CNN –
President-elect Donald Trump has selected South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to be his next Homeland Security secretary, according to two people familiar with the selection.
Noem will be tapped to take over the agency, with two major immigration hardliners — Stephen Miller and Tom Homan — set to hold top positions, signaling that Trump is serious about his promise to crack down on his immigration pledges. By selecting Noem, Trump is ensuring that a loyalist will head an agency that he prioritizes, and that is central to his domestic agenda.
The department saw a tremendous amount of turmoil the last time Trump took office. At the time, DHS had five different leaders, only two of whom were confirmed by the Senate. The agency has a budget of $60 billion and employs hundreds of thousands of employees.
Noem, who previously served as a state representative for South Dakota, will now be tasked with overseeing a sprawling agency that oversees everything from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Secret Service.
Noem was once on Trump’s shortlist for vice president, though her relationship with Trump changed after the negative buzz surrounding the publication of her book, No Turning Back: The Truth About What’s Wrong in Politics and How We Move America Forward. In it, she revealed that she once killed her 14-month-old wire-haired dog, Cricket, when she wasn’t showing signs of an ideal hunting dog.
The governor wrote that the dog was “untrainable,” according to excerpts first reported by The Guardian. Noem later argued that those tales were meant to show how capable she was of some of life’s more gruesome jobs when necessary.
