South Dakota landowners, legislature at odds over Summit carbon pipeline

By Joe Fisher
Oct. 4, 2024 / 

Ed Fischbach, a landowner from Spink County, SD, and member of the South Dakota Easement Team, speaks out against RL 21 during a landowner meeting in Aberdeen, SD, in July. Photo courtesy of Ed Fischbach

Oct. 4 (UPI) -- The rights of landowners and local control are on the ballot in South Dakota as Summit Carbon Solutions seeks to build a carbon pipeline across the Midwest.

Despite South Dakota's Public Utilities Commission denying Summit's application to build nearly 500 miles of pipeline through South Dakota, the state legislature approved a bill that could help the company push forward with its plans.

Referred Law 21, or Senate Bill 201, would allow counties to impose a $1 per foot charge on CO2 pipelines if they received 45Q tax credits in the prior year. Revenue from this could be given to property owners throughout the county in the form of tax relief. It establishes some requirements for pipeline installation such as minimum depth and operator responsibility for damage to drain tiles, leaks and failure.

The 45Q federal tax credit is meant to incentivize decarbonization by industrial power plants. It is available for 12 years after a company puts carbon capture equipment into service. The deadline to begin construction on qualifying projects is 20

A coalition of landowners has risen up to challenge the bill by putting a citizen-initiated referendum on the ballot.

The bill was signed by Gov. Kristi Noem on March 26 and the coalition had 90 days after to collect about 17,500 signatures for a referendum to be placed on the ballot. It collected more than 34,000 and about 92% were validated.

"It's nonpartisan," landowner Ed Fischbach, member of the South Dakota Easement Team, told UPI. "I'm working with people I never thought I'd be working with before. We don't agree on anything else. But this is about property rights and decency. We have liberal Democrats and far-right MAGA Republicans working together on this one goal."

Rep. Roger Chase, a Republican, told UPI that RL21 will bring an economic impact to the entire state.

"Innovation is key to South Dakota's growth, and that's why I'm voting Yes on Referred Law 21," Chase wrote in an email. "It's not just about farming-it's about driving economic impact across the state, creating more jobs, and strengthening county services. This is an opportunity to invest in the future of South Dakota, and that's why my vote is a Yes on RL21."

The bill was referred to by the legislature as the Landowner Bill of Rights. However, opponents of the pipeline have come to call it the "Summit Bill of Rights," as it preempts local regulations and limits the Public Utilities Commission's grounds for denying an application.

The coalition is encouraging voters to vote "No," on Nov. 5.

A 'Trojan horse'

"From the very beginning, my organization, we've referred to this bill as a Trojan horse," Chase Jensen, senior organizer for Dakota Rural Action, told UPI. "There are a lot of mediocre benefits being tossed out, generally to obscure or to hide the explicit attempts to gut local authority when it comes to the regulation of these projects."

There are two components of the bill that pipeline opponents mainly object to: The preemption of local ordinances and the apparent directive for the Public Utilities Commission to approve applications such as Summit's.

Jensen is also concerned that counties will not be able to impose taxes on future projects if they are built after the 45Q tax credit deadline.

"This is a surgical attack on the mechanisms that kept this company from doing whatever it wants," Jensen said. "It is intentionally ambiguous but basically they can claim that something that has to do with energy, commerce or transmission deserves to be permitted."

Jensen argues that the bill puts the onus on counties to prove their ordinances are legal, rather than defending them after they have been challenged. It is a reversal of order that he likens to flipping the burden of proof.

"The impact of this is pretty tremendous," he said. "What we're saying is we assume everything passed locally is going to be restrictive and local governments are bad actors. So they need to bear the burden of proof to the Public Utilities Commission."

Path to the ballot

The path to the ballot was more than three years in the making, according to Fischbach. He has been referred to as the "godfather of the pipeline fight." He launched his opposition to the Summit pipeline in July 2021, after receiving a letter from the company that included a map of his property.

"They tried to ram it through really fast," Fischbach said. "I started talking to other neighbors and we went to public meetings Summit had. We said we need to organize an opposition to this thing. Nobody trusted this company."

Landowners in Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and North Dakota have given testimony during public hearings that allege Summit has not been transparent in its attempt to commandeer permission to build on their land. Attorney Brian Jorde, representing more than 1,000 landowners in lawsuits against Summit, said his clients have described an aggressive pressure campaign by Summit that included complaints of harassment.

"It's a consistent pattern," Jorde told UPI. "There's hours of testimony in trials I've had of that type of behavior."

Summit scored a legal victory in the South Dakota circuit court system, allowing it to perform surveys without landowner consent. The state supreme court reversed the decision in a 42-page opinion.

The most significant part of the supreme court ruling was that the court found Summit is not a common carrier. A common carrier is a business that offers a transport service to the public for a fee. Some examples include rail companies, airlines and public utility companies.

Common carriers have the right to exercise eminent domain.

The supreme court found that Summit is not a common carrier because the CO2 transported through the pipeline would be sequestered underground with no apparent productive use.

"The legislature's decision to delegate the power of eminent domain to pipeline companies -- must be understood to require a public use that actually serves the public," the opinion reads. "A pipeline cannot become a common carrier simply by declaring itself to be one."

It also found that Summit obstructed the landowners' ability to acquire depositions and documents that were part of the circuit court case.

The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission listened to the concerns of county commissioners and landowners as it considered Summit's application. The pipeline would span about half of the state of Iowa with branches in Minnesota and Nebraska. It would then cross South Dakota to reach a carbon sequestration site in North Dakota.

Several county commissions in South Dakota unanimously issued moratoriums on the pipeline and established ordinances that included setback requirements. Summit sued the counties, including Spink County where Fischbach lives. The lawsuits claimed that the counties violated federal law by imposing moratoriums.

"The commissioners didn't budge," Fischbach said. "They passed these ordinances and setbacks."

In August 2023, Summit filed a motion requesting that the Public Utilities Commission overrule those local ordinances so it could build as it had planned. It withdrew the motion days later and, following an evidentiary hearing, the commission denied the application.

In its order to deny, the commission wrote that there were "material misstatements" in Summit's application regarding its ability to comply with local ordinances. It found that the proposed route violated local ordinances and must be denied. It also denied an application from Navigator CO2. That pipeline project was canceled in October 2023.

On Jan. 31, the Landowner Bill of Rights was first read in the state legislature. On March 6, it passed the Senate by a 24-10 vote, then passed the House 39-31.

'Political earthquake'

The coalition of landowners threw their support behind congressional challengers in the June primary. Six House and five Senate incumbents, all Republicans, were defeated.

"They were calling it the political earthquake in South Dakota," Fischbach said. "We believe we have flipped the House of Representatives. We believe there is going to be all new leadership. We're hopeful in the state senate."

A number of prominent political figures have supported the Summit pipeline project. Bruce Rastetter, the founder and executive chairman of Summit Agricultural Group, is the former president of the Iowa Board of Regents. He is also one of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds' biggest donors. Summit was also a platinum level donor to Gov. Noem's inaugural ball in 2019.

Summit employs former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, as its senior policy adviser and Jess Vilsack, son of Prsident Joe Biden's Secretary of Agriculture and Tom Vilsack, as its general counsel.

Former South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture Walt Bones owns land on the pipeline's proposed route. He emailed UPI comments supporting the project.

"RL21 proactively supports landowners, like our family, that could be impacted by this project which will positively affect our local Ag economy," Bones wrote. "If we can add value to our 800 million bushels of corn, the potential impact is massive. This is a huge opportunity for South Dakota, we need to make it happen."

If RL21 passes, Fischbach and Jensen expect Summit will file a new application quickly.

"At that point, it begins again," Jensen said. "There will be a new push for counties to pass ordinances, even though their legal standing will be diminished. Citizens will continue to lobby their local governments. We would have to fight just as hard to enforce them."

If it fails and the coalition's bid is successful, they plan to push for eminent domain reform in the next legislative session.

Cruelty is all the Republicans have left

Thom Hartmann
August 24, 2024

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) speaks to members of the press on the steps of the House of Representatives at the U.S. Capitol on May 8, 2024. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

During the 1950s, Republicans were the party that promoted labor unions, Social Security, and a top 91% income tax bracket and 70% estate tax on the morbidly rich. Dwight Eisenhower successfully campaigned on what we’d call a progressive agenda for re-election in 1956.

During the Reagan years, Republicans embraced Milton Friedman’s neoliberalism with its free trade, opposition to unions, ending free college, and tax cuts for the fat cats. They called themselves “the party of new ideas.” They may have done more harm than good, but for most Republicans it was a good-faith effort.

Today, they’ve pretty much given up on all of that. All they have left is cruelty.

When Governor Tim Walz gave his heartwarming acceptance speech Wednesday night here at the DNC in Chicago, his son Gus was caught on camera proudly proclaiming, through tear-streaked eyes, “That’s my dad!”

The response from Trumpy Republicans was immediate: Ann Coulter wrote, “Talk about weird.” Rightwing hate jock Jay Weber posted, “Meet my son, Gus. He’s a blubbering b---- boy. His mother and I are very proud.” Trumpy podcaster Mike Crispi ridiculed Walz’s “stupid crying son,” adding, “You raised your kid to be a puffy beta male. Congrats.” Another well-known podcaster on the right, Alec Lace, said, “Get that kid a tampon already.”

Compassion for a learning-disabled child is dead on the right: all they have left is cruelty.

Ronald Reagan helped shepherd through Congress the most consequential border bill in American history, and when it needed updating Oklahoma’s Republican Senator James Lankford worked with Democrats to update it in a meaningful way. Trump demanded Republicans kill the legislation, invoking the memory of his tearing over 5,500 babies away from their mothers and trafficking them into fly-by-night “adoption” schemes (around 1000 are still missing) and his demand that the border patrol shoot immigrants in the legs.

Trump’s acolytes in Congress don’t even pretend any more to have a border policy: all they have left is cruelty.

Stephen Miller and 16 Republican state attorneys general are suing for the right to tear apart about a half million American families because at least one member of their family has brown skin and is not yet a US citizen.


Their hatred has almost no limit because all they have left is cruelty.

President George HW Bush worked with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to unwind the USSR in the hope of creating a democratic Russia. Neither expected Vladimir Putin to turn that nation into a virtual concentration camp where gays are routinely murdered, child pornography is legal (and they’ve kidnapped over 700,000 Ukrainian children), and dissenters are tortured, poisoned, and sent to brutal Siberian gulags. Donald Trump celebrates Putin, calling his invasion of Ukraine “genius” and “savvy,” handing Putin’s ambassador a western spy and top-secret information in his first month in office, and trying to abandon America’s traditional role as a moral leader in the world.

Trump’s GOP has abandoned our founding principles: all they have left is cruelty.


During the 2020 election, Trump followers tried to run a Biden/Harris campaign bus off the road in Texas, threatening to kill the occupants (which they believed included Kamala Harris). A crazed Trump supporter broke into Nancy Pelosi’s home and attacked her 82-year-old husband with a hammer. Trump tweeted a picture of the bus being attacked, writing below it, “I LOVE TEXAS!” and repeatedly makes jokes about the attack on Pelosi, as if to encourage future attacks on the families of other Democratic politicians. Most recently, Donald Trump posted a picture on social media of Joe Biden tied up in the back of a pickup truck with a bullet hole in his forehead.

Not a single elected Republican (as best as I can find with a pretty thorough web search) has condemned any of these, because all they have left is cruelty.

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis turned down federal money that would have fed 2.1 million low-income children in his state; he was one of 13 Republican governors to do the same, in a nation where one in seven children — over 11 million every year — go to bed hungry.


We are literally the only developed country in the world with a massive child hunger problem because all Republicans have left is cruelty.

When President Obama succeeded in passing and signing the Affordable Care Act, it offered every state funds to expand Medicaid to give healthcare coverage to all their low-income citizens with the federal government covering 90% of the cost. To this day, ten states under Republican control have refused to accept the money, leading to millions of preventable illnesses and early deaths.

Republican states could have joined all the Blue states and every other developed country in the world by providing universal healthcare, but refuse to because all they have left is cruelty.

When a 10-year-old girl was raped and impregnated, Republicans like Congressman Jim Jordan, Governor Kristi Noem, Fox’s Tucker Carlson and Jesse Waters, and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost ridiculed the claim. When the rape and pregnancy were proven and the girl fled Ohio to a state where abortion was legal to terminate the pregnancy, Indiana's Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita promised to launch an “investigation.”

Rokita didn’t investigate the rape, however: he instead went after the physician who performed the abortion. Because cruelty is all Republicans have left.

When Donald Trump lost the 2020 election by seven million votes, he sent a violent mob against the US Capitol. As they tried to murder the vice president and speaker of the house, covered the walls of the building with feces and defaced priceless paintings, Trump gleefully watched on live television for over three hours while refusing to call in the national guard or take any other meaningful action.


Five civilians and three police officers died as the result of his sending that murderous mob because all he and his GOP have left is cruelty.

This week Americans saw Democrats display compassion, care, respect, and reverence for our democracy. We saw the best of this country, hope for the future, and actual plans to improve the lives of Americans.

Last month, in sharp contrast, we watched the Republican convention and saw, instead, a cavalcade of anger, bile, grievance, hate, and, of course, cruelty.


Because cruelty is all Republicans have left.

‘We have nothing’: SD flood victims say government failures continue after botched warning

Joshua Haiar, South Dakota Searchlight
July 20, 2024 

Damages remain visible in the McCook Lake community on July 3, 2024, after a massive flood hit the area on June 23. (Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight)

McCOOK LAKE — Neither Morgan Speichinger nor many of her neighbors came away worried on June 23 after listening to Gov. Kristi Noem talk about flooding in the southeastern corner of South Dakota.

“Noem’s press conference made it sound like it wasn’t going to be bad for us,” Speichinger said. “There was no talk of a massive flood coming our way.”

McCook Lake catastrophe shatters complacency around old flood plans

Four hours later, Speichinger and her neighbors were fleeing for their lives, while Noem was at a political fundraiser in Tennessee, having flown out after her press conference in North Sioux City.

The floodwaters that slammed into the McCook Lake neighborhood destroyed and badly damaged dozens of homes, temporarily knocked out electricity, gas and water service, and carved deep gouges in the land.

Speichinger and some other McCook Lake residents say the effects of the botched warning have been exacerbated by a disorganized recovery effort and by Gov. Kristi Noem’s decision not to dispatch the National Guard.

“We have no idea what’s coming next for us,” said flood victim Nathaniel Cutsinger.
A press conference and a flight to Memphis


Authorities began expecting flooding as historic amounts of rain fell for three days, June 20-22, in southeast South Dakota, southwest Minnesota and northwest Iowa.

In the southeast tip of South Dakota, McCook Lake, North Sioux City and Dakota Dunes are situated alongside the Big Sioux and Missouri rivers, making the communities especially vulnerable.

At 11 a.m. on Sunday, June 23, the North Sioux City Council held an emergency meeting and activated a 48-year-old flood mitigation plan. The city got the state’s blessing to close a section of Interstate 29 and build a temporary levee across it. The temporary levee plugged a gap in permanent levies that protect parts of North Sioux City and Dakota Dunes.

Noem led a press conference later that day in North Sioux City, beginning at 2:30 p.m., that focused on the construction of the temporary levee and a voluntary evacuation order that Dakota Dunes issued for its residents.

“Knowing that’s where we’re most vulnerable,” Noem said at the time.

None of the local, state or federal authorities at the press conference clearly explained that the temporary levee was intended to direct Big Sioux River floodwaters toward McCook Lake, where the overflow would hopefully drain toward the Missouri River while causing minimal damage.

When somebody in the audience asked what McCook Lake residents should do, Noem said they should protect their personal property, “because we do anticipate that they will take in water.”

“That’s what we’re preparing for,” she 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.”


Noem shared projections during the press conference indicating the Big Sioux River in North Sioux City would peak at 42 feet by 1 p.m. the following day.

As the press conference concluded around 3 p.m., the crest projection had been updated to 42.3 feet by 7 p.m. that evening, and the projection continued to change as the situation worsened.

Sometime after the press conference, Noem flew to Memphis, Tennessee, where she was the featured speaker that evening at the Shelby County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Gala fundraiser. The event started at 6 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Central.

Phone alerts fail to reach stunned residents

Based on what Speichinger heard from the afternoon press conference, which she’d streamed on her phone, she was comfortable allowing her kids to play at a neighbor’s pool while authorities and contractors worked on the temporary interstate levee and after they completed it around 3:30 p.m.

“There were people still out in their boats on the lake as the flood was coming,” Speichinger said. “Nobody had any idea. I didn’t even know there was this diversion plan.”


She had moved into her home on Penrose Drive near the lake in 2019. Some other lake residents also lacked knowledge of the plan to divert water to McCook Lake or were caught off guard by the severity of the flooding, including a few police officers in the neighborhood, according to residents.

Speichinger said a sudden gush of water flowed through her backyard around 7 p.m.

“People were running and screaming, ‘Get out! Get out!’” she said.


Union County Emergency Management Director Jason Westcott said first responders, including two emergency rescue boat teams, conservation officers, law enforcement and firefighters were all on standby in case “the worst-case scenario happened.”

“And that’s what happened,” he said.

Those first responders immediately began alerting residents to evacuate and performing rescues, Westcott said. He targeted an alert to the smartphones of residents along the north shore of McCook Lake at 8:21 p.m.


“We were relying on other people to know about the issues going on,” he said. “A lot of stuff was happening very fast.”

Speichinger and some others said they didn’t receive the phone alert.

“I’ve only heard of a few people who got that alert,” Speichinger said. “It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The flood was here.”

Wescott said the alert system has weaknesses. He said the area’s poor cell service may have contributed to the problem, and some people may have disabled the location tracking on their phone.

“There are a million different ways you won’t get one,” he said of the alerts.

At 8:35 p.m., Westcott posted an urgent message to his office’s Facebook page.

“𝐄𝐕𝐀𝐂𝐔𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐄 𝐍𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐇 𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐔𝐗 𝐂𝐈𝐓𝐘 / 𝐌𝐂𝐎𝐎𝐊 𝐋𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐀,” the message said in bold and all-caps. “𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐓’𝐒 𝐎𝐍 𝐍𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐇 𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐄𝐗𝐈𝐓 𝟒 𝐓𝐎 𝐃𝐀𝐊𝐎𝐓𝐀 𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐘 𝐇𝐈𝐆𝐇 𝐒𝐂𝐇𝐎𝐎𝐋 – 𝐏𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐄 𝐄𝐕𝐀𝐂𝐔𝐀𝐓𝐄!”

Speichinger saw that message, although it has since been deleted from the page. Her webcam-enabled Ring Doorbell shows the water was about 3 feet high outside her home at 8:35 p.m.

Nathaniel Cutsinger was finishing up his shift at Dollar General in North Sioux City as water rushed into his home across the street from Speichinger’s.

“There was absolutely no notice of anything that was going on,” Cutsinger said.

When he got home, he waded into floodwaters to rescue his pets and an elderly neighbor.

“He was waiting at the window for someone to come,” Cutsinger said of the neighbor.

They got into Cutsinger’s Tahoe and drove down a flooded street until the vehicle stalled. Then they walked a few blocks in knee-high water to safety.

Emergency responders spent the night performing rescues, wading through knee-deep water, knocking on doors and shouting to alert residents, while others used boats to reach stranded families.

The Big Sioux River crested at 10:30 p.m., reaching a new record in North Sioux City of 44.98 feet after a 13.48-foot rise since 9:15 a.m.
Aftermath: ‘We have nothing’

An estimated 30 homes at McCook Lake were destroyed and at least 100 damaged, though Wescott said those numbers are preliminary.

Some homes were ripped from their foundations, while others collapsed or suffered severe erosion around their perimeters. Washed-out roads were littered with debris, trees were ripped from the ground, and there were dozen-feet-deep gashes in the land. Electricity, gas and sewer services were disrupted.

“We have nothing,” Cutsinger said several days after the flood. “We’re not rich people. People on this street have put everything into these houses.”

Problems continued after the floodwaters receded.

“The government response immediately after was terrible,” Cutsinger said.

At press conferences during the days after the flood, reporters asked Noem why she didn’t deploy the National Guard to help flood victims. She said no local officials requested it, and she also cited the expense of activating soldiers.

But during a July 1 public meeting, North Sioux City Mayor Patricia Teel said she did request the National Guard’s assistance.

“I asked for them,” Teel said. “I was told at first they were gone and ‘we are sending extra law enforcement’ instead.”

The Highway Patrol provided additional security to keep people out of dangerous areas immediately after the flood. Some residents were frustrated that they weren’t able to see or evaluate their homes, and authorities made them schedule appointments to be escorted into the neighborhood.

Mayor Teel did not respond to messages from South Dakota Searchlight. Westcott said Teel requested the Guard’s help with security, but Westcott agreed with Noem that law enforcement was better suited to keep the area protected. He said a specific request for help with debris cleanup has to be made to get that help – something some residents say would have been useful.

North Sioux City hired a contractor, Blue Cell, to “help organize communications and operations,” according to the Governor’s Office. Additional contractors have been hired to help repair roads, electric distribution lines, and water and natural gas pipelines.

The contractors’ work has been limited to fixing public infrastructure, according to multiple lake residents. That has left residents to clean up their homes themselves, hire help, or wait for volunteers.

On July 3, volunteer Mary Lee Lazarowicz was spending the day removing soaked drywall from a basement. She said an apparent lack of organization, beyond the already stretched-thin local lake association, was leading to inefficient aid distribution.

“I have to think that if we had some kind of centralized command center for volunteers, I just wonder if things would be running a lot more smoothly,” she said.
Confronting the ‘harsh truth’

Ten years ago, the same levee plan was utilized in response to flooding. Then-Gov. Dennis Daugaard warned McCook Lake residents at a press conference that the plan meant the homes surrounding the lake would be in danger of flooding. He sent National Guard troops to Union County to assist in preparation and relief.

Gov. Noem’s spokesperson, Ian Fury, has repeatedly defended Noem’s actions in relation to the flood and the aftermath. Fury said in a written statement June 27 that all local emergencies are handled through the county emergency manager, with support and resources provided by the state when requested.

“Since the first forecast of significant rainfall coming to our area, Governor Noem and the South Dakota Office of Emergency Management started communicating with impacted counties to help them prepare,” Fury wrote.

He shared a document showing a series of projections from June 21 to 24. The modeling indicates how high and when the Big Sioux River was expected to crest. With each update, the water was expected to come sooner, and many updates included a higher crest.

One of the most dramatic changes to the projections occurred immediately after Noem’s press conference, Fury highlighted.

“Officials can only use the best, available data in decision making and warning processes,” the document reads. “Due to limited data, modeling showed that this was not going to be a historic flood event that it ended up being.”

But the claim that authorities didn’t foresee a “historic flood event” is contradicted by the data in Fury’s own document, which includes a projection from Friday night, June 21 — two days before the McCook Lake flood — already predicting that the Big Sioux River in Sioux City was headed for a record-high crest.

McCook Lake residents say their homes were sacrificed, and they want a new flood plan

Westcott initially rejected claims that residents were not adequately warned, but later acknowledged to South Dakota Searchlight that residents were not given enough warning to prepare. He said authorities expected the flood mitigation plan to work as it had in the past, when McCook Lake was spared catastrophic damage.

“We did not know we had a 1,000-year flood coming at us. That was not part of the plan,” Westcott said. “That’s the hardcore truth of it.”

Westcott and Fury each said if the flood mitigation plan had not been utilized and the temporary levee had not been built, the flood would have overwhelmed North Sioux City and Dakota Dunes. They point to modeling showing just that.

Westcott said flood response work began immediately after residents were deemed safe. Those efforts included restoring water, electricity and gas services, working with the Red Cross to help flood victims, organizing volunteer and donation efforts, and bringing in emergency supplies.

During the July 1 public meeting, Mayor Teel read a statement to residents. She said her team was short-staffed and was not equipped to handle such a severe emergency; therefore, it relied on the state for help.

“We trusted the team that was provided by the state. By Thursday,” she said, referring to the fourth day after the flood, “we knew that the help provided wasn’t really helping us.”

Teel said she requested more help and was advised to hire a contractor, which she did.

Residents at the meeting also shared frustrations.

“I think we deserve to know why none of you thought it was necessary to tell the residents this flood was coming,” one said.

“What I’m disgusted with is the lack of response after it happened,” said another, who added that bottled water didn’t arrive until June 26.

“We had to run for our actual lives,” another resident said. “My kids are having PTSD.”

Some residents, including Cutsinger and Speichinger, do not have flood insurance. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood maps do not require insurance in the neighborhood, and Cutsinger said the optional insurance would cost his family $5,000 a year.

Noem is seeking flood recovery assistance from FEMA. Westcott hopes that effort will bring financial help to McCook Lake residents, but he doesn’t know when it will happen, and he doesn’t expect it to fully replace their losses.

“The program is only designed to get people on their feet again,” he said. “That’s the harsh truth.”



South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on Facebook and X.

Trump’s Day of the Jackal

BY MATTHEW STEVENSON

 JULY 19, 2024
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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

When I hear (as per President Biden’s comments on the Butler shooting) “There’s no place in America for this kind of violence – it’s sick. It’s sick,” I am reminded that the narrative of American history is actually one long paean to political violence—from Bunker Hill to all those weapons being sent off to kill Gazans.

Now about half of the Republican party is strutting around with an AR-15 lapel pin, which suggests that rooftop gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks might well (at least for the Grand New MAGA Party) have been part of the solution, not part of the problem.

After Abraham Lincoln was shot, not many of his Republican supporters walked around with buttons that read “Sic semper tyrannis” (“thus always to tyrants”)—which is what assassin John Wilkes Booth shouted as he leaped onto the stage at Ford’s Theatre.

On the other hand, Trump might well owe his next presidency to his would-be assassin, so perhaps, as it becomes clear that Crooks was in lockstep with Trumpism, a revived Warren Commission might be pressed into service to explain how the gunman himself was a victim of Deep State transgenderism and to attribute his rooftop violence to hormone blockers that robbed him of him of his manhood.

* * *

My doubt about the official narrative of the Butler shooting is this: I am not entirely persuaded that Crooks mounted his step ladder to heaven only with the goal of dispatching Donald Trump to eternity.

Yes, in all likelihood he fired the shot that either winged the former president or blooded him with a ricochet, but did Crooks really intend to kill Trump?

From what I read and hear on newscasts, Crooks was a rank-and-file MAGA, J.D. Vance circle jerk Republican, sheep dipped in Trump ideology and someone who probably recited the Second Amendment when saying grace at Thanksgiving.

Crooks died wearing his Demolition Ranch t-shirt (it’s a GunTuber video website that closes the circle between porn, cartoons, and assault weapons as a cure for societal ED, if not Bidenism), and not long after the Crooks’ front yard was awash in Trump signs (“God, Guns & Country: Trump 2024…”).

Before that, the American sniper was singing Trump’s praises in his conversations with friends. So why, now, did he want to bring down his idol?

* * *

My sense is that Crooks needs to be defined as a post-modern assassin, the spiritual heir of AR-15 school shooters, different from such historical presidential assassins as Charles Guiteau (who in 1881 shot President James Garfield and shouted the words, “I am Stalwart. Arthur shall be president”) or John Hinckley, who shot at Ronald Reagan in 1981 “to impress” Jodie Foster.

For all I know, Crooks might well not even have been aiming at Trump, but instead imagined himself on his rooftop laying down covering fire to Make America Great Again.

Maybe he thought his shots would take out some members of the seditious press? Maybe he believed that his gun burst would be construed as the first shots of the next American Revolution, that which convict Steve Bannon preaches on his podcasts?

Maybe by some twisted logic Thomas Matthew Crooks believed that in his efforts as an onward Christian nationalist soldier, Trump would invite him to the White House, much the way the president rewarded triggerman Kyle Rittenhouse with a presidential audience for taking out some Black Lives in Kenosha?

* * *

In case Rittenhouse is lost in your jumbled memories of the bump stock nation, Kyle was the Illinois teenager sent off to Wisconsin with a lunch box from his mother and an AR-15 (the semi-automatic military-grade weapon, not the lapel pin) to do battle with Kenosha protesters (many of whom were unhappy that the police had shot Jacob Blake during an arrest).

Vigilante Rittenhouse initially self-deployed in a car lot in downtown Kenosha, then under threat from BLM rioters.

During the confrontations of that summer night, Rittenhouse shot and killed two men, and seriously wounded a third.

One of the men Rittenhouse killed was chasing him, suspecting that the Illinois teenager armed with an AR-15 was an active shooter and not some minuteman drafted by the Kenosha police to ensure domestic tranquility.

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Rittenhouse was tried, according to press reports, for “first-degree intentional homicide, attempted first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide, and two counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety.” A jury exonerated him.

Following the not-guilty verdict, former president Trump issued a statement: “Congratulations to Kyle Rittenhouse for being found INNOCENT of all charges.”

Trump said: “If that’s not self-defense, nothing is,” and he added: “He should never have been put through that. That was prosecutorial misconduct.”

Later the former president welcomed Rittenhouse to Mar-a-Lago, where Trump called the gunslinger a “really a nice young man”. Trump told broadcaster Sean Hannity that Rittenhouse “wanted to know if he could come over and say hello because he was a fan.”

Then, as if a presidential audience at Mar-a-Lago wasn’t enough for Kyle Rittenhouse, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Pluto) issued a statement that read:

Kyle Rittenhouse deserves to be remembered as a hero who defended his community, protected businesses, and acted lawfully in the face of lawlessness. I’m proud to file this legislation to award Kyle Rittenhouse a Congressional Gold Medal.

Was it lost on AR-15 owner Thomas Matthew Crooks that the Trump circle beatified another AR-15 active shooter?

Was the Demolition Ranch, MAGA-loving gunman fantasizing that when it was all over in Butler the former president and Republican candidate would invite him to dinner? Maybe together they could watch The Day of the Jackal?

Guns twist mens’ minds, and to many in American politics (but probably not those who had to collect the dead in Uvalde), AR-15s now speak an auto-erotic language of love and attraction, at least to the likes of Thomas Crooks and Donald Trump.

* * *

The attempted assassination (or whatever metaphor the shooting was) has allowed Trump to ascend into political heaven where his rape judgments, civil fraud penalties, and felony charges for espionage, sedition, and electoral racketeering are seen as little more than “trespasses” that the electorate is happy to forgive (provided it doesn’t have to vote for the demented Biden).

If assassination deification wasn’t enough for one month, around the same time the Supreme Court decided to sell the former president various indulgences for his repeated sins.

First, the flag-waving Roberts Court overturned the original intent of the U.S. Constitution that no man or woman, even a president, is above the law—by listing all those presumptive instances (including the official act of paying off a porn star while seated at the Resolute desk in the Oval Office) when a president (the judges mostly had Trump in mind) can beat any and all raps.

When those dispensations seemed insufficient to curry favor with his candidate mob boss Trump, Justice Clarence Thomas (apropos of nothing in the case being heard) added an addendum that was little more than a mash note to Florida Judge Aileen Cannon to embolden her to dismiss the Florida documents case against Trump.

The Thomas addendum was written in such a way (legally misleading and false, but that hardly matters if it’s on Supreme Court letterhead) that it can be used to challenge many of the other cases pending against the criminally charged Trump.

In less than two weeks, the Supreme Court ruling and the assassination attempt have transmogrified Trump from a psychotic (who sounded like Travis Bickle talking about how “the late, great Hannibal Lecter is a wonderful man…”) to a statesman and the Great White Hope of those who dream of the United States of Apartheid.

At this week’s Republican National Convention (and what felt like an endless rerun loop of Dynasty) Trump basked in the near-endless hallelujahs that “God protected him” in Butler for a higher purpose. That was the message spread from every speaker from Marjorie Taylor Greene to Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem (I had hoped we might be done with this cast of B actors).

After a while, the Almighty began to sound like yet another political action committee eager to buy Trump air time or launder money for his attorneys.

* * *

I am not surprised that Donald Trump would find common cause with the school shooter industrial complex—the NRA, gun fetishizers like Don Jr., the U.S. Concealed Carry Association and the Second Amendment crowd, not to mention all those clicking on Crooks’ own Demolition Ranch snuff films.

Here’s the advertisement copy for a Demolition Ranch pimped-out edition of the AR-15:

Team EMG is proud to announce this special collaboration with F1 Firearms and Demolition Ranch to bring you the Demolition Ranch AR-15! The Demolition Ranch AR-15 is a special edition rifle in the real shooting world engineered and spec’d out to perfection by the elite engineers at F-1 Firearms and Matt himself. Fully licensed featuring authentic F1 and Demolition Ranch engravings, this EMG airsoft parallel training rifle is a stunning recreation of the real firearm this was based on.

Does it sell at a discount to any Republican member of Congress now wearing an AR-15 lapel pin?

* * *

Even before the AR-15 had its own congressional fan club, Trump was refusing to consider any legislation that might make it harder to spray an assault weapon around a grammar school or shopping mall.

For example, after a school shooting in Perry, Iowa in January 2024 that killed one child and wounded six others, it took Trump 36 hours to say anything (even though he was then campaigning in Iowa), and when he did say something, it was to tell Iowans: “It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here. But have to get over it, we have to move forward.”

And here, according to U.S. News and World Report in 2024, is how Trump summed up his gun policies while president. He told the NRA’s Great American Outdoor Show in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania:

During my four years nothing happened. And there was great pressure on me having to do with guns. We did nothing. We didn’t yield… [I am the] best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House….Every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated my very first week back in office, perhaps my first day.

These words would have been music in the ears of Thomas Matthew Crooks, who must have thought he would be dying to absolve Trump of any sins.

Matthew Stevenson is the author of many books, including Reading the Rails, Appalachia Spring, andThe Revolution as a Dinner Party, about China throughout its turbulent twentieth century. His most recent books are Biking with Bismarck and Our Man in Iran. Out now: Donald Trump’s Circus Maximus and Joe Biden’s Excellent Adventure, about the 2016 and 2020 elections.