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Kristi Noem at DHS? The Threat to America’s Borders is Coyotes, Not Puppies

By John Zmirak Published on November 13, 2024

Donald Trump has apparently picked South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to head up the Department of Homeland Security. This  represents the first serious mistake of his second term in office. (I know, I know, he was elected in 2020, but the coup worked, didn’t it?)

First of all, let’s admit one obvious fact: DHS should be abolished. It was created in the hysteria after the Dubya administration failed to protect our homeland from terrorists. Instead of self-searching over its failure and reorienting the Defense Department toward defending us, Bush shoved through terrible laws like the Patriot Act, which turned our intelligence agencies into a politicized, East German Stasi. Then he created a whole new department to do what the Pentagon apparently couldn’t — since he decided that DoD’s real job was bombing Afghanistan and Iraq until they turned into New Hampshire.

But new government agencies aren’t like gonorrhea, which can be cured. They’re more like herpes; they linger. Too many people collect too much money and crave too much power to ever wind anything down — from the now useless nuclear war booby trap that is NATO to the “temporary” racial quotas that followed the Civil Rights Act. I’m surprised that we don’t still have naval bases on the Great Lakes aimed at Canada, left over from the War of 1812.

So DHS exists. Is it too much to ask that the department which oversees our immigration policy be run by a person with a track record of serving voters, rather than dancing on the strings of the Chamber of Commerce? Because that’s exactly what Kristi Noem did in office in South Dakota, as we documented here at The Stream.

Mike Pence in Bad Drag

Back in March, some were feverishly whispering that Noem might be Trump’s vice-presidential pick for his second term. I warned against that, pointing out how similar she was to his vice-presidential pick for his first term, the odious Pharisee Mike Pence. Before he sold out American voters on January 6, 2021, and even before he knifed Gen. Mike Flynn in the back, Pence sold out Christian citizens in Indiana — gutting the religious freedom bill that protected them from the lawfare the LGBTQ+ leviathan waged against Christian bakers and wedding planners.

In the same way, Noem sold out Christian parents and female athletes by gutting legal protections against the transgender madness. From the March piece:

Margot Cleveland wrote about that in The Federalist, in a piece titled “The Worst Thing About Kristi Noem’s Sports Capitulation Is Her Lies.” Cleveland wrote that Noem claimed simply to tweak that bill in order to protect the state from litigation, but in fact ‘completely gutted the proposed statute,’ under pressure from … drumroll please … the NCAA. The same organization that got Mike Pence to cave. Cleveland called on Noem to ‘at least be honest. Tell America that her obligation is to her South Dakota constituents and that the Chamber of Commerce, Amazon, and the NCAA threatened the economic wellbeing of her citizens.

…If Noem isn’t up for the task, or if she believes her duty to her South Dakota constituents demands she put their monetary interests first, fine. But don’t wave the white flag of surrender and tell me you’re merely waving to your coalition to join you.’

The Chamber of Open Borders

Ah, the Chamber of Commerce — the same organization that pressured Ronald Reagan to gut the enforcement mechanisms meant to limit the damage his immigration amnesty did to the country. (He caved. We still see the results all around us.) Local Chambers of Commerce and the national organization have been among the loudest advocates of weak immigration enforcement for decades, backing figures like Rep. Paul Ryan in seeking one amnesty deal after another. All in service of keeping the labor flow cheap, docile workers coming across our borders, and blue collar American wages flat for decades.

Noem also supported employer vaccine mandates, telling those of us who rejected the untested vaccine derived from the stem cells of aborted children that if we didn’t like it, we could go find another job:

Oh yes, and in office as governor, Noem insisted on taking “refugees” into South Dakota, even after Trump gave state leaders a choice:

Literally the last thing America and Donald Trump needs is someone who scoffs at blue collar workers, sides with big business, betrays social conservatives — and yeah, who shoots dogs. That last point isn’t just a cheap shot. In Noem’s hilariously ill-advised memoir, she recounts gunning down the family puppy in front of her kids as proof that she can make the “tough decisions.” Let’s say that this is true, that there’s a cold and ruthless streak running through Noem, as her poor little dog could witness.

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If Donald Trump indeed keeps his promise of “mass deportations” of the 15 million or so illegals waved across our borders by the reckless Biden-Harris regime, one of the key tactics our enemies will use is to play on our heartstrings. To forget the 300,000 or so unaccompanied minors the Democrats lost track of — who might well be slaves in the sex industry or being worked to death by unscrupulous factory owners — and point instead to every “hard case” in which someone’s auntie or nanny or yard guy is getting sent back to Honduras. Do we need the public face of that policy to be someone who’s proud of gunning down a difficult family pet? Who thought that would help her in politics?

Mr. Trump, you could do better — or instance, by picking a random name out of Kristi Noem’s cowboy hat.

 

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of 14 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.