Kristi Noem, Who Sparked Controversy For Shooting Her Dog, Selected New Head Of Homeland Security
In addition to Neom, Trump has appointed immigration hardliners Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, both of whom hold strict stances on immigration policy and have been given senior positions.
US President-elect Donald Trump has selected South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem as his next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, a report in CNN said.
Neom's political journey has been closely linked to Trump and has also been a top candidate for Vice President. She rose to prominence after refusing to impose a statewide mask mandate during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Noem will now be tasked with overseeing a sprawling agency that oversees everything from US Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the US Secret Service.
The appointment of the next Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security comes even as Trump selected Florida Senator Marco Rubio as his Secretary of State and Congressman Mike Waltz as his National Security Advisor.
Rubio is considered to be a friend of India and has been an advocate of the India-US relationship, while Waltz is an old-India hand and has been co-chair of the Congressional Caucus for India and Indian Americans for years.
By picking Rubio and Waltz as his top diplomat and NSA guarantees a continuation of bi-partisan support and further strengthening of India-US relationship under the second Trump administration. The news of these two major appointments came as the Republican party won a majority in the House of Representatives, thus giving Trump control over both the wings of the US Congress.
When Kristi Neom Killed Her 'Untrainable' Dog
Kristi Neom has faced widespread backlash in April this year when she wrote in her memoir that she shot an "untrainable" dog to death. In her book, "No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward", she wrote her dog, cricket, was untrainable and behaved like “a trained assassin”. She wrote that once while she was talking to a local family, the dog escaped the truck attacked the family's chickens and killed many of them.
“At that moment. I realised I had to put her down," she wrote, adding that it was not a pleasant job. She also mentioned of a male goat, which was “nasty and mean”, and attacked her children and knocked them down. Noem decided to kill the goat the same way she had killed her dog.
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