*South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem said she plans to reapply to bring fireworks back to Mount Rushmore in summer 2025.
This comes after president-elect Donald Trump announced plans for a “most spectacular” birthday celebration for America’s 250th anniversary in 2026.
Noem in a Thursday social media post said she wants to celebrate the occasion with fireworks.
Fireworks shows haven't been allowed at Mount Rushmore for over a decade due to wildfire concerns. They returned in 2020 in an event attended by then-President Trump.
Since then, Noem’s applications to bring fireworks back have been denied by the National Park Service.
The NPS cited an environmental study showing potential negative impacts on the monument itself, nearby water quality, wildlife and Native American relations.
The latest Drought Monitor, which was released Friday, shows the entirety of South Dakota is facing some degree of dryness.
The western portion of the state is the most dry, facing extreme drought conditions. Over 60 percent of South Dakota faces severe drought conditions.
*As the weather gets colder, changes are being made to the flow levels at Gavins Point Dam. But officials say it’s nothing to worry about this year.
The flow at Gavins Point is expected to hit its winter levels in the coming weeks, but nothing out of the ordinary is there to report this time around.
John Remus is the chief of Missouri River basin water management for the US Army Corps of Engineers. Remus said drought conditions are complicating work at the dam.
The river flows are typically cut each year by December 1, in order to end the navigation support at the mouth at Saint Louis. Therefore, officials will start cutting back releases from Gavins Point on about November. 22.
“We’ll cut 3,000 cubic feet per second, per day, until we reach about 15,000 cubic feet per second," Remus said. "Then we’ll hold that flow for five days then drop it 1,000 CFS every five days until we get our winter release of 12,000 cubic feet per second.”
*The first roundabout to be built on Sioux City streets opened to drivers on Friday.
The one-lane roundabout is located at Old Lakeport Road, Elk Creek Road, Christy Road, and Southern Hills Drive.
Many Iowa cities have had roundabouts for years. They are a traffic device that the Iowa Department of Transportation touts as a great way to manage speed in residential neighborhoods, as they are accepted as one of the safest types of intersection design.
Sioux City officials are urging people unfamiliar with roundabouts to look at the city website to look at a video on how to drive through a roundabout. They said roundabouts have been used in the United States for 25 years to reduce crashes, traffic delays, fuel consumption, and air pollution.
*Additionally, Nebraska voters overwhelmingly chose to send Donald Trump back to the White House, as well as re-elect an all-Republican congressional delegation on Tuesday.
A review of county vote totals that the state Secretary of State tallied showed Nebraska continuing its streak of being conservative red, with people in rural areas voting differently from those in the high-population cities that lie in Lancaster and Douglas counties,
Those were the only two counties where a majority of people voted for Democrat Kamala Harris instead of Trump.
In one of the two U.S. Senate races, incumbent Republican Senator Deb Fischer beat labor leader Dan Osborn, who ran as an independent. Like Trump.
Fischer lost the two metropolitan counties that hold Lincoln and Omaha and received lower levels of support in the eastern half of the state and in the more diverse Interstate Highway 80 corridor.
Osborn won two more counties than Vice President Kamala Harris: Sarpy and Thurston. He struggled for voter support on his competitor's home turf in the Nebraska Sandhills.
In the other Senate race, Senator Pete Ricketts handily won 92 of the state’s 93 counties to finish the remainder of Ben Sasse's term. Of the two Republicans who won the Senate seats, former governor Ricketts was more popular by nearly 16,000 votes.
The state ballot measures showed much more division with voters than the top of the ticket.
On Amendment 439, which would expand the right to an abortion up to fetal viability, voters on the eastern edge of the state generally favored the measure, while the margin between the two sides was much closer along the I-80 corridor.
The measure was ultimately rejected with 51.3 percent voting against it.
