Social Security cannot be cut! This is our money that we have earned over decades and paid into a government program we trusted would be there for us in our retirement or need. Most disabled people and retired people depend solely or partly on this monthly social security check, and have planned their lives around it. To have it cut out from under us would be devastating, is wrong, cruel and immoral.

Children's early literacy programming is suffering even more–as if the Pandemic learning losses weren't enough. In my work with children through the nonprofit I lead, Minnesota Children's Press, www.minnchildpress.org we research, write, illustrate, publish books and sell books--our latest is out! "Go Away, Rock Snot!". Minnesota Children's Press touches about 300 children a year in grades k-5 through North Shore schools, summer day camps, outreach workshops, in-school writeshops and after-school publishing club called Story Scouts. www.storyscouts.org We depend on philanthropic donations from individuals, foundations and governments to run our programs and print our books. In the last month alone, two grant opportunities closed down--and with them the prospect of $9,000 in literacy grant funding for innovative projects such as having the youngest learners, kids in grades 1-5, write and illustrate the most respected cultural artifact of literacy: the bound book. Other funding prospects remain–we hope. But the uncertainty of plan/unplan injects a wobble into programming that impacts families and children who rely on us to consistently offer creative applied literacy that wows us all with what children invent!

One in 5 families here in Cook County, struggle to feed their families TODAY; I shudder to think how these numbers will jump as the Trump administration, with Congressperson Pete Stauber's support, continues to dismantle the critical support the federal government provides Minnesota EVERY month! USDA is cutting millions of dollars that Minnesota schools, childcare centers, and food banks use to buy local food. The state will lose about $18 million in federal funding as the Trump administration terminates two pandemic-era programs.

For fiscal year 2025, Minnesota was awarded approximately $13.3 million to purchase food for schools and an additional $4.7 million to cover products for food banks. Those funds will no longer be distributed. The Farm to School program has helped our students receive fresh and nutritious locally sourced food while providing additional revenue streams for our farmers, which is a win-win for Minnesota. Cutting this funding does not eliminate waste; it only harms our food supply.

We are working diligently here to support this program; however support from the Federal government is crucial.

Cheers and jeers at Cook County, Minnesota's first Town Hall of 2025 were prompted by citizen concern over the chaos, cruelty and incompetency of the new MustTrump administration.

And there were lots:

Cheers for the suggestion that if the “unelected South African nepo baby” —as the state’s Governor Tim Walz calls Elon Musk — isn’t jettisoned from the levers of U.S. presidential powers, Minnesota should consider “pasting itself” onto its neighbor, Canada—65% of Minnesota’s border with Canada is in Cook County––to become its 11th province.

Jeers and boos met the lone resident who shared her opinion that student exposure in school to diversity, inclusion and equity issues, as well as to transgender concepts, may be harming children and causing school test scores to plummet. This sparked angry yelling from retired teachers in the audience who dismissed the allegations as cruel falsehoods, amid supportive cheers, and followed by more cheers when Sen. Hauschild gracefully dismissed the assertions as unsupported by evidence. He noted Minnesota is a leader in supporting same sex marriage and he expects that to stand.

More cheers met other urgent concerns and the prospect for change with citizenry outcry, with the most blazing anger over the daily disasters of the current administration’s dismantling of the federal government.

The largest rural county in Minnesota is Cook County, which has as its hub the city of Grand Marais, population 1,309. Cook County borders Canada and is the gateway to the historic Gunflint Trail into the nation’s pristine paddling paradise, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW).

On Friday, in a lunch hour Town Hall with their Democrat state senator, the first held under the 2025 new federal administration, it felt like you could hear most of the residents at times—this from a town that regulates quiet by posting signs for snowmobilers to refrain from revving during church services.

More than 200 concerned citizens showed up at noon, on a workday, at the local YMCA gym to talk for 90 minutes to their state senator —Sen. Grant Hauschild, a Democrat.

Among their top concerns:

• MINING: The Administration’s recent declaration of emergency war powers to accelerate mining rights for copper-nickel cobalt is seen as a bald lie and bold power grab for mineral wealth by Administration principals, their oligarch friends, and mining companies, the biggest of which are not even U.S. industries. Mining is already a contentious issue in Northern Minnesota because of the pollution threats it poses to the state’s prized freshwater bounty of more than 11,000 inland lakes and Lake Superior, the largest of the Great Lakes and also the biggest lake in the world by surface area. Several testified about their work in Minnesota’s famed iron ore mines and the indifference and unresponsiveness of mining companies to both miners’ health and cleaning up the environment. Private profit at public risk and expense is how most in the audience characterized mining interests in Minnesota, who call for rigorous scientific proof of the proposed new mining methods be presented for professional and public review before any new mining resumes.

• BOUNDARY WATERS CANOE AREA WILDERNESS. Cook County, Grand Marais, and a nearby city of Ely are the gateway to an American parkland treasure: the remote, rugged, pristine boreal forest wilderness that is more than 1 million acres in size and with more than 1,200 miles of canoe routes and 2,000 campsites, greatly prized for its non-motorized use by paddlers, campers, hikers, anglers, spiritual retreats, Indigenous rituals and traditions. In calling for an immediate mineral inventory of all federal lands, the current Administration is signaling its intent to commercialize and destroy this irreplaceable natural asset to development of extractive industries, logging, energy and more.

• FOREST FIRE RISK: More than 90% of the land in Cook County is forested as part of the Superior National Forest. As a result of the recent Administration’s aggressive batch cuts without provable cause, only two Forest Service workers remain on duty in the district, as drought and fire concerns build and the busy tourist season approaches.

• THEFT/LOSS OF SOCIAL SECURITY MONEY, MEDICARE AND MEDICAID: Retired teacher of 30 years, whose husband was laid-off as a miner in the 1980s, “which turned our life upside down”, Sylvia Peters, is outraged. She has been employed and paying into Social Security since she was 15 years old. The current disarray caused by the Administration, his unelected South African neopo baby sidekick and the child computer whizzes he is grooming to be agents of ruthless societal destruction are proposing cuts that will leave her family unsure they will have any of the government benefits they’ve been paying into all of their adult lives. “We should be getting back services that support us. We are supporting the government. We the people should be supported by what we pay in. That all this is being cut is so infuriating to me, having to remake my life, over and over again.”

• BALANCE OF PAYMENTS: Minnesota pays more to the Federal Government than it receives in services funded by the Federal government. “And if we’re not getting it back, does Minnesota have to continuing paying it to the Federal Government?” Sen. Hauschild acknowledged that Minnesota is one of 13 “pay-in” states that gives more to the Treasury than it receives. Minnesotans still must pay taxes. even in the face of threatened cuts to services that support them—while subsidizing other states. But that is an issue he and his staff are researching.

Actionable answers were few. Writing letters and emails to your representatives and holding town halls and peaceful, law-abiding acts of visible protest are the impactful actions of dissent, Sen. Hauschild said. Phone calls help, but mainly get logged in a for:against tally.

In letters and phone calls, adding details by telling stories of how your life is impacted by the current Administration’s actions is most effective. “Right now, stories are the best response,” he said.