South Dakota voters are rejecting incumbent Earth haters

Doeden surpasses Johnson in latest KELOLAND/Emerson poll https://t.co/CY6cggFlBt

— KELOLAND News (@keloland) May 21, 2026

Earth hater Howdy Doody Dusty Johnson was reimbursed for private flights more than any member of Congress from 2019 until June 2025 so self-funded Toby Doeden has surpassed him in the SDGOP gubernatorial primary.

In 2026, 70.5% of the state legislative incumbents running for election in South Dakota will face primary contests, a record high since 2010. In total, 55 incumbents face contested primaries across the South Dakota House and Senate. The average number of incumbents contested each election cycle since 2010 was 24. All 55 of the contested incumbents are Republicans. [Ballotpedia]

And from South Dakota's favorite former teevee anchorman, Shad Olson.

So, the latest "smear Toby Doeden" messaging is a string of vague and stupid musings about shadowy, scary, bogeyman "Dark Money PACs" supposedly controlled by Doeden, publishing Jon Hansen's voting record. The Black Helicopters of the 2026 South Dakota gubernatorial primary.

Because to the children of perpetual victimhood in the hypocritical slander squadron, any unfounded personal slander of Toby Doeden is fair game, while even the slightest published critique of Jon's voting record is "mudslinging" and "conduct unbecoming."

Rumors of "Dark Money PACs".... spread like the typical Katie Hoffmann bullshit that has become the lasting hallmark of Hansen Lems and their idiot surrogates. The panic is real.

Hint: Starting a dozen more facebook groups and pages doesn't extend your reach, nor conceal your identities.

Jon Hansen, taking big pharma campaign checks from Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Bayer pharmaceutical.... that's real.

Jon Hansen taking contributions from Dennis Daugaard and diminutive RINO hitman and crank, Lee Schoenbeck, also real. See the screenshots.

AFP, Odenbach and Hansen using PAC money to gas up the biggest idiots in South Dakota politics to be their slandering surrogate squadron, that's real.

If beating Dusty had actually mattered to any of you, the straightest line between two points would have been uniting behind the already well known outsider candidate in the race. If beating Dusty were the goal, (instead of praising him as a "Really great guy,") your boy wouldn't have jumped Toby's public announce date.

On a technical note, and with the origins of advertising notwithstanding, whether by Dusty Johnson, Larry Rhoden or Marvin the Martian, simply publishing Jon's voting record IS NOT negative campaigning. Grow up.

NO matter what the children of perpetual victimhood might claim.

And since handing out campaign advice seems the predilection of Hansen's cadre of cat moms and furbabies, maybe have Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, or Bayer chip in a little more dough to help Jon fight back.

Feast your eyes....

Feds boosting ethanol but North Dakota soils are shot, too

Aquifer sources are not considered high quality for irrigation because of their salinity levels but fossil water from limestone contains the minerals that made us human. In my home state of South Dakota some eight million acres are salt-impacted due to seawater intrusion, fertilizer and other soil amendments, irrigation with saline water and roadway deicer applications. Soils are worn out from decades of pesticides, poor farming practices and manufactured fertilizers. Shallow wells and waterways suffer impairment from nitrate pollution making water less available especially where aquifer levels are dwindling.

In North Dakota soil salinity affects at least 6 million acres or about 13% of the state's total land area impacting over 90% of local agricultural producers. Traditional deep-rooted prairie grasses and diverse small-grain rotations have largely been replaced by heavy corn and soybean rotations allowing the water table to rise and deposit more salt at the surface. Expanding white and brown saline patches force farmers into a loop of spending money on seeds that fail to emerge exposing the trade-off between short-term financial profitability and long-term soil health.

In January, Earth hater and former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum pulled the Bureau of Land Management leases from American Prairie. In February BLM and Forest Service bumped the Animal Unit Month or AUM lease to $1.69 from $1.35 for one cow and her calf, one horse, or five sheep or goats for a month, created an app that locates unused grazing allotments then threw bison off federal land and ended conservation rules.

Roads in northwest North Dakota are reporting extremely low visibility due to blowing dust and dirt. KELOLAND News also received photos from our viewers of dust storms in South Dakota. [Dust storms rage in North Dakota and South Dakota]

Learn more from North Dakota State University.

Most of them know not to use apostrophes in plurals https://t.co/6rx2oTZZTi

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 14, 2026

Hardly new, environmental racism part of lithium, rare earth mining

In 1951 after uranium was discovered in South Dakota's southern Black Hills more than 150 mines were ripped into the Earth where the Oglala Lakota once made their winter camp. Since then, radioactive tailings from those scars have been detected in Angostura Reservoir after a dam on the Cheyenne River broke in 1962. Beginning in 1958 Homestake Mining Company gouged uranium from New Mexico leaving piles of waste rock laden with selenium causing cancers and thyroid disease in its wake. 

In 2017 Rare Element Resources said its mine in the Wyoming Black Hills just upstream of the South Dakota border on ancestral Apsáalooke and Lakota lands at the headwaters of the Redwater River, a tributary of the Belle Fourche/Cheyenne, announced financial backing from General Atomics and applied for enough water for the mineral separation process despite widespread contamination in Crook County wells. 

In 2019 because the Trump Organization despises Native Americans uranium mining was fast-tracked in and around Indian Country where tribes already suffer from diseases and birth defects wrought by radioactive contamination and in northwestern South Dakota cleanup in the Cave Hills area went for decades without remediation. 

In South Dakota, British Columbia-based United Lithium staked some 500 claims on treaty lands, some on Bureau of Land Management ground near Pringle, where lithium bearing pegmatites are already being quarried for potassium feldspars and micas. Canada-based Clean Nuclear Energy Corporation wants to drill through the water-bearing Inyan Kara Group on School and Public Lands property in Fall River County. The project is less than a mile from Craven Canyon where pictographs and rock art of the Lakota, Cheyenne, Mandan, Hidatsa, Ponca, eastern Dakota, and other Native American cultures are protected on the Black Hills National Forest.

Exploiting the General Mining Law of 1872 Australia-based South32 Ltd. is ripping into Sobaipuri O’odham and Hohokam ancestral lands at Harshaw, Arizona with plans to extract zinc, manganese and nickel. In 2023 Trump appointees rejected a lawsuit that would have blocked mineral exploration in Arizona's Patagonia Mountains despite the resultant acid mine drainage that puts wildlife at risk where half of all migratory birds in North America move through the nearby avian sanctuaries at Sonoita Creek State Natural Area and Patagonia Lake. 

Australian miners like Jervois Global want to gouge ore containing cobalt from the homelands of the Nimíipuu or Nez Perce at a Superfund site near the Frank Church Wilderness in Idaho.

Trina Lone Hill wasn’t surprised that mining companies had found lithium in South Dakota’s Black Hills. Gold and uranium had drawn drillers to the Lakota Sioux tribe’s hallowed ground in these western highlands years ago. Now, with this new mineral powering the global green-energy transition, the tribe’s historic preservation officer had one thought: “Here we go again.” 

Indigenous communities are hard hit: Roughly one in 10 proposed mines sits within 10 miles of a tribal reservation, even though reservations comprise 2 percent of U.S. land overall. “All those minerals … are right in our sacred sites,” Lone Hill said. The pattern of sidelining tribal voices and dispossession, she added, “has always been oppressive.” In Nevada, ground zero for America’s lithium rush, Western Shoshone members, much like their Sioux counterparts, have maintained that they never ceded their ancestral land. [How the Rush to Mine the Metal of the Future Echoes America’s Colonial Past]

Learn more from the South Dakota Democratic Party.

Larson inducted into SD Hall of Fame funded in part by Earth hater adversary Schieffer

Citing discovery on Indian trust ground a Republican politically motivated acting US Attorney for the District of South Dakota named Kevin Schieffer upended local control and seized a thunder lizard named Sue in 1992 from Pete Larson and the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in Hill City. 

A team led by Larson unearthed and restored another Tyrannosaurus named Stan and created replicas of what some call the world's second-finest T. rex fossil. Stan's fossilized bones were found by amateur paleontologist Stan Sacrison in the Hell Creek Formation near Buffalo, South Dakota in 1987. After a public feud and lawsuit the first Stan was awarded to Pete's brother, Neal who then teamed up with geologist Walter W. Stein Bill. 

In 2013 then-Governor Denny Daugaard appointed the disgraced Schieffer to the South Dakota Board of Regents. 

In 2019 a replica of Stan was moved from the lobby of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science to Farmington to make room for Albuquerque's new Bisti Beast exhibit. The original Stan sold for nearly $32 million in 2020 to an anonymous buyer and today is in a museum in Abu Dhabi. 

In 2022, auction house Christie's withdrew a T-rex skeleton from an event after experts, including Larson, noticed just 79 original bones and over 200 cast from Stan in the fossil known as Shen which was excavated from a portion of the Hell Creek Formation in McCone County, Montana.

Pete Larson has since co-authored and published findings from a study of the effects the Chicxulub asteroid impact had on Laramidia after the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction and on the Hell Creek Formation near Tanis, North Dakota.

Today, Schieffer is a lifetime contributor to the South Dakota Hall of Fame into which Pete Larson has been inducted.

"A Visionary in Paleontology:" Operating from Hill City, SD, for over 50 years, Peter Larson heads Black Hills Institute, the world’s largest private fossil company. Internationally known for work with T. rex specimens Sue and Stan, he has authored over 80 scientific articles, shaped federal fossil collection policy, and built a collaborative community spanning business, academia, and government. Peter believes discovery is richer when done together. [press release]

Montana loses attempt to block Native voting

In an effort to reverse voter apathy in Indian Country the Montana Democratic Party became the first state party to formally include Indigenous as equitable partners. Montana is home to 12 Indigenous languages three of which are at risk of going extinct after Donald Trump weaponized a novel coronavirus strain killing many Assiniboine, Gros Ventre and Montana Salish elders. 

President Joe Biden restored the White House Tribal Nations Summit after Herr Trump declared war on Indian Country and undercounted Indigenous Americans because Earth hating Republicans want citizens to believe democracy isn’t for everybody. 

American Civil Liberties Union of Montana, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Native American Rights Fund sued to reverse another attempt to restrict Indigenous people from voting.

A Montana district court has blocked a new state law that would have reduced Election Day voter registration hours, ruling that the measure likely violates the constitutional right to vote and disproportionately harms Indigenous voters living in rural reservation communities. The law, passed during the 2025 Montana Legislative session, would have eliminated the final eight hours of Election Day voter registration access across the state. Civil rights organizations argued that the state failed to justify the restrictions imposed by the legislation. [Montana Court Blocks Law Limiting Indigenous Voters’ Access to Election Day Registration]

Indian Country has won victory after victory by relying on protections in the Voting Rights Act. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Callais weakens the safeguards guaranteed under Section 2 of the VRA, undercutting a critical tool for defending voting rights. Learn more: buff.ly/oyhcHej

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— Native American Rights Fund (@nativerights.bsky.social) May 6, 2026 at 3:05 PM

The SAVE Act is drawing criticism from Native American civic groups concerning its impact on Native voting rights. The bill would require proof of citizenship documents to register to vote, raising questions about whether Tribal IDs can be used. #VotingRights #NativeVote @fdnv.bsky.social

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— Public News Service (@publicnewsservice.bsky.social) February 19, 2026 at 12:00 PM

Guest post: free-roaming horses are unsustainable

Editor’s note: in 2018 my trail camera caught a cougar drinking at the trough under the windmill so when The Horse Shelter just east of Cerrillos reported two foals were killed a few years ago nobody was very surprised. An Appaloosa mare that foaled in 2023 showed up without it several weeks later so the logical conclusion was that a cougar took it. She just delivered again and the local herd has doubled in size hooking up with another probably from the Kewa Pueblo.

DEAR WILD HORSE ADVOCATES: You can't have it both ways

One of the biggest contradictions in modern wild horse debates is hearing people insist that every family band must remain completely intact while also arguing that inbreeding is a major concern. Those positions are not fully compatible under basic population genetics.

Family bands are social structures, not genetic management units. Long-term genetic health depends on effective population size (Ne), breeding diversity, dispersal, and gene flow (Waples et al., 2013; Hoban et al., 2021). When populations become smaller, geographically restricted, or behaviourally closed, relatedness and homozygosity increase over time because the same lineages repeatedly breed within a limited population pool (Thompson et al., 2024).

Importantly, wild horses do not naturally remain in their natal bands forever. As horses reach sexual maturity, young stallions typically disperse from their birth bands, and some mares disperse as well (Linklater, 2013; Nuñez et al., 2016). This natal dispersal is a normal behavioural mechanism that promotes gene flow and reduces close inbreeding in free-ranging horse populations (Linklater, 2013). Preventing movement between groups or restricting populations into isolated management areas interferes with those natural dynamics.

In free-ranging horse populations, most foals do not remain permanently in their natal band once they reach sexual maturity. Both colts and fillies naturally disperse, although males usually leave earlier and more consistently than females. Dispersal is a well-documented behavioural mechanism that reduces inbreeding risk in equids (Feh, 1999; Berger, 1986).

There is no single universal percentage because dispersal rates vary by habitat, density, stallion turnover, and herd structure, but studies consistently show that the majority of offspring eventually leave their natal group. Feh (1999), studying semi-feral horses, reported that dominant stallions expelled approximately 82–84% of daughters, greatly reducing opportunities for sire-daughter breeding.

Actual sire-daughter breeding rates in naturally functioning herds are relatively low, but a consequence of restricting dispersal of family bands. Berger (1986) found that only about 3.9% of matings involved fathers and their genetic daughters in a free-ranging horse population. Feh (1999) later found somewhat higher rates (~10–11%) under certain conditions, particularly when normal dispersal patterns were disrupted or when horses had prior captive management histories.

These findings demonstrate that horse societies are dynamic, not static “family units,” and that natural dispersal behaviours play a major role in limiting close inbreeding. Corona, from Sand Wash Basin, has been observed exhibiting reproductive behaviour with his presumed daughters on numerous occasions, with observations suggesting the pairings may have produced a foal.

At the same time, many advocates oppose nearly all removals, the introduction of horses from outside, and the disruption of existing bands. But if populations remain closed with limited dispersal and limited external gene flow, close relatives will inevitably breed over time, particularly in smaller herds or fragmented habitats (Hoban et al., 2021; Thompson et al., 2024).

Modern conservation genetics, therefore, focuses on maintaining an adequate effective population size and preserving gene flow, not simply preserving every social grouping indefinitely (Frankham et al., 2017; Hoban et al., 2021). Social stability matters, but it cannot replace population genetics.

You cannot simultaneously argue that:

1. No horses should ever be removed,

2. Family bands must remain permanently intact,

3. Outside gene flow should be restricted or prevented,

4. There will be no increase in inbreeding risk.

Those arguments fundamentally conflict with established conservation genetics principles.

----------------------------------------

References:

Berger, J. (1986). Wild horses of the Great Basin: Social competition and population size. University of Chicago Press.

Feh, C. (1999). Alliances and reproductive success in Camargue stallions. Animal Behaviour, 57(3), 705–713.

Feh, C., & Munkhtuya, B. (2008). Male infanticide and paternity analyses in a socially natural herd of Przewalski’s horses: Sexual selection? Behavioural Processes, 78(3), 335–339.

Frankham R, Ballou JD, Ralls K, et al. Genetic Management of Fragmented Animal and Plant Populations. Oxford University Press, 2017.

Hoban S, Bruford MW, Funk WC, et al. Global commitments to conserving and monitoring genetic diversity are now necessary and feasible. BioScience. 2021;71(9):964-976.

Linklater WL. Adaptive explanation in socio-ecology: lessons from the Equidae. Biological Reviews. 2013;88(1):182-198.

Nuñez CMI, Adelman JS, Mason C, Rubenstein DI. Immunocontraception decreases group fidelity in a feral horse population during the non-breeding season. Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 2016;183:13-17.

Rubenstein, D. I. (1986). Ecology and sociality in horses and zebras. In D. I. Rubenstein & R. W. Wrangham (Eds.), Ecological aspects of social evolution (pp. 282–302). Princeton University Press.

Thompson MA, McCann BE, Rhen T, Simmons R. Population genomics provide insight into ancestral relationships and diversity of the feral horses of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Ecology and Evolution. 2024;14:e11197.

Waples RS, Luikart G, Faulkner JR, Tallmon DA. Simple life-history traits explain key effective population size ratios across diverse taxa. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 2013;280:20131339.

Cresciente (dun) & Poseidon (black/dark bay)

Sand Wash Basin, Colorado, 2017 

Equus ferus- Wild Horse Photography®

Amalgamating Science & Art

Karen McLain Studio

Corps warning of low Missouri River levels as pipeline boondoggle doubles in price

Recall the fight over surplus water in the Missouri River basin when Marty Jackley blamed the US Army Corps of Engineers after the Oahe Dam dropped sediment that ultimately filled up some areas in South Dakota’s Moreau River. 

Hardly coincidentally, an Earth hating former governor of South Dakota who built a house in a swamp knowing Lake Sharpe was filling with silt sued the Corps after he was flooded out. 

Today, the Lewis and Clark Rural Water System exists because farmers have ruined their own wells and the Big Sioux River but South Dakota will flout Waters of the United States rulings until the cows come home unless or until downstream states cry foul.  

And speaking of poisoning your own aquifers Earth hating Republicans are begging for more federal money for a 165-mile, 71-inch pipeline from the Missouri River to Rapid City that will cost at least $4 billion then lift water nearly two thousand feet in elevation for lawns, Rally campgrounds and Ellsworth Air Force Base carving through Native America for white privilege instead of empowering communities to harvest snowmelt and rainwater while rural communities are dependent on politicians who exploit need.

The United States Army Corps of Engineers says April 2026 runoff in the Missouri River Basin above Sioux City, IA, was 51% of average– or 1.5 million acre-feet. John Remus, chief of the Corps’ Missouri River Basin Water Management Division, says dry conditions are present in 74% of the basin. He says drought conditions are expected to persist through July with some expansion likely in Montana and South Dakota. As a result, the runoff forecast was lowered by 0.7 MAF from last month. [Missouri River upper basin runoff forecast lowered due to dry conditions]

South Dakota receives zero dollars for hydropower generation but eminent domain forces transmission lines to be built so how is that in the state’s best interest? Silt deposits are the responsibility of the state so AG Jackley should sue the mining and ag industries for that runoff instead of blaming the Corps.

“'Ultimately a lawsuit was filed in 2003 [and] the federal court judge held for liability against the United States and held that they were the proximate cause of injury. That was back in 2022. As I sit here today, the United States still has not resolved that case. It has created major problems with the environment and other concerns. The United States held that trust lands that involved ranchers and native americans [sic] have no property interests. And equally so on range units – where you combine parcels of land – set up by the BIA. They ultimately determined that that also is not a property interest. So they put these ranchers in jeopardy of their farming operations by bad decision they’ve used the civil courts to drag out litigation,' said AG Jackley." [Jackley, Sullivan, Byfield speak in House lawfare roundtable]

With irony as a casuality US Senator Mike Rounds continues to push for legislative changes to the Corps' Master Manual to prioritize flood control over the threatened piping plover and endangered pallid sturgeon and demands better mitigation strategies for the Missouri River basin.

Tapio qualifies for November ballot, will siphon votes from Earth haters

God certainly works in mysterious ways, innit? 

Neal Tapio turned in enough signatures to run as an unaffiliated candidate for the South Dakota House of Representatives in District 5. In 2018, Tapio ran for the state’s lone seat in the US House of Representatives and finished third in the primary with approximately 24% of the vote losing to Earth hater Dusty Johnson. 

Today, it's very brave of former State Senator Tapio to expose the South Dakota Republican Party as the white extremist cult it is and he knows he can't win in a primary for statewide office that's fixed against him. In his appeals to conservatives Tapio has said that too few adolescents are being imprisoned and that he believes the people living in Oyate communities are victims of "incest and molestation" that lead to federal dependence, despair and high suicide rates.

Earth haters Byron Callies and Matt Roby are running for D-5 House but incumbent Josephine Garcia is running instead in the primary against fellow Earth hater, Glen Vilhauer for the State Senate in the 2026 cycle.

Swanson wants to go to Pierre

Editor's note: in South Dakota House District 30 the two Earth haters who advance from the primary will face Democrat Bret Swanson from the Hermosa area in the general election. He was interviewed by a newspaper that covers a Black Hills county named for a war criminal.

Swanson is a college instructor who served on the board of the Humane Society of the Black Hills for three years and the Rapid City Area Schools Board of Education for five years.

Swanson said he is running for a seat in the state house because he wants the constituents of District 30 to know there is viable choice between those who are servile to the ruling party and someone who wants to help them. He said he would bring open-mindedness, honesty and creativity to the position.

As for the biggest issues facing District 30 over the next few years, Swanson said the western part of the state is facing an historic drought, which is directly related to protection of our watershed. 

“The state needs to raise the minimum wage, offer childcare assistance and protect people with exorbitant medical bills from bankruptcy,” he said. “There needs to be a comprehensive approach to addressing educational deficiencies; mandatory early childhood education should be part of that.”

Swanson said for context, the largest publicly funded project in the state’s history is a penitentiary—$350 million for a “big, fat, ugly jail. Not a school, not a museum, not a power plant, not even a sports arena,” he said. “A monument to a failed system. This is a symbol of how shortsighted and backwards the state is and has been. Basically, most people want practical solutions to the problems they face not empty talk about who is or is not allowed to play sports.”

Swanson said relying on sales tax for property tax relief is regressive and wrong, and in the end it doesn’t solve the problem.

“The state agricultural production tax is fair,” he said. “That should be expanded.”

He also said there is a serious threat to Black Hills water quality from large out-of-state mining interests and there is a need for strong legislation to protect the watershed.

Swanson said only half the state’s voters are Republican and yet 89 percent of the legislature is Republican. In District 30, Republicans have long dominated.

“Has the district benefitted from this dominance? If you like the status quo with the rich and powerful always calling the shots, taking advantage of a gamed system, you can continue to send those who support the unfair, exploitive establishment to Pierre,” he said. “Or you can choose an alternative that puts middle- and working-class people first.”    

Read the rest here.

Olson and the war among SD Earth haters

South Dakota's favorite handicapper, Shad Olson brings more truth to the war within the SDGOP.

So, a brief description. and timeline of the power struggle inside the SDGOP.

Once MAGA patriots claimed the reins of key positions in the statewide Republican organization, the RINO donor class put the word out to stop ALL corporate and lucrative personal donations to the state party and redirected those deep pocketed donors to "South Dakota Strong," "Rushmore Principles," "Sensible South Dakota," and the mushroom-sprouted and fertilizer filled establishment PACs in order to support RINO-establocrat candidates in primary races across the state.

This discontinuation of corporate support was of course immediately and handily taken up as narrative fodder against the MAGA patriot leadership of the SDGOP by conjoined idiot twins, Katie Hoffmann and Pat Powers, who both produce dozens of badly written and painfully composed screeds, railing against the "incompetence" of, and "lack of support" for, present SDGOP leadership and the importance of having their equally stupid and politically compromised quantities returned to the throne in every county and precinct in South Dakota.

"Put the RINOs back in control and the money will flow once again."

Of course it will. Because the corporatist spigots will be cranked back to full.

This manufactured drought of dried up corporate support creates the illusion of a lack of statewide party loyalty, seized upon by the tittering twits and out-of-joint establishment hacks who were displaced in the MAGA wave, 2018-2024. The same wave that resulted in Pat Powers expulsion and exile from his previous SDGOP "official blogger" perch in same timeframe. An $85,000 gig for the news judgment of a TMZ tabloid artist and the writing skills of a toddler.

Of equal import and simultaneous to his present run for South Dakota Governor, Dusty Johnson has waged nearly a one-man ground war over the past two years to groom, boost and restore precinct and county SDGOP leadership to RINO hands... all backed and capitalized with Dusty warchest dollars and the supplicant narrative retardation of the Hoffmann-Powers paste eating TBI brigade.

Don't be fooled by the phony smear. As with everything else in their echo chamber of lies and fabrication, it's coming directly out of their leaky diapers. Size XXXL.

South Dakota is flunking high school

Source: WalletHub

Daily Digest and the latest in South Dakota's red state failure: 50th in financial education performance and access, 49th in financial education growth, 49th in high school financial literacy, 48th in high schools ranked in top 10% and 48th in projected high school financial literacy grade by 2028.

Recall Earth hating former South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds won election to the US Senate for advocating the dissolution of the US Department of Education so he is currently sponsoring a bill that would eradicate the DoEd, curtail federal funding for kids and South Dakota still hates teachers. Students in South Dakota are fifth in overall rank of those in debt and suffer that load at the highest proportion in the US. The Bendagate state is 37th in grant and work opportunities rank and is tied for 42nd in student work opportunities.

Daily Digest: Trumpistan still struggling

Straight off my bingo card, here's the latest in South Dakota politics!

Creighton University's Ernie Goss has been warning that the Trump Organization is bad for American agriculture and follows the economies of several breadbasket states including South Dakota's—one of the slowest growing in the US.

April's employment index slipped in Trumpland, supply managers expect input prices to spike by more than five percent in the next six months and South Dakota’s manufacturing sector lost 400 jobs in the last year, losing nearly one percent of its manufacturing base. 50.0 is growth neutral.

Goss notes the survey's trade indicators are still negative. The new export orders index rose to a weak 49.9 from 48.9 in March. Goss attributes recent retaliation from higher U.S. tariffs and trade restrictions as the culprit. "That's still an issue with President Trump and his volatile policies on tariffs," he said. "I consider this volatility to be a self-inflicted wound. The president doesn't see it that way, but most economists see it that way. Trade and imports, not good." He adds supply managers indicate the Iran war is having an impact on manufacturing. "One in three of the supply managers indicated the Iran war was causing supply chain disruptions," said Goss, "stockouts, stock reallocations--this is, your company can only buy this amount of inputs. We're seeing that--that's certainly an issue. We saw supply chain disruptions as a measure that rose significantly for the month, with significantly higher prices on inputs." [source]

Former SD School of Mines scientist one of several missing in New Mexico

Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico is part of a network created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Chemical Sciences Laboratory to monitor anthropogenic aerosols in the Earth's gases of life even as emissions released by oil and gas extraction in the Permian Basin threaten Texas and the other horrible red states on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. NOAA wants to be able to detect whether Solar Radiation Modification (SRM), sometimes called solar geoengineering or albedo modification, is happening. Sandia is also home to the Plasma Research Facility and is operated by a subsidiary of Honeywell International under contract with the US Department of Energy. 

In 2016 DOE and Republican former US Representative from New Mexico's First District then President Heather Wilson of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, later Air Force Secretary in the first Trump term, a Rapid City firm specializing in toxic waste floated the idea of a deep borehole in Spink or Haakon Counties where contaminated materials could be dumped. 

In South Dakota’s Black Hills, DOE, New Mexico's Sandia Labs, Los Alamos National Laboratory, South Dakota School of Mines and others are collaborating on the potential for generating electricity using Enhanced Geothermal Systems. While Wilson was president of SDSMT, Denny Sanford donated millions to the university including $2 million to help build a new student wellness and recreation center. Wilson's LinkedIn profile highlights her oversight of the underground lab made possible by a $70 million gift from the now-disgraced Sanford.

Just recently, current University of Texas at El Paso President Heather Wilson was among 24 members of the National Science Board terminated by the Trump Organization on April 24, 2026. The mass firing was delivered via email, ousting members of the body that oversees the $9 billion National Science Foundation just weeks before her term expired on May 10.

The FBI is now investigating the deaths and disappearances of thirteen scientists, researchers, and workers connected to America's nuclear weapons and aerospace programs, reacting to pressure from a public increasingly alarmed by what appears to be a troubling pattern. Nearly half of the thirteen people have direct ties to Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories, large weapons science labs in New Mexico. 

Ingrid Lane vanished on State Route 144, a narrow dirt road that runs through the Jemez Mountains. Her black 2019 Subaru Impreza hatchback was found on 144 about 11 miles north of NM-126, near San Antonio Mountain and the Valles Caldera National Preserve, at 9,100 feet elevation and out of cellular range. Lane's educational background reflects someone operating at the highest levels of scientific research. She attended Johns Hopkins University, studied at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, and completed biomedical engineering coursework at the University of New Mexico. [Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez for THE PUGILIST]

Cesar Chavez's name is being stricken from public facilities in New Mexico after revelations of sexual misconduct yet Denny Sanford's name is still smeared all over South Dakota.

Told you so.

8 September, 2025.

140 pound weakling Howdy Doody Dusty Johnson is way ahead in funding since his grift never stops raising money so the South Dakota Democratic Party needs start running opposition ads on every commercial radio station in South Dakota. Johnson needs to be held accountable for coddling a would be dictator, building a war chest on the Big Lie, for his failures to support Medicaid, for voting against marriage, for not moving on immigration reform and for his culpability in driving talent from South Dakota. Johnson went from being a likable moderate to becoming just another tool of the oligarchs who hoard trillions in South Dakota’s banks and trusts because, hey, that’s where the money is.

South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden told a gathering of journalists Friday that one of his challengers, U.S. House Rep. Dusty Johnson, attempted to blackmail him into not entering the gubernatorial race. "They let me know he had more than just the $6 (million) or $7 million in his personal fund. That he also had these dark money super PACs that he could maintain cover on. In fact, that's exactly what he did when he released the ads," Rhoden said. [Rhoden: Johnson tried to keep me from entering governor's race]

BHE, NWE merger rankles MFU

Democrat Brian Schweitzer was governor when this interested party was living in Montana but after leaving office he chose not to run for the US Senate allowing raving lunatic Steve Daines to sashay into the seat. In 2021 Schweitzer raked Montana Earth haters after they gave special treatment to NorthWestern Energy calling it "a fine mix of Socialism and Crony Capitalism to match Russian President Vladimir Putin." 

Also in 2021 power lines owned by NWE caused a wildfire that destroyed most of Denton and liability lawsuits from that incident are still being litigated. In 2025, drafted in part by NWE, Kalispell Earth hater Amy Regier was lead sponsor of Montana House Bill 490 that protects utilities from liability for wildfires they start. 

In January the three Earth haters on the South Dakota Public Utilities Cartel approved a rate increase for NWE. And since utilities are not your friends the absence of transparency in the proposed merger of Black Hills Corporation and NorthWestern Energy is worrying the Montana Farmers Union. 

Walter Schweitzer is a third-generation farmer and rancher elected President of the MFU in 2019 and previously worked on his brother Brian's campaigns.

Based on the questions MFU leaders have asked and the [Montana Public Service] Commission docket so far, the proposed acquisition is not designed to help the Montana family farmer. It is designed to build a corporate balance sheet large enough to serve the bottomless appetite of multinational data centers. NWE denies wanting the acquisition for data centers, yet outreach to investors focuses on this acquisition as a necessary step to serve data centers. As in the past, ratepayers are being deceived. We cannot allow a distant holding company to treat Montana’s water and power as commodities to be extracted for Wall Street and Silicon Valley. It is time to put Montana farmers first. [Schweitzer: Northern Ag Network]

In a related story, Blackstone Infrastructure is in the process of acquiring TXNM Energy the parent company of PNM, New Mexico’s largest electric utility for $11.5 billion in a deal announced in May 2025 and is currently undergoing regulatory review while facing significant opposition.