Newsletter: What was South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem thinking? Everybody loves dogs

Good morning. I’m Carla Hall, a member of the editorial board, and it is Wednesday, May 1.

I generally don’t think that killing your puppy and goat is a qualification for anything other than a psych evaluation. But apparently Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem thought it would boost her profile in the race for the vice-presidential nod from Donald Trump.

In her memoir, which comes out next week, Noem writes that she took her 14-month-old wire-haired pointer, Cricket, on a pheasant hunting trip to train her, but the dog ruined the hunt by chasing the pheasants. Later while visiting neighbors, Cricket got out of Noem’s truck and attacked and killed some of a neighbor’s chickens. She also tried to bite the governor.

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes in the book, according to The Guardian, which got a copy. She declared Cricket “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”

Noem’s solution was to march the dog to a gravel pit and shoot her dead. She also decided to visit the same fate on her family’s uncastrated goat. The goat’s crime? Being smelly, ill-tempered and chasing her kids.

Noem says this tale — and it’s so appalling that it’s hard to believe it’s anything but a tall tale — demonstrates her ability to make difficult decisions. It only shows her making unhinged decisions.

This isn’t tough-mindedness. This is cruelty. And it makes the revelation that Mitt Romney, who was running for president at the time, drove 12 hours with his dog riding in a kennel strapped to the roof of the car, look sentimental in comparison.

And, for someone who so desperately wants to be Trump’s running mate, it’s also impolitic. The critical response has been bipartisan. Why wouldn’t it be? I’m sure the issue that practically all Democrats, Republicans and independents agree on is that they love their animals and would do almost anything to keep them alive. A 2018 The Economist/YouGov poll showed 51% of Republicans have dogs. Meanwhile, Democratic governors have been posting pics with their pups.

Noem could have — and should have — given the animals to someone who could raise them or turned them over to an animal shelter that would try to adopt them out.

Noem has a history of toadying up to Trump. She gave him a miniature of Mt. Rushmore with his face on it in 2020. But why would she think offering up a dead dog and goat would give her the edge for any job that requires a certain amount of, um, humanity?

The puppy killing story prompted columnist Robin Abcarian to wonder why Republican female politicians seem to think they need to perform acts of extreme toughness to get elected.

Here’s what’s been happening in Opinion so far this week.

That scowl. The gag order. A frightened juror. Who’s on trial, a former president or a mob boss? Columnist Jackie Calmes writes that “Trump’s trial — where he’s charged with fraudulently covering up pre-election hush money payments to Stormy Daniels in 2016, to keep voters in the dark about their alleged tryst — resembles nothing so much as a prosecution of yet another organized crime figure, even if it is, in fact, unprecedented: The first criminal case against a former U.S. president in history.”

USC’s ‘security risk’ rationale to thwart peaceful protest is not justified. USC administrators turned to that hoary excuse that outsiders stirring up trouble were a “security risk.” Sandy Tolan, a professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, criticizes the administration’s squelching of “legitimate protest and the free expression of ideas.”

Sending armed troops to quash peaceful campus protests is a dangerous idea. Republicans, including U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), suggested that if campus protests over the Gaza war continued, then the president should order the National Guard to intervene. The Times’ editorial board thinks these comments are irresponsible. Armed troops confronting mostly peaceful student protesters raises the real possibility of injury and death. Have these GOP leaders never heard of the Kent State massacre of 1970?

Americans might finally get a real privacy law to fight Big Tech intrusions. The U.S. lags far behind the rest of the world on privacy legislation. A bipartisan bill in Congress is a “victory for transparency” by limiting the collection of data by companies and organizations and requiring disclosures to users, tech entrepreneur and privacy expert Mark Weinstein explains.

More from this week in opinion:

From our columnists

• Robin Abcarian: How Santa Monica’s Rape Treatment Center revolutionized the way we treat victims of sexual assault
• LZ Granderson: College costs are beyond absurd. Here’s a way to rein them in

From the Op-Ed desk

• My mother set herself on fire. Why do people choose to self-immolate?
• Republicans’ 2025 agenda tells you how they really feel about crime and cops
• California’s budget deficit will force difficult cuts. This one should be the easiest

From the Editorial Board

• Reversal of Harvey Weinstein’s conviction is disappointing, but a fair justice system is important
• Even with tax and rate hikes, California water’s still pretty cheap
• Only dictators have immunity from criminal acts while in power

Letters to the Editor

• The next DWP chief is being paid $750,000. Readers say that’s too much
• Do college protesters deserve praise, or are they seriously misguided?
• My home insurance policy isn’t being renewed. Desperate Californians need help