'Who is she looking out for?' Botched disaster response stirs new backlash for Trump pick

During the United States' 2024 presidential election, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem was hoping to be Donald Trump's running mate. Instead, she got the president-elect's nod to be secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

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But according to Washington Post reporters Peter Jamison and Isaac Stanley-Becker, some South Dakota residents are worried about how Noem, if confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2025, would handle the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

And they are critical of her response to disastrous flooding in the state.

"If confirmed," Jamison and Stanley-Becker wrote Wednesday, "she would oversee not only immigration enforcement, but an agency that has become increasingly important in a nation battered by frequent fires and floods: the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That alarms victims of one of the most serious disasters to affect Noem's state during her six years as governor."

The journalists continued, "In North Sioux City, whose 3,000 residents live across the Big Sioux River from Iowa, many fault Noem for overseeing a response to the catastrophic June floods that they describe as disorganized, delayed and often simply nonexistent. Although she urged people in a development several miles away to move to safety, Noem did not order or even suggest that residents of McCook Lake evacuate their homes, leaving people to scramble for their lives as the Big Sioux overflowed its banks and tore through their neighborhood."

Noem, according to Jamison and Stanley-Becker, "waited more than a month to ask President Joe Biden for a disaster declaration."

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South Dakota resident Kathy Roberts, one of the victims of the disaster, is vehemently critical of Noem's response.

Roberts told the Post, "I feel foolish for thinking that my government would take care of me in an emergency. Where are her priorities, and who is she looking out for? Because it's definitely not me. It's definitely not my neighborhood."

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