Short answers, pulled from the story.
Kristi Noem is an American politician born on the 30th of November 1971, in Watertown, South Dakota. She served in the South Dakota House of Representatives from 2007 to 2011, in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2011 to 2019, as the 33rd governor of South Dakota from 2019 to 2025, and as the eighth U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security from January 2025 to March 2026.
Noem was removed following a March 2026 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that focused on her handling of the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, her alleged relationship with subordinate Corey Lewandowski, more than $220 million spent on government television advertisements, and over $300 million allocated for three private luxury jets. Trump announced on the 5th of March 2026, that he was reassigning her to the role of Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas.
In Noem's 2024 memoir No Going Back, she recounted shooting her fourteen-month-old wirehaired pointer, Cricket, dead in a gravel pit after the dog failed a pheasant hunt and killed chickens. The book also contained false claims that she had met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and that she had canceled a planned meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, both of which were disputed. The dog-killing account drew bipartisan criticism and damaged her chances of being selected as Trump's vice-presidential running mate.
By 2024, all nine tribes in South Dakota had banned Noem from tribal lands, which cover nearly 20 percent of the state. The bans followed her January 2024 statements that drug cartels were using reservations to spread drugs and her March 2024 claim that some tribal leaders were personally benefiting from cartel activity, made without evidence. Around January 2025, Noem apologized to the tribes; the Flandreau Santee Sioux dissolved its ban in response, but most others remained in effect.
Noem did not impose statewide mask mandates or stay-at-home orders, making South Dakota one of the few states without such policies. In early 2020, the Smithfield Foods plant in Sioux Falls reported four deaths and nearly 1,300 infections among workers and family members. By October 2020, South Dakota recorded one of the highest per-capita case rates in the country, and hospitalizations reached a then-record 355 on the 22nd of October 2020.
In 2020, after Noem's daughter Kassidy Peters was denied a real estate appraisal license, Noem summoned Sherry Bren, the state employee who had directed South Dakota's Appraiser Certification Program for thirty years, to a meeting at the governor's mansion. Bren later testified she felt "very nervous" and "intimidated." A week after the meeting, the Labor Secretary demanded Bren's resignation. Bren filed an age discrimination complaint and received a $200,000 settlement with a nondisclosure agreement.