The overwhelming generosity of the people of Grand Marais helped provide joy to children in need through Operation Christmas Child shoebox gifts this season. Across the U.S., the Samaritan's Purse project collected 10.5 million shoebox gifts in 2024. Combined with those collected from partnering countries in 2024, the ministry is now sending over 11.9 millionshoebox gifts to children worldwide.

A couple of weeks ago I read an op-ed by William Cooper titled ''Shut-Up' doesn't light the way.' He wrote a lot about free speech (protected by the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution along with freedom of press, assembly, petition, and religion). Cooper wrote that 'America's founders specifically engineered them (the essential tools of American democracy) to be effective tools against the threat of politicians with autocratic impulses. ..Tyrants don't just concentrate power; they eliminate dissent...Violence within and between nations increases when governments stifle communication.... Silencing free speech is a slippery slope... President Truman put it plainly in 1950: 'Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.' ' Cooper ended his opinion piece emphasizing that freedom of speech is crucial to our representative democracy and it is essential to a functioning society. 'We must fight to preserve it by respecting it and promoting it ourselves...even when the speaker says things we don't want to hear....especially when Donald Trump is president.'

MILLIONS and MILLIONS have been added to our county debt.