Who is Kristi Noem, Trump’s pick for homeland security secretary

In choosing South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as his homeland security secretary, President-elect Donald Trump is tapping a long-time loyalist to helm an agency that’s expected to play a central role in his immigration crackdown.https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/12/politics/kristi-noem-homeland-security-secretary/index.html

In choosing South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as his homeland security secretary, President-elect Donald Trump is tapping a long-time loyalist to helm an agency that’s expected to play a central role in his immigration crackdown. She will work closely with two immigration hardliners, incoming deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller and administration “border czar” Tom Homan — both early choices that signaled Trump is serious about his pledge to conduct mass deportations. Noem, 52, is a former state legislator and four-term congresswoman who was elected governor of South Dakota in 2018 and reelected in 2022. Her profile grew during the Covid-19 pandemic, when she rejected mask mandates and social distancing. But she is perhaps best-known nationally for the controversy that followed the publication of an excerpt of her memoir earlier this year, in which she revealed she’d shot and killed a family dog, a 14-month-old wirehair pointer named Cricket, in a gravel pit because the dog was was “untrainable” and “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with.” Facing backlash, Noem defended her actions, writing on X that her book had “more real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping.” She also retracted a story in the book about a meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, indicating that such a meeting never happened.