A Wall Street Journal investigation found ICE is paying contractors millions to scan social media around the clock, then using subpoenas to unmask Americans who criticize the agency. Nobody has been charged. That may be the point.
Trump's HHS scrapped the rule capping child care copays at 7% of a family's income. On July 30 the Senate had a chance to undo it. These 14 Republicans we track voted no.
On July 30 the Senate came one vote short of forcing a debate on Trump's unauthorized war with Iran. These 13 Republican senators we track voted no — a week after the House told the president to get out.
Food, rent, electricity, healthcare - in America we should be able to afford these basic necessities of life without going bankrupt.
Mike Rounds has supported the current administration's tariffs and other policies which have led to:
Half of all Americans struggling to afford groceries
47% struggling to afford their utility bills
47% struggling to afford healthcare
48% struggling to afford housing
1 in 4 Americans saying they have skipped a medical checkup due to affordability
23% skipping a prescription dose
Gas prices skyrocketing
The Sioux Falls-based Dakota Institute estimated the tariffs would raise the price of South Dakota's imports by roughly $296 million — costs borne by "South Dakota businesses and consumers" in a state that depends on imported machinery, fertilizer and intermediate goods, and that will "ultimately raise prices for consumers."
The budget bill's cuts to clean energy will push average annual electricity costs up $130 for South Dakota households in 2026 — on top of the utility rate increases residents are already absorbing — and the average household will spend $195 more a year on gasoline by 2035.
Rounds told a Rapid City audience that Trump's tariffs are "of concern" and that "consumers will pay a part of that" — then voted against every Senate resolution that would have ended the tariff emergencies: the Canada tariffs in April 2025, and the global tariffs in April and again in October
Even after the Supreme Court's February 2026 ruling on Trump's tariffs, Rounds was still praising him as "an expert in the art of the deal" — while a South Dakota manufacturer whose business the tariffs put "at a standstill" said: "We tried to get Thune, Rounds, and Johnson's help on it, and they wouldn't even give us the time of day"
We are feeling this directly in our wallets. What is Mike Rounds doing about that? Making things worse. We deserve better.
We all deserve access to quality healthcare so we can live healthy and productive lives.
Mike Rounds disagrees:
He voted to cut more than $1 trillion in federal health care and food assistance as part of the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act"
He voted to let ACA tax credits expire, increasing health costs for millions of Americans, driving many of them to switch to cheaper plans or abandon health insurance coverage altogether. And the less people there are with coverage, the higher the rest of our premiums will be.
He wants to repeal the ACA, reduce Medicare and Medicaid spending, and add work requirements to Medicaid.
An estimated 13,000 South Dakotans are projected to lose Medicaid under Trump's budget bill — and when combined with the expiration of ACA premium tax credits, up to 20,000 additional residents could become uninsured.
Wants to Gut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security
Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security aren't handouts. They're earned benefits that we pay into out of every single paycheck, our entire working lives, so that we can see a doctor, take care of our parents, and retire with dignity instead of going bankrupt when we get old or sick.
For years, Mike Rounds and his party have been quietly laying the groundwork to gut these programs. Now they've said the quiet part out loud.
They admitted the plan. Speaker Mike Johnson told the "Moon Griffon Show" that "entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and things like Social Security ... have to be adjusted and fixed," and that "We have a plan to do that next year ... desperate times call for desperate measures."
We know what the plan looks like. The Republican Study Committee — a caucus of more than 170 House Republicans that includes Speaker Johnson and his top three deputies in leadership — released a budget calling for raising the Social Security retirement age for future retirees and converting Medicare into a privatized "premium support" model that would hand seniors over to for-profit insurance companies.
They already started. The "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" that Mike Rounds supported cut roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid to help pay for tax cuts for the richest 1 percent.
Even Republicans admit what "reform" means. Sen. Josh Hawley, on the push to "address" and "reform" these programs: "That's usually code for 'cut.' I'm not in favor of that."
It's a broken promise. Donald Trump pledged in 2024, "I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare." Mike Rounds and his party are now preparing to do exactly that.
These programs are a promise: work hard, pay in your whole life, and your country will be there for you when you need it. Mike Rounds wants to break that promise so he can keep cutting taxes for billionaires. We deserve better.
Cut Taxes for the Rich, While Making the Rest of Us Pay For It
We all need to pay our fair share to the government so it can provide the services that benefit all of us.
But billionaires in the U.S. pay a smaller tax rate than most teachers and nurses. That's not fair.
The wealthiest 400 billionaire families in the U.S. paid an average federal individual tax rate of just 8.2 percent. For comparison, the average American taxpayer in the same year paid 13 percent.
23 of the largest and most profitable companies in the US paid no federal corporate income taxes from 2018-2022. And 109 corporations paid zero federal tax in at least one of those years.
The "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" that Mike Rounds supported will reduce taxes for the top 1 percent of taxpayers by more than $1 trillion over the next decade, while raising taxes for the poorest Americans.
Mike Rounds is on the side of the billionaires and big business. We deserve better.
We all deserve clean air, clean water, and a healthy planet to live on.
Mike Rounds has supported the repealing and rolling back of environmental protections and climate change regulations, all so that billionaires and big business can plunder natural resources and destroy our environment in the name of profit.
When EPA chief Scott Pruitt was engulfed in ethics scandals over first-class travel and a $50-a-night condo lease tied to a lobbyist, Rounds went on Meet the Press to defend him, dismissing the reporting as nitpicking: "We'll nitpick little things."
We're all going to pay the price for this with increased rates of asthma, cancer, and premature deaths. We deserve better.
Is Intentionally Wrecking Our Public Schools and Our Kids' Futures
Nine out of ten American children — 49.6 million of them — go to a public school. It's where they learn to read, where they eat breakfast and lunch, where kids with disabilities are guaranteed an education by law, and where a kid from any family, rich or poor, religious or not, gets a fair shot.
Mike Rounds and his party are taking that apart on purpose: draining public school money into private and religious schools, pushing one religion into everybody else's classrooms, and shutting down the federal department that is supposed to look out for our kids.
He voted to create the first national private school voucher in American history. It is hidden inside the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act." You give up to $1,700 a year to a charity that hands out private school scholarships, and the government gives you back every penny you gave on your taxes. It costs you nothing — no other tax break in the country works that way. Each person is capped at $1,700, but any number of people can do it, so there is no limit on what it drains from the Treasury. It starts January 1, 2027. Congress's own scorekeepers say $26 billion over ten years; one tax research group says as much as $51 billion every year — more than the government spends on Title I ($18.4 billion) for poor schools and IDEA ($14.6 billion) for kids with disabilities combined. And "low-income" means a family earning three times what a normal family in their area earns still qualifies — in some places, $500,000 a year.
They are giving away our tax dollars to families who are already wealthy and were never in public school to begin with. Every state that has tried it gets the same result — the money goes to people already paying private tuition: 95% of Arkansas voucher users never attended a public school. In Florida's first year of universal vouchers, 69% of new recipients were already in private school and only 13% had ever set foot in a public one. In Iowa, two-thirds were already in private school. We aren't rescuing kids from bad schools — we're cutting checks to families who never needed them, with the money coming out of the schools 90% of our kids actually attend.
And the kids who do switch end up doing worse. Four careful studies found the same thing. In Washington, DC, voucher kids fell behind in math. In Louisiana, a student who started in the middle of the class dropped to the bottom third in math after three years. Indiana and Ohio found the same. Kids with disabilities lost the most.
The money goes to religious schools that can turn our kids away. Ohio now spends nearly $1 billion a year on vouchers, the vast majority going to Catholic and evangelical schools — schools that, unlike public schools, can reject your child over their religion, their disability, or who their parents are, or for ANY REASON AT ALL with almost no accountability for the public money they take. Many have simply raised tuition to capture the vouchers instead of enrolling more students.
Our public schools took generations to build, and they are the one institution that has to take every single child who walks in the door. Mike Rounds is helping tear them down and hand the pieces to private interests. Our kids will pay for it for the rest of their lives. We deserve better.
A good job where we can make a living to support our families, own a home, and have a good life. That's the American Dream.
Mike Rounds supports policies and an administration that are turning the American Dream into a nightmare.
There were 20.8 million layoffs in the U.S. in 2025
55% of employed Americans say they're concerned about losing their jobs
The unemployment rate is 4.2%
In 2025 the U.S. economy averaged just 15,000 jobs added per month, a dramatic decrease from the monthly average of 125,000 the year before Trump took office.
Overall employment for workers without college degrees fell by 361,000 jobs from January to September 2025.
58,000 net manufacturing jobs have been lost from April, when the administration announced "Liberation Day" tariffs, to September 2025.
Let Elon Musk and DOGE Cut More Than $191 MILLION from South Dakota
We all want a government that works for us as efficiently and effectively as possible. Unfortunately our government doesn't always work that way, so reform is badly needed. Given how big and complicated the government is, it's a tough problem that needs well-thought out solutions, so that we don't make things worse.
That's not what we got.
Mike Rounds stood idly by while billionaire and ketamine-addled chaos monkey Elon Musk and his DOGE goons chainsawed their way through the U.S. government, promising to save the government at least $2 trillion annually in waste, fraud and abuse. Because they had no idea what they were doing and no one to stop them, in the end our government suffered, people suffered, South Dakota suffered, government spending actually went UP and Elon Musk became even richer.
Elon Musk and DOGE:
Had access to and exfiltrated (stole) all our sensitive personal information.
Kneecapped the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had returned over $26 billion to the American people since 2011.
Attempted to cut $4 billion in funding for medical research.
Will cost the federal government an estimated $500 billion in lost tax revenue (that could pay for programs for us), due to cuts at the IRS.
Laid waste to the employees at several government departments, removing their top experts and most skilled practitioners, and making their services less effective for all of us. This badly affected veterans, who make up 30% of the federal workforce.
Rounds joined the Senate DOGE Caucus to work alongside Elon Musk's effort to gut the federal programs South Dakotans rely on — in his own words, "ready to work with my colleagues in the Senate to do our part in assisting President Trump in cutting spending, eliminating unnecessary programs and streamlining the federal government"
Within weeks, calls to his office for help had tripled as DOGE cuts hit South Dakotans — by mid-March 2025 his staff were working 139 separate cases trying to undo the damage
By April 2025, his offices had fielded nearly 2,300 calls about DOGE — but Rounds kept defending the cuts, saying the goal of trimming government excess was worthy
Then Rounds voted for the $9 billion DOGE rescissions package anyway — even though he said the cut would have wiped out up to 92% of the budgets of some tribal radio stations, which "were literally caught in the crossfire." He settled for a "handshake deal" with Trump's budget director to send them $9.4 million — a deal that was never written into the bill, so it never became law, and six weeks later the stations still hadn't heard when, or how much, money would actually come
We'd like to thank you, Mike Rounds, for doing absolutely nothing while an unelected South African big tech billionaire took a chainsaw to vital U.S. government functions and completely failed to make the government more efficient. We deserve better.
As a member of Congress, part of Mike Rounds's job is to act as a check and balance to the executive branch. He and his fellow members of Congress from South Dakota have completely abdicated their responsibility. These spineless cowards are rubber stamping everything Donald Trump wants to do, no matter how crazy, dangerous or harmful. And we've seen the results. We deserve better.
We deserve to feel safe in our neighborhoods, schools, and places of worship.
In order to do that, we need to take real steps to prevent gun violence. And despite what we've been told, it is possible to support the 2nd Amendment and support common-sense gun safety laws at the same time. But Mike Rounds has opposed bipartisan gun safety laws, while offering meaningless thoughts and prayers every time there's a new mass shooting.
South Dakotans are dying from gun violence every week. But Rounds carries the NRA's endorsement, so he voted against the bipartisan gun safety law that passed the Senate 65 to 33 after Uvalde, and is actively trying to expand gun rights.
A child or adolescent is killed with a gun every 2 hours and 48 minutes in the U.S.
Age-adjusted firearm homicide rates in the U.S. are 33 times greater than in Australia and 77 times greater than in Germany
Every day, 125 Americans are killed with guns, and more than 200 are shot and wounded
Women in the U.S. are 28 times more likely to be killed with a gun than women in other high-income countries.
South Dakota has 17.3 gun deaths per 100,000 people — 35% above the national average, with approximately 159 South Dakotans dying from gun violence every year.
America is the land of FREEDOM. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to start a business, freedom to choose your own career path, freedom to make your own medical decisions, freedom to raise your children according to your values, and freedom to pursue happiness. Freedom is what makes America great.
Unless you're a woman and you're making the deeply personal decision about whether to have a baby or not. A decision that will dramatically affect the rest of your life. In that case Mike Rounds thinks that your freedom doesn't matter and that the government should get to control your body. That's not freedom, that's tyranny.
Mike Rounds:
Opposed Roe v. Wade
Supported federal efforts to ban abortion
Attacked Planned Parenthood throughout his career
Here in South Dakota we live under a total abortion ban that permits abortion only to preserve the pregnant person's life — no exceptions for rape or incest.
Arkansas House of Representatives candidate (and pastor) Robb Ryerse stated it well: "Abortion should remain safe and legal. These are personal decisions best made by patients, their doctors, and their faith — not politicians. You don't have to agree with every decision someone makes to believe they should be free to make it. That's what personal liberty means." Almost 2/3 of Americans agree and believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. But Mike Rounds thinks he knows better, and doesn't believe that we should have the freedom to make our own decisions. We deserve better.
In America our vote represents our will. It gives us the power to make the change that we want to see in the world.
Unfortunately that's not a sentiment that Mike Rounds's billionaire and big business donors can stomach. Because when we have voting power, we use it to make our lives better, and they lose power. Read about all the ways they're trying to take away our voting power on our about page, then come back here.
Mike Rounds has opposed legislation to make voting easier while supporting the SAVE Act, which would force every single American citizen to prove their citizenship status in person when registering to vote or updating their voter registration information. For the vast majority of Americans, this would mean presenting a passport or birth certificate at their local election office. This would disenfranchise millions of U.S. citizens: 146 million Americans do not have a passport, and 69 million women who have married do not have a birth certificate that matches their new legal name. Working-class and low-income Americans would also be disproportionately disenfranchised if the bill became law, as the vast majority of these groups do not possess a passport.
YOU HAVE POWER. Why else do you think Mike Rounds and his bosses are working so hard to take it away? Don't let them. We deserve better.
Whether white, black, or brown, we should all be able to live in America and exercise our constitutional rights without fear that law enforcement will turn on us.
But the current administration has created a secret police force that is abusing their power against anyone who stands in their way, U.S. citizen or not. They claim to be going after "the worst of the worst", but are taking daycare workers, day laborers, grandmas and kids who are valued members of our communities. And Mike Rounds, staunch defender of the Second Amendment to fight back against government tyranny, is doing nothing while the government tyrannizes us.
ProPublica:They describe the legions of masked immigration officers operating in near-total anonymity on the orders of the president as the crossing of a line that had long set the United States apart from the world's most repressive regimes. ICE, in their view, has become an unfettered and unaccountable national police force.
ProPublica:Accosting people outside of their immigration court hearings where they're showing up and trying to do the right thing and then hauling them off to an immigration jail in the middle of the country where they can't access loved ones or speak to counsel. Bands of masked men apprehending people in broad daylight in the streets and hauling them off. Disappearing people to a third country, to a prison where there's a documented record of serious torture and human rights abuse.
New York Times:Masked and heavily armed, ICE agents are sent to cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis to terrorize immigrant communities and brutalize people who challenge their efforts to stop and detain anyone deemed suspicious. To expand its reach, ICE greatly lowered its recruitment standards, effectively enlisting anyone who cares to sign up. To attract new officers, ICE advertises the chance to do violence to people deemed "enemies" of the United States, likening civil immigration enforcement to a war on a dangerous, alien force. The result is an agency whose agents' first recourse appears to be violence or the threat of violence.
They are executing American citizens. On January 7, 2026 an ICE agent in Minneapolis murdered an American citizen, a mother of 3, by shooting her in the face as she tried to drive away. Then the killer walked away, and our government lied and tried to gaslight us about what happened. Decent politicians condemned the murder. What did Mike Rounds have to say? Nothing.
They are executing American citizens: Part 2. On January 24, 2026 ICE agents in Minneapolis murdered an American citizen, a 37 year old ICU nurse, who was filming their activity and trying to help others. Then our government lied and tried to gaslight us about what happened.
And the list of the dead keeps growing. ICE agents — on duty and off — keep killing members of our communities, while Mike Rounds says nothing:
On December 31, 2025, an off-duty ICE officer in Northridge, Los Angeles shot and killed Keith Porter Jr., a 43-year-old U.S. citizen and father of two who was born and raised in Compton. Federal officials called it self-defense against an "active shooter," but Porter's family says he was peacefully returning home and never posed a threat — and witnesses reported only three shots, matching his autopsy and contradicting claims of an exchange of gunfire.
On July 7, 2026, an ICE officer in Houston shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father of three and small-business owner who had lived in the U.S. for 35 years. Agents had been hunting a different white van. Harris County's medical examiner ruled his death a homicide, and his co-workers disputed ICE's claim that he used his vehicle as a weapon.
On July 13, 2026, an ICE agent in Biddeford, Maine shot and killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian father who was legally authorized to work in the U.S. and supported his wife and 3-year-old daughter by delivering food and cleaning a veterinary clinic. He was not the target of ICE's warrant — agents were looking for someone else — and were not wearing body cameras. Even Maine's Republican Senator Susan Collins urged DHS to halt non-urgent vehicle stops in the state.
If ICE can murder innocent U.S. citizens without repercussions, what could they do to you? ICE is out of control and a danger to us all - no one is safe. What's Mike Rounds going to do about it? Absolutely nothing. We deserve better.
Voted for the Unnecessary and Unpopular War in Iran
War destroys human lives, families and innocent people, causes economic ruin, and triggers immense suffering. War should always be the option of last resort.
In order to distract from the Epstein Files, Donald Trump started an illegal war of choice with Iran, and now:
We are being dog-walked by Israel, who has been trying to convince presidents to attack Iran forever, and finally found one dumb enough to do so
The American people don't want this war with Iran. But Mike Rounds supports this madness and voted against the War Powers Resolution that would have stopped it. Does Mike Rounds work for Israel or the people of South Dakota? We deserve better.
Avoids His Constituents and Refuses to Hold In-Person Town Halls
Good leaders meet with their constituents and have town halls where citizens can voice concerns, ask questions, and provide input on policies. Mike Rounds doesn't want to hear what we have to say. He only wants to talk to his rich donors or people who agree with him.
In April 2025, South Dakota Democrats had to hold public town halls in four cities — Rapid City, Sioux Falls, Vermillion and Aberdeen — "in the absence of South Dakota's Republican senators and congressman." Even the state Republican Party chairman said he'd heard complaints about the delegation's accessibility: "Even some Republicans have been saying that."
That June, organizers delivered a 40-page report to Rounds' Sioux Falls office documenting what South Dakotans said at the town halls he skipped — "Every town hall was over capacity," the organizer said
Mike Rounds is avoiding us because he doesn't care what we think. We deserve better.
Agriculture drives South Dakota's economy, and Trump's trade war has thrown it into chaos.
After China stopped buying American soybeans in retaliation for the tariffs and turned to South American producers, East River row-crop farmers face low demand and prices well below the cost of production — one Groton farmer said soybean growers are "hurting all over."
Mike Rounds has failed South Dakota's farmers. We deserve better.
Ran an EB-5 Visa Scandal That Cost Investors Millions
We should hold our leaders to high standards. When Rounds was Governor of South Dakota, he was at the center of a federal visa program scandal that cost foreign investors millions and ended with a member of his own cabinet dead days before a grand jury. We deserve better.
The highest-profile project SDRC ran that money through was Northern Beef Packers: foreign investors put $100 million into the beef plant, which slaughtered its first cows in October 2012 and was bankrupt nine months later — leaving up to 200 investor families with neither their money nor their green cards, while SDRC executives pocketed millions in fees
Rounds signed off on a $600,000 state loan to Northern Beef that his own development secretary, Richard Benda, had arranged after agreeing to take a job with the project — and Rounds later said he knew about Benda's new job before he left office, around the same time he approved the money
We're all going to pay the price for this with increased rates of asthma, cancer, and premature deaths. We deserve better.
