O.K., we've had our parliamentary fun; now on the policy itself: The Senate yesterday took up Senate Bill 195, Senator Chris Karr's (R-11/Sioux Falls) latest attempt to make the sales tax reduction he won three years ago permanent. In 2023, the Legislature reduced the sales tax from 4.5% to 4.2% but scheduled the rate to revert to 4.5% on July 1, 2027.

I hate to lead a policy story with what can be read as a personal tussle, but when that personal tussle is expressed in disagreement over parliamentary procedure, I can't resist. Three weeks ago, Senate President Pro Tempore Chris Karr (R-11/Sioux Falls) flipped a mean parliamentary bird at Lieutenant Governor Tony Venhuizen by challenging Venhuizen's exercise of his power as Senate President to cast tie-breaking votes on final passage of legislation…

While the Legislature struggles to agree on any plan for comprehensive tax reform, anti-hunger advocate Cathy Brechtelsbauer of Sioux Falls notes that the state already hands provides many millions in property tax relief to homeowners. Pay particular attention to Brechtelsbauer's last sentence: It cost the state $171,922,177 of state revenue to provide owner-occupied tax relief on the property taxes we pay this year.

Corporate welfare is bad enough, but now the state of South Dakota is forking out cash to China. Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods has a problem: CEO Shane Smith says they "have to either make significant renovations to our 100-year-old Sioux Falls facility or build a new plant." Smithfield responds to this necessity by choosing to move its Sioux Falls meatpacking operations from the old plant at the north side of downtown to Foundation Park at the city limits by the intersection of I-29 and I-90.

The Board of Elections showed its usefulness last November in shooting down one of Secretary of State Monae Johnson's worse ideas: replacing nominating petitions with filing fees. Secretary Johnson floated filing fees as one of 17 proposals for election legislation for the 2026 Session. This grossly undemocratic idea met with uniform opposition from the other six members of the Board of Elections at their November meeting:

Why would South Dakota's libertarians advocating for autocracy? Representative Aaron Aylward (R-6/Harrisburg), who ran the South Dakota Libertarian Party before he decided to brand himself with an R to get elected, has filed House Bill 1324 to abolish the State Board of Elections and move control over a host of election details from a bipartisan and experienced board to one person, to the Secretary of State.

Hundreds of children are currently being held with their parents at an immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas. In letters and drawings, eight kids convey the pain of feeling trapped with no end...

Rookie Senator Amber Hulse (R-30/Hot Springs) is proposing Senate Joint Resolution 507 to have voters say this November whether they want to semi-replace property tax on homes by raising the state sales tax to 5%. Rookie Representative and Rhoden appointee Tim Czmowski (R/6-?) offers the Legislature a chance to enact that tax swap itself with House Bill 1308. The problem is that Czmowski's swap is more of a steal from schools.

In case you haven't figured out that tariffs are really bad economic policy, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York substantiates what we've known since the 1890s about tariffs—the vast bulk of tariff revenue is coming out of Americans' pockets: We highlight two main results. First, 94 percent of the tariff incidence was borne by the U.S. in the first eight months of 2025.

Opinion | Consumers must beware of products that seem harmless and offer an unproven benefit. Not everything is ‘worth a try.’

Representative Will Mortenson (R-24/Fort Pierre) has teamed up with some other level-headed legislators—three House Democrats and Senator Tim Reed (R-7/Brookings)—to propose House Bill 1278, a reasonable campaign finance reform to prevent elected officials from coercing employees into funding those officials' campaigns. But the language of the bill appears to deviate from the stated intent of its title. HB 1278 is titled "

German chancellor rebuts idea of American unilateralism and says ‘democracies have partners and allies’ The US acting alone has reached the limits of its power and may already have lost its role as global leader, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, warned Donald Trump at the opening of the Munich Security Conference. Merz also disclosed he had held initial talks with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, over the possibility of joining France’s nuclear umbrella, underlining his call for Europe to develop a stronger self-standing security strategy. Continue reading...

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio skipped a Berlin Format Ukraine meeting at the Munich Security Conference, the Financial Times reported Feb. 13, raising concerns among European officials amid broa...

Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft's AI chief, says AI can automate white-collar jobs within 12-18 months, as tech reaches human-level performance in tasks.

Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources could have saved the state $500,000 and the moral stain of turning kids into cold-blooded critter killers by defunding the cruel and useless Nest Predator Bounty Program. Instead, they're going to write a letter. Senate Ag NR heard Senate Bill 148 Tuesday. They heard from prime sponsor Senator Tim Reed (R-6/Brookings) that we have no evidence that paying people $10 for every tail they hack off of a raccoon, striped skunk, red fox, badger, or opossum boosts pheasant populations:

Federal prosecutors in Minneapolis have moved to drop felony assault charges against two Venezuelan men, including one shot in the leg by a immigration officer, after new evidence emerged undercutting...

Senator Carl Perry (R-3/Aberdeen) apparently isn't very good at writing legislation. Upset that an Aberdeen man killed himself last spring and that a woman watched and didn't call an ambulance or tell anyone else for five hours, Senator Perry filed Senate Bill 122 to make failure to intervene in a suicide attempt a Class 2 misdemeanor. But Perry's original language…

With the Legislature still struggling to coalesce around any plan to lower property taxes, rookie Senator Amber Hulse (R-30/Hot Springs) proposes punting the issue to the voters. Senator Hulse's Senate Joint Resolution 507 would place on the November ballot a plan to take away school district's ability to tax owner-occupied residential property for general funds and special education. School districts could still tax ag and commercial land.