A Republican senator went all the way back to Kristi Noem’s dark history with puppies in a searing takedown of the embattled Homeland Security secretary.
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, 65, was visibly irate as he went on a 10-minute rant against Noem, 54, who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday as the Department of Homeland Security faces a shutdown and criticism of its heavy-handed deportation blitz.
Tillis was among a few Republican senators to join Democrats in needling the cosplay-loving Cabinet secretary over her rocky tenure, including federal agents’ killing of two American citizens—Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti—during immigration operations in Minneapolis.
“What we’ve seen is a disaster under your leadership, Ms. Noem. A disaster,” he said. “I don’t know that we’ll have time for you to respond because I’m giving you a performance evaluation here. I’m not looking for a response. And I’m saying, Ms. Noem, that time after time after time, I’ve been disappointed.”
“Going back to Minneapolis, why can’t we just say we made a mistake?” he continued. “The fact that you can’t admit to a mistake, which looks like under investigation, it’s going to prove that Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti probably should not have been shot in the face and in the back. Law enforcement needs to learn from that. You don’t protect them by not looking after the facts.”
Tillis went on to share that he read Noem’s 2024 book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, where she disclosed that she killed an “untrainable” 14-month-old female dog named Cricket and a “nasty and mean” male goat—and said it “had to be done.”
At the time, Noem responded to the blowback by writing in an X post, “We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm.”
“I train dogs, alright? And you are a farmer, you should know better,” Tillis scolded Noem. “You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time in training, and then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it’s a leadership lesson about tough choices.”
“My point is, those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment, not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis,” he raged on. “We’re an exceptional nation, and one of the reasons we’re exceptional is we expect exceptional leadership, and you’ve demonstrated anything but that.”
The tirade came as The Washington Post reported on documents backing a former ICE instructor-turned-whistleblower’s claim that the agency slashed its basic training program by more than 40 percent as the Trump administration ramped up its immigration operations.
Tillis ended his scathing rebuke of Noem by holding up a letter from the Office of Inspector General that he said listed 10 instances under her leadership where the watchdog was “misled and not allowed to pursue investigations that they think are critically important.”
“That’s a failure of leadership. And that is why I’ve called for your resignation,” he said, drawing applause from the room.
The DHS did not immediately return a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
