LAKE NORDEN — The names on the list included some of Dorothy Elliott’s best employees: hardworking, reliable, honest.

Most had been working at Drumgoon Dairy for years. Some worked there for nearly two decades, playing a role in the operation’s expansion and success.

But after an audit of the dairy at the end of May by the federal Department of Homeland Security, 38 of those employees are gone.

The department said they each had inaccurate, outdated or incomplete proof of U.S. citizenship or permission to work in the country.

Elliott co-owns the farm near Lake Norden, 5 miles from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s eastern South Dakota home. Elliott asked the affected employees for updated documentation but ultimately had to fire those who weren’t able to adequately resolve the problems with their documents. One person returned home because his visa was expiring, and another quit.

The audit decimated Elliott’s workforce, once more than 50 employees, dropping it to just 16.

Audits at dairy farms under the Trump administration’s escalated immigration enforcement efforts have “created unrest” among workers and owners, Elliott said. It’s made for a tough summer in an industry that was flourishing after decades of support from state government.

Elliott’s remaining employees have been working without breaks, she said. Without a pathway or plan to create a sustainable workforce in agriculture and by “removing everyone working in it,” she worries some agricultural operations will go out of business. She hopes Drumgoon isn’t one of them.

“Basically, we’ve turned off the tap, but we’ve done nothing to create a solution as to how we find employees for the dairy industry,” she said.

Never previously audited

Elliott is required to file I-9 forms with documentation proving her workers’ identity and eligibility to work in the U.S. It puts employers in a difficult position, said Scott VanderWal, president of the South Dakota Farm Bureau, because applicants may present fraudulent documents an employer doesn’t catch. Yet employers could also be sued for mistakenly rejecting valid documents.

“If employers are presented with documentation that looks real and legitimate, they’re obligated to accept it,” VanderWal said. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offers similar guidance, saying employers must accept documentation if it “reasonably appears to be genuine.”

Elliott could use the federal government’s web-based system, E-Verify, that allows employers to confirm their employees’ eligibility to work in the country. But E-Verify is not mandated for new hires in South Dakota, and Elliott said she doesn’t use it because of “unreliable results.” Organizations ranging from the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute to the American Civil Liberties Union have opposed the use of E-Verify, citing reasons including errors that cost people jobs because the system wrongly flagged them.

So Elliott evaluates applicants’ documents herself. If their IDs are out of date or if they have a visa and are applying from another farm without returning home, she passes on hiring them. She’s turned people away a dozen times over the years, she said.

Drumgoon was never audited before. In her past dealings with the Department of Homeland Security during nearly two decades of running the dairy, Elliott said, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents would merely tell her they were searching for a person and ask for a notification if the person applied for a job.

This time was different. After an audit, employers are required to terminate unauthorized workers who can’t prove their employability, according to a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson. Audits — which are distinct from raids or other immigration enforcement operations — are meant to ensure businesses comply with federal employment laws.

Elliott does not know where her 38 former employees went. They could be working at other dairies in the U.S. They could have left the country. They could be anywhere.

Because the dairy is near a farm owned by Noem, the former governor of South Dakota, and because Noem was in the state during the month of the audit to receive an honorary degree, South Dakota Searchlight asked the Department of Homeland Security if Noem had a direct role in the audit. The department didn’t respond to the question.

Elliott declined to talk about Noem, saying she recognizes that federal immigration authorities “have a job to do.”

South Dakota Farmers Union President Doug Sombke called federal dairy audits “stupid,” because they needlessly displace workers.

“Why the heck can’t we continue to use them there as an intern or apprentice or whatever you want to call it and make it legal? Why is it so important we grab them and call them a criminal? No one wants those jobs,” Sombke said. “I don’t understand why you’d cripple or cause problems for a labor shortage when all you have to do is get them legalized.”

Immigrants hiring immigrants

Elliott’s connection to immigrants isn’t limited to her employees. She was born in the United States but married her husband, Rodney, in Northern Ireland, where they had their children.

Eliott worked in health care and her husband operated their 140-cow dairy farm in Northern Ireland when a newspaper ad, “Wanted: Dairy farmers in South Dakota,” caught their attention. Moving to America meant fewer regulations, cheaper land, cheaper feed and the ability to grow their business, she said.

Elliott’s children got their citizenship shortly after moving to the U.S., and her husband became a citizen about eight years after they moved. That experience helps her empathize with her workers, many of whom are Hispanic. She said everything they’re doing is to support their families back home, even though many aren’t able to see their families for years at a time.

“All they’re guilty of is working and doing a job that isn’t currently being filled by an American,” Elliott said.

Taneeza Islam advocates for immigrants as executive director of South Dakota Voices for Peace. She’s spoken to immigrant workers in other industries who were scared and confused after being terminated due to stricter immigration enforcement.

“We have two very separate worlds right now: the community that’s impacted and worried about getting detained and deported, and the community that doesn’t know this is happening here,” Islam said.

State recruited dairies

The Elliotts are among many new South Dakotans who’ve helped the dairy industry boom in the last two decades. Then-governor and now-U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, a Republican, focused on supporting the industry in the early 2000s, which included efforts to recruit farmers from overseas.

In 2010, South Dakota’s dairy industry had an economic impact of $1.27 billion. By 2023, that had grown to $5.67 billion.

“We’ve achieved our goals we set out for ourselves: build a dairy, milk cows and grow the dairy industry in South Dakota,” Elliott said. “Is it a sustainable goal if there’s nobody to work on these dairies? No. So all the time, money, effort, investment and hard work that has gone into it will be null and void if there isn’t a workforce.”

Sombke, the state Farmers Union president, said the state’s investment in dairy “has been a good thing,” but he isn’t surprised by the recent disruption in the industry.

South Dakota Searchlight requested the number of audits conducted in South Dakota so far in 2025, but a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said the department “does not disclose specific data on audits or enforcement actions by state or industry.”

Sombke said dairy audits are “way up” in the state compared to last year. He said nobody should be surprised to find workers at dairies without permission to be in the country.

“What do you expect? The unemployment rate is less than 2% in the state,” Sombke said. “You’re going to be looking for labor anywhere you can find it.”

Aftermath of an audit

Drumgoon Dairy’s remaining employees have made mistakes because of the long hours they’ve had to cover — like reversing a payloader into a manure pond — or because they’re new to working on the farm.

“Some of them only get one or two days off in a 15-day period,” Elliott said. “But what else do you do? Do you just let cows starve or calves die because there’s no one there to take care of them?”

Some nearby farms sent workers to help at Drumgoon for a couple of days at a time this summer after the audit. Elliott and her husband have spent over $110,000 on recruiters and transportation so far to hire 22 visa workers from Mexico. But the visas come with restrictions on the types of jobs workers can do, so Elliott hired a dozen or so new employees locally, and still wants to hire another 10 to 15 people to replace terminated staff.

Elliott is struggling to find local applicants, which she is required by law to attempt before hiring visa workers.

“If raising wages even more will bring Americans to work on the farm, we can try it,” Elliott said, “but there is a limit to how high you can raise wages when you don’t get to set the price of milk. Can I afford to pay a milker $25 an hour? At some point, you’d produce milk for more than you’re receiving for it.”

Trump could lead immigration reforms, Thune says

After a panel discussion at the annual Dakotafest agricultural trade show in Mitchell in August, U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, told South Dakota Searchlight that he believes President Donald Trump is interested in legal immigration and work visa reforms.

“If we can find some willing partners in the Democrats, some sort of an immigration policy or a piece of legislation that we could pass is not outside the realm of possibility,” Thune said. “Ultimately, that’s the best long-term solution, and I’ve heard him talk about it.”

Sen. Rounds told Searchlight that as more people are deported and industries are disrupted, “we will get enough support from the administration to begin looking at a legal system again.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson, who is running for South Dakota governor next year, said some visa programs should be modified to meet the needs of the dairy industry. Some visas are seasonal programs that require participants to return home after a few months. The programs don’t fit the needs of dairy operations that require workers year-round.

Elliott has broached the issue for years to Thune, Johnson, Rounds and other federal officials.

“All I hear is, ‘I’ll mention that. We’ll talk about that.’ But nothing,” Elliott said. “What we hear is there is absolutely no passion for any kind of change to the status quo.”

Farmers suggest solutions

Lynn Boadwine of Boadwine Farms in Baltic has “run out of gas” trying to advocate for visa and immigration policy changes to support the dairy industry. But he was heartened to hear the congressional delegates’ comments.

“There’s rhetoric, but are you really working on it?” Boadwine said. “I hope they are, because the clock is really ticking on all of these issues and we’re going to start to run out of people.”

Boadwine shared immigration reform ideas with congressional offices but hasn’t heard back on the topic. His hope is to modernize and simplify the H-2A visa program for dairies. His proposal would remove the seasonality requirement and allow workers in the country without legal permission to transition to guest-worker status. Long-term guest workers would have a path toward permanent residency by proving they are law-abiding, hardworking employees.

VanderWal, with the South Dakota Farm Bureau, said he met this spring with Noem in Washington, D.C., in his capacity as vice president of the American Farm Bureau Federation. He urged Noem and the Trump administration to back off on audits in the agricultural industry in hopes that Congress would “fix the system.”

“We wanted to impress upon the administration that if they started removing illegal workers up and down the food chain, from production to processing to transportation to grocery stores to restaurants, we’d see a disaster worse than the pandemic,” VanderWal said.

The administration has since “backed off ag,” VanderWal said, but the consequences linger for producers like the Elliotts and their employees. He said that unless President Trump “gets real forceful and goes after it,” he doesn’t expect Congress to undertake legal immigration reforms.

Economic consequence predicted

At Drumgoon Dairy, Elliott has tried automating aspects of her operation. She and her husband put in 20 robots a few years ago with the expectation they could hire students from nearby Lake Area Technical College’s robotics program to maintain them.

They posted robotics maintenance positions to attract graduates, but the response was deflating.

“To date, no one,” Elliott said.

She plans to remove the robots because the cost of running and servicing them is too expensive. So far, they’ve sold three. If the cost of technology continues to be prohibitive or there aren’t reforms to workforce visa or immigration programs, she said, “I wonder how we will become a sustainable industry.”

Elliott fears there will be consequences and higher prices for milk and other consumer dairy products without action at the federal level. Boadwine agreed.

“If we keep down this road we’ll have no choice but to import more food,” Boadwine said, “and the reason we’d import more is because it’s gotten so much more expensive here because we crippled ourselves.”

SIOUX FALLS — When South Dakota Republican John Thune delivered his first remarks as U.S. Senate majority leader in January, he pledged to restore “regular order” to the chamber, including “bringing appropriations bills to the floor for serious deliberation.”

Tuesday, he said a stopgap spending bill will likely need to be negotiated with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown in October.

Congress didn’t finish its 12 annual spending bills before its August recess and would have to sprint to approve them by Oct. 1, which is the deadline to avoid a shutdown.

“We’re going to have a big fight at the end of September,” Thune told an audience at the Greater Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce Inside Washington luncheon.

He told reporters after the meeting that he hopes the spending extension would be for a short amount of time if Democrats don’t “work with us in a constructive way” through the traditional appropriations process.

In May, President Donald Trump released a budget request proposing $163 billion in spending cuts. Thune said the appropriations process would allow individual programs to be reviewed by members of Congress and potentially saved from cuts if “appropriators believe that they’re getting a good return for the American taxpayer.”

“I think that it’s in everybody’s best interests if the Appropriations Committee is able to do its work and then Congress, the House and Senate, pass appropriations bills and put them on the president’s desk for him to sign into law,” Thune said.

Thune also addressed Trump’s imposition of higher tariffs. Before last year’s presidential election, Thune criticized tariff proposals like Trump’s as “a recipe for increased inflation.” Tuesday, he offered a different take, referencing trade deals that have resulted from tariff negotiations.

“I do think that the ways in which they are using them, in my view, at least right now is yielding some results,” Thune said of the White House’s strategy.

Afterward, Thune took questions from reporters on topics including immigration.

Lack of action on immigration is ‘holding SD back,’ dairy farmers say

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law last month provides $170 billion for immigration- and border-enforcement activities. Thune said the spending helps pay for “everything we need to keep the border secure and ensure we have an orderly way of processing people who are coming into the country, whether it’s for refugee status or otherwise.”

The next step, Thune said, should be to address workforce shortages with legal immigration policies. Thune said “it’d be nice” if Congress passed legislation so polices don’t change “from one administration to the next.”

South Dakota relies on immigrants, especially in agriculture and tourism. Growing workforce needs will force the immigration issue “to be front and center,” he added.

“It’s an economic issue because of the impact that it has,” Thune said. “If you can’t find workers in our economy, that’s a big problem.”

The chamber’s Inside Washington luncheons are annual events inviting South Dakota congressional delegates to speak about issues affecting the state and businesses. Rep. Dusty Johnson is set to speak at the next luncheon on Aug. 22, and Sen. Mike Rounds is set to speak on Aug. 28.

South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com.

The scene outside Thursday’s Watertown Rotary luncheon turned raucous in the presence of South Dakota’s senior U.S. senator.

Not long after the event, staffers urged Republican U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune into a black sedan as protesters outside Watertown’s Elks Lodge yelled “do your job.”

Before he left, though, Thune said he didn’t take issue with the people doing the yelling.

“We hear in our office on a fairly regular basis from people across the state on sort of all sides of the issues. Clearly these protesters are very anti-Trump policy, and so they have every right to make their voices heard,” Thune said. “We welcome that.”

The protesters want Thune to oppose several of the president’s efforts, and for him to hold public town halls.

The noon event where Thune took questions was open to Rotary Club members and media, not the general public. Several protesters said they’d reached out to Thune’s office through phone or email in recent months without a response.

“Our senator doesn’t have the guts to stand up to what Trump is doing,” said Kay Solberg, an organizer who said she plans to hold another protest in Watertown this weekend.

It was the second gathering of displeased citizens to greet Thune in as many days. More than 100 people protested outside a Thune event in Rapid City Wednesday.

Thune said he doesn’t see how a public town hall “accomplishes anything that we don’t accomplish on a daily basis.” He maintains that he’s “probably one of the most accessible politicians in South Dakota.”

That’s why Thune was behind schedule on Thursday, his staff said. He’d taken two too many questions from Watertown Rotarians, held a second press conference that wasn’t scheduled, and stopped to shake hands again and again with Watertown residents who had lingering questions and concerns.

Wednesday marked Thune’s third event in the state this week during Congress’ April recess, following the Pennington County Republican Women’s meeting in Rapid City and an appearance at Northern State University in Aberdeen on Tuesday. He’s also spent hours visiting with the public at the state basketball tournament in Aberdeen in March, he said.

East River South Dakotans vent, call for action at Sioux Falls political town hall

“If people have questions, we’re available on a regular basis,” Thune said.

Thune answered several questions during the Rotary meeting, addressing the uncertainty regarding foreign trade, immigration and cuts to entitlement programs.

Thune encourages patience on tariffs

Thune has long been a critic of tariffs and supportive of free trade deals, but said South Dakotans should offer grace to Trump and his shifting tariff policy “to see what kind of deals he can strike.”

At a town hall earlier this week, Augustana Economics Professor Reynold Nesiba said tariffs risk relationships with other countries. U.S. beef exports to China were halted, the former Democratic state lawmaker said, allowing Australia to fill the gap. The same can happen with China’s soybean imports, Nesiba said, shifting from the United States to Brazil.

Trump’s intention, Thune said Wednesday, is to negotiate better trade deals and create a “more level playing field,” especially regarding China’s trade practices. He said he’s heard support from agricultural producers in the state on the plan.

America should explore partnerships with other countries in the meantime, Thune said. He supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership during the Obama administration, which would have opened up markets in countries like Japan and South Korea.

“We have a lot of national security interests in the region, and they’re allies of ours and we can use that to isolate China,” Thune said. “What you don’t want is these countries running into China’s orbit.”

If Trump’s trade policies are “used in a way that gets a trilateral deal in place, for example with Japan and South Korea, that would be a win.”

Medicaid’s role in budget reconciliation

Republican U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan to pass a budget reconciliation bill by Memorial Day is “certainly aspirational,” Thune said.

Since Republicans control the House and Senate, they can unlock the reconciliation process to fast-track major spending legislation and bypass the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster role with a simple majority.

Thune expects to iron out differences between budget resolutions from the House and Senate and send the finished product to Trump’s desk “hopefully by the middle of summer to create some economic certainty.”

Congress needs to “get it done right,” Thune said.

“Whatever amount of time that takes, we’re going to do the right thing,” he said.

Republicans hope to leverage the process to extend and expand expiring tax cuts, increase border security and defense spending and cut federal spending throughout the budget.

Medicaid is on the chopping block, Thune said. The House budget envisions a Medicaid cut of $880 million over a 10 year period, although the House Energy and Commerce Committee would have to hammer out how to save the money.

Medicaid cuts rippling through rural America could bring hospital closures, job losses

Medicaid is a federal-state health insurance program for people with low income. Medicaid spending is projected to cost $7.4 trillion over the next decade.

Thune proposed Medicaid work requirements rather than cutting the program as a way to “achieve a significant level of savings that would strengthen the program and not harm people who are beneficiaries.”

The change would generate more than $100 billion in savings over a decade, he said.

South Dakota voters approved a constitutional amendment during the 2024 general election to allow the state to implement Medicaid work requirements if the federal government allows them.

Thune says he’s ‘not worried’ about legal status of immigrants

Rotarian Don Goldhorn said he appreciated Thune’s appearance, but said some responses left him disgruntled.

Goldhorn and his wife sponsored a work visa for a Ukrainian family, he said, helping them adjust to life in the United States during Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine. The two-year work visa will end in September, and Goldman is concerned the family won’t receive an extension and be forced to return to their besieged home country.

“If they came here legally into this country,” Thune said, “and they’re law-abiding citizens here, I’m not worried.”

Other Rotarians received similar responses from Thune about the detention of Pro-Palestine protesters because of allegedly antisemitic behavior.

“I’m not satisfied,” Goldhorn told South Dakota Searchlight, “and it’s nothing personal against Sen. Thune. I went to get some specific answers, and I didn’t feel like there were specific answers.”

Driving past protesters to enter the building before the luncheon began, though, Goldhorn wondered if a town hall would accomplish what the protesters might hope it would.

Thune could speak directly to all constituents, he said, and they could raise their concerns or dissatisfaction to him. But the Rotarian worries that larger, more public town halls could turn from peaceful to confrontational.

South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com.

VERMILLION — Six South Dakota lawmakers — three Democrats and three Republicans — celebrated bipartisan accomplishments Thursday at an annual democracy conference, including their efforts to stop what one legislator called an influx of “bad bills” from reaching the governor’s desk.

Fourteen incumbent Republican lawmakers lost in the 2024 primaries, with many challengers capitalizing on opposition to Summit Carbon Solutions’ proposed multibillion-dollar pipeline project. That produced a large class of freshman Republican legislators, and last year’s Republican leadership group lost support, resulting in a new leadership team when the Legislature convened in January.

Sen. Jamie Smith, D-Sioux Falls, said those changes produced bills that pitted Republicans against each other, leading Democrats and some Republicans to work together against legislation they both opposed. Republicans outnumber Democrats in the Legislature 96-9.

“Unfortunately this year, a lot of times it was killing bad bills that we were the most successful,” Smith said.

Rep. Drew Peterson, R-Salem, said he ran for a caucus leadership position ahead of the session but “lost by a few.” He said some Republicans who failed to gain a leadership post worked with Democrats on some issues.

“I wasn’t in leadership this year, but we still lead within our group,” Peterson said. “Collectively we could get 36 to 42 votes between the Democrats and Republicans, and we did our job.”

Peterson and Smith were among the lawmakers who participated in a legislative panel discussion at the annual conference hosted by the Chiesman Center for Democracy at the University of South Dakota.

As evidence of bipartisan efforts between Democrats and some Republicans, the lawmakers highlighted the amending of legislation dubbed the “locking up librarians” bill, by removing a proposed criminal penalty for distributing harmful or obscene material to minors and instead requiring an appeals process for challenging materials in school and public libraries. The amendment passed the Senate 18-16 before the bill passed the chamber 32-2. The House accepted the amendments in a 36-34 vote, and Gov. Larry Rhoden signed the bill this month.

Attempt to revive ‘locking up librarians’ bill fails; version with appeal process goes to governor

There was also bipartisan cooperation against a failed attempt to stop funding the state’s controversial Future Fund, which is an economic development fund controlled by the executive branch, and several failed bills intended to provide property tax relief to South Dakotans.

Sioux Falls Democratic Rep. Erik Muckey said he most clearly saw the shift within the Republican Party in the Future Fund debate, where he said some Republicans reacted to a lack of oversight for the fund by supporting its elimination without “actually digging into” how it works.

“We’re trying to take down an agency, effectively,” Muckey said, “but we don’t actually know what the agency does, the process to get there or what the consequences of a bill is that we didn’t even all probably read, frankly.”

Rep. Chris Kassin, R-Vermillion, said the push for property tax relief included a determination by some freshmen lawmakers to pass property tax cuts without considering costs. That’s primarily because some lawmakers, he said, were quick to “slam something through” and slow to research and understand a bill’s consequences.

The Legislature ultimately passed Rhoden’s legislation including a temporary cap on countywide assessment increases, with plans to dig into the property tax system further with a summer task force.

Other notable efforts that some Republicans and Democrats worked together on failed, such as funding the replacement of the state penitentiary.

The Legislature lost leadership with deep institutional knowledge because of the primary defeats, said Sen. Sydney Davis, R-Burbank, leading to less understanding among lawmakers of the process and why bills failed in past sessions.

Davis said some bills saw several layers of amendments, which hinders how lawmakers and the public vet bills in the committee process.

“That’s a drain on the process and the system,” she said.

One of the new legislative leaders, House Majority Leader Scott Odenbach, R-Spearfish, told South Dakota Searchlight by phone that he saw factions of Republicans working with Democrats during the session. He described the comments made during the panel as part of an attempt to frame the session as “fraught and chaotic.”

The bills highlighted by lawmakers during the panel weren’t bad, he said, but were emblematic of the divide within the Republican Party. The Future Fund and property tax discussions, he said, showed the divide is centered on government involvement in economic development and government spending.

“What some people call bad, others call conservative,” Odenbach said.

Odenbach said the next session will be different as freshman lawmakers have a year under their belts and a better understanding of the legislative process. The divide, he said, will remain.

“The South Dakota Republican Party is changing,” Odenbach said. “It’s going back to its roots and we’re going to redefine what it means to be a conservative. It’ll take a few twists and turns until we get there.”

South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com.

BRANDON — Incoming U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, signaled Tuesday he’s willing to push back against potential attempts by President-elect Donald Trump to expand presidential power over federal spending.

“Every president is going to come in and try to do as much as they can by executive action as possible,” Thune said. “Congress, in some cases, is going to be the entity that sometimes will have to put the brakes on.”

Thune spoke Tuesday to the Brandon Valley Area Chamber of Commerce and also took questions from reporters. He said Republicans in Congress will work with Trump to achieve shared policy goals.

“The things we want to achieve at present are by and large the same,” Thune said. “How we get there is another matter, and we’ll have to work through that.”

Trump’s pick for his budget director, Russ Vought, served in the same role during the first Trump administration. Vought has since outlined an aggressive vision for presidential power in Project 2025, a 922-page document from the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation.

New Trump budget chief wrote Project 2025’s agenda for empowering the presidency

“The President should use every possible tool to propose and impose fiscal discipline on the federal government.” Vought wrote. “Anything short of that would constitute abject failure.”

Trump has meanwhile tried to assert greater control over the Cabinet selection process, calling for the Senate to recess the chamber early next year so he can appoint whoever he wants without having to go through the confirmation process.

Thune said Tuesday he plans to immediately begin committee hearings on Cabinet nominees when Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3, 2025.

That’ll give the Senate a head start vetting Trump’s nominees before his inauguration on Jan. 20. After Trump is sworn in, Thune expects some nominations to quickly hit the floor of the Senate.

“The committees can’t report them out until the president is officially sworn in and they’re officially nominated,” Thune told the audience Tuesday in Brandon. “But they could do hearings.”

Thune told South Dakota reporters after the event that even though some questions have been raised about nominees, they “deserve a fair process” where senators question them on their background, qualifications and whether they “ought to be in these really important positions.”

Thune said he has not taken recess appointments off the table if Democrats try to obstruct or delay the confirmation of nominees when they reach the Senate floor, “particularly if they’re well regarded and they have bipartisan support.”

Top priorities for Republican senators heading into the new session of Congress, Thune said, include extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and securing the nation’s southern border.

Thune said he plans to begin drafting a budget reconciliation resolution to push an extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, key provisions of which expire at the end of 2025. The reconciliation process allows tax and spending bills to pass the Senate with 51 votes, instead of the 60 needed for most Senate legislation. Republicans will control 53 seats in the new Senate and will also control the House.

Failing to extend the tax cuts would lead to a $4 trillion tax increase, Thune said.

States Newsroom’s D.C. Bureau contributed to this report.

South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on Facebook and X.