reads.
David Owen, president of the South Dakota Chamber, told South Dakota Searchlight he got a call from Joe Fiala, deputy director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, shortly before the first press release mentioning South Dakota was issued by Rasner Media.
“It was, ‘Here’s an opportunity. You’ve got 12 hours,’” Owen said.
Owen said his organization had nothing to lose.
“What’s your risk by suggesting publicly it would be a good thing?” he said. “And if it doesn’t come about, what are you out?”
Northern State University Government Professor Jon Schaff said there could be reputational damage to the governor “if Rasner turns out to be something of an empty suit.”
“To the extent they are depicting themselves as partners rather than mere supporters-encouragers, yes, there is potential backlash,” Schaff said.
Rhoden’s spokesperson, Harms, declined to comment about Rasner’s financial disclosures, political aspirations and TikTok investors.
Rasner declined to respond directly to a dozen questions on his companies, political ambitions, investors and personal life. He sent a statement through a spokesperson that accused South Dakota Searchlight of approaching this story with a “tone and accusatory nature” that is “completely unprofessional.”
“Your biased attacks will not deter Rasner Media’s mission to free TikTok from Chinese control,” the statement said, in part.
Reid Rasner statement
In response to a dozen questions from South Dakota Searchlight about his finances, his bid for TikTok and other topics, a representative of Reid Rasner sent an emailed statement.
Here is that statement in full:
“While we respect the media’s role and have cooperated with credible outlets, the tone and accusatory nature of your questions toward Mr. Rasner are completely unprofessional. Rasner Media’s TikTok acquisition efforts are a business transaction, not a political campaign. Mr. Rasner is unapologetically one of the most pro-Trump, MAGA businessmen in America, dedicated to protecting conservative voices on platforms like TikTok. This has naturally drawn opposition from Communist China and parts of the Democrat machine, including outlets like yours. Your biased attacks will not deter Rasner Media’s mission to free TikTok from Chinese control, support President Trump’s efforts to establish a United States sovereign wealth fund, and protect conservative influencers who are being censored by foreign adversaries and woke leftists behind keyboards.”
Photo: Reid Rasner, who says he’s pulled together a $47.45 billion bid for TikTok, speaks on May 23, 2025, at Dakota State University in Madison. At left is DSU President José-Marie Griffiths. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight).
If you appreciate Bluestem Prairie, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen, 600 Maple Street, Summit SD 57266) or use the paypal button in the upper right hand corner of this post.
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BWSR is the state soil and water conservation agency, and it administers programs that prevent sediment and nutrients from entering our lakes, rivers, and streams; enhance fish and wildlife habitat; and protect wetlands. The 20-member board consists of representatives of local and state government agencies and citizens. BWSR's mission is to work with partners to improve and protect Minnesota's land and water resources.
If you appreciate Bluestem Prairie, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen, 600 Maple Street, Summit SD 57266) or use the paypal button in the upper right hand corner of this post.
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