(C) South Dakota Searchlight
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A new wind animating South Dakota’s protest climate is blowing toward the congressional delegation • South Dakota Searchlight [1]
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Date: 2025-04-09
Anti-Trump protests are nothing new. They’ve been occurring with regularity in America, and I’ve been attending them here in Rapid City, ever since Donald Trump’s first election in 2016. So I was expecting all of the usual suspects, and about the usual response when I went to the Hands Off protest last weekend here that was part of a larger national movement. A protest in Rapid City, or anywhere in South Dakota, usually means a gathering of not more than a couple hundred people whose actions go largely unnoticed by the rest of the state.
This one felt, if not exactly new, at least different.
For starters, there was not one, but two, rallies in Rapid City on Saturday. Both of them were larger and more enthusiastic than past rallies have been. There were better signs, more encouraging honking from passing motorists and, most significantly, what appeared to be a wider, broader base of angry voters. Most of the vitriol was reserved for President Trump, of course, but there was plenty left over for South Dakota’s congressional delegation.
Crowd size is difficult to estimate, but I’m guessing perhaps a thousand people stretched out along Omaha Street at Rapid City’s Founders Park on Saturday morning for the Hands Off event. At noon, a second rally had begun a bit farther east in front of City Hall, where a similar sized crowd — no doubt many of the same protesters — continued their anti-Trump messaging at a 50501 event. Protests occurred across the state, in cities including Pierre, Brookings, Aberdeen, Mitchell and Watertown. In Sioux Falls, thousands of people showed up, to the surprise of protesters and observers alike.
In Rapid City, there were plenty of signs telling President Trump and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency to keep their “Hands Off!” of schools, libraries, feeding programs, Medicare, Social Security, voting rights, free speech, health care, transgender kids, democracy, federal employees, gay rights, the courts, reproductive rights … and on, and on, and on. The Hands Off list was as long as the flurry of executive orders issued by Trump in the first few weeks of his presidency. I especially liked the “You Can’t Spell Felon without Elon” sign and the many inventive reinterpretations of the MAGA acronym, such as “Morons Are Governing America.” One of my personal favorites was a sign carried not by a person at all, but affixed to a fluffy little dog that read, “Good DOG; Bad DOGE.”
There were also plenty of signs letting South Dakota’s congressional delegation know what protesters think of them. What they think is that Sen. John Thune, Sen. Mike Rounds and Rep. Dusty Johnson are complicit in Trump’s blatant disregard for federal workers, his dismantling of federal agencies and his abandonment of democratic norms.
Photos of the three incumbent Republicans appeared on numerous signs that were critical of Congress for conceding its power to Trump’s executive branch, with slogans like: “Anybody Here Seen Our Old Friends?” “Can You Tell Me Where They’ve Gone?” “Do Your Jobs!” “Support Democracy, not Fascism.” “History Will Remember Your Complicity.”
While the three men could not escape the creativity of the rally signs, it remains to be seen if they will manage to escape angry voters at the ballot box. South Dakota is a very red state, after all, and they have all cruised to easy election victories in the past. But we are also a state with a rich history of showing longtime incumbent politicians the door once voters decide an elected official has become more responsive to the powers-that-be in Washington, D.C., than to South Dakotans. Even many Trump voters may eventually decide they’ve had their fill of tariff trade wars and stock market losses. Some of them, likely some of the federal employees carrying AFGE signs supporting the American Federation of Government Employees last Saturday, already have. Thune, Rounds and Johnson would be wise to consider them.
Back on Jan. 25, I went to a March for Democracy in Rapid City, just days after President Trump’s second inauguration. It all felt futile that day, and I bemoaned to two friends in the crowd, “What is it we’re doing here … again?” Perhaps the small crowd and the lack of enthusiasm we felt that day could be blamed on the freezing temperatures and the bitter cold wind. But it was clear that we were also feeling the dispiriting chill of another four years of a Trump presidency and what it meant for our country.
Fast forward two months, and the protest climate in Rapid City felt different to me. Maybe that was nothing more than last weekend’s sunshine and the spring-like temperatures, but I suspect there is something else heating up voters all across America.
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[1] Url:
https://southdakotasearchlight.com/2025/04/09/a-new-wind-animating-south-dakotas-protest-climate-is-blowing-toward-the-congressional-delegation/
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