Welcome to what is the 1060th original profile here at “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing the sitting Governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, who was first elected to that office in 2018 who came on the scene in the South Dakota state legislature in the 2006 elections, and after two terms, riding the crest of the Tea Party Wave to Washington D.C. to spend four terms in Congress serving as the U.S. House Representative for South Dakota’s At-Large Congressional District. In case you’ve forgotten how much of an extremist she was as a legislature, we have some receipts:
- On January 5th, 2011, Rep. Noem votes the first attempt by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act. She voted for every attempt to do so that the GOP attempted from that point forward.
- On February 18th, 2011, Kristi Noem votes to defund Planned Parenthood.
- March 17th, 2011: Rep. Noem votes to cut funding to National Public Radio.
- September 15th, 2012: Rep. Noem votes for the "No More Solyndras Act".
- September 21st, 2012: Noem co-sponsors and votes for the "Stop the War on Coal Act".
- January 15th, 2013: Kristi Noem votes against Disaster Relief Funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy.
- February 28th, 2013: Noem votes against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.
- June 19th, 2013: Kristi Noem votes against restoring $20.5 billion towards the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.
- September 30th, 2013: Rep. Noem votes for the 2013 Government Shutdown. When the vote came up seventeen days later to re-open the government, Noem voted to keep it closed.
- Feb 26th, 2014: Kristi Noem goes "all in" on the faux-scandal surrounding the IRS researching SuperPACs by voting for the "Stop the Targeting of Political Beliefs by the IRS Act".
- July 10th, 2014: Noem votes for House Amendment 1040, to prevent the implementation of the dreaded United Nations Agenda 21 Treaty, that in spite of just being recommended climate change guidelines, have many conspiracy theorists within the extreme right convinced it’s a plot for global domination.
- January 22nd, 2015: Kristi Noem votes for HR 7, an anti-abortion bill that makes even some Republicans pause before voting for it because of its language that tries to define the conditions for what “rape” is, in it.
- February 3rd, 2015: Rep. Noem votes for the 60th Republican attempt at repealing the Affordable Care Act. This in spite of the fact that by this point, the law is not just working, but better than experts predicted.
- September 11th, 2015: Noem votes against the United States' nuclear treaty with Iran.
- September 18th, 2015: Rep. Noem co-sponsors and votes for a bill with most House Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood, based on highly edited “sting” videos submitted by a Pro-Life advocacy group that have been repeatedly debunked by investigators.
- November 19th, 2015: Noem votes for the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act, reacting to the terror attacks in Paris by jihadists from France and Belgium by trying to create greater restrictions to keep out Syrian refugees, of whom exactly zero were involved in those attacks.
- February 2nd, 2016: Kristi Noem votes for HR 3762, the 61st attempt by Congressional Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act (which is still working better than was predicted).
- February 16th, 2017: Noem votes for HJR 69, to make it legal for hunters on wildlife reserves to kill several species of hibernating bears or wolves while they’re sleeping. Because… well, the logic really isn’t there as to why, it’s just awful.
- March 16th, 2017: Kristi Noem votes for HR 1181, which would allow veterans deemed mentally incompetent to continue to own firearms, and not have them taken away without a judge's written order. We feel safer already.
- May 4th, 2017: Noem votes for the GOP's healthcare plan, that would allow 24,000 more people to die a year, give $50,000 in tax breaks to millionaires, would eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions, and would treat pregnancy, post-partum depression, and sexual assault as "pre-existing conditions". Oh, and a provision in the bill would make sure that Noem would be allowed to keep his healthcare plan as it exists under the ACA, which would be repealed for the rest of the country. She and her Republican compatriots threw themselves a beer bash to celebrate taking away healthcare from millions and then gloated about it with Donald Trump at a White House press conference, as well.
- June 8th, 2017: Kristi Noem votes for HR 10, the GOP’s attempt to repeal Dodd-Frank financial reform, because what the country really needs is to allow the big banks to make the same mistakes that imploded the economy only a decade earlier.
- October 3rd, 2017: Noem votes for HR 36, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, that would try to create an unconstitutional ban abortion at 20 weeks (even though medical science tells us fetuses do not have the capability to feel pain until 29 weeks).
- February 18th, 2018: Rep. Noem and his fellow Republicans decide that poor big businesses are suffering too much at the hands of the Americans with Disabilities Act too much, and vote for HR 620, which would strip most of the civil rights protections guaranteed by it.
But it has been since Kristi Noem became a governor, how she truly started to make headlines… mostly by catering to the whims and malignant narcissism of one Donald Trump whenever he would abscond to her state for a hate rally, and to incessantly try to manipulate his way onto having his butt-ugly mug added to Mt. Rushmore. As a former beauty queen, she’s certainly his type. Noem tried to placate his endless ego about having his likeness put on Mt. Rushmore by presenting him with a miniature statue of what it might look like, and yes, he has it down at Mar-a-Lago today.
And at first, in say 2019, that sort of sucking up didn’t have any major consequences on the lives of people in her state… there were signs she might be in over her head, like how her administration spent about half a million dollars on an ad campaign to combat methamphetamine addiction that came up with the tagline, “Meth: We’re On It”. But in 2020, Kristi Noem’s sycophantic obedience towards the Dotard-in-Chief became truly lethal. The Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020, and Trump wanted to campaign for president like it wasn’t happening. He needed Republican Governors who were fanatical enough to keep his rallies unrestricted, unmasked, not-socially distanced… ignoring public health advisories to stop the spread of the virus, specifically at a July 4th rally that had some pretty blatant white nationalist vibes.
Noem was there to foolishly accommodate him, visit after visit, and went so far as to advocate for the non-effective and potentially harmful treatment of hydroxychloroquine. Meanwhile, she also diverted funds from the federal government meant for pandemic relief towards state tourism advertising, trying to make sure that events like the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally were packed (and thus became super-spreader events). And again, she’s enough of a fanatic that she not only ignored the warnings prior to Sturgis 2020… she is stupid enough to repeat the same idiocy, and did it again in 2020, causing another septupling of Covid-19 rates in her state. She’s refused to allow unemployment payments to workers displaced by the pandemic, and while forcing people back to work has definitely not helped mitigate the problem, her spreading anti-mask and anti-vaccination talking points doesn’t help.
And yet, as all of her campaign assistance to Donald Trump didn’t help him beat Joe Biden in 2020, Gov. Noem has baselessly jumped to help her guy spread his “Big Lie” that the election was somehow stolen from him through “mass voter fraud” that she provides no evidence of, and also, Donald Trump easily won South Dakota.
But alas, her corrupt ideology is not limited simply to doing Donald Trump’s bidding. She also has been accused of abuse power in office to try to get her daughter a license as a realtor, calling the state employee who gave her a failed grade to her office, specifically, and forcing her to let her daughter an extra chance to correct her wrong answers to be granted the license anyway. Oh, and that official had their retirement forced only months after this unorthodox testing session, but tipped off the local media about where to send a FOIA request to get the dirt.
Kristi Noem is currently trying to cement her status as a potential contender for a VP nomination or perhaps 2024 presidential candidate by, what else, bullying the LGBTQ community in ways such as banning trans-women from women’s sports in South Dakota, and also coming out in opposition to the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling. Because who better to stand up for the sanctity of marriage than a woman who has allegedly been running around behind her husband’s back to f*** Corey Lewandowski, right?
We’re going to go ahead and advise the country to please take a hard pass on a president who is so woefully and brazenly corrupt and places partisan politics and willful scientific ignorance above using common sense to preserve lives. Hell, someone competent might want to primary her.
One Year Ago, January 1st, 2021: Matthew Hill (TN)… 2021 Update
Two Year Ago, January 1st, 2020: Matthew Hill (TN)… 2020 Update
Three Years Ago, January 1st, 2019: Matthew Hill (TN)… 2019 Update
Four Years Ago, January 1st, 2018: Matthew Hill (TN)… 2018 Update
Five Years Ago, January 1st, 2017: Matthew Hill (TN)… 2017 Update
Six Years Ago, January 1st, 2016: Matthew Hill (TN)… 2016 Update
Seven Years Ago, January 1st, 2015: Matthew Hill (TN)… Original Profile