Lawyer For Boulder Suspect’s Family Was Banned From Practicing Law For Immigration Misconduct
She has been involved in multiple incidents related to immigration.She has been involved in multiple incidents related to immigration.GOP’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill Act’ lets Big Tech and Big Pharma run wild
The Republicans’ bizarrely named “Big Beautiful Bill Act” includes two egregious provisions that would strip states of their power to regulate key agenda items pushed by globalist elites.
Anyone who still understands what the word “conservative” means can see the truth: The Republican budget bill is a mixed bag of deficit bloat, missed opportunities, and the odd policy win. Whether the House bill was worth passing as a “take it or leave it” deal depends on one’s political calculus. But the result is underwhelming and fails to rise to the moment.
Stripping states of authority and subsidizing green fantasies are the exact opposite of the anti-globalist message that won Trump the White House.
Supporters of the bill — particularly President Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) — argue that it’s the best possible outcome given a razor-thin House majority packed with RINOs from purple districts in blue states. Set aside that debate. If it’s true, then conservatives should focus their energies in deep-red states where Republicans hold supermajorities. That’s where we can — and must — do the work Congress won’t.
Instead, Republican leaders included two provisions in the bill that actively prevent red states from pushing back against green energy mandates, land-grabs, surveillance schemes, and a growing transhumanist agenda.
Green New Deal jam-down
Thanks to Republican Freedom Caucus stalwarts, including Reps. Andy Harris of Maryland and Chip Roy of Texas, much of the Green New Deal faces rollback — assuming, of course, the Senate doesn’t block the repeal. But one key subsidy survives: federal incentives for carbon capture pipelines. Worse still, the bill strengthens protections for these projects by stripping states of regulatory power.
Section 41006 spells it out: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law,” once the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission grants a pipeline license under an newly amended section of the Natural Gas Act, state and local governments can no longer block or delay the project using zoning, permitting, or land-use laws.
In plain English: carbon dioxide pipelines, backed by federal subsidies, get the same privileges as oil and gas pipelines. That includes eminent domain powers and “certificate of public convenience and necessity” status — bureaucratic code for “we’ll take your land whether you like it or not.”
But carbon pipelines aren’t oil and gas. Oil fuels the economy and delivers a clear public good. Carbon capture, by contrast, sucks up CO2 and buries it to appease climate hysterics. It serves no market need and survives only through government handouts. It exists to sanctify the fiction that carbon dioxide is a pollutant.
This isn’t an oversight. It’s a direct response to South Dakota ranchers, who successfully fought to ban eminent domain for carbon capture projects. Lawmakers in Iowa and North Dakota have followed suit, targeting Summit Carbon Solutions’ proposed pipeline, which would have plowed through private ranchland to serve a project with no public value.
The rebellion in South Dakota ranks among the most important conservative grassroots victories in recent history. Yet this bill spits in the face of those landowners. It overrides red-state laws and rural rights on behalf of globalist, green-energy profiteers.
A 10-year pause on state bans
Funny how Republicans said budget reconciliation couldn’t include policy changes. That was the excuse for not pursuing immigration reform or judicial restructuring. And yet when it suits the priorities of Big Tech and globalist interests, lawmakers found a way to insert sweeping federal mandates into the bill.
Out of nowhere, either the White House or GOP lawmakers added a provision banning states from regulating artificial intelligence or data center systems. Section 43201 of the bill states: “No State or political subdivision thereof may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act.”
That’s not compromise. That’s total pre-emption — no exceptions.
Florida and other red states have already passed laws prohibiting the use of AI in enforcing gun control or violating medical privacy. More states are following suit. Legislatures across the country are debating how to safeguard civil liberties and property rights from tech overreach. But this bill would kneecap every one of those efforts.
Then come the AI data centers — massive, power-hungry, water-consuming facilities that are cropping up in rural areas and harming communities in their wake. Bipartisan state efforts aim to regulate them through zoning and environmental protections. Yet under this bill, Congress could override even the most basic local safeguards. If a township tries to limit where these centers operate or how they’re built, that could be viewed as “regulating AI systems” and thus outlawed for a decade.
Why does this matter? Because tech moguls aren’t hiding their intentions.
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At Trump’s January 22 launch event for Oracle’s Stargate platform, CEO Larry Ellison gushed about mRNA vaccines. “One of the most exciting things we’re working on ... is our cancer vaccine,” he said. “Using AI, we can detect cancers through blood tests and produce an mRNA vaccine robotically in about 48 hours.” That’s the model. AI plus big data plus biotech equals unregulated medical experimentation — powered by infrastructure no local government can block.
Red states have started pushing back, attempting to pass 10-year moratoriums on mRNA technology. But the federal budget bill would do the opposite: It could impose a 10-year federal moratorium on state bans.
So here’s the question: Do we really want Arab-funded special interests building AI spying centers in our heartland with no recourse for state and local governments to regulate, restrict, or place common-sense privacy guardrails on these new Towers of Babel?
That question raises another: Should localities be forced to accept carbon pipelines by federal decree, with no power to defend their land or water?
These policies — stripping states of authority, empowering transnational corporations, subsidizing green and biotech fantasies — are the exact opposite of the anti-globalist, America First message that won Trump the White House and won Republicans the House.
We deserve answers. Who inserted these provisions? And more urgently, who will take them out?
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With 64-6 and 32-3 majorities in the South Dakota House and Senate, Republicans alone have the power to advance or block their agenda. Yet, Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden’s veto of a key initiative petition reform bill hands Democrats an opening to continue pushing their agenda through the state’s highly manipulated ballot initiative process.
In the Mount Rushmore State, the Democratic Party is slightly less popular than herpes, which forces progressives to rely on massive outside funding to place their proposals directly on the ballot. Although the electorate leans conservative, ballot measures are often complex and confusing — one reason the nation’s founders rejected direct democracy in favor of a representative system.
It’s astonishing how, across red states, only the Freedom Caucus seems willing to stop the left from using ballot initiatives to shift policy in purple and blue directions.
This is especially true when it comes to constitutional amendments. At the federal level, amending the Constitution requires approval from two-thirds of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states. Yet at the state level, well-funded left-wing groups are trying to change constitutions with a simple 51% majority and carefully crafted ballot language — turning red states blue, one vote at a time.
A commonsense safeguard
Last year, liberal groups gathered enough signatures to place several controversial proposals on the South Dakota ballot: codifying abortion as a right, legalizing marijuana, and eliminating partisan primaries. Voters rejected all three, but these efforts reflect a growing trend. In other red states, similar campaigns have succeeded, using direct democracy to bypass conservative legislatures. Why continue to leave this pathway open — allowing progressives to rewrite the state’s constitution through tactics they could never achieve in the Capitol?
House Bill 1169 offered a commonsense safeguard. The bill would have required petition circulators to gather signatures from all 35 state Senate districts, totaling at least 5% of the votes cast in the most recent gubernatorial election. This district-level requirement would have supplemented the existing statewide threshold of 10%, already mandated by the state constitution.
Across the country, progressive groups are steering major policy questions directly to the ballot, often collecting most of their signatures from the most liberal population centers. In South Dakota, that means relying on Sioux Falls and Rapid City, rather than seeking broad statewide support.
“This bill would have finally given people in small towns and rural counties a voice in the petition process to amend our constitution,” House Speaker Jon Hansen (R) lamented after the governor’s veto. “If you live in a small, rural community, chances are you’ve never been approached by a petition circulator. That’s because most proposed constitutional amendments are placed on the ballot by paid circulators in Sioux Falls and Rapid City — without input from smaller communities. If you live in a small town, you rarely get a say in what amendments reach the ballot.”
The measure passed the House by a wide margin along party lines and cleared the Senate by a narrower 19-15 vote. Rhoden vetoed the bill earlier this week.
Absurd excuses
In his veto message, the governor hid behind concerns that the bill would not survive legal challenges. He suggested he supported the idea in principle but believed the measure would ultimately backfire — arguing it could empower, rather than restrain, well-funded special interests.
“The additional burden of collecting signatures from each of the 35 senatorial districts, each on a separate petition sheet, risks creating a system where only those with substantial financial resources can effectively undertake a statewide petition drive,” Rhoden wrote. “This undermines the bill's intent by putting South Dakotans at a disadvantage to dark money out-of-state groups.”
The argument is absurd. In a hypothetical scenario where rural districts lean as liberal as urban areas, Rhoden’s claim — that a uniform signature threshold across all districts would burden grassroots groups more than big-money interests — might hold water. In reality, South Dakota’s rural districts remain largely immune to left-wing campaigns. Passing HB 1169 would likely halt nearly all liberal petition efforts in the state.
That’s precisely why former state Sen. Reynold Nesiba, a Democrat from Sioux Falls, said he planned to launch a referendum to repeal the bill. “It will effectively end the constitutional amendment process initiated by citizens in South Dakota,” he warned.
That’s the point. Why would a Republican governor want to give the left a back door to influence state policy?
The idea that the bill would hinder conservative petitions doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, either. If a proposal has genuine conservative support, it should have no trouble passing through the Republican-controlled legislature. Conservatives only turn to the initiative process when liberal Republicans like Rhoden turn a supermajority trifecta into a uniparty circus.
Letting the left win
It’s astonishing how, across red states, only the Freedom Caucus seems willing to stop the left from using ballot initiatives to shift policy in purple and blue directions — just as it did in Alaska. In Missouri, GOP leadership has repeatedly dismissed Freedom Caucus efforts to rein in initiative petitions, even after the left used that very process to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.
In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) called a special session earlier this year to address widespread petition fraud. But legislative leaders ignored his request and have been slow-walking reform legislation during the regular session.
This reluctance among Republican leaders to limit ballot initiatives reveals a troubling truth: Many of them quietly support certain left-wing goals but don’t want their fingerprints on the results. They’re fine with legalizing recreational marijuana, weary of the abortion fight, and unwilling to oppose Medicaid expansion.
By allowing Democrats to exploit the initiative process, these Republicans effectively outsource controversial policy changes to the ballot box — letting the left win while they avoid tough votes.
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A South Dakota man admitted to hitting a woman in the head with a can; she later died. However, his defense argued that the woman's poor health and alcoholism were major factors in her death.
In October, 44-year-old Pedro Simental pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in connection with a physical confrontation with 40-year-old Edleigha Little in November 2023. Authorities said Little died after Simental struck her in the head with a can of beans.
Simental’s attorney argued that these conditions made her more vulnerable to the 'single, reckless blow' to the head that ultimately caused her death.
On Monday, Seventh Circuit Judge Joshua Hendrickson sentenced Simental to 15 years in prison. Both the prosecution and the defense recommended a 15-year prison sentence.
What's the background?
Simental and Little got into a physical altercation on the evening of Nov. 8.
KELO-TV reported that Simental admitted to law enforcement investigators that he "may have struck the victim in the left side of her head with a can."
When police arrived at the crime scene, they found Little unconscious and suffering multiple bruises on her head, neck, and face. She was rushed to the hospital. However, Little succumbed to her injuries and was pronounced dead a few hours later.
According to KOTA-TV, the defense noted Little’s blood alcohol content was .474% at the time of her death.
The Pennington County State’s Attorney noted in a statement that Hendrickson acknowledged the case's numerous challenges, especially the victim's poor health before the attack.
During the trial, Simental’s lawyer highlighted several of the victim's pre-existing health conditions, including that Little was a “severe alcoholic,” and her years of excessive drinking could have caused the hematoma, according to KOTA-TV.
Defense Attorney Conor Duffy cited statements from two medical examiners that claimed severe alcoholism triggered the hematoma after the blow to the head. Medical examiners noted that Little sustained "minimal external signs of trauma."
A state doctor claimed that her hematoma was "spontaneous."
Simental’s attorney argued that these conditions made her more vulnerable to the “single, reckless blow” to the head that ultimately caused her death.
However, Senior Deputy State Attorney Roxanne Hammond expressed concern over Simental’s lack of accountability.
During the investigation, Simental allegedly stated that he "takes little to no responsibility for his role in her death."
However, Simental stressed in court that he does take responsibility for his actions that led to Little's death.
Little's niece told the court that her aunt was a caring, thoughtful person and accused Simental of regularly abusing the victim. The niece urged Judge Hendrickson to impose a lengthy sentence so Simental could not "do this to another woman and her family."
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