Category Archives: South Dakota

Experts dismiss Kristi Noem’s ‘dubious’ claim to have met Kim Jong-un

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South Dakota governor says she met North Korean dictator in same book in which she describes killing her dog

The South Dakota governor, Republican vice-presidential hopeful and self-confessed dog-killer Kristi Noem’s bizarre claim in a new book to have met the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has been dismissed by experts as “dubious” and not “conceivable”.

The Dakota Scout first reported Noem’s claim, which is in her forthcoming book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward.

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Kristi Noem’s story of killing her dog points to class two misdemeanor

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South Dakota governor’s account of family dog Cricket killing neighbor’s chickens may be an offence, according to state law

Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor and Republican vice-presidential hopeful, may have committed a class two misdemeanor offence when her fated dog Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehair pointer Noem deemed “untrainable” for hunting pheasant, killed a neighbor’s chickens.

Under South Dakota law, “any person owning, keeping, or harboring a dog that chases, worries, injures, or kills any poultry or domestic animal is guilty of a class two misdemeanor and is liable for damages to the owner thereof for any injury caused by the dog to any such poultry or animal.”

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Kristi Noem defends killing dog: ‘Cricket had shown aggressive behavior’

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South Dakota governor says she ‘understands why some people are upset’ about story of shooting family puppy but points to state law

Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor and Republican vice-presidential hopeful, on Sunday again defended killing a family dog and goat on her farm, two days after the Guardian revealed how she describes those actions in a forthcoming book.

“I can understand why some people are upset about a 20-year-old story of Cricket, one of the working dogs at our ranch, in my upcoming book – No Going Back,” Noem wrote on Twitter/X.

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Conservatives condemn Kristi Noem for ‘twisted’ admission of killing dog

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Revelation in new book that possible Trump running mate killed ‘untrainable’ hunting dog prompts widespread revulsion

Conservative pundits have condemned the South Dakota governor and possible Trump running mate Kristi Noem, amid widespread horror over her admission in a new book that she killed both an “untrainable” dog and an unruly goat during a single day in hunting season.

Alyssa Farah Griffin, a Trump White House staffer turned critic, said: “I’m a dog lover and I am honestly horrified by the Kristi Noem excerpt. I wish I hadn’t even read it. A 14-month-old dog is still a puppy and can be trained. A large part of bad behaviour in dogs is not having proper training from humans.

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South Dakota tribe bans governor from reservation over US border comments

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Oglala Sioux tribe banishes Republican Kristi Noem after she spoke about wanting to send razor wire to Texas

A South Dakota tribe has banned the state’s Republican governor, Kristi Noem, from one of the US’s largest reservations after she spoke this week about wanting to send razor wire and security personnel to Texas to help deter immigration at the southern border with Mexico.

The Oglala Sioux tribe president said Noem’s ban from the Pine Ridge reservation resulted from the fact that many arriving at the US border with Mexico are Indigenous people from places like El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, who come “in search of jobs and a better life”.

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‘Burn, beetle, burn’: South Dakotans torch an effigy of destructive bug

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Hundreds of people set fire to a giant wooden beetle in the annual festival to raise awareness of the harmful pine beetle

In what’s become an annual winter tradition: hundreds of people carrying torches set fire to a giant wooden beetle effigy in Custer, South Dakota, to raise awareness of the destructive impact of the mountain pine beetle on forest land in the Black Hills.

Custer firefighters prepared and lit the torches for residents to carry in a march to the pyre Saturday night in the 11th Burning Beetle fest, the Rapid City Journal reported.

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Blizzard conditions hit US northern plains and upper midwest

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Freezing weather affecting more than a million people expected in parts of South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado

Snow, freezing rain and high winds are hitting the northern plains and upper midwest states, with the National Weather Service warning that “blizzard conditions for central South Dakota into parts of Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado [are] resulting in difficult to near impossible travel” soon after Christmas.

Parts of South Dakota were expected to receive up to 13in of snow, with wind gusts as high as 55 mph, according to the weather forecasting agency. The conditions affecting more than a million people could last through early Wednesday, forecasters said.

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Fossil fuel firms spent millions on US lawmakers who sponsored anti-protest bills

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About 60% of oil and gas operations protected from protest due to money spent on lobbying, says Greenpeace USA report

Fossil fuel companies have spent millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign donations to state lawmakers who sponsored anti-protest laws – which now shield about 60% of US gas and oil operations from protest and civil disobedience, according to a new report from Greenpeace USA.

Eighteen states including Montana, Ohio, Georgia, Louisiana, West Virginia and the Dakotas have enacted sweeping anti-protest laws which boost penalties for trespass near so-called critical infrastructure, that make it far riskier for communities to oppose pipelines and other fossil fuel projects that threaten their land, water and the global climate.

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‘Inhumane’: judge hears arguments about anti-migrant buoys in Rio Grande

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Court to decide whether to remove them as Greg Abbott and other Republican governors defend militarization of border with Mexico

A federal judge heard arguments on Tuesday about whether state authorities should remove huge buoys installed to stop migrants crossing the river that divides Texas from Mexico.

The court hearing in Austin came a day after Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, and a group of hardline Republican governors gathered on the riverbank to defend local militarization of the US-Mexico border – while also acknowledging that the 1,000ft (305-meter) floating barrier had been adjusted after complaints that it had mostly drifted into Mexican territory.

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US publisher of pro-fascist books revealed as military veteran

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Bailey Ross, reported air force reservist and former Coast Guard service member, linked to Agartha Publishing in South Dakota

The Guardian has identified a trainee nurse and reported US air force reservist called Bailey Ross as the proprietor of a white nationalist publisher in South Dakota.

Ross was also a paid-up member of a white nationalist organization that marched at Charlottesville while enlisted in the United States Coast Guard.

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South Dakota governor says her two-year-old grandchild has several guns

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Kristi Noem tells audience at NRA forum toddler has a shotgun, a rifle and a pony

South Dakota’s governor told an audience of people that her two-year-old grandchild has several guns.

While speaking on Friday at a National Rifle Association (NRA) lobbying leadership forum in Indiana, the Republican governor Kristi Noem told audience members her toddler grandchild has multiple guns, reported Mediaite.

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Huge winter storm closes US highways and prompts rare southern California blizzard warning

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Hundreds of thousands lose power and thousands of flights canceled as weather takes toll across northern and western states

A brutal winter storm closed interstate highways from Arizona to Wyoming on Wednesday, trapped drivers in cars, knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people and prompted the first blizzard warning in southern California in decades – and the worst won’t be over for several days.

Meanwhile, pockets of the south-east will be cooking, with record-breaking warmth expected to stretch into the mid-Atlantic spiking temperatures more than 40F warmer than normal and creating weather that feels more “like June than February”, according to the National Weather Service.

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US National Weather Services warns of ‘widespread’ winter storm hazards

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More than 15 million people under winter advisory while several areas in midwest and Great Plains face intense snowstorms

More than 15 million people are under a winter advisory as of Tuesday, as several areas in the midwest and Great Plains face intense snowstorms, Axios reported.

Storm warnings are in effect across a dozen states, including parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana and South Dakota.

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Marijuana, abortion, climate crisis: what was down the ballot in the midterm

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The ‘green wave’ expanded to Maryland with voters opting for recreational cannabis while California voted to enshrine abortion

Voters across the US weighed in on a variety of ballot measures during the US midterms on Tuesday, passing judgement on everything from recreational drugs to abortion rights, to sports betting and the climate crisis.

Multiple states voted on whether or not to legalize recreational marijuana, part of a growing “green wave” that has already seen many relax their laws on cannabis use.

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South Dakota investigates governor’s use of state airplane

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County prosecutor will decide whether Republican Kristi Noem broke an untested law to rein in questionable use of state plane

South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem, was returning from an official appearance in Rapid City in 2019 when she faced a decision: overnight in the capital of Pierre, where another trip would start the next day, or head home and see her son attend his high school prom?

The Republican governor chose the latter, a decision that eventually cost taxpayers about $3,700 when the state airplane dropped her off near her home and then returned the next day to pick her up.

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South Dakota teachers scramble for dollar bills to buy classroom supplies in half-time game – video

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A competition pitting 10 teachers against each other to scramble for dollar bills to fund school supplies in a city in South Dakota has been described as ‘demeaning’ and drawn comparisons with the hit Netflix series Squid Game.

The local Argus Leader newspaper reported that $5,000 (£3,770) in single dollar bills was laid out on the ice skating ring during the Sioux Falls Stampede hockey game on Saturday night, and the teachers from nearby schools competed to grab as many as possible in less than five minutes

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Republicans in six states rush to mimic Texas anti-abortion law

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North Dakota, South Dakota, Mississippi, Indiana, Arkansas and Florida eye similar measures to new Texas ban after six weeks

Republican leaders in as many as six US states are rushing to follow the lead of Texas in adopting an extreme abortion ban that critics, including Joe Biden, have slammed as unconstitutional and built to encourage vigilantism among the public.

Abortion rights advocates are bracing to resist a flurry of initiatives from Florida to North Dakota in the wake of the new Texas law, the most extreme in the US, which the conservative majority on the supreme court refused to block.

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Thousands of bikers heading to South Dakota rally to be blocked at tribal land checkpoints

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Clampdown comes as fears mount that mask-free bikers headed to large gathering could spread coronavirus to tribal groups

Thousands of bikers heading to South Dakota’s 10-day Sturgis Motorcycle Rally will not be allowed through Cheyenne River Sioux checkpoints, a spokesman for the Native American group said on Saturday.

The decision to prevent access across tribal lands to the annual rally, which could attract as many as 250,000 bikers amid fears it could lead to a massive, regional coronavirus outbreak, comes as part of larger Covid-19 prevention policy. The policy has pitted seven tribes that make up the Great Sioux Nation against federal and state authorities, which both claim the checkpoints are illegal.

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‘It’s just madness’: bikers throng South Dakota town despite Covid threat

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  • At least 100,000 expected for Sturgis rally in state’s Black Hills
  • Worker at local bar says crowd seems larger than usual

At least 100,000 people are expected to attend the 10-day annual Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota’s Black Hills from Friday, as opportunities for the local economy have overridden concerns it could become a coronavirus superspreading event.

Related: Coronavirus US: death toll tops 160,000 as relief package impasse continues – live updates

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‘I believe in our freedoms’: the governor who resists lockdown and stresses American liberty

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South Dakota’s Kristi Noem refuses to impose a stay-at-home order, citing a deeply held ideology – one supported by many in the midwest

To much of the rest of the country, South Dakota’s governor looks awfully like an ideologue sacrificing lives on the anvil of Trumpology.

Related: Coronavirus live news: global confirmed cases pass 2.5m, as Sweden reports its highest daily death toll

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