Thom Tillis Torches Kristi Noem For Failed Leadership Of ICE, FEMA And Her Dog

WASHINGTON ― Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) excoriated Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to her face on Tuesday for her “failure of leadership,” not just at the federal agencies she oversees but also with her past decisions to kill her dog and a goat.

Tillis, who voted to confirm Noem to her post last year, was seething as he questioned her during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. She appeared before the panel as part of the Senate’s oversight of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Federal Emergency Management Administration.

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He torched her leadership at ICE, where he said she’s “missing an opportunity” to focus its work on detaining criminals in the country illegally. Instead, she’s made ICE agents prioritize the detention of large numbers of people.

“Quality matters, not quantity!” shouted the Republican senator. “What we’ve seen is a disaster under your leadership, Ms. Noem! A disaster! What we’ve seen is innocent people being detained that turn out are American citizens!”

Tillis then turned to the FEMA, ripping Noem’s “incompetent” policy that she must personally approve any disaster relief to states that totals more than $100,000. Her policy has led to severe delays in federal aid in North Carolina, which is trying to rebuild after suffering nearly $60 billion in damages after Hurricane Helene ravaged the state in 2024.

“People are hurting in western North Carolina from the most significant storm they’ve ever experienced!” he said, displaying a poster mapping out FEMA’s efficiency in past years in getting aid to disaster areas. “This is what we need more of. I’m convinced you can’t do it.”

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Noem tried to talk, but Tillis said he wasn’t done. He brought up Minneapolis, where the Trump administration has centered its aggressive mass deportation efforts. Thousands of DHS agents have spent the past few months hunting for immigrants in the state, infusing communities with trauma, violence and even killing two Americans, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

“Why can’t we just say, ‘We made a mistake?’” Tillis asked Noem, who earlier in the hearing repeatedly refused to admit she wrongly smeared Good and Pretti as “domestic terrorists” after they were fatally shot by immigration agents.

“The fact that you can’t admit to a mistake which looks like, under investigation, is gonna prove that Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti probably should not have been shot in the face and in the back!” Tillis shouted. “Law enforcement needs to learn from that! You don’t protect them by not looking out for the facts!”

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He still wasn’t done. He brought up that he recently read Noem’s 2024 book, “No Going Back,” and was disturbed by a passage about how she shot and killed her 14-month-old dog, Cricket. Noem describes Cricket in the book as “untrainable” and “less than worthless” after it ruined a hunting trip by attacking a neighbor’s chickens.

“I train dogs, alright?” the North Carolina senator yelled at Noem. “You are a farmer. You should know better. You should know that if you’re going out to a hunting lodge and you’re puttin’ pheasants out and you’re puttin’ dogs out, you don’t take a puppy out there!”

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He lashed Noem for not getting that a 14-month-old dog is “basically a teenager in dog years.”

“You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time and training!” shouted Tillis, as Noem sat silently, shaking her head. “And then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it’s a leadership lesson about tough choices!”

The senator also brought up how Noem talks about killing a goat in her book, something else he said she shouldn’t have done.

“You killed a goat because you said it was behaving badly,” he said. “You are a farmer. [If] you don’t castrate a goat, they behave badly! You should have probably done that before!”

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Tillis added, “My point is: those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment ― not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis.”

Before his time was up, the North Carolina senator vowed to block action on all Trump nominees unless he got immediate answers from Noem about FEMA money being held up in his state’s communities. And if he doesn’t get answers in the next two weeks, he said he’ll block nominees in Senate committees, too.

He accused Noem of stonewalling on FEMA funds: “That’s a failure of leadership,” he told her. “And that’s why I’ve called for your resignation.”

During the hours-long hearing, other senators pressed the DHS secretary on the basis for her false accusations about Pretti and Good being “domestic terrorists,” questioned excessive use of force by ICE officers and demanded details about the firm tied to Noem that secretly got money from $220 million DHS ad contracts.

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HuffPost caught up with Tillis after his fiery comments. He appeared still fuming.

“She’s making rash decisions, and that’s fine if you’re killing a dog or a goat on a farm,” he said. “It’s not fine when people are dying because enforcement agencies aren’t actually using the sort of temperament that they should to get it right.”

Igor Bobic contributed reporting.

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