Three thoughts …

Auschwitz. Treblinka. Bergen-Belson. Russian gulags. Manzanar. Heart Mountain. Lincoln.

Wait, what? Lincoln?

Go ahead. Insist I’m overreacting. Being a drama queen. Hyperventilating on the hype. Getting my NIMBY on. Maybe I am. But the idea that a federal migrant detention camp would be built where I live — already reported as a possibility — comes with a stigma.

Nor would a camp in Omaha, Grand Island, North Platte or any place in Nebraska mitigate the mood. If Floridians want to embrace “Alligator Alcatraz,” the camp in the state’s swamps with the childishly cruel name, let them. But as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security searches for other detention camp sites, let’s hope Nebraska political leaders understand the long-term message such a place sends and the reputation that will follow.

Immigration is in dire need of serious reform. So some may welcome a camp here for migrants as part of the solution to the immigration problem. Indeed the president said on the campaign trail that a mass deportation will take place to rid the country of violent criminals, human traffickers and fentanyl pushers.

To date, however, the data shows that a clear majority in detention camps or already deported fits none of that trifecta. Of interest, too, is that according to 8 U.S.C. § 1325, being in the country without documentation, with a few exceptions, remains a civil and not criminal offense.

Placing a migrant detention camp in the backyard may not last forever, but its memory would. Lincoln and Nebraska can do without.

School Finance

With the dog days behind us and their namesake rightly in its heavenly place, most Nebraska’s schools are up and running. (We pause here to give thanks for air conditioning.)

Also at their desks starting last week were members of the governor’s newly-minted School Financing Review Commission, charged with building a better school financing mousetrap.

Even a cursory look at school financing in Nebraska requires a trip down the rabbit hole when considering formulas and fairness. While the commission holds out hope it can solve some seriously hairy dilemmas involving property taxes and paying for a quality education, its initial conversations — as they should be — seemingly kept an aggregate eye on the prize: Nebraska’s public school students.

The old saw about showing me a budget and I’ll show what you value applies here. Nebraska schools have historically performed well in comparison to its border neighbors and the nation as a whole. In the constant push to lower property taxes, however, previous attempts not simply here but in other states have too often centered on painting school districts as spendthrifts or wholly inefficient stewards of money. The result has been a patchwork of policies that have satisfied neither those who pay property taxes nor those on the front lines of educating children.

Ergo, the School Financing Review Commission … and the balancing act which lies before it.

History Lesson

Speaking of schools, Nebraska’s history teachers should take note of a worrisome development at the Smithsonian Institution, the nation’s flagship museum of all things American.

The White House has sent a letter to the Institution’s director, giving him a heads up that the administration will be “reviewing” the museum’s exhibitions and research so they march to the same drummer as “the president’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.” The review would apply to eight Smithsonian museums.

Oh, boy. Democracies are, by their very nature, divisive. When the people make the rules, differences of opinion are not only evident and expected, they create a process of deliberation and debate that has made us the best last hope for freedom on the planet. Probably best not to mess with that.

Moreover, like book banners, if rewriters of history reveal only the good parts of the past, it’s not really history. Slavery, Japanese internment camps (two of which are listed above), the Tulsa Race Massacre, the mistreatment of Mexican Braceros and Jan. 6, 2021 — when for the first time in our nation’s history, a violent mob tried to undo a free and fair election — all happened, whether we like it or not. Not our finest hours. We must acknowledge them, study them and learn from them. Otherwise, the axiom is true: we’ll repeat them.

Maybe we already are.

When we own all of our history, when we count all our wins and losses, when we let all of our true narrative be our teacher and not something to edit or erase, then we are unquestionably an exceptional nation.

This story was published by Nebraska Examiner, an editorially independent newsroom providing a hard-hitting, daily flow of news. Read the original article: https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2025/08/18/a-nimby-note-finding-balance-edi...