{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/news/press-releases/thune-theres-no-place-like-south-dakota/", "Thune: There\u2019s No Place Like South Dakota", "2026-09-17", "2026", "2026-09", "Republican", "Senate", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", "thune", "https://www.thune.senate.gov/news/press-releases/", "scraper", "Click here to watch the video.\n\nWASHINGTON \u2014 U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor:\n\nThune\u2019s remarks below (as delivered):\n\n\u201cMr. President, late summer in South Dakota is one of my favorite times of the year.\n\n\u201cAnd as usual, I spent a lot of it crisscrossing the state, talking to South Dakotans and seeing some of the great things that are happening \u2013 from Sisseton to Spearfish to Sioux Falls.\n\n\u201cLate summer, of course, is fair season, and I made the rounds of multiple fairs.\n\n\u201cBrown County. Turner County. Butte/Lawrence County. The State Fair. Dakotafest.\n\n\u201cI love the chance to meet so many South Dakota families and to hear what\u2019s on their minds.\n\n\u201cAnd, of course, if I can eat a little fair food while I\u2019m at it, it\u2019s even better.\n\n\u201cI particularly value the opportunity I have at these fairs to hear from the men and women of South Dakota\u2019s leading industry, which is agriculture.\n\n\u201cThe Aberdeen Area Chamber of Commerce hosted a terrific agribusiness meeting at the Brown County Fair, and the Dakotafest congressional forum always provides me with a lot of valuable feedback from South Dakota farmers and ranchers.\n\n\u201cOutside the fair circuit, I also had the chance to talk to South Dakota ag producers at a number of other stops, including the CHS Southwest Grain elevator in Lemmon and the Midwest Agricultural Export Summit.\n\n\u201cFarmers and ranchers, Mr. President, are facing a lot of headwinds right now, and I\u2019m committed to doing everything I can in Washington to help producers.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m proud that the Republicans\u2019 Working Families Tax Cuts legislation strengthened a number of programs that producers depend on, such as crop insurance and commodity and livestock programs.\n\n\u201cAnd while I\u2019m disappointed that my Democrat colleagues have chosen to put politics ahead of producers and unanimously oppose the farm bill, which was voted on yesterday at the Senate Ag Committee, I haven\u2019t given up.\n\n\u201cMr. President, another big perk of the past few weeks has been the opportunity to visit South Dakota small businesses.\n\n\u201cI got to tour Gameday Social\u2019s new headquarters in Sioux Falls.\n\n\u201cSit down with ranchers and other community leaders at the Lazy Spurr in Bison.\n\n\u201cTour Woodland Cabinetry in Sisseton.\n\n\u201cAnd more.\n\n\u201cI love hearing from small business owners about how the Working Families Tax Cuts is helping their businesses.\n\n\u201cAnd I value the opportunity to hear what else we can do in Washington to help small businesses grow and thrive and create jobs.\n\n\u201cMr. President, it\u2019s always an honor to get to talk to the men and women who put their lives on the line to protect their fellow Americans.\n\n\u201cOver the past few weeks, I had the chance to visit with South Dakota sheriffs at a roundtable in Flandreau.\n\n\u201cChat with members of the Lemmon Volunteer Fire Department.\n\n\u201cAnd show the under secretary of the Army around Ellsworth Air Force Base.\n\n\u201cAnticipation is building for the arrival of the B-21 bomber, which is the future of long-range strike.\n\n\u201cAnd we had some great discussions about the preparations that are underway.\n\n\u201cWe also had the opportunity to meet with leaders of the South Dakota industrial base and academia about their contributions to the joint force, like the work that VRC Metal Systems in Box Elder is doing on cold-spray maintenance technology.\n\n\u201cMr. President, there were so many other great moments from my travels.\n\n\u201cGetting to tour Spearfish High School\u2019s Career and Technical Education Center.\n\n\u201cVisiting Dakota State\u2019s Applied Research Corporation to discuss how South Dakota can be a leader in cybersecurity and national intelligence.\n\n\u201cInteracting with students at Black Hills State University.\n\n\u201cParticipating in the groundbreaking of the James Abdnor Center for Advanced Manufacturing at Southeast Technical College \u2013 which was a deeply meaningful moment for me, as a former Jim Abdnor staffer.\n\n\u201cMr. President, late summer in South Dakota can\u2019t be beat.\n\n\u201cAnd I\u2019m very proud to be from our great state.\u201d", 1, "2026-09-18T09:27:43Z", "2026-09-18T09:29:09Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.thune.senate.gov/news/press-releases/thune-theres-no-place-like-south-dakota/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.9273069445043802, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}