Protecting South Dakota
By Rep. Dusty Johnson
December 1, 2023
BIG Update
The border crisis continues – and it extends beyond the southern border.
This week, House Republicans passed the Protecting Our Communities from Failure to Secure the Border Act to block the Biden Administration from housing undocumented migrants on National Parks and other public lands.
The need to act came after the Biden Administration set up makeshift shelters for migrants to stay in at a public park in New York City. This park used to be a place for families to play and the public to enjoy. Now it’s filled with thousands of migrants whose backgrounds are not known. This housing is in the middle of a floodplain – it’s not even a safe place for the migrants to stay.
I enjoy using our public lands in South Dakota. They should remain accessible and safe for all Americans to use. Passing the Protecting Our Communities from Failure to Secure the Border Act this week will help safeguard our parks for our communities.
BIG Idea
I spent Monday in Indian country meeting with Crow Creek Sioux Tribe Chairman Peter Lengkeek and Lower Brule Sioux Tribe Chairman Clyde Estes and heard about ways they are improving their communities.
We talked about the new boat dock at LBST, their upcoming grocery store, and CCST’s emergency facilities, mental health resources and law enforcement. Law enforcement in Indian country faces unique challenges such as too few officers, slow emergency response times – as long as thirty minutes – and officer retainment. I’m working on this issue so tribal police departments have the resources they need to keep their communities safe.
BIG News
Investments of state funds across America could be invested in companies backed by the Chinese Communist Party – financing the growth of our biggest adversary. These dollars are available to the CCP to make spy balloons, steal Americans’ personal data on TikTok, and grow the CCP’s military. Some states like South Dakota have attempted to divest their funds, but have trouble doing it. Divesting from these companies requires express consent from Congress.
I introduced the PRC Accountability and Divestment Act to give states the authority to pull their funds from Chinese companies of concern that have humanitarian and military values antithetical to America. We shouldn’t be giving our adversary capital to increase their tyrannical power.
You can read more here.
abraham lincoln, the first modern republican president, had a civil war to fight. he had to play around with the u-s constitution; he struggled with suspension of habeus corpus to keep the legal system churning; he shoved his countrymen and himself to a bigger application of human rights under law than previous congresses had sanctioned, turning the constitution into a living document with power.
liz cheney has written a book which drops tomorrow. part of it discusses why it’s important to never let the vulnerable points where that law is generous and protective, be exploited by ruthless people as leverage points to break past the hard restrictions that keep freedom intact.
cheney co-wrote the jan 6 committee report from the 2020 insurrection probe that the house conducted. i hope rep dusty johnson has read that report (speaker johnson, it seems, is a peripheral subject of the probe and report for whatever murky help he gave to trump’s lie.) dusty is one of the people who will be crucial in deciding if the gop has any future at all.
make no mistake, the legal process of the constitution handed citizen trump the honored role of president, and honored role of former president. he screamed, sent those sanctioned roles through a shredder and burned them to dust.
like a good tyrant, trump immediately attacked the thing trying to dethrone him: the partly counted votes of good honest citizens for whom he could not care less. after those vote tallies rejected him and took his throne, he declared them false pretenders; he gathered his mad rabble with torches and pitchforks; he races through the country to strengthen his numbers via join-or-be-crushed coercion; he battles to regain a throne before his enemies can put him in a dungeon. some future shakespeare will write a gripping tragedy about all of this a century from now.
republican activism today consists of being in trumps mad rabble, or being outside of power.
the party of lincoln no longer exists in the form that lincoln established for us. be honest enough to admit it. i’m reregistering independent. i’m out.