Category: Uncategorized

Senator Mike Rounds Weekly Round[s] Up: February 10-16, 2025

Welcome back to another Weekly Round[s] Up! We’re continuing to confirm President Trump’s nominees at a record pace here in the Senate. We now have 18 in place, including Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, whose swearing-in ceremony I attended this week at the White House. As we vote on nominees, we continue with our regular business in the Senate like meetings with South Dakotans, hearings and classified briefings. I also introduced legislation this past week to create more oversight of the bureaucracy. More on all of this in my Weekly Round[s] Up:

South Dakotans I met with: Leaders from the Oglala Sioux Tribe, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe; Dr. Troy Meink, nominee to serve as Secretary of the Air Force, who is originally from Lemmon and graduated from South Dakota State University (Go Jacks!); representatives from the South Dakota chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business; physicians from the South Dakota State Medical Association; leaders from Black Hills Area Habitat for Humanity; and members of South Dakota Civil Air Patrol.

South Dakota towns represented: Brookings, Eagle Butte, Hermosa, Lemmon, Madison, Mission, Pierre, Pine Ridge, Rapid City and Sioux Falls.

Other meetings: Emil Michael, nominee for Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering; Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency; David McIntyre, President and CEO of TriWest; Bill Pulte, nominee to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency; King Abdullah II of Jordan; and Gary Cohn, Vice Chairman of IBM. As I mentioned, I attended the swearing-in ceremony for our new Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, whose nomination passed the Senate this week. I supported her through the process and look forward to working with her, particularly through my work on the Select Committee on Intelligence. I also attended our Senate Bible Study and our Senate Prayer Breakfast, where Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma was our speaker.

Hearings: I attended three hearings this week. One was a closed hearing in the Select Committee on Intelligence. One was a hearing in the Senate Armed Services Committee to hear from the leaders of United States Northern Command and United States Southern Command. I also attended a hearing in the Senate Banking Committee where we heard from Jay Powell, Chair of the Federal Reserve. You can watch my questions from that here.

Classified briefings: I attended one classified briefing on Central Command as part of my work on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Votes taken: 7 – we confirmed three additional cabinet nominees this past week: Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services and Brooke Rollins for Secretary of Agriculture. We also took two procedural votes on the nominations of Howard Lutnick for Secretary of Commerce and Kelly Loeffler for Administrator of the Small Business Administration.

We’re working hard to get to the finish line on cabinet nominees. There are 24 positions within the executive branch that are considered “cabinet level.” Of these, two are not confirmed by the Senate: Vice President JD Vance, who was elected by the American people, and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who was hand-selected by the President. This means we have just four nominees left before President Trump has his full cabinet in place, but rest assured we’re just getting started on the President’s plan to Make America Great Again.

Legislation introduced: I introduced two cybersecurity related bills this past week. The Cyber Conspiracy Modernization Act would strengthen penalties for cybercrimes. The Providing Individuals Various Opportunities for Technical Training to Build a Skills-Based Cyber Workforce Act of 2025 (Cyber PIVOTT Act) would provide scholarships to students and professionals training in cyber-related fields. You can read more about these bills here.

I also joined Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in reintroducing the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act to help put power back in the people’s hands instead of the administrative state. Under the REINS Act, once major rules from government agencies are drafted, they must then be affirmatively approved by both chambers of Congress and then signed by the President, satisfying the bicameral and presentment requirements of the Constitution. Currently, regulations ultimately take effect unless Congress specifically disapproves. Read more here.

My staff in South Dakota visited: Pierre and Tea.

Steps taken: 50,659 steps or 25.23 miles.

Video of the week: I joined Newsmax for an update on cabinet confirmations, as well as to discuss eliminating the federal Department of Education:

Are you familiar with Laura Loomer?  I wasn’t either.  From Wikipedia..

Loomer has worked as an activist for several organizations, including Project Veritas, the Geller Report, Rebel News, and InfoWars. She has described herself as being “pro-white nationalism” and a “proud Islamophobe”, repeatedly making anti-Muslim statements in public settings.

Loomer has gained notoriety as a result of being banned from numerous social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, payment processors, vehicles for hire, and food delivery mobile apps for various reasons, including violating policies on hate speech and posting misinformation. Loomer has also been banned and removed from events, and had press credentials revoked, for harassment and causing disturbances.

Donald Trump sought to hire Loomer to his presidential campaign in April 2023, but his senior campaign advisors successfully discouraged Trump from doing so.

Read that here.

(How do you get banned from Facebook AND food-delivery mobile apps? )    Why do we care?  Just like when Toby “Dumpster-fire” Doeden tried to bring “alleged Black Nazi” Mark Robinson into his circle, it looks like he’s picking up another fringer and is involving Laura Loomer in his ambitions.

This popped up on twitter a short time ago with a video clip, just as if this gal was there. Which is kind of weird if you’ve ever been to the Pierre Airport.  But the silliness just starts with the clip that I would guess Toby had his PAC minion Brian Lewis film with his phone, so they could send it to her:

It gets even sillier with this scripted nonsense: “I have been told by my sources in South Dakota that many America First Leaders and activists have been pressuring Doeden to launch a run for Governor of South Dakota.”

Many America First Leaders? Well, that’s a fish story if I’d ever heard one. Who, exactly are these leaders and activists pressuring him? The person Toby sees in the mirror?

Or is the tweet referring to the people Toby has written a check to? Because there weren’t enough of them to stop the campaign finance fix for the loophole that allowed him to dump “loan” unlimited funds to his PAC, because there aren’t that many who were doing so otherwise.

And nevermind the fact that the script that Dumpster Doeden handed Loomer actually has the arrogance to refer to Dusty – someone who has been involved in the GOP over a lifetime  – a “Republican in Name Only.” Ignoring the fact that Toby’s exposure to Republicans started what? A year ago? And he only voted in his first and only Republican primary in June of 2024?

I could go on, but I’ll just leave it at that. I have the sneaking suspicion that I will have ample opportunity to go on at length about Toby Doeden’s ridiculousness.

Get ready for 2026.

One of the goofier House Bills found itself on the House floor today losing. And it’s disappointing because it should have lost by a larger margin.

House Bill 1223, an act to provide for “I don’t feel like it” exemptions for vaccinations lost on a narrow vote of 36 to 34.  It should have been a more significant margin, and I’m seeing some good Republicans who typically support businesses who seem to have lost their way.

I’m a bit shocked to see pro-business Republicans such as Reps Jamison, Fitzgerald, and Baumiller voting against business and basic science and instead siding with conspiracy goofiness on the Internet. C’mon guys…

First we had the ULTRA-EXTREME and laughably awful Lee Qualm for chair letter.   And now we have a milder (but also silly) counterpart from Ezra Hays, the saddle stitched glossy paper booklet:

Yes, Ezra Hays mailed out a several page saddle-stitched glossy booklet with misc information, including his life story, the platform, his proposed budget, etc., in his pursuit of the Republican Party chair election this weekend.

And it is this weekend when the pain is over, and a new adventure will begin with which I believe will give me many things to chronicle.

But as a quick summary, since it’s getting kind of hard to remember what all the candidates have been doing at this point, here’s what I can tell you from reports, personal observations, and a quick review of past posts:

• Qualm placed ads on Dakota Scout, and is hanging out a lot at the legislature in Pierre. And he’s going to install new staff, as well as to use the SDGOP go on a tear about vaccinations.
• I’m told Eschenbaum got a few Dems to swap parties to help organize an unorganized county to form a new GOP Committee, and he and Janet Jensen did a zoom call.  Oh, and in a meeting, he called the people in the SDGOP “power hungry elitists.”
• Hays did a website, text blasts, has been sending out postcards, and now this booklet. And to his credit, unlike the others, he did truck across the state to see people, including making it all the way over here to Brookings where he was at one of our last county GOP meetings.

Take it for what it’s worth, and how those activities matter to you in earning the vote of Central Committee members for the person who is going to be the next Republican Party Chairman. We’re almost at the finish line.

Occasional Sioux Falls political candidate and current leader of a petition effort to keep the Brockhouse collection in Sioux Falls Mike Zitterich is unhappy with me.

Yep. He’s downright fuming over the fact I’ve said that I absolutely believe that we should raise the age to marry to 18, as per Sydney Davis’ bill SB 156 that was heard yesterday.

I saw a note in the comment section about his response, and had to find it.  And I regret it, as  I think Mr. Zitterich managed to out-ick California Carley’s rejection of SB156.

So, straight from the former “Primary John Thune” facebook group, now known as the “the South Dakota Grassroot Conservative Republicans Facebook group,” Mike Zitterich’s rebuttal to my post unhappy about SB 156’s failure.

“By the time your children reach their teenage years, ages 13-19 becoming young adults, they begin to earn our respect, earning the the right to become employed (age 13), to drive on public roads (age 14), and beginning to form their own adult like relationships. Mind you, all by pertaining by the rules and guidelines as laid down by the rules of the home, their parents, so by age 16, they may get married to any adult older than 16”

—

“You see even Pat Powers falls victim to the b.s media clam that anyone having sex with a teenager is a pedo, when in fact, it simply violates the consent laws, where the parents must be involved in those types of relationships.”

This might be one of the most horrific and completely f’d up things I’ve ever read on facebook in a group that pretends to be a South Dakota “Republican” group.   If a parent is involved in allowing a 13 year old to have a sexual relationship, most would consider that human trafficking, and they should be in jail for a very, very long time.

If you were against Senate Bill 156 to raise the age of marriage to 18, between these comments and California Carley’s equally messed up arguments – THAT’S why we need laws protecting 16 and 17 year old girls from someone marrying them away.

Yesterday Senator John “California” Carley left some of his colleagues scratching their heads in his arguments against Senate Bill 156, which would have set a minimum age for marriage to 18 to help put an end to loopholes in the law which allow 50 year olds to marry 16 year olds in South Dakota.

Because Ol’ California Carley came up with a cringeworthy string of arguments on why he wants sex between 16 year old girls and middle aged men to be legal:

Carley echoed opposition given in the bill’s committee hearing, arguing that while he is “appalled at the idea of predators and abusers taking some of our young daughters and forcing them into a life of servitude and abuse,” he thinks that the bill fails to address the issue, and that it “criminalizes marriage rather than the abuse that is covered up by such a marriage.”

Carley suggested that changes could be made to make the bill more appealing to him, such making it a requirement that both parents have to sign off on a child marriage, requiring counseling before a child can be married to an adult, or giving emancipation to children who get married, though he did not bring any of these ideas as amendments to the bill.

and..

Carley did not advocate raising the age of consent in South Dakota from 16 along with the age of marriage, but instead argued that sex between an adult and a minor is better if the two are married than if they are not.

Read Carley’s opinion on sex between an adult and minor at Keloland.com.

Umm..       Not sure how to respond to that one.

Maybe by asking “How would he know?”

(Maybe he should put that on a t-shirt for the next election)

Another one down!  The Senate confirmed another Trump nominee Tuesday evening to continue the record pace of confirmations that the Senate has been able to achieve under the leadership of Senate Majority Leader John Thune. As noted in the Daily Caller:

The Senate voted to confirm Wall Street investor Howard Lutnick as President Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary along party lines Tuesday evening.

Senators voted 51 to 45 with Democratic Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Gary Peters of Michigan and Republican Sens. Jerry Moran of Kansas and Dan Sullivan of Alaska not voting.

and..

While the Senate GOP secured the confirmation of Trump’s 17th cabinet nominee in 30 days, the Democratic-controlled Senate took nearly 60 days to confirm former President Joe Biden’s 17th cabinet nominee in 2021, according to a senior GOP aide.

“Under Leader [John] Thune and Whip [John] Barrasso, the Senate is moving at record speed to get the President’s Cabinet in place,” Kate Cooksey Noyes, communications director for Barrasso, said Tuesday.

Read the entire story here.

Apparently it’s a big mail day for Republican Central Committee members, as a number of mail pieces were received from candidates running for various Republican offices, including this one from Lee “attempted conversion” Qualm.

Why did this letter get my attention? Well, parts are just embarrassingly awful (“…talked to a person who has extreme experience in fund raising..” What is extreme experience in fund raising?  Are they skydiving while raising money?), and uses an overabundance of superlatives like someone bought a thesaurus just for the occasion.

But this passage in the letter where he talks about changing staff is what sent up the flare for me:

..I have talked to a person who is very interested in becoming our Executive Director who would be a powerful asset to this team…

In his letter to the Central Committee, why would Qualm bring up who he intends to install as the Executive Director while the Republican Party still has Reggie Rhoden in place as the current SDGOP Executive Director?

Because that says to me that “Honest” Lee has already had a conversation and has plans about making that position available to his mystery candidate.

Despite the fact that the position is currently filled.

I was kind of surprised to see that while I had my head down in working my real job this afternoon that the bill that would have helped stop legalized sex trafficking failed in the state senate this afternoon.

Did I say legalized sex trafficking? What am I referring to? Senate Bill 156, of course. The measure that proposed to increase the minimum age for marriage to 18 failed on the Senate floor on a vote of 16 for the bill, 19 against.

19 members of the State Senate are ok with this?  Really?

Many of the same people who want to demand that every effort be made to ensure that people are 18 and older before they can download apps on a cell phone are just fine with that same 16 year old girl getting married to a 45 year old man?  If a 35 year old man is exchanging nude pictures with a 16 year girl, he’s going to go to prison for a while. But, if he marries that same young girl and starts having kids, a majority of the Senate is perfectly ok with that arrangement?   Am I missing something?  Because typically the older man – and almost always an older man – is not the one who ends up with the bad end of the stick in this deal.

Let me give you a real-life example. My grandmother.

My grandmother was an Iowa girl with an indomitable will growing up in Waterloo Iowa in 1930.   She was not going to be told what to do, and one weekend she and her 22 year old boyfriend decided they were going to drive over from Iowa to Illinois to get married.  She claimed she was 18.  Nobody verified anything at the time, because this was a long time before electronic records.  And on the 28^th of December in 1931 my grandmother Lanore became a 16 year old bride.  From what family stories note, the families were displeased once this came to light, but, what were they going to do? They were married.

A year later, grandma was giving birth to one of my aunts. By the time she was 22, she’d had three kids, with much of their marriage spent with a husband who joined the military and ended up overseas for much of WWII. In time the war was over and married life continued, what seemed like a good idea when she was 16 left her divorced at age 34 with three kids.

She got married again right away in 1950. But in a story that was never mentioned for many decades, the two youngest including my mom ended up living down the street with neighbors, as the new husband didn’t have an interest in the three kids that came along with the marriage.  For better or worse, possibly for the better, he dropped dead of a heart attack leaving this once child bride not just divorced but also widowed by 35. The daughters still there were able to come home.

Thankfully, things stabilized with a third marriage a few years later to the person I and my cousins always grew up knowing as our grandfather.  But the whole point is that despite some who try to say that’s what we did “way back when,” child brides could still bounce around from crappy situation to crappy situation, with a chunk of that burden coming back on the kids. It wasn’t abusive to my knowledge. But by the same token, it’s not something that any of us would refer to as “good.”  Child marriage is not something that should be romanticized.

Yet, here we are, nearly 100 years later after my grandmother did it, supposedly 100 years better educated and more enlightened. And we still have people fooled by some illusion, whether hypnotized by religion or weirdly romanticized notions of the past that try to find justifications for marrying off 16 year old girls to older men like they are Irish Traveller brides.

There is not one of us who would say we don’t want to protect our kids. But as noted above, in the same breath, coming out of the same people’s mouths there are just too many who say kids should not be exposed to certain scandalous ideas in high school libraries, or have a remote possibility of looking at naughty pictures on-line, yet they are happy to cast a vote saying it’s ok that a 16 year old girl should be able to get married to their 29 year old boyfriend…. because they have a license from the state that says it’s somehow ok?

As one study noted, Some 60,000 marriages since 2000 occurred at an age or spousal age difference that should have been considered a sex crime.  In about 88% of those marriages, the marriage license became a “get out of jail free” card for a would-be rapist under state law that specifically allowed within marriage what would otherwise be considered statutory rape.

People might think I’m using girls as an example too much. But look at the statistics. There really aren’t roving packs of cougars out trying to marry 16 year old boys. Of the child marriages that take place,  86% involve minor girls to 14% boys.

And if you listened to the testimony in committee, once they get into those situations and they try to escape, state laws make it near impossible for them to get out. A 16 year old typically can’t go to a women’s shelter. They cannot enter into a contract with an attorney to initiate a legal proceeding, because they’re a minor. Even better, many times minors who leave home to escape from an abusive spouse or impending forced marriage are typically considered runaways.

If you want to go read a good reference at what South Dakota just voted to continue to do to our daughters, the website Unchained at Last has more information than you might have ever wanted to read on the type of child-trafficking that the State Senate voted today to allow to continue in South Dakota.

We can do better for our daughters. And today, we should have.

Attorney General Jackley Praises Senate for Passing Government Accountability Legislation 

PIERRE, S.D. – South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley praises the State Senate for Tuesday’s passage of Senate Bill 62, which would establish mandatory reporting requirements related to improper governmental conduct and crime, and to provide a penalty.

“Thank you to the Senators for strengthening government accountability, protecting taxpayers and renewing trust in our State Government,” said Attorney General Marty Jackley.

The bill was approved 33-2 and now goes to the House for further action.

Tuesday’s approval means that all of the Attorney General’s legislative bills have passed the Senate and will be considered later by the House.

-30-