On June 15, 2026, The Rapid City Sentinel submitted a formal press questionnaire to both campaigns competing in South Dakota’s first-ever gubernatorial runoff election.

The questions were sent to Governor Larry Rhoden’s spokesperson Ian Fury and to Toby Doeden’s campaign at their public press address with a follow up email sent June 20,2026.

The deadline was today, June 22, 2026.

Neither campaign responded. Not a partial answer. Not a request for more time. Not a decline. Silence.This is not a complaint. It is documentation.

Independent press is not entitled to access. Campaigns are under no legal obligation to answer our questions. But voters are entitled to know who answered and who didn’t — and what was asked.

Gatekeeping?

The Rapid City Sentinel is not alone in navigating a closed door. KELOLAND Media Group, one of the state’s largest broadcast outlets, extended a debate invitation to both campaigns for a televised one-on-one forum. Doeden accepted, but Rhoden declined — with a spokesperson explaining in a written statement that responding to his opponent’s claims simply takes too much effort.

Now, as the July runoff approaches, the candidates’ willingness to answer direct, unscripted questions hasn’t vanished entirely, but it has certainly receded from public view.

It feels less like a targeted decision about which specific outlets matter, and more like a collective decision by both camps to simply retreat from scrutiny, lower the blinds, and stick to the safety of managed talking points.

The Weight of Silence

When the political landscape gets difficult, the standard playbook often calls for silence. But independent journalism is either part of the accountability mechanism or it isn’t. Transparency shouldn’t scale back just because the cycle gets tense.

Because here is what matters more than campaign access. The questions we sent were not abstract. They were grounded in active issues that do not pause for an election cycle, and problems that will land on the desk of whoever becomes or remains governor of this state.

The ongoing oversight concerns surrounding state land sales and the foreign-owned GCC Dacotah operation. The strain resource-heavy data centers will place on local infrastructure and the environment. The lingering gap in voter registration laws for those using Tribal IDs. These are not hypotheticals. These are the realities on the ground.

Rapid City’s own mayor would presumably like to know where the next governor stands on some of these questions. So would Rapid City’s residents. So would anyone paying attention to what is actually happening in western South Dakota.

Neither candidate offered an answer. Not one word.

The Rapid City Sentinel Gubernatorial Questionnaire

The questions we sent were these:

1. Inflation is hammering people at the pump and the grocery store. Beyond simply criticizing federal policies, what specific, measurable state-level actions will your administration take to ease this localized financial burden for South Dakotans?

2. How will you balance the integration of AI in state government functions with the strict need for transparency and municipal accountability to the taxpayers?

3. In the wake of the GCC Dacotah fallout and ongoing concerns regarding long-term industrial oversight, what specific, stringent compliance measures will you implement regarding state land sales to foreign entities?

4. As development expands, specifically regarding resource-heavy data centers, how will your administration weigh the environmental impact and strain on local infrastructure against corporate interests?

5. South Dakota’s relationship with the federal government is constantly in flux — sometimes a partner, sometimes an obstacle. When Washington and Pierre’s interests diverge, where does your administration draw the line, and what’s an issue where you’d actively push back against federal direction?

6. Tribal ID cards are accepted at the polls and now qualify as proof of citizenship under SB 175, but they still can’t be used on their own to register to vote. As governor, would you push to close that registration gap?

7. Why should the average resident care enough to show up for this runoff?

8. Prior to active campaigning, what was the last book you read?

9. The Rapid City Litmus Test: A Pterodactyl at Dinosaur Park—yes or no?

These are not partisan questions. They are not gotcha questions. They are the minimum any voter deserves before casting a ballot for the person who will hold the most powerful office in this state.

South Dakota’s runoff law, SDCL 12-6-51.1, exists because the legislature decided in 1985 that a plurality wasn’t enough. That legitimacy requires a threshold. That voters deserve more than whoever happened to finish first.

Both men asking for your vote on July 28 declined to meet the threshold this outlet set.The record is clear. They were asked. The deadline passed. You are reading this.

We asked if they believed in dinosaurs.

They answered by becoming one.

The Droehdon-A-Saurus – An Editorial Cartoon

The post The Runoff Plurality of Silence: The Gubernatorial Questionnaire They Ignored appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

The Runoff Plurality of Silence: The Gubernatorial Questionnaire They Ignored

The post The Droehdon-A-Saurus – An Editorial Cartoon appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

Rapid City voters settled all five ward alderman races Tuesday in a primary that saw turnout vary widely across the city, with Ward 2 recording the lowest total of any ward at 1,427 votes — less than half the 3,313 cast in Ward 3.

Statewide, 171,729 ballots were cast out of 497,046 registered voters, a turnout rate of roughly 34 percent.

Rapid City Council Primary Results

Ward 1 Josh Biberdorf defeated Murray Lee 71 to 29 percent, with 2,651 total votes cast.
Ward 2: Incumbent Lindsey Seachris defeated Christopher Vanderhoof 54 to 46 percent, with 1,427 total votes cast across all five precincts.
Ward 3: Kevin Maher defeated Andrea Schaefer 58 to 42 percent, with 3,313 total votes cast.
Ward 4: John Roberts defeated Valeriah Big Eagle 52 to 44 percent, with 1,672 total votes cast. A third candidate, Ardin Jay Cychosz, received 65 votes despite having withdrawn from the race after ballots had already been printed. Roberts’ margin of victory was 68 votes.
Ward 5: Laura Armstrong defeated Patrick Roseland 56 to 44 percent, with 2,818 total votes cast.

Gubernatorial Runoff

At the statewide level, the Republican gubernatorial primary ended with no candidate clearing the 35 percent threshold required to avoid a runoff. Toby Doeden led with 31 percent, followed by Larry Rhoden at 25 percent, Dusty Johnson at 23 percent, and Jon Hansen at 21 percent. A runoff is scheduled for July 28.

The post Rapid City Council Races Decided; Ward 4 Results Complicated by Withdrawn Candidate appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

South Dakota law prohibits the distribution of AI-generated political video within ninety days of an election unless it carries a specific disclosure stating the content was digitally created or manipulated. With Tuesday’s Republican gubernatorial primary two days away, at least one political action committee appears to have distributed exactly that kind of content — without the required language.

Senate Bill 164, passed by the 2025 South Dakota Legislature and introduced by Senator Larson, defines a deepfake as any image, audio, or video created or manipulated using artificial intelligence that is realistic enough that a reasonable person would believe it depicts the actual speech or conduct of a real individual.

Violating the law is a Class 1 misdemeanor. Injured candidates and the Attorney General may seek injunctive relief, damages, and attorney fees.

The law includes an exemption for satire and parody. It does not exempt content that names a candidate by name with the stated intent to influence how voters cast their ballots.

An AI Deepfakes Study

Concerned Citizens of South Dakota, a statewide political action committee based out of 2811 Vanocker Canyon Road in Sturgis, posted an AI-generated video to its Facebook page on May 18 — 15 days before Tuesday’s primary.

The video, which carries the disclaimer “Paid for by Concerned Citizens of South Dakota,” depicts multiple AI-generated characters in a cinematic Old West setting. It does not include the disclosure required by SB 164.

The video is set to an original recorded song — a parody of the classic western theme “Rawhide” — in which the word “rawhide” has been replaced throughout with “rhino hide,” a reference to the RINO political epithet. The audio is labeled “Original audio” on the PAC’s Facebook page, indicating custom production rather than auto-generated or stock content.

Auto-generated captions captured during the video include the phrase “send donors back in. Johnson cracking guard back inside,” naming gubernatorial candidate and U.S. Representative Dusty Johnson explicitly. Facebook’s own label on the video reads “Captions auto-generated,” indicating the platform detected no human-provided caption track — consistent with AI-generated audio content.

One scene depicts an AI-generated figure in a frontier setting hammering a “Pipeline Coming Soon” sign into the ground. Another shows a figure seated by a fireplace in a pinstriped suit. A “Pierre City Limits — Rhino’s Only” sign appears in a separate scene, with the caption “Keep it rolling though the voters told them no.” The video ends with riders herding rhinoceroses across South Dakota prairie.

The accompanying Facebook post states: “Our political insiders tell us that D.C. Dusty is trying to control our whole state — and we’re not going to stand for it.” It directs voters to nonsensesd.org ahead of Tuesday’s election.

The website nonsensesd.org, which carries the footer “Paid for by Concerned Citizens of South Dakota,” bills itself as a voter guide to candidates who “put South Dakotans last.” It lists dozens of Republican legislative candidates by name and photo across both chambers of the South Dakota Legislature, organized by district.

A Pattern Across the Race

Among those listed is District 31 Representative Mary Fitzgerald, an incumbent Republican who has been publicly active in South Dakota’s pipeline and property rights debates. On May 27, Fitzgerald posted a formal public statement to her Facebook page under the heading “For the Record.” It read: “I did not authorize, consent to, or approve the use of my likeness on any card, political mailer, campaign literature, advertisement, or other political communication.”

Fitzgerald is not alone. Dakota News Now reported that fifteen South Dakota legislative candidates issued cease-and-desist orders over campaign mailers sent by Dakota First Action, a separate PAC founded by gubernatorial candidate Toby Doeden, after mailers used their names, images, and likenesses without permission. Representative Spencer Gosch, an outspoken supporter of gubernatorial candidate Jon Hansen, told the outlet the mailers made it appear he was endorsing Doeden when he had not consented to appear on them at all.

The Concerned Citizens PAC Stacking

Campaign finance records filed with the South Dakota Secretary of State tell a story of their own.

Concerned Citizens of South Dakota lists Calvin Fickbohm of Newell as committee chair and Dylan Wieneke of Sturgis as treasurer. Its pre-primary report, filed May 18 — the same day the video was posted — shows total income of $4,875.

The single largest contribution came not from an individual donor but from another PAC: Concerned Citizens of Butte County, which contributed $2,000.

Concerned Citizens of Butte County is also a statewide political action committee. It lists Travis Ismay of Newell as committee chair — and Dylan Wieneke of Sturgis as treasurer. The two PACs share the same treasurer, the same committee address at 2811 Vanocker Canyon Road in Sturgis, and the same daytime phone number.

Ismay, the chair of the feeder PAC, is a Representative-elect to the South Dakota Legislature. He does not appear to be hiding his involvement. According to documentation reviewed by the Sentinel, Ismay himself appears on camera at the conclusion of the video, riding on horseback across the South Dakota prairie.

The pre-primary finance report for Concerned Citizens of South Dakota lists one expenditure: $2,000 for a radio advertisement. The AI-generated video — which by any reasonable measure required professional production, including original music recording and cinematic videography across multiple scenes — does not appear in the disclosed expenditures.

A Second Video

The western saloon video is not the only AI-generated content the PAC has produced.

A second video, posted to the Concerned Citizens of South Dakota Facebook page and promoted under the caption “Meet the Dusty Bots,” depicts AI-generated robotic figures in a suburban street scene with the on-screen text: “Find out which Dusty Bot model is right for you. Visit dustybots.org.” That domain redirects to nonsensesd.org — the same voter guide website carrying the PAC’s paid-for disclaimer.

One week before the primary, the PAC posted a teaser to its Facebook page reading: “Is anybody waiting for the next ad from CCOSD? Stay tuned.”

The PAC’s Facebook page describes its mission as keeping South Dakota “FREE and PROSPEROUS” and states that “the PEOPLE should be in charge of South Dakota’s future, not powerful interest groups.”

Neither video includes the disclosure required by South Dakota Senate Bill 164. The Sentinel reviewed frame-by-frame screenshots of both videos and found no superimposed text stating the content was digitally generated or manipulated. The only text identifying the content’s origin in either video is the campaign finance disclaimer: “Paid for by Concerned Citizens of South Dakota.”

Not About Scale

The videos are a small part of a much larger and more expensive air war surrounding Tuesday’s primary. Campaign finance reports connect Johnson to a political action committee that has spent more than $1.3 million on advertisements targeting his opponents in less than a month.

A Virginia-based Super PAC called Defend US has spent more than $600,000 on attack ads and mail opposing Johnson, including $500,000 on television. Concerned Citizens of South Dakota, by contrast, reported a total balance of $3,693.96 at the close of its pre-primary reporting period.

What distinguishes the CCOSD operation from the broader spending environment is not its scale. It is the technology it employed, the law that technology triggered, and the disclosures that technology required and did not receive.

South Dakota is not alone in grappling with AI-generated political content. Similar legislation has been enacted or introduced in dozens of states as campaigns increasingly deploy artificial intelligence to produce attack content at low cost and high volume. SB 164 was South Dakota’s answer to that problem. Tuesday’s primary may be an early test of whether it has teeth.

The Sentinel contacted Concerned Citizens of South Dakota for comment prior to publication. No response was received by 8:00 PM Sunday, May 31.

The post AI Deepfakes and How They Are Infecting South Dakota’s Election Cycle appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

RAPID CITY, S.D. — When Rapid City’s Legal and Finance Committee advanced Ordinance 6717 Wednesday, the item was described simply as bringing the city’s municipal code into alignment with state law.

What that alignment represents is a legal framework — rooted in an 1890 statute — that concentrates authority over appointed city officers firmly in the mayor’s office.

The ordinance is Rapid City’s response to South Dakota Senate Bill 165, signed by Governor Larry Rhoden on March 4, 2026, which reinforced existing statutes governing municipal government. The driving force behind that legislation was a situation that unfolded in Spearfish earlier this year.

The Spearfish Catalyst

In January 2026, five Spearfish city council members called publicly for the removal of City Administrator Bobby Falcon, citing concerns about performance and communication. The mayor declined to act. When the council attempted to use a local ordinance to exercise termination authority themselves, the Spearfish city attorney sought guidance from the state.

On January 28, 2026, South Dakota Attorney General Official Opinion 26-02 answered the question definitively: the council cannot terminate the city administrator. That authority is vested solely in the mayor.

The opinion cited SDCL 9-14-13 — a statute that has been on the books since 1890 — which grants the mayor of an aldermanic municipality the power to remove any officer the mayor appointed, if the mayor believes removal is in the interest of the municipality. The mayor’s only obligation is to report the reasons to the council at the next regular meeting.

Following the AG opinion, the state legislature reinforced the statute through SB 165, closing any ambiguity that local councils might use to challenge mayoral authority over appointed officers.

Municipal Code Is Changing Statewide

Cities across South Dakota, including Rapid City, are now updating their local codes to reflect the change before the July 1, 2026 effective date. A representative of the city attorney’s office noted at Wednesday’s committee meeting that once the updated municipal code language is finalized, all municipal departments will be notified.

The authority described in these statutes is not theoretical in Rapid City. On April 1, Mayor Jason Salamun exercised it directly, removing longtime city attorney Joel Landeen effective immediately. No council vote was required. No public hearing was held. Salamun reported the action and confirmed it was his decision.

On Wednesday morning — the same day Ordinance 6717 advanced through committee — the city announced Carla Cushman, who had served as interim city attorney since Landeen’s departure, had been appointed permanently. Her confirmation vote is scheduled for June 1.

Ordinance 6717 is on its first reading. It will return to the full council for a second reading and vote before taking effect.

The post How A Spearfish Political Power Struggle Helped Shape Rapid City Ordinance 6717 appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

Editor’s note: This is a developing story. The Rapid City Sentinel will update this report as the Sequitor Edge land transaction closes, city building permits are filed, and additional records become available. Corrections or new information can be sent to the Sentinel directly.

Rapid City is about to get its first data center.

The facility isn’t built yet. The land hasn’t closed. It hasn’t cleared city permits. But in February, Sequitor Edge — a Nebraska-based company founded in 2024 — announced plans to construct a 30,000-square-foot computing facility on a 10-acre site in the Black Hills Industrial Center, south of Old Folsom Road near Highway 79. The announcement was made at Elevate Rapid City.

As of this week, the parties are still operating under a Letter of Intent and completing final due diligence, with the land transaction expected to close later this spring. Groundbreaking is anticipated for late summer, pending that closing. If construction stays on schedule, the doors open in 2027.

The timing is notable, because one month after that announcement, Congress published a report explaining exactly what communities should understand when a data center comes to town. And six weeks after that, Governor Rhoden signed two bills into law that address almost every concern the federal report raised. South Dakota moved faster on this than most of the country.

But there’s a gap — and Rapid City is sitting right in it.

What Pierre Did, and Why it Mattered

Data center legislation dominated the 2026 session in ways that surprised even some veteran Capitol watchers. By the time the session ended, lawmakers had fielded a 50-year sales tax exemption for data center equipment — which failed — a one-year construction moratorium — which also failed — and two competing visions of whether South Dakota should be courting this industry or protecting its residents from it.

What emerged was Senate Bill 135, which its prime sponsors called the “Data Center Bill of Rights for Citizens.” Governor Rhoden signed it, along with House Bill 1038, on March 24.

The new law requires data centers to:

1. Pay for any electrical infrastructure costs their operations create — not spread those costs across the existing ratepayer base.

2. It requires that water use not overburden local resources.

3. And it explicitly prohibits the state from overriding local ordinances that limit or regulate data centers. A companion bill allows the Public Utilities Commission to assess regulatory review costs directly to data center companies.

None of that happened by accident. Residents in Sioux Falls, Toronto, and Sully County had shown up to crowded public meetings raising exactly those concerns. The legislature listened.

A Federal Report That Validated the Worry

In the middle of that legislative fight, the Congressional Research Service — the nonpartisan research arm of Congress — published a detailed FAQ on data centers and their energy consumption. It is, in plain terms, the federal government’s attempt to explain what the rest of the country is dealing with.

The numbers are not small. U.S. data centers consumed approximately 176 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023 — about 4.4 percent of total national consumption. Some projections have that figure doubling or tripling by 2028, driven largely by artificial intelligence applications. According to the report, artificial intelligence alone accounted for 10 to 20 percent of data center energy use in 2023, and that share is growing.

On Water: the report cites International Energy Agency estimates that a 100-megawatt data center may consume roughly 530,000 gallons of water per day through its cooling systems. EPA figures put total U.S. data center water consumption at 17.4 billion gallons in 2023, projected to reach between 38 and 73 billion gallons by 2028. For context, a city in Oregon reported that Google’s data centers were responsible for nearly 30 percent of the entire city’s water consumption — a figure that had tripled over five years.

On ratepayer costs: the report confirms what Rapid City residents have been asking about. If a utility builds new infrastructure to accommodate data center demand, those costs can be passed to existing customers through rate increases. That is exactly what the new South Dakota law is designed to prevent.

On federal regulation: there are no legally binding energy or water standards that apply to private-sector data centers anywhere in the country. None. The ENERGY STAR certification program is voluntary, and here is the part that rarely makes the news release — ENERGY STAR’s calculation method excludes the energy used by the actual IT equipment. It only rates the building shell. The servers, the processors, the storage drives — not counted.

South Dakota’s new law addresses what the federal government hasn’t gotten around to yet.

What Rapid City is Actually Getting

Sequitor Edge is not Google. It is not a hyperscale facility. That distinction matters and deserves honest treatment.

A megawatt is a unit of electrical power equal to one million watts — enough to continuously power roughly 800 homes. The Sequitor Edge facility will start at 2 megawatts, the equivalent of a small neighborhood’s power load. At full build-out across five data halls, it could reach 10 megawatts — roughly the continuous power demand of a small town. Black Hills Energy representatives at the announcement compared Phase 1’s energy draw to a grocery store or a big-box retailer. That comparison is reasonable.

On water, the company’s numbers are also genuinely different from what the federal report describes for large facilities. Sequitor Edge says its closed-loop cooling system requires a one-time fill of approximately 19,000 to 20,000 gallons — about the same as filling a residential swimming pool — with no ongoing daily consumption unless additional data halls are built. The 530,000-gallons-per-day figure in the federal report applies to facilities using evaporative cooling towers, which is a fundamentally different technology. The closed-loop claim, at this scale, is not misleading.

The facility will create three full-time positions averaging $100,000 annually. That is what it is.

The Gap We Need to Know

Here is where Rapid City residents should pay attention.

South Dakota’s new law — the one that requires data centers to cover infrastructure costs and protect local water supplies — applies to facilities with a peak electrical demand of 10 megawatts or greater. Sequitor Edge’s Phase 1 starts at 2 megawatts. Phase 1 falls below the threshold entirely. Even at full expansion to 10 megawatts, the facility is right at the line where the law’s protections begin.

That is not an accusation of bad faith by anyone. Sequitor Edge’s stated plans are modest compared to what is being built elsewhere. But the question is worth asking before the permits are signed: if Phase 1 is below the threshold, and Phase 2 expands the facility, at what point do the ratepayer protections in SB 135 actually apply? The law was designed to protect Rapid City residents. Whether it does depends on a number neither the city nor the state has formally addressed in the context of this specific project.

The city permitting process is the moment to ask it.

The Sovereign Land Question

There is a thread in this story that the legislature did not pick up. In December, a tribal council passed a resolution at its 5th annual conference — held here in Rapid City — opposing the construction and operation of data centers in treaty territory. In April, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe hosted a public hearing where the Indigenous-led nonprofit Honor the Earth argued for a moratorium on data centers in tribal lands, stating that the new state law was passed without consultation of any tribal government.

Treaty territory water rights and state utility regulation do not operate on the same legal framework. That tension does not disappear because a facility is small or locally focused. It is an open question the new law does not answer, and it was raised here, in this city, months before the permits were filed.

While South Dakota protected Ratepayers, Washington Did the Opposite

On the same day this article was being reported, the federal government moved in the other direction. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed rolling back wastewater discharge limits for coal-fired power plants — explicitly because of data center demand. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin stated that “the AI and data center revolution is creating an electricity and baseload power demand that cannot be met under the overly restrictive policies of past administrations.”

To be direct about what that means: Washington is loosening environmental standards on coal plants to generate more power for data centers, while South Dakota is requiring data centers to pay their own infrastructure costs and protect local water supplies. Those two things are moving in opposite directions on the same week. One of them protects Rapid City residents. The other one doesn’t.

What Rapid City Should Be Asking

Rapid City is not a cautionary tale waiting to happen. The scale of what is proposed here is genuinely different from the facilities that have overwhelmed water systems and utility grids in other parts of the country. The state legislature took the issue seriously before the problem arrived. That is not nothing.

But the questions a small facility raises are the same ones a large facility raises — they are just easier to ask before the concrete is poured.

1.What are the thresholds at which the new law’s protections kick in for this specific project?

2. What is Black Hills Energy’s formal capacity assessment for the Black Hills Industrial Center corridor?

3. What does the city’s permitting process require Sequitor Edge to disclose about expansion plans?

A federal report just told us what the rest of the country learned the hard way. We have the advantage of asking the questions first.

The Rapid City Sentinel will follow this story as the land transaction closes, building permits are filed with the city, and Black Hills Energy’s capacity planning for the Black Hills Industrial Center corridor becomes clearer. If you have information relevant to this story, contact the Sentinel directly.

Sources: Congressional Research Service Report R48646, “Data Centers and Their Energy Consumption: Frequently Asked Questions” (May 2026); South Dakota Senate Bill 135 and House Bill 1038 (signed March 24, 2026); Elevate Rapid City press release, February 11, 2026; U.S. EPA proposed rule on steam electric power plant effluent limitations guidelines (May 14, 2026); Fortune, “America’s data centers are thirsty” (May 13, 2026); Rapid City Journal, NewsCenter1, KOTA Radio, South Dakota Searchlight, and KELO reporting on Sequitor Edge announcement and state legislative session; Buffalo Today/National Today reporting on tribal responses.

The post South Dakota Got Ahead of This. Here’s What it Means for Data Centers in Rapid City appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

On Monday afternoon in Sioux Falls, a police officer followed a woman into what turned out to be an ambush. A man waiting around the corner shot him multiple times. Both suspects — Darren Richards and Loretta Bettelyoun — were on state-supervised parole at the time of the attack. The officer survived. Barely.

Both suspects are Rapid City natives.

By Tuesday, Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken was calling South Dakota’s parole system “broken.” Police Chief Jon Thum and Minnehaha County Sheriff Mike Milstead agreed. Milstead noted that at that moment, 114 of the 400 people sitting in his county jail were on parole holds. Thum told reporters he felt like a broken record — that law enforcement had been repeating this warning about repeat offenders for years without being heard.

By Thursday, Governor Larry Rhoden had announced a new round of emergency directives: an enhanced compliance unit, five new parole agent positions, stiffer sanctions for repeat violators, and a near-doubling of revocations in the first week of implementation.

Credit where it’s due. Those are concrete steps.

But the question worth asking — the one a press release won’t answer — is how South Dakota got here in the first place.

The Numbers Tell the Story

South Dakota’s recidivism rate for its 2021 adult cohort hit 50 percent — the highest recorded in at least 18 years.

For Native Americans, who make up 35 percent of the male prison population and 61 percent of the female population despite being roughly 10 percent of the state’s general population, the rate is 59 percent. For Native women specifically, 67 percent returned to prison within three years.

This is not a new crisis. It is a neglected one.

In 2013, under Governor Dennis Daugaard, South Dakota enacted sweeping sentencing reform through Senate Bill 70.

The results were measurable: parole revocations dropped 41 percent, average parole caseloads fell 18 percent, and the state saved more than $34 million by 2015. The system, by the numbers, was improving.

Then it stopped improving.

The Noem Years

Kristi Noem took office in 2019 and announced she would modernize South Dakota’s correctional system. What followed was a different kind of modernization.

Over two years, Noem bypassed the Board of Pardons and Paroles — the oversight body that reviews clemency applications — and granted commutations to 20 people without board review. Her two immediate predecessors had not done this.

In at least one documented case, she overruled a board denial, skipped notifying victims’ families, and may have violated her own executive order establishing the review process.

Her corrections secretary, Kellie Wasko, was eventually forced out after legislators lost confidence in the department’s leadership. Rhoden replaced her with Nick Lamb after taking office.

Noem’s plan to build a new men’s prison south of Sioux Falls was rejected by the Legislature. Rhoden had to start over with a new site and a new plan.

By the time Noem left for Washington in January 2025 to join the Trump administration, South Dakota’s recidivism rate was at an 18-year high, DOC leadership had been upended, and the prison infrastructure plan was in disarray.

Rhoden inherited all of it.

Two Cities, Two Different Situations

Here is something worth understanding about the geography of this crisis: Sioux Falls has been sounding this alarm longer, and it already has the infrastructure to show for it.

The Sioux Falls Area Joint Fugitive Task Force — a multi-agency body focused on violent crimes and outstanding warrants — has operated for years, bringing together the Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Office, the Sioux Falls Police Department, and the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office. That collaborative didn’t emerge from a press release. It was built over time, out of sustained pressure from law enforcement leaders who kept showing up and kept getting ignored.

Pennington County’s Parolee Accountability Task Force, by contrast, was announced approximately 36 hours before early and absentee voting started for the June 2nd municipal election, with Sheriff Mueller and State’s Attorney Roetzel named in the press release.

After the Sioux Falls shooting, Mueller and Hedrick issued a joint statement noting that additional data from the Pennington County task force would be released later this week. Chief Thum, meanwhile, called for the statewide conversation to be a priority — and then added a telling qualifier: after the election season.

Who Is Paying For This?

Governor Rhoden’s directives are real. The five new agents are real. The doubled revocation rate in week one is real. These are not nothing.

But the announcement is notably quiet on how the new positions will be funded. The administration noted it will continue working with lawmakers on “additional reforms and funding” — future tense.

The broader Smarter Supervision Initiative, announced less than a month ago, is partly contingent on an $892,000 Bureau of Justice grant application that has not yet been awarded.

Chief Thum said it plainly this week: fixing this is going to cost money. That conversation with the Legislature is apparently still ahead.

South Dakota lawmakers acknowledged this week that they passed only two bills specifically addressing parole in the last legislative session. That number is worth sitting with.

What Accountability Actually Looks Like

A near-murder of a police officer by two parolees — both of whom had active “attempt to locate” warrants issued — is not a system working. It is a system that absorbed years of deferred attention and is now paying the bill.

The suspects are from Rapid City. The crisis is statewide. The reforms are being announced in an election year, by candidates competing to be the one who finally fixes it.

The question for Rapid City, for Pennington County, and for the citizens of South Dakota is straightforward: now that the bill has come due, will the people making the announcements still be making them in January?

The post South Dakota’s Parole Crisis Didn’t Start Monday appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

​If you stand on the sidewalk outside Red Wing Shoes on West Main and look south across the street, you’ll see the historic spine of Rapid City: a maze of old industrial brick, an active freight line, and a whole lot of untouchable dirt. It’s a neighborhood where 19th-century railroad laws still dictate 21st-century reality.

​At 7:00 AM this morning, those laws caught up with a developer.

​Already $40,000 deep into a boutique coffee concept on the 1100 block of West Main, he was staring down a municipal math problem he couldn’t solve: 64 seats, minimal parking, and a massive adjacent dirt lot legally controlled by the railroad.

The Rapid City Planning Commission practically handed him a gift-wrapped zoning loophole to save the project, but he pushed back, determined to fight the physical and legal constraints of the tracks.

​Watching someone try to out-brand a freight train is a masterclass in development hubris. But his zoning headache isn’t just a local business dispute—it’s a blaring warning siren for Rapid City taxpayers.

​The invisible borders of the railroad right-of-way that just trapped a coffee shop are the exact same hurdles waiting for the city’s proposed multi-million-dollar Innovation District. And if we aren’t careful, we are about to make a very expensive mistake.

The Invisible Fortress

To the modern eye, the dirt adjacent to a railroad track looks like wasted space just waiting to be paved or developed. But when the predecessors of the RCPE (Rapid City, Pierre & Eastern) laid those tracks in the 1880s, the federal government and local charters didn’t just give them the five feet of gravel under the steel.

​They granted Rights-of-Way (ROW) that often extend 50 to 100 feet outward in both directions. This means there is an invisible federal fortress cutting right through Rapid City, governed entirely by the Surface Transportation Board.

​If the city wants to build tech labs, housing, or pedestrian bridges inside that corridor for the Innovation District, they are going to run into the 19th-century ledger. When they do, they will face four distinct legal realities:

1. The Clean Win: Fee Simple

If the city is lucky, the railroad bought the original parcels outright. This is called “Fee Simple.” The railroad owns the dirt forever, and the city can simply try to buy it from them at fair market value.

2.The Trap: Right-of-Way Easements

Most of the time, the railroad didn’t buy the dirt. A 19th-century landowner just signed an easement—a permanent permission slip to use the land strictly for railway purposes. The city cannot simply buy this land from the railroad, because the railroad doesn’t own it.

3. The Nightmare: Reversionary Rights & Ghost Heirs

If the city gets the railroad to “abandon” an easement so they can build a fiber-optic network or a lab, that permission slip vanishes. Legally, the land instantly reverts back to the original owner. Since it’s been 130 years, that land snaps back to the “ghost heirs”—great-great-grandchildren scattered across the country who have no idea they just inherited a slice of Rapid City. Clearing these titles requires a “Quiet Title Action”—hiring forensic genealogists and fighting years of expensive legal battles, all funded by the taxpayer.

4. The “Get Out of Jail Free” Card: Railbanking

There is one massive federal loophole the city can use to bypass the ghost heirs: The National Trails System Act. If the city and the railroad agree to transfer the unused corridor specifically for a public trail (like a bike path), it is considered “railbanked” for future use rather than legally “abandoned.” The easement remains intact, the ghost heirs get nothing, and the city gets to use the land.

PDFs VS. Pavement

The Innovation District is aimed directly at the corridor between Downtown and the School of Mines—an area defined by this exact railway infrastructure.

​Right now, the city is in the “PDF Phase” of planning, looking at beautiful, glossy renderings of tech hubs built over “underutilized” industrial zones. But the maps that will actually govern this project aren’t sitting on an iPad; they are locked in dusty county ledgers.

SDSMT and the Railroad

​The irony of the Innovation District is that it is trying to connect downtown Rapid City to the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology—a campus founded in 1885 as the engineering “brains” of the Black Hills. Exactly one year later, in 1886, the railroad arrived as the industrial “brawn” to haul the ore. For 140 years, the tracks and the campus grew up together as twin engines of Rapid City’s survival.

​But today, the 19th-century infrastructure that originally put Rapid City on the map is the exact legal fortress threatening to stall its 21st-century future.

The State’s Million Dollar Gamble

It’s one thing to stall a private business venture. It is entirely another to stall a state-backed economic initiative. With Governor Larry Rhoden and the state funneling millions into Rapid City’s infrastructure and innovation future, the pressure to break ground is immense.

​But if those state funds are being allocated based on glossy “PDF phase” planning—without clearing the 130-year-old railroad titles first—we aren’t just gambling with local pothole budgets. We are setting up a scenario where millions of state taxpayer dollars get deadlocked by a 19th-century permission slip.

The Sentinel’s Call to Action: Demand the Pavement Map

We cannot build Rapid City’s future by ignoring its physical past. Before the City Council approves another budget line item or signs off on state grants for the Innovation District, taxpayers and local officials need to ask three very specific questions:

1. ​Where is the Title Map? We need public transparency on which parcels in the proposed Innovation District are owned “Fee Simple” and which are encumbered by 19th-century Railroad Easements.
2. ​Who is paying for the Quiet Titles? If the city plans to build over old easements, is there a dedicated fund to handle the forensic genealogy, legal fees, and payouts for the “ghost heirs,” or will that blindside the municipal budget?
3. ​What is the Railbanking Strategy? Is the city actively negotiating with the RCPE and the federal Surface Transportation Board to preserve these corridors under the National Trails System Act, or are they just crossing their fingers?

​The next time you walk down West Main, look past the storefronts like Red Wing and Ernie November, and look at the iron tracks cutting through the dirt. They aren’t just history; they are a legal fortress. The developer at the 1100 block of West Main just invested $40,000 to learn that lesson. Let’s make sure Rapid City doesn’t pay millions to learn the same one.

The post The Tracks to Innovation Run Deeper Than Imagined in Rapid City appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

Just 36 hours before early municipal voting opens in Rapid City, local law enforcement has announced a heavily-armed, seven-agency task force to address a sudden parole crisis. Even for those of us who believe people on parole should be held accountable, the timing, the scale, and the stagecraft demand a closer look.
The stated catalyst is five to seven parole-related arrests spread across the entire county in a single day. That is not a crisis. It is a standard Tuesday. It is also useful.

Useful to a governor running for reelection who needs to show voters he delivers results, not studies.

Useful to a multi-agency infrastructure that already exists and needs a mission.

And useful to every elected official who wants to be seen doing something about public safety without spending a dime on the things that actually reduce it.

The Political Calendar that Nobody Mentioned

Seven days before this task force was announced, Governor Larry Rhoden was in a different kind of fight.
South Dakota’s June 2 Republican gubernatorial primary is heating up, with Rhoden and U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson each competing to appear tougher on recidivism.

The battle has a specific backdrop: last month, the state legislature rejected a bill that would have awarded $2.7 million to the Department of Corrections to expand existing rehabilitation programs. Lawmakers also killed $50,000 for a study of juvenile corrections. Real investment in reducing reoffending — gone.
On April 7, Rhoden responded with a press offensive. His Department of Corrections announced a $160,000 consulting contract and a new “Smarter Supervision Initiative.” The state had also submitted an $892,000 federal grant application to the Bureau of Justice at the end of March.

In a social media post the same day, Rhoden drew a sharp line between his opponents and himself: “Plans are fine, but when it comes to public safety, I have delivered RESULTS.”

Worth noting: Rhoden’s own letter supporting the federal grant application acknowledged that half of South Dakota’s exiting inmates reoffend within three years, and that “our current approach to community supervision is not producing the outcomes we need.

The legislature killed the money that might actually reduce recidivism. The governor needed a visible win before June 2. And somehow, the solution that emerged wasn’t more case workers, better transitional housing, or culturally appropriate reentry programs for the Native American population that makes up the majority of the state’s prison population. It was federal marshals in North Rapid.

Who Is Actually Being Targeted

To understand this dragnet, the public must first understand who is in the crosshairs. Probation and parole are often used interchangeably, but the legal reality is vastly different.

Probation is a judge’s alternative to incarceration. The targets of this task force are people who have already served hard time in the state penitentiary. They survived the prison system, proved to a state board they were safe enough to return to society, and now live under zero-tolerance conditions — surrendering their Fourth Amendment rights and paying mandatory supervision fees of $20 to $25 every single month just to exist outside a cell.

When officials boast that parolees have “readily available resources” to succeed, they are describing a system that has monetized the transition process from day one.

The Oxford Houses and sober living facilities in Rapid City are self-run and resident-supported — parolees pay rent. Section 8 housing applications carry non-refundable fees.

The state offers standardized, urban-centered programs with a documented lack of culturally specific resources, and the jurisdictional tangle between state parole boards and sovereign tribal lands means Native parolees often fall into a bureaucratic black hole about where they can live and what treatment they can access.

Framing any violation in this environment as a simple personal choice ignores the architecture of failure the state built around these individuals.

The Geography of Enforcement

When officials describe concentrating operations in “high-crime neighborhoods,” Rapid City residents do not need a map. They mean North Rapid and Star Village — the areas with the highest density of low-income and Native American residents.

That is not an accident of geography. It is the downstream consequence of a state that incarcerates at one of the highest rates in the democratic world, and does so with a racial disparity that is among the worst in the United States.

Native Americans make up roughly 9% of South Dakota’s general population. Depending on the year, they represent between 50% and 60% of the state prison population. When those individuals are released on parole, the system funnels them — through mandated housing, treatment centers, and reporting requirements — into specific corridors of this city.

The task force is not being deployed into neighborhoods that happen to have crime. It is being deployed into neighborhoods the system has spent decades filling with the people it now intends to re-arrest.

Supervision matters. The question is whether this task force is actually designed to provide it, or whether it is designed to be seen.

A Machine That Was Already Built

Officials claim they constructed this seven-agency task force in response to last week’s arrests. The agency rosters tell a different story.

Jeremy Taylor
Here is who responded to the Jeremy Taylor manhunt in February, when Taylor fled a traffic stop on January 30 and holed up in the Black Hills:
Rapid City Police Department
Pennington County Sheriff’s Office
South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI)
U.S. Marshals Service
Pennington County 911 / Emergency Services Communications Center
South Dakota Highway Patrol (highway perimeter and traffic)
Fall River County Sheriff / Hot Springs PD (brought in when Taylor fled south)

Parole Accountability Task Force
Here is the core roster of the brand new “Parole Accountability Task Force” announced this week:
Rapid City Police Department
Pennington County Sheriff’s Office
South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI)
U.S. Marshals Service
Pennington County 911
Pennington County State’s Attorney’s Office (added for prosecution authority)
SD DOC Parole Services (added to supply the target list and technical violation authority)

The core tactical unit — local PD, the Sheriff, State DCI, the Marshals, and dispatch — is identical. Highway Patrol was swapped out. The State’s Attorney and DOC Parole Services were swapped in.

They did not build a new task force. They kept the Jeremy Taylor manhunt infrastructure active, added the prosecution and parole components, and pointed a multi-jurisdictional apparatus designed for an armed, out-of-state fugitive at local residents who may have missed a drug test.

The Impossible Timeline

Building this kind of infrastructure from scratch takes a minimum of 60 to 90 days.

Bringing in the U.S. Marshals is not a phone call. It requires formal Memorandums of Understanding. Local officers often must be cross-deputized as Special Deputy U.S. Marshals under Title 18 authority before they can cross state lines or execute federal warrants. That paperwork and legal review alone takes weeks.

Multi-agency overtime operations then require budget authorization — someone has to determine whether the funds come from RCPD, the Sheriff’s Office, a DOJ grant, or HIDTA funds earmarked for warrant sweeps. Financial agreements between city, county, and state agencies move at a notoriously glacial pace.

Then comes intelligence and target packaging. A task force does not wander through Star Village hoping to bump into an absconder. They operate off a target package — weeks of cross-referencing parole records, active warrants, known associates, and current addresses. That work had to begin long before last Tuesday.

Finally, before hitting the streets, agencies must complete operational deconfliction: ensuring plainclothes DCI agents are not accidentally walking into a separate U.S. Marshals investigation, and establishing encrypted radio channels all seven agencies can access simultaneously.
The presence of DCI and the U.S. Marshals is the clearest signal that this has been on the whiteboards since at least February. Citizens who want to verify the timeline should request Pennington County Commission meeting minutes going back to mid-February — specifically the Consent Calendar — for any approvals of inter-agency MOUs, overtime authorizations, or acceptance of state or federal grants earmarked for warrant sweeps or task force operations. If those approvals exist, the official timeline collapses entirely.

The Right Questions

A genuine parole accountability effort would look different.

It would invest in the case-worker ratios that actually reduce recidivism.

It would use graduated sanctions instead of sending someone back to the penitentiary for a missed appointment.

It would not announce itself publicly 36 hours before operations begin, giving any actual absconder ample time to disappear.

What was announced Tuesday has the architecture of enforcement and the soul of a press release.
Accountability is a two-way street. Supporting it from parolees means demanding it from the agencies spending public money. Rapid City residents should be asking their elected officials:

Who is signing the checks? A seven-agency operation requires massive overtime. Did the City Council or County Commission authorize new funding, or are agencies burning surplus emergency funds left over from the Taylor manhunt?

What is the cost per arrest? How many taxpayer dollars are being spent deploying federal marshals and state detectives to arrest someone for a missed check-in, compared to the cost of funding a single transitional housing bed?

Is this public safety or public relations? If the goal is truly to apprehend dangerous absconders, why hold a press conference giving them 36 hours of advance notice to flee?

The people of Rapid City deserve parole supervision that actually works. What launched Tuesday deserves a closer look at the ledger.

The post The Task Force Trap: Manufacturing A Crisis for Election Season appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

Why This Concerns You

​When hyper-realistic, explicit deepfakes of celebrities like Taylor Swift flooded the internet, it brought federal outrage to the deepfake crisis. But pop stars aren’t the reason South Dakota is finally rewriting its criminal code.

​While the cameras were focused on Hollywood, the actual casualties were piling up in local high schools and government databases. The real crisis isn’t happening on red carpets; it’s happening on Snapchat, in Rapid City living rooms, and at the local DMV. And until now, South Dakota law enforcement has been largely powerless to stop it.

Trauma, Not Politics drove this bill

​For years, the state operated in a jurisdictional blind spot. If a citizen was victimized by a digital forgery, police often had to turn them away because existing revenge-porn statutes didn’t explicitly cover AI-generated material.

​The breaking point came from the ground up. The South Dakota Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force and local school districts found themselves dealing with a wave of localized trauma, forcing the state to recognize that local law enforcement needed criminal teeth to fight back.

​Signed into law this month by Governor Larry Rhoden, Senate Bill 41 officially closes the gap. Taking effect on July 1, 2026, the law makes creating or distributing non-consensual explicit deepfakes a Class 1 Misdemeanor—carrying up to a year in a county jail and a $2,000 fine. For repeat offenders, it escalates to a Class 6 Felony, punishable by up to two years in the state penitentiary and a $4,000 fine. It gives local police the authority to secure warrants, seize hard drives, and put perpetrators in handcuffs.

The Extortion Angle: Gaming Consoles & Crypto ATM’s

​This legislation is critical because the threat has evolved from localized harassment into highly organized financial extraction.

Overseas cybercrime rings are specifically targeting teenage boys, using gaming consoles—like Xbox Live and PlayStation Network—as a way into their lives.

​Armed with a single innocent photo, scammers generate a deepfake, threaten to send it to the boy’s family and peers, and demand immediate payment. The payment method of choice? The untraceable crypto ATMs popping up in local convenience stores.

The psychological terror of these extortion rings has directly contributed to a devastating spike in teen suicides

From The DMV to the Front Porch All it Takes is One Shot

​The illusion that citizens can protect themselves by simply “staying offline” or avoiding social media is dead. State-of-the-art AI no longer requires a curated photo album to steal your identity; it requires only a single clear frame of your face.

​This was underscored by a localized case involving a former DMV employee accused of scraping secure government photos to create manipulated images.

But the threat extends far beyond state databases—it exists in the cameras we walk past every single day. From 4K mall security feeds to the ubiquitous Ring doorbell cameras on almost every suburban street, our facial geometry is constantly being captured.

​This isn’t an indictment of home security systems; it is a reality check on how easily everyday technology can be weaponized:

A person taking a normal walk through their neighborhood is recorded by dozens of private lenses. If a bad actor accesses just one clear frame of that footage, it can be fed directly into an AI generator.

When a legally required trip to renew a driver’s license or a walk down your own street can land your face on a dark-web forum, the argument that victims somehow “brought it on themselves” completely disintegrates.

​Furthermore, the state recognized the profound psychological terror of the silent victim. What if a person’s image is forged and distributed, but they are never extorted? The sheer paranoia of knowing a fabricated reality is floating in the digital world waiting to be found by a future employer or spouse, is a unique trauma. That is why SB 41 penalizes the creation and distribution of these images, whether the victim is immediately aware of the violation or not.

Federal Initiatives and AI GuardRails

​SB 41 provides the criminal handcuffs, but it operates as part of a broader, multi-front war against digital exploitation:

The Preventative Shield (SB 168)

Moving parallel to the criminal code is Senate Bill 168, aimed at forcing tech companies to implement AI guardrails.

Most important, it mandates that if an AI system interacts with minors and detects suicidal ideation, it must trigger protocols to immediately route the child to a crisis hotline.

The Federal Hammer -The DEFIANCE Act

While the state puts the perpetrator in jail, the pending federal DEFIANCE Act aims to allow victims to sue creators and hosting platforms for up to $150,000 per incident. It is designed to financially ruin the perpetrator and force platforms to scrub the images from the internet.

Anonymous & Immediate Recourse Is Available

​The perpetrators of these crimes rely entirely on panic, isolation, and shame to maintain control.

If you or someone you know is targeted, DO NOT DELETE THE EVIDENCE. Law enforcement needs the screenshots of the images, usernames, and demands to make an arrest.

​If going to the police feels impossible right now, there is another way designed to help you survive and fight back anonymously:

Talk To A Peer ( Teen Line):

• You don’t have to explain internet culture to an adult. Text “TEEN” to 839863 or call 800-852-8336 to speak confidentially with another highly trained teenager who understands exactly what you are going through.

Kill the Image Anonymously ( Take It Down)

You do not have to show the explicit image to an adult or a police officer to stop it from spreading. Go to TakeItDown.ncmec.org. You select the photo on your own device, and the site generates a unique digital code (a hash) to send to platforms like Meta and TikTok, automatically banning the image from ever being uploaded. DO NOT DELETE THE IMAGES. KEEP THEM FOR THE POLICE ONCE YOU ARE BRAVER.

Get Expert Help (CCRI)

The Cyber Civil Rights Initiative Crisis Helpline (1-844-878-2274) offers free, 24/7 tech and legal advice on how to lock down your accounts and handle extortionists.

Stay Alive You Matter

A digital forgery is not a death sentence.

The people doing this want you to feel hopeless. Call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

The post A South Dakota Digital Loophole Closed: How SB 41 Arms Law Enforcement to Take Down Creators & Distributors of AI Deepfakes appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.