CNN
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President-elect Donald Trump has selected South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to be the next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, according to two people familiar with the selection.
“Mr. Christie has been very strong on border security,” Trump said in a statement formally announcing the pick late Tuesday.
“She will work closely with ‘Border Czar’ Tom Homan to secure the border and ensure that the American mainland is safe from enemies,” he added.
Noem has been selected to take over the agency as two leading immigration hard-liners, Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, are set to take over the agency’s leadership, and as President Trump tightens his immigration promises. It shows that they are serious about their promise to crack down. With Noem’s selection, President Trump is ensuring that loyalists head his preferred government agencies, which are key to his domestic policy.
The last time Trump took office, the department experienced untold turmoil. Since then, DHS has had five different leaders, but only two have been confirmed by the Senate. The agency has a $60 billion budget and hundreds of thousands of employees.
Noem, who previously represented South Dakota, will now lead a vast agency that oversees everything from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Secret Service. He will be responsible for supervising.
Noem does not represent the border state, but she has a long history of taking hard-line positions on immigration. As a candidate for Congress in 2010, she supported Senate Republicans’ ultimately unsuccessful attempt to block the Obama administration’s lawsuit challenging Arizona immigration law. She also called for punishment for Democratic-led “sanctuary cities” that did not cooperate with federal agencies and sheltered illegal immigrants during President Trump’s first term.
As governor, Ms. Noem sparred with the state’s Native American tribes, suggesting that tribal leaders were more focused on profiting from drug cartels than on their own children, and her comments made her This led to the expulsion of some tribes from their lands. As DHS secretary, Noem will be in charge of the division that deals with tribal issues.
Since taking office in 2019, Noem has established herself politically as a Trump-style governor and has long sought to win the president-elect’s support. She has been a vocal opponent of COVID-19 safety measures such as mask mandates and business and church closures, and has accused her 2-year-old grandson of carrying multiple guns at a National Rifle Association event. I have even made a statement. In 2020, the New York Times reported that Nomu once gave President Trump a 4-foot-tall replica of Mount Rushmore with his face on the Hall of Presidents, and that she plans to It was reported that he was one of the first governors to support him before he ran for president. .
Meanwhile, President Trump has called Noem a “fantastic person” and was once considered a top vice presidential candidate as he prepares for the 2024 presidential election. However, she was ultimately dropped from the nomination list and subsequently suffered an embarrassing political episode following the publication of her book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wroning with Politics and How We Move America Forward. In it, she revealed that she once killed Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer who was not showing signs of being an ideal hunting dog.
In excerpts first reported by the Guardian, the governor wrote that the dog was “untrainable.” Noem later claimed that these anecdotes were meant to demonstrate how capable she was of performing some of life’s more gruesome tasks if necessary.
Still, Noem remained a staunch ally of Trump. In the final weeks of the 2024 campaign, The Atlantic reported that Noem participated in a strategy briefing with President Trump and questioned campaign officials’ findings about the current state of the race. And in October, Trump hosted a memorable town hall where he swayed to music for more than 30 minutes.
This story has been updated with additional details.
CNN’s Michelle Shen contributed to this report.
