Senator M. (for mum’s the word?) Michael Rounds has not said much about the federal government’s murder and slander of another innocent American in Minneapolis two days ago. Both of the men aiming to replace Senator Rounds have.
First, Julian Beaudion, Democrat, responds with this meditation:
Who Are We?
We find ourselves asking a simple yet profound question: Who are we?
Not as a political slogan, not as a rallying cry, but as an honest plea for reflection. At a time when the streets of Minneapolis have been a witness to yet another life cut short, a compassionate ICU nurse, a neighbor, a human being, shot by federal agents during an immigration enforcement operation, we must pause.
Earlier this month, 37-year-old Renée Good, a mother and citizen, was killed by an ICE agent during an enforcement action that shocked local residents and fueled nationwide debate about the role of federal law enforcement in our communities.
And then, again, another life — Alex Pretti — whose work cared for veterans, whose friends described him as driven by empathy, was taken in a hail of bullets as he recorded and tried to help others amidst the chaos of enforcement.
These are not just headlines. These are human stories. Loved ones whose absence will never be filled, whose lives mattered beyond the moment of tragedy.
So we must ask again: Who are we?
Are we a nation that values human dignity above all?
Do we want to be people who see one another’s suffering and respond with empathy rather than escalation?
Do we protect the vulnerable with the same passion we protect ourselves?
These questions matter because at the core of any society is a simple truth: Our strength is not measured by the force we show, but by the compassion we show to one another.
When a mother loses her life, or a caregiver falls in the streets of a city struggling to make sense of itself, the wound is not just local, it reverberates through every community that believes in justice, fairness, and the sanctity of life.To the families grieving in Minneapolis, your loss is unimaginable. To the communities marching, chanting, and mourning in the cold winter air, your voices echo a yearning for something deeper, like justice, clarity, peace, and above all, humanity. To the leaders and citizens across the nation watching these events unfold, this is not a distant story. It is a mirror held up to all of us. And to the men and women who proudly wear the uniform with truth, honesty, distinction and a strong regard for humanity, your duty is appreciated and we need you do more.
Do what is right and use your voice when you see things are wrong.
We must ask, who are we when faced with fear? Do we shrink into defensiveness or rise into courage?
Do we barricade our hearts behind policy and power, or do we open them wide in radical empathy?
The answers to these questions will shape the future of this nation and define the legacy we leave behind. Not only in laws and enforcement strategies, but in the soul of our collective conscience.
Who are we?
We are people capable of great goodness.
We are people capable of deep empathy.
We are people bound together not by the color of our differences, nor the borders we draw, but by the shared versions of us that breeds humanity.
Let this moment, painful as it is, be a turning point. Let it remind us that every life holds a story beyond politics, beyond fear, beyond headlines. Let us choose compassion. Let us choose justice. Let us choose to see one another fully, without reservation.
Because in asking “Who are we?” we find the answer not in what divides us, but in what unites us, our humanity [Julian Beaudion, campaign e-mail, 2026.01.25].
Meanwhile, Brian Bengs, independent, makes a more direct call for consequences for the killer… in this case, the killer’s boss, Kristi Noem:
I spent my day Saturday out in South Dakota, meeting with folks and gathering the signatures we need to get on the ballot.
But while I was on the trail, I saw news that made my blood boil as a veteran and a JAG officer: ICE agents just killed another American citizen.
This time, it was a VA hospital ICU nurse. A man who spent his life caring for our veterans, who was legally carrying a registered firearm—simply exercising his constitutional Second Amendment rights—and agents of the state murdered him for it, firing FIVE bullets into his body as he lay on the ground.
Then Kristi Noem began assassinating his character after assassinating the man.
This is a matter of right and wrong.
When the government kills an American citizen for exercising their constitutional rights, for filming ICE agents, for carrying a legally registered firearm, the leadership at the top must be held accountable. As a South Dakotan, it pains me to say that the highest level of influence our state currently has in the federal government is Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
This happened on her watch. This culture of lawlessness and the violation of the Bill of Rights stops with her.
I am calling for Kristi Noem to resign as Secretary of Homeland Security, effective immediately.
We cannot have a “law and order” administration that ignores the most basic laws of our land and abuses the rights of our citizens.
The silence from Senator Mike Rounds is damn deafening. As a senior member of the Senate, he should be the first one demanding accountability. Instead, he stays silent to protect the party line. He has proven he is no longer able—or willing—to call balls and strikes.
I am running for the U.S. Senate because we need an Independent who answers only to the Constitution and the people of South Dakota. I will never stay silent when our rights are being trampled by agents of the state.
Thank you for standing with me for the rule of law.
Thank you for standing with me. The mission continues [Brian Bengs, campaign e-mail, 2026.01.26].
Beaudion asks for reflection; Bengs asks for Noem’s resignation. Beaudion portrays his message (and, unavoidably, himself) as “beyond politics”; Bengs asks for a campaign donation to support political action.
I noticed that the links Beaudion includes in his e-mail end with “?utm_source=chatgpt.com”, the code ChatGPT adds to indicate it tracked down the article and produced the link for a user. I’ve stripped that code from the links above, but the indication that Beaudion used ChatGPT to find his references, got me wondering if his philosophizing, clearly a more abstract, arguably fuzzy text than Bengs’s very direct blast against DHS’s crime against Alex Pretti, might also be a product of ChatGPT.
I ran both texts through three AI checkers. GPTZero guesses the percentage chance that a text is completely AI-generated, completely human-writtern, or mixed. ZeroGPT and Grammarly guess what percentage of a text came from AI.
| Beaudion | Bengs | |
| GPTZero | 65% chance all AI | 84% chance all human |
| ZeroGPT | 79% AI text | 15% AI text |
| Grammarly | 27% AI text | 0% AI text |
The government is murdering Americans who oppose its fascist crackdown. We can take Beaudion’s (?) suggestion and reflect on our goodness and shared humanity (?)… but in the face of armed goons acting on the orders of the federal government to trample our Constitutional rights, it may be more urgent to take political action, win an election, and hold the killers in our government accountable.
p.s.: GPTZero, ZeroGPT, and Grammarly all correctly guess that my text here is 100% human.
If AI constructs something and it perfectly says what you want to say—your ideas, your values, your intent—then the words were generated by AI, but the meaning belongs to you.
Think of it like this:
• If you dictate a letter and a secretary types it → it’s still your letter.