South Dakota State Senator Amber Hulse (District 30), an attorney with the Dhillon law firm, joins Dave Roetman to talk about property taxes, the Hot Springs VA hospital, 2024 election integrity work and lawfare against President Trump. Hulse says rising home sale prices in her district have pushed some constituents’ property taxes up 70 percent over five years, calls the governor’s bill a freeze measure rather than a solution, and hopes the summer property tax task force produces relief. She describes the Save the VA fight to keep the Hot Springs facility open and its current staffing and service cuts. Hulse recounts running a national desk for Arizona in the Trump campaign’s West Palm Beach war room on election day 2024, including threatening letters and invalid voter registrations in Pennsylvania. She also discusses the Federalist Society and CALSA at Georgetown Law.
Topics: property taxes, property tax task force, Hot Springs VA hospital, veterans health care, election integrity, 2024 Trump campaign, voter registration fraud, lawfare, Federalist Society, Georgetown Law, District 30
“What increasingly frustrates me is the nature of how political the court system has become and how you can determine the outcome of a case based off of which President appointed the judge. And that is not how the legal system is supposed to operate.” - Amber Hulse
CALSA - Conservative and Libertarian Student Organization
SB73 (Prime Sponsor) - require that an individual registering as a voter when applying for a driver license be a resident of this state for the purposes of voting
Full transcript
About this transcript: It was machine-transcribed in-house and then edited for readability. Filler words and false starts are removed, and the meaning is unchanged. [?] marks a word or phrase we’re unsure of. Timestamps are approximate.
[00:00]
Dave Roetman: This is the Making Waves podcast. My name is Dave Roetman. We’re here with Amber Hulse, District 30 Senator. Amber, welcome.
Amber Hulse: Hi, Dave. Thank you so much.
Dave Roetman: You wear a number of hats in addition to being Senator from District 30. I believe you’re a lawyer with Dhillon Law Firm. They’re involved with some of the lawfare that’s against President Trump, is that correct?
Amber Hulse: Yes, that is correct. We were the firm that represented the president for the presidential campaign in 2024 and also represent the president in his personal capacity in a number of cases.
Dave Roetman: That’s quite impressive. And I’m sure we’ll get to that in the podcast here. But let’s start with some local issues. Senator from District 30, and one of your issues is property taxes. Where do you think that’s going? A lot of people are complaining about property taxes in South Dakota. They’ve been on the rise, and there’s some issues I think with some of the people on fixed income that can’t afford their homes anymore.
Where do you think that’s going to go in South Dakota?
Amber Hulse: Yeah, absolutely. Well, my District 30, is what one of my colleagues likes to say, where all of the items in a tourism brochure for the state of South Dakota, except for one other location, are pretty much in this district. And so, we’ve got Mount Rushmore, Custer State Park, Wind Cave National Park. And so, there’s a lot of really attractive places to live, and especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the commercials that were all over national TV were promoting this area of the state.
And so we had a huge influx of people moving to the area and buying homes that completely unexpected prices that were never before seen in this area. And the way that South Dakota’s property taxes are calculated, they actually use those sale values or comps that are from the neighborhood and so what will happen is if you’re sitting in your home, you do nothing and someone buys the home next to you or in your neighborhood that they’ve arbitrarily kind of lumped you together, if that price is inflated, your property taxes could also go up because your home value is going up and so it really is a tax on unrealized gains.
Which can be a huge problem for folks that are on fixed incomes that are living in their dream home, their retirement home. But also, one thing that’s not talked about as much is that it can also be a problem for young families too. If they budgeted, they say they’ve got their money, they put a deposit down on a home, and now they’re seeing unexpected hikes in their property taxes that they didn’t budget for.
On a fixed income can’t ask for more social security, a young family can’t go to their boss and ask for a 30% increase in their wages either. And so it affects all different ages and it’s become a huge issue in the area because not only are the rates super high for home buying, but that makes it really difficult for folks at all ages if they need to swap out and downsize to buy a new home or switch properties as well.
Dave Roetman: I imagine it makes it very difficult for first-time house buyers. That’s something that the latest generation would have difficulty with.
Amber Hulse: Yeah, and I mean, in the last, five, ten years, I guess not ten years, but in the last five years, South Dakota’s legislature has been trying to come up with some sort of solution to this issue, and even this past legislative session, I believe there was over [?] and somehow really nothing has gotten [?] done. The governor’s bill was [inaudible] to get across the finish line. And he admits that it is kind of just a freeze measure to try to slow the growth down of the property tax problem.
But it isn’t an actual solution to stop some of these just crazy year over year increases. I have constituents that have seen 70% increases over the last five years. Their bills, it’s going from $2,000, $3,000 a year to $8,000 a year, and that’s just not something that is manageable for most people’s income levels in this area.
Dave Roetman: Do you think that in future legislative sessions they’re going to be focusing more on that issue so that we can get some resolutions?
Amber Hulse: Well, I hoped that we were going to fix the problem this year and I tried very, very hard. The problem is the way the South Dakota system is set up. It kind of pits the different categories of property against each other and so there’s ag and then there’s non-agriculture property and within the non-agriculture property category there’s owner-occupied and then commercial and so really there’s three categories. Commercial owner occupied, and an AG.
And what will happen is if you mess with only one category, so if you are going to change some of the provisions of law just for owner occupied, it can cause disproportionate shifts to the other categories. And commercial, they have a lobbyist to represent them through the Retailers Association, and then a lot of the different people from the agriculture industry also have lobbyists to represent them in Pierre, but the legislators are the ones supposed to be representing the homeowners and the people.
[05:00]
And so you end up with this really strange dichotomy of people against your bills that the lobbyists are coming out in full force against bills that are trying to help the very people that you represent. So it was very frustrating when it was done this year. I hope that something will come out of the property tax task force that’s happening this summer in South Dakota. Not a summer study necessarily, but basically is a summer study.
And while I’m, disheartened that I was not appointed to that commission in my three of the counties that I represent are of the six to nine that are, I think, most affected by this problem, I really hope that that commission gets together and comes up with some kind of solution to at least provide relief. But really, the biggest thing is we really need to look at all calculation because even if you provide some kind of relief, whether it be in the form of an increased sales tax or a receipt tax or whatever the proposal is going to be to give people some relief or reduction in the form of an alternative source of revenue, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s not, to me, right.
Or just, I guess you could say, that your piece of the pie and the way that your taxes are calculated on that little white slip that comes in the mail is fair because year over year you should have some kind of reliance or understanding of what that piece of paper is going to say. You shouldn’t be scared and laying in bed awake at night. Wondering what your property taxes are going to be this year because of arbitrary sales that have happened in your area.
What area are you taxed for doing nothing? Most of the time you have to do something in order to be taxed, take some kind of action, move money around, pay for something, buy something. There has to be some kind of transfer. This, you’ve done nothing. You’ve sat in your home and somehow you’re paying more.
Dave Roetman: Well, thank you for your attention on that issue. I’m sure it’s going to come to the head pretty soon. Another issue locally in District 30 and perhaps in other parts of the state is the VA hospitals, the veterans’ hospitals. And you’ve been working with the White House to deal with some issues. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
Amber Hulse: Actually the very reason that I got involved in politics at such a young age and it goes all the way back to when I was in middle school. The VA hospital in Hot Springs has been in existence for over 100 years at this point. Before it was obviously a federal facility, it served veterans going all. The way back historically documented to the Civil War and so my hometown is actually nicknamed the veteran’s [?] town because of how much of a history there is in taking care of our nation’s heroes.
But in about 2012, 2013, the then Obama administration slated the facility to be closed. And so that’s when the Save the VA movement was born, and the town really rallied together to encourage our federal officials to keep the facility open, and we ultimately won that fight initially. Since then, there’s been, kind of ups and downs in the process. The facility is open today. There’s been a call center that was started that has now kind of fell apart, and What has kind of happened is that as a provider leaves or a staff member moves away or what have you retires, they don’t fill that position again.
And so there’s been a lot of staffing shortages and many issues that are kind of tied to the property tax and housing issue in the area as well, but also have to do with the fact that the federal system is not opening positions back up and just not providing the services that they used to. So the urgent care hours have been cut back. The emergency services are basically nonexistent. And this used to be a full-fledged hospital.
I mean, they did surgeries here. They had dialysis. They had x-rays. They had a full-fledged domiciliary for mental health care and drug addiction rehabilitation that served hundreds of veterans. And now I think the last statistic I saw was it was less than 50 people that were being served for some of the mental health treatment. And so the issue has kind of been brought back to light and come back on my radar.
Especially as now we have President Trump in the White House who’s one of his main priorities is taking care of our nation’s heroes and moving some of that funding that was once being used for illegal immigrants away from that issue and focusing it on homeless veterans and mental health issues because we still have terrible statistics that over 20 veterans a day are committing suicide, and that shouldn’t be happening in this day and age.
We have the resources and the availability. We have beds literally sitting empty at this facility in Hot Springs that could be used to help our heroes. This is an issue that’s very personal to me. My dad’s a disabled Vietnam veteran, 100% disabled, and my mom actually used to work at the facility in Hot Springs. So this is my number one issue and something that I hope to work and use some of my network and connections that I have in Washington DC to help my district, help my area, but most of all help our heroes.
[10:00]
Dave Roetman: That’s where the funding should be with the Veterans Administration and our veterans rather than illegal [?] aliens. Thank you for doing that. Now speaking about the Trump campaign. You were involved with election integrity during the Trump campaign, and that’s been an ongoing issue. With my time with the party, I was well aware that the RNC involved itself with election integrity issues and making sure that the vote is fair. And obviously, there are some issues there.
Could you tell us a little bit about your experience about election integrity and how do you help the Trump campaign?
Amber Hulse: So I actually worked on the campaign in 2024, so just last fall. And I actually spent election day in 2024 in West Palm Beach in Trump headquarters. And I ran one of the national desks in the war room for actually Arizona and then helped out with Pennsylvania after many of the issues were happening as we all are aware in the state of Pennsylvania. But the experience was incredible. I was very lucky to be brought in by my law firm to work on the election integrity unit of the campaign and to be there to actually win my seat in the State Senate, sadly not in my own district, but to me it was more important to get President Trump elected than my own election in some ways.
It was just really crazy to be watching my own election results come in on a separate screen, and then also watching the presidential election results come in while also taking care of some of the issues that were happening on the ground in Arizona and Pennsylvania. So the operation that they had set up all across the country was absolutely incredible, though the teams that they had on the ground around, ensuring in every single polling place in the swing states to make sure that everything was done properly.
And then we saw how the outcome was much different than 2020. And I still haven’t heard someone give a good explanation as to where the 60 million votes went this year, this time around. I never could have imagined having such a hand in helping getting the president elected. And it is a huge blessing to be a part of that operation to ensure that the vote was more secure than it ever was before. But I do think that many of the messaging campaigns from the RNC and Laura Trump with make it Too Big to Rig and ensuring that everybody really got out and voted was also really helpful as well.
Dave Roetman: Can you give us some examples of what issues you had in 2024, the election integrity? What kind of issues do you have to deal with?
Amber Hulse: Well, there was a couple things that we had to actually try to get the then Biden DOJ involved, which I’m sure you can imagine didn’t go over too well. But in particular, there was several issues where there was threatening letters being sent in Pennsylvania specifically to neighborhoods that had Trump signs in their yard threatening, we’re going to come kill your cats and do things to your pet’s wall [?] if you vote for Trump.
And so it was pretty comical to have these letters being sent at the same time that the President was then being attacked for the, eating the cats or eating the dogs comment during the presidential debate, but then Democrats themselves were actually sending out threatening letters, threatening Trump supporters, that they were going to kill their pets. And so that was ironic, I guess, in that moment. So we had some of those issues.
And then there was a lot of problems on election day across the country, both in Georgia and in Pennsylvania, where power was going out, of course, on the day of all days for the power to go out on election day. And so for those areas that did use either electronic ballot counters or actual electronic voting machines. They had huge backups in the lines and people waiting hours upon hours. There’s a lot of issues across the country, in Georgia specifically, that there was issues that happened and they were trying to extend the election dates out for mail-in ballots.
And then I think the biggest issue that I didn’t really see reported on as much, but was something that really scared me, was I think the hack this year was trying to register false voters, and so Alaska’s voter registration system was actually hacked into by what the team believed was actually a foreign nation or people from a foreign nation. And then we also had, issues in Pennsylvania as well where there was thousands and thousands of voter registrations being dropped off from, purportedly legal and valid voter registration drives.
But then, many of the voter registrations that were submitted, over 50% of them were invalid or not real people. And so we had this question as to whether or not those people’s idea was to register enough people in certain specific counties and then use the mail-in ballot process to rig the vote that way.
[15:00]
Dave Roetman: I imagine that would be overwhelming for the local auditors and secretaries of state to have that many voter registrations come in, and what do you do when you have thousands and thousands coming at the same time?
Amber Hulse: Yeah, and that’s the question, is what do you do? Because then, they have to, use scrutiny to determine whether the person should be validly registered and then they’re also up against. Statutory deadlines as to how many days they’re supposed to process those things. And so I think that was kind of the point was to drop off thousands at the last minute in the 11th hour right up against the deadline in the hope that the registrations wouldn’t be scrutinized.
As intensely and that’s not thankfully what happened because it was reported to us and I believe in many of the cases circuit court judges across the country did throw out many of the registrations just because it was obvious that it was fraudulent voter registration schemes with how many that were invalid. But it was touch and go there for many, many moments and we worked on Saturday and Sundays and from seven in the morning sometimes until, two o’clock in the morning and so it was definitely not a sustainable lifestyle but it was easy to work that hard for a cause so important to win our country back.
Dave Roetman: Thank you for doing that. Obviously, you had good success, but you’re still helping defend President Trump involving with the lawsuits and the lawfare against him. I’m sure there’s a lot of things you can’t talk about, but can you give us a general overview of your opinion of the lawfare that’s being done against President Trump and what can be done to stop it?
Amber Hulse: Yeah, I mean, thankfully, a lot of the indictments have been dismissed, but there’s still ongoing cases against the President. And like you said, there’s some things that you can’t talk about necessarily, or the President doesn’t appreciate necessarily lawyers benefiting from talking about him too much. But our law firm continues to represent the President in his personal capacity. From even events taking place during the presidential debate. And so something that happened September of 2024 is still something that the president may have to answer depositions for different things.
And so we don’t want that to happen. Obviously, the sitting president has much better things to worry about than ridiculous, frivolous lawsuits that are still pending against him for things that were said months ago that – in my personal opinion are not actionable but we’re continuing to fight the good fight and defend our President now and it’s just been like I always say, to go from West River, South Dakota to the West Wing and many of the people that were on my team when I was working in West Palm Beach are now working in the White House Counsel’s Office, which is incredible.
I got to go to the White House a couple of weeks ago and see all of them, and it was very nostalgic to see everybody in a very official high-up position, my work family in a way, getting to continue to serve our country and enact President Trump’s agenda.
Dave Roetman: Do you think the lawfare [?] is going to continue once they’ve settled these current lawsuits against him that are going to try something else?
Amber Hulse: Well, I’m sure they still have many things cooking. I mean, we’ve seen already how the federal court system has continued to try to block the Trump agenda, whether it be for immigration or other issues. But what increasingly frustrates me is just the nature of how political the court system has become and how you can basically determine the outcome of a case based off of which president appointed the judge. And that’s not how the legal system is supposed to operate, right?
We have three separate branches of government enshrined in the Constitution for a reason. And the court should be reviewing these cases in a way that is nonpolitical and is truly just reading the law and then determining the case based off of the law. But we’ll see what the next debates [?]. Is going to be because they never stop. But the good thing is that the President has incredible people at the DOJ now and is continuing to hopefully appoint more federal judges so that we’ll have more of a fair shake in the federal court system as we go forward.
Dave Roetman: That does seem to be something new and newer in American politics where the judges don’t seem to be using the Constitution or the law so much as their own personal opinions and biases in politics.
Amber Hulse: Yeah, I was a member of the Federalist Society at Georgetown Law which was one of the two conservative groups on campus. And so people can say whatever they want about the Federalist Society, but it’s literally the only option that you have on a liberal law school campus, which is most law schools in the country, if not pretty much all of them. Their whole saying is that you say what the law is, not what it should be.
[20:00]
And it’s just incredible to watch federal judges who are renowned in the legal field. Manipulate and twist things and do mental gymnastics to try to get the outcome that is more favorable for their personal political positions than what is correct and just and right for our judiciary.
Dave Roetman: The Federalist Society does some good work, but out of curiosity, what is the other conservative group?
Amber Hulse: Yeah, the Georgetown Law started a group called the Conservative and Libertarian Student Association, so it was CALSA, and that group focused more on things that were innately political, and so the Federalist Society has certain rules about, because it’s not supposed to be an innately Republican group necessarily, it’s more just about conservative legal And so if there were issues where students were being, wrong-fully treated because of being conservative or we had some issues with students actually We had professors tweeting about students, about clerkships and different recommendation letters and just crazy things.
The CALSA was kind of the group that students could band together and take more of those political stances and we dealt with issues with critical race theory. Georgetown Law School too. Before you could graduate, you had to take at least one class that was teaching something about critical race theory. And so CALSA got together and fought that requirement for graduation. And so it’s things like that, that as a member of the Federalist Society, you couldn’t use the Federalist Society to advocate for those things.
And so it was just a different way for students with different belief systems that were in the minority. At a school like Georgetown could band together and take a stance which ended up being very successful and then, the group, had a seat at the table and they had different round tables with all the different student organizations. And one of my good friends who helped me run the Federalist Society while I was in law school continued to do really strong work with that with anti-Semitism on Georgetown Law’s campus and other things as well.
Dave Roetman: Thank you so much. That sounds like my kind of group because critical theory is literally Marxist theory. It’s nothing new. Critical race theory is just the latest version of critical theory. There’s critical literary theory. There’s all kinds of, long story short, it is anathema to western civilization. So thank you for opposing that stuff. So what do you think of President Trump’s first 100 days in office?
Amber Hulse: I think it’s been incredible. He’s done more to disrupt the DC swamp and restore American strength And, he did it while the media tried to distract you from what was really happening. But, we’ve got a more secure border. Fentanyl has gone way down. We’ve gotten aggressive deregulation that, every single regulation that they wanted to promulgate to existing ones had to be eliminated. We’ve got tax reform being debated right now.
We’ve got a revival of America and energy, and America first, and energy independence. We’ve got stuff for rebuilding our military. It’s so nice to see a president in office who actually cares about putting America first. And focusing on keeping America strong and essentially cutting our legs out from underneath us.
Dave Roetman: I think that Trump really, in his second term here, has a very clear agenda that he’s implementing and he knows how to do it this time. And so I think his first hundred days has been spectacular and amazing. Thank you. And we’re going to have to see.
Amber Hulse: I think that after the assassination attempt, there was a certain fire that was lit within him, whether it, if you’re religious, divine, or, just some other, once someone shoots at you and you almost died, I think you pretty much lose all cares, and you just go forth, and it doesn’t matter who, tells you can’t do that, it’s going to happen. And I think, the first four years getting himself into in some ways, and who can blame him?
He was never a politician. But now he knows his way around Washington, and he knows kind of where the bodies are buried, and he’s going to do everything that he can to ensure that we are in the golden age of America, and then that continues for folks in my generation and my kids and my grandchildren. And so my hope America is stronger for the next 50, 100-years because of these four years in office.
Dave Roetman: You could really see the change in his demeanor after the attempt of his life. And I think you’re right that he is really determined, and he’s got a lot stronger team which you’re a part of.
[25:00]
Amber Hulse: It’s been incredible to grow up in this age of politics in our country. I know many times young people are kind of looked at as being politically apathetic, but we’re seeing this resurgence in Millennial and Gen Z and now even Gen Alpha, young people standing up and realizing that they have to get involved. We were affected. We had graduations, canceled. Our lives were up-ended. We’re the ones that are kind of taking over the reins now.
And I love the Reagan quote, freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. And I’m so grateful that President Trump is now in office and is enacting policies to put America into this golden age so that my generation and future generations can live in the America that we all dream of and that we can all chase our American dream.
Dave Roetman: Amber, thank you for being with us. This is the Making Waves podcast. My name is Dave Roetman. We’ve been here with Amber Hulse, District 30 Senator. Thanks, Amber.
