By REBECCA SANTANA

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump elected South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem He will head the Department of Homeland Security, one of the largest government agencies that will be integral to his promise to secure the border and carry out a massive deportation operation.

Here are five Things to know about Noem:

He is a farmer

The 52-year-old was born in Watertown, South Dakota, and grew up on a farm and ranch outside the city. His father died at the age of 49 in a granary collapse.

“My father’s passing was devastating for our entire family,” he said in a 2022 interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. “He was my best friend. “He was the person I admired the most, the person I cared about what he thought of me the most, and the person I planned my entire life just to grow up with, work with, and do business with.”

He was involved in a number of family businesses before successfully running for the South Dakota House of Representatives in 2006. She won the state’s at-large House seat in 2010 and was elected the state’s first female governor in 2018. Re-elected in 2022.

After becoming governor, Noem began working closely with Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. He later rose to prominence in conservative circles during the pandemic. resist most government regulations to slow the spread of infections. She has since become a regular presence in Trump’s political world and was at one point considered his running mate.

He enjoys pheasant hunting and hosts the governor’s hunt every year. And he is an excellent horse rider.

dog story

This year he was slandered for a story he told in his book book about killing 14 month old wirehaired pointer, Cricket.

Cricket was Noem’s hunting dog, but he was stray. Noem took her dog with her on a hunting trip with the older dogs in hopes of calming him down.

It didn’t work, and on the way home, Noem wrote that when she stopped to talk to a family, Cricket got out of Noem’s truck and attacked and killed some of the family’s chickens. The dog then “scanned around trying to bite me,” he wrote.

“I realized at that moment that I had to put him down,” Noem wrote. He took the cricket to the gravel pit and killed it.

Critics berated him as he defended Cricket’s killing as an example of his willingness to make difficult choices.