GOP Senator Yells at Kristi Noem Over Handling of DHS and Dog Murder
An irate Senator Thom Tillis offered a sharp rebuke of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a Senate Judiciary hearing on Tuesday afternoon, attacking her for her aggressive immigration quotas, her detainment of American citizens, and murdering her dog and family goat.
“Why am I disappointed with Secretary Noem? Because we’re not going after enough people who did this damage at the expense of running numbers that Stephen Miller wants out of the White House. We just want numbers! We want 1,000 a day, 6,000 a day, 9,000 a day, because numbers matter, right? No, they don’t matter. Quality matters, not quantity,” Tillis yelled. “And what we’ve seen is a disaster. Under your leadership Ms. Noem, a disaster.”
“Time after time after time, I’ve been disappointed,” he said. Tillis also questioned Noem’s blocking or delaying of FEMA disaster aid, and criticized the DHS killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, saying that it “cast a pall” on other agents he thought were doing a good job.
Thom Tillis unloads on Kristi Noem: We’re not going after enough people who did this damage at the expense of running numbers, as Stephen Miller wants. We want 1000 a day, 6000 a day, 9000 a day. Because numbers matter right now. They don’t matter. Quality matters not quantity.… pic.twitter.com/JxxMrcfzCj
— Blue Georgia (@BlueATLGeorgia) March 3, 2026
Tillis then took time to specifically address the pet dog Noem casually wrote about shooting and killing for no good reason around 2004 in her book No Going Back.
“I read your book last week.… Some of it distresses me, and I’ll give you a good example of one that does,” Tillis continued. “The passage where you talked about killing a dog that was 14 months old. I train dogs, alright? And you are a farmer, you should know better. You should know that if you’re going out to a hunting lodge and you’re putting pheasants out and you’re putting dogs out, you don’t take a puppy out there. 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, and then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it’s a leadership lesson about tough choices! It’s in your book … at that same lunch hour, you killed a goat because you said it was behaving badly.… My point is, those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment, not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis.”
In No Going Back, Noem wrote that the dog, Cricket, was ruining a pheasant hunt by “chasing all those birds and having the time of her life” and killing some chickens. For some morbid reason, Noem decided the only option was to shoot Cricket dead in a gravel pit. And then she killed a family goat because it was “disgusting, musky, rancid.”
Tillis to Noem: “A 14 month old dog is basically a teenager in dog years. You decided to kill that dog because you hadn’t invested the appropriate time and training, and then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it’s a leadership lesson about tough choices! … Those… pic.twitter.com/NxqajEZdQl
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 3, 2026
Tillis ended his time by demanding Noem’s resignation.
“I wanna submit this letter from the Office of the Inspector General that cites 10 different instances under Ms. Noem’s leadership where they’ve been misled and not allowed to pursue investigations that they think are critically important. Does anybody have any idea how bad it has to be for the OIG in this agency to come out and do this publicly? That is stonewalling, that’s a failure of leadership, and that is why I’m calling for your resignation. And if I don’t get an answer to these questions—”
Tillis was interrupted by applause.
“Please don’t do that for me. If I don’t get an answer to these questions … as of today, I’ll be informing leadership that I’m putting a hold on any en bloc nominations until I get a response. And in two weeks if I don’t get a response, I’m gonna deny quorum and mark up in as many committees as I can until I get a response.”
