Several lawmakers in South Dakota launched on Wednesday the “South Dakota Freedom Caucus” to extend freedoms already being enjoyed by citizens of the Mount Rushmore State. Said Tony Randolph, vice-chair of the group: “We are a simple group that desires to follow [the Republican Party’s] platform [by demanding that Republicans] follow the platform and do what we said we would do when we were elected.”
In other words, the group wants to add additional momentum to the freedom movement already evident in South Dakota. It is linked to similar groups in five other states, including Nevada, Illinois, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina.
Its website outlines the present problem: government overstepping its constitutional bounds; and the solution: following the Tenth Amendment:
Today, the federal government is larger and has more authority than ever before. The permanent administrative state, filled with unelected bureaucrats, has run roughshod over our state legislatures and consolidated power.
The principles enshrined in the 10th Amendment have never been more critical:
“Those powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
South Dakota is the perfect state for such a group as it is the envy of so many in the freedom movement for standing firm against federal tyranny.
Part of the advantage is that Republicans have an overwhelming legislative and logistical advantage in the legislature and in the governor’s mansion. Almost every elected position is held by a Republican, and the governor, Kristi Noem, is so firmly committed to supporting the Constitution, both federal and state, that she is currently running third behind Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in polling for the 2024 presidential election.
The state has a “trigger law” that became active after the Supreme Court tossed Roe v. Wade earlier this week. It has a law that became active today that, as writer David Kelly at The New American expressed it, “protects students and employees at [the state’s] institutions of higher learning from divisive concepts such as Critical Race Theory (CRT).”
The state already allows constitutional carry, and on Thursday Governor Noem signed into law a bill that eliminates any and all fees related to the issuing of permits to carry concealed.
It has a “gold card” that streamlines the process a South Dakotan goes through in order to purchase a firearm by “reducing the hassle for law-abiding citizens seeking to exercise their Second Amendment rights,” as noted by the NRA. The Gold Card holder can forgo criminal background checks when purchasing a firearm, providing only periodic checks to ensure continued eligibility.
Said Noem: “In South Dakota, we will always defend the rights of law-abiding gun owners to keep and bear arms to protect themselves and their loved ones.”
There are other advantages citizens in South Dakota enjoy: The state legislature opens for business on the second Tuesday in January and closes up shop 30 days later.
It boasts the lowest per capita total state tax burden in the country, thanks to having no personal, corporate, or inheritance taxes. Less than eight percent of the land is state or federally owned.
It has no traffic problems. In fact, Sioux Falls, the state’s largest city (population 192,500) has the second highest insurance rating in the country for safe driving.
It allows a full range of natural health practitioners and it provides parents with both religious and medical exemptions for vaccines for their school age children.
According to the latest freedom study by the Cato Institute, South Dakota is “one of the top-five freest states” in the country. It enjoys right-to-work laws, “is one of the best states for health insurance freedom,” and is “one of the best states in the country for gun rights … with the passage of constitutional carry in 2019.”
All of which is being driven largely by the governor, who first cut her teeth during her four terms as the state’s single representative in the House of Representatives. There, she opposed ObamaCare, voting often to repeal it She is adamantly pro-life, sporting a 100-percent rating from the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List.
While governor she endeared herself to freedom lovers by refusing to implement face mask mandates. In fact, she raised serious doubts about the efficacy of mask-wearing and, on the contrary, encouraged large gatherings without social distancing or mask-wearing. She even had the audacity of questioning the advice of so-called “public health officials” over COVID restrictions.
She greatly annoyed the LGBTQ crowd in 2015 when she vocally opposed the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that bans on same-sex “marriages” were somehow unconstitutional.
She further annoyed them by signing into law the Women’s Fairness in Sports bill, which bans males masquerading as females from competing with women on school and college sport teams.
In the 2020 presidential election, the Trump-Pence ticket carried the state over the Biden-Harris ticket, 63-37 percent.
The launch of “The South Dakota Freedom Caucus” will likely find that it is pushing on an open door in its quest to extend further the freedoms that the state’s lucky citizens already enjoy.
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