Trump adds a puppy killer to his cabinet

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is headed to Washington D.C. after all.
The Republican official who was on the shortlist to be Donald Trump’s running mate but had her chances thwarted in part because of backlash from writing in her memoir of the ill-fated Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer she was training for pheasant hunting, that she shot in part because she deemed it “untrainable.”
The incoming president tapped Noem to be his next Department of Homeland Security secretary, per multiple reports.
From CNN: Noem will be tapped to take over the agency as two key immigration hardliners — Stephen Miller and Tom Homan — are slated to serve in senior roles, signaling Trump is serious about his promise to crack down on his immigration pledges. With his selection of Noem, Trump is ensuring a loyalist will head an agency he prioritizes and that is key to his domestic agenda.
The department saw an immense amount of turmoil the last time Trump was in office. Then, DHS had five different leaders, only two of whom were Senate-confirmed. The agency has a $60 billion budget and hundreds of thousands of employees.
Noem defeated a Democratic state lawmaker in 2022 to win reelection, leaning heavily on her handling of the coronavirus pandemic in a first term marked by positioning herself on the national stage in 2024.
The Republican governor eased past state Rep. Jamie Smith after raising more than $15 million via a nationwide fundraising network. Noem has said she would serve a full four-year term if reelected, but she generated speculation about higher political ambitions by becoming a fixture in conservative media and making appearances in key 2024 states. Her fundraising haul was a historic amount of money for a South Dakota gubernatorial candidate.
Noem’s campaign centered largely on her handling of the state’s economy as well as her record of forgoing most government mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic. The 50-year-old Republican vaulted to national prominence within the GOP during her first term after deriding those government mandates.
She said she looked forward to “the next four years,” while also repeatedly taking shots at President Joe Biden. Noem accused him of ruining the country, said she doubted “whether his mind was his own,” and threatened that “if he tries to take our guns, he can take them from our cold dead hands.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Matt Arco may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewArco.