Call it Cricket’s Revenge.
Thursday’s firing of Kristi Noem as secretary for homeland security was at once brutally swift and entirely expected. The best that can be said about Noem’s tenure was that her disastrous piloting of the Trump immigration policy almost made people forget about the fact she shot the family dog. Almost.
Cricket’s sorry fate was raised by Republican senator Thom Tillis during Tuesday’s Senate hearings, during which Noem faced a caustic and relentless line of questioning from Democrats and Republicans alike.
Difficult as it is to imagine now, Noem, the former governor of South Dakota, was loosely mentioned as a vice-presidential running mate for Donald Trump in the early days of the 2024 election.
The publication of her memoir, in the spring of that year, put a swift end to that. In it she recounted, with apparent pride, her decisiveness in dealing with a 14-month-old hunting dog, Cricket, who, on a hunt, had gone berserk with excitement, attacked a neighbour’s chickens and then attempted to bite Noem.
Back at the ranch, Noem took Cricket to a gravel pit and shot her. For good measure, she also laid waste to a goat who was ill-tempered with the children. The story of bucolic slaughter was intended as a tale of South Dakotan, no-nonsense, tough-choice leadership.
The outcry was predictable. Noem’s veep aspirations disappeared. She was fortunate in that Trump is, at best, indifferent to dogs – and, it would seem, goats – and gave her his nod as homeland security secretary.
Kristi Noem, then governor of South Dakota, with Donald Trump at an event in October 2024. Photograph: Michelle Gustafson/The New York Times
This week, Tillis, a retiring Republican who has found his critical voice, explained why he felt the story of Cricket’s demise played into the disastrous decision-making Noem had displayed over the months when public protests against the sinister behaviour of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents turned fatal in Minneapolis.
“I think it’s relevant because if you read it, she tries to suggest that a 14-month-old dog that’s only half way through what most people that train dogs for hunting purposes think is necessary … so she puts that dog in service long before she should and then she goes and kills it. Then she goes back to the farm and grabs the family goat and shoots it because it made her mad. That’s a thought process. The fact that she acted precipitously on limited information not really understanding that she had put something into a situation that it was not ready for felt a lot like some of the decision-making done in Minneapolis.”
Trump phoned Noem on Thursday to tell her directly she was being relieved of her duties, an act that could be interpreted as merciful had it not occurred minutes before she took to the podium for a public speaking engagement in Nashville.
Markwayne Mullin, the veteran Oklahoma senator – whose previous Senate highlights include inviting an opponent to duke it out with him – is quite liked by many colleagues across the aisle and is expected to be confirmed at the end of the month.
The reasons behind Noem’s dismissal run long. In the long term, her tenure will be remembered for the notorious moment when she branded Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the Ice protesters fatally shot on the streets of Minneapolis, as “domestic terrorists”.
Her lack of empathy, and refusal to retract the comment, was mirrored by the preening, sinister performances of Ice field commander Greg Bovino.
Restoring control at the southern border had been the jewel in the crown of Trump’s first-year policies. But then it overtook unhappiness with inflation as a cause of complaint as poll after poll returned deep public unease with the brutal tactics. Trump replaced Bovino and sent experienced border tsar Tom Homan to Minnesota to restore control.
Meanwhile, scandal continued to follow Noem. Last November, ProPublica broke the story that a $200 million (€177 million) department of homeland security advertising campaign had been awarded to a “Republican consulting firm with long-standing personal and business ties to Noem and her senior aides”.
The main recipient was a company listed in Delaware and established just eight days before the contracts were settled. In return, the taxpayer was treated to nationally-broadcast adverts of Noem sitting on horseback against a South Dakota backdrop of which John Ford might have been proud – prairies, mountains and, fatally, Mount Rushmore. If there is any face of the administration that Trump would like to see set against the presidential carvings at Rushmore, it’s the one staring back at him in the mirror every morning. The panoramic adverts, complete with Noem warning immigrants to either get out or else, did not go unnoticed.
[ ‘They’re toast and they know it’: the Trump team’s hyper-aggressive war rhetoricOpens in new window ]
When an incredulous Louisiana senator, John Kennedy, asked Noem whether the president had approved the lavish budget for these ads, the secretary confirmed he had.
Kennedy, spilling the beans to Capitol Hill reporters after Noem had been dismissed on Thursday, received a phone call from Trump hours after that hearing, “when he was mad as a murder hornet, and he asked me what I thought of Markwayne, I said I like him. Very smart. He’s a very good businessman.”
Other senators were more exercised about the acquisition of two luxury jets for the department of homeland security, with the $200 million coming from funding released by the Big Beautiful Bill. A third plane, complete with a bedroom and bar, was in line to be refurbished at a cost of $70 million.
To further complicate things, Noem was forced to answer questions about a long-rumoured affair with Corey Lewandowski, who serves as an unpaid special adviser to the department of homeland security, from members of the House judiciary committee this week. Responding to Democrat representative Jared Moskowitz, who pressed her to clear the matter up by saying no, Noem told him: “You say conservative women are stupid or sluts. I am neither.”
On Thursday, Noem maintained her poise through the humiliation in Nashville, later taking to social media to thank Trump for her new role as “Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas” in which she will work, she said, with South American leaders to dismantle cartels and develop US interests.
So Noem, then, becomes the first major casualty in the Trump cabinet, an event that proved a temporary distraction from the hourly events in the Middle East. As Trump hosted Lionel Messi and the Inter Miami football team in the White House on Thursday, there has still been no official acknowledgment of the reported deaths of more than 160 Iranian schoolgirls in the southern Iranian city of Minab during US air strikes on the country.
And even as Noem absorbed her fall from grace, “secretary of war” Pete Hegseth, who for months was considered the biggest liability in the administration, sounded more chipper than ever as he gave his latest update on the war, explaining why this one was different from “the dumb politically correct wars of the past”.
“Our capabilities?” he said.
“We have only just begun to fight – and fight decisively. If you think you’ve seen something, just wait.”