Seth Tupper, South Dakota Searchlight

Gov. Kristi Noem celebrated South Dakota’s nation-leading growth in a category of household income, but she didn’t mention a reason why the state was well positioned to improve: It ranked last during the prior year.

Noem’s office issued a news release Tuesday saying South Dakota “once again led the nation in income growth in 2023.”

“South Dakotans are thriving because we defend Freedom and advance their opportunities to pursue their dreams,” said a statement from the Republican governor, which continued her two-year-old practice of using a capital “F” when writing the word “freedom.”

The release cited newly published data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The numbers show South Dakota’s real median household income grew by 17% percent in 2023, which was the best growth rate in the nation.

But a little digging into the same dataset reveals South Dakota’s real median household income fell by 16% in 2022, which was the nation’s worst decline that year.

Noem’s office did not immediately respond to a Searchlight request for comment about that statistic.

Noem’s news release also said South Dakota ranks second in real median household income growth over the past five years, which is true. The state’s rate of growth from 2018 to 2023 was 15%, behind only Alaska’s rate of 19%.

Real median household income is the inflation-adjusted (i.e., “real”) midpoint of all household incomes in a given geography.

South Dakota’s real median household income in 2023 was $81,740, which ranked 22nd in the nation.

South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on Facebook and X.

Federal, state and local officials are focusing their efforts on a voluntary evacuation of Dakota Dunes and a levee construction project across Interstate 29 near McCook Lake as they continue responding to historic rainfall and flooding in southeast South Dakota that has claimed at least one life.

Gov. Kristi Noem led a press conference Sunday in North Sioux City. She shared news of the death but declined to provide any information about the person, circumstances or location, other than saying the death was related to flooding.

“Because of respect for the family, I’m not going to share any details around that,” Noem said. “All I’m going to say is that I want to remind everybody to remember the power of water and the flow of water, and to stay away from flooded areas.”

Sunday morning, prior to Noem’s press conference, the state Department of Public Safety issued a news release saying that an 87-year-old man died Saturday afternoon in a single vehicle crash 5 miles northeast of Harrisburg.

The man was driving a utility terrain vehicle on a road that was closed because one of the shoulders had washed away. The department said the driver attempted to turn around and went backward over the washout, was ejected from the UTV and was pronounced dead at the scene. The man’s name has not been released, pending notification of family members.

Asked after the Sunday press conference whether the 87-year-old man’s death was the one Noem was referencing, her spokesman Ian Fury said, “I’ll let Highway Patrol report that situation as they normally do.” Department of Public Safety spokesman Brad Reiners said, “We are not releasing additional information at this time.”

Ten to 15 inches of rain fell from Thursday to Saturday in the hardest-hit area of southeast South Dakota, northwest Iowa and southwest Minnesota, with totals exceeding 17 inches in some locations. During the rain and the immediate aftermath, many basements and roads flooded, and local emergency responders conducted numerous rescues.

Estimated three-day rainfall totals in southeast South Dakota as of 7 a.m. Central time on June 22, 2024. (Courtesy of National Weather Service)

Sioux Falls temporarily asked residents to limit showers, clothes washing, dishwasher use and other contributions to the city’s overstressed wastewater system. The city rescinded that request Sunday, saying the system was “trending in the right direction.”

Attention has since shifted to rising rivers and creeks. The Big Sioux River at Sioux City surpassed 43 feet Sunday on its way to an expected crest Sunday night, surpassing the former record of 37.7 feet for that segment.

The Big Sioux and other swollen rivers and streams flow into the Missouri River in the southeast corner of the state, as do other rivers such as the Niobrara in Nebraska, placing North Sioux City and Dakota Dunes in the crosshairs of the collected floodwaters.

John Remus is the chief of the Army Corp of Engineers’ Missouri River Basin Water Management Division. He said the corps lowered releases from Fort Randall and Gavins Point dams — upstream of North Sioux City and Dakota Dunes — to ease downstream flooding. There is plenty of capacity behind Fort Randall, he said, but the water behind Gavins Point was near the top of the floodgates Sunday afternoon and still rising.

“That’s why we have not been able to cut outflows as much as we originally wanted to,” Remus said. “We’re going to continue to monitor that. It appears that the inflows are starting to peak and turn over. As soon as we can, we’ll start decreasing the flows.”

The high flows headed for Dakota Dunes led authorities to issue a voluntary evacuation order.

Jason Westcott, emergency management director for Union County, said local crews are working to strengthen dikes in the area and have opened a self-serve sandbag station for local residents at the county highway shop in Elk Point.

But he stressed that people should evacuate if they’re in harm’s way.

“The county currently is about maxed out on being able to do water rescues at this point,” Westcott said. “As we move further into this incident and it becomes more serious in this area, we may not have the ability to rescue people from their homes if they continue to stay there.”

Craig Smith, director of operations for the state Department of Transportation, said Interstate 29 would close at 6 p.m. Sunday between exits 2 and 9.

The closure will allow work crews to build a levee across Interstate 90 at Exit 4, just north of North Sioux City and Dakota Dunes, and tie it in with other protective structures. That section of interstate is sandwiched between the Big Sioux River to the east and McCook Lake to the west.

Smith said 1 to 2 feet of water could flow over the interstate there as floodwaters crest, and the closure will remain in effect as long as the levee is needed.

A lengthy detour will route drivers west through Vermillion, via Highway 50 in South Dakota and I-29 Exit 144 in Iowa.

Some other roads in the southeast region of the state remain closed due to flooding. Drivers are encouraged to visit sd511.org or download the SD511 mobile app to view all current road closures, no-travel advisories and highway obstructions.

Noem signed an emergency declaration Saturday, which allows the state to begin paperwork for potential help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. She urged everyone affected by the flood to document their damages and contact their insurance agent and local emergency manager, so that the information can be used in the state’s application to FEMA.

Sunday’s weather was dry and hot in southeast South Dakota. The National Weather Service forecast includes chances for isolated storms Monday and Tuesday, and sunny weather on Wednesday.

“We’re hoping that by Thursday morning we’re in a very different situation and water starts to recede,” Noem said.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated since its initial publication with additional flooding information and reaction from state officials.

South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on Facebook and X.

South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem was in political freefall Friday as embarrassing revelations continued to emerge from the scrutiny of advance copies of her memoir, which doesn’t officially publish until Tuesday.

Noem was already reeling from near-universal backlash against her disclosure in the book that she shot and killed a dog named Cricket and a billy goat years ago — the dog for its failures on a hunting excursion and its attacks on a neighbor’s chickens, and the goat for chasing after Noem’s children and smelling bad.

Thursday and Friday, news emerged from outlets including Politico and The Dakota Scout of inaccuracies in Noem’s book, the title of which — “No Going Back” — is now ripe with irony. The most glaring inaccuracy is Noem’s recounting of a meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un during her time in Congress — a meeting that never happened.

“I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un,” Noem wrote. “I’m sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I’d been a children’s pastor, after all).”

The Dakota Scout published a story Thursday casting doubt on the meeting. Noem’s spokesman, Ian Fury, eventually said the anecdote was one of “two small errors” in the book that were the fault of others.

“This has been communicated to the ghostwriter and editor,” Fury said, according to the Scout. “Kim Jong Un was included in a list of world leaders and shouldn’t have been.”

Yet there seems to be no way Noem could’ve been unaware of the errors. She’s been promoting the book for weeks, there is no other writer credited in the book besides her, and she’s already voiced an audio version of the book.

The Scout also questioned Noem’s anecdote in the book about canceling a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron over Noem’s dislike of his comments about the Israeli-Hamas war. The French president’s office released a statement that Macron had never extended a “direct invitation” to Noem for a meeting, the Scout reported, but the office left open the possibility that the two could have been scheduled to attend the same event.

Politico reported on a story Noem related in the book about a 2021 conversation with former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. Noem wrote that Haley, who would go on to unsuccessfully seek the Republican presidential nomination, “threatened” Noem politically. A spokesperson for Haley told Politico that Haley had called to encourage Noem, and “how she would twist that into a threat is just plain weird.”

Politico also reported that a Colorado county Republican group canceled a Saturday fundraiser Noem was scheduled to headline, after the group received death threats and information about a planned protest related to Noem’s treatment of animals.

Reacting to the cascade of negative news, political science professor Jon Schaff of Northern State University in Aberdeen said Noem’s short-term national ambitions “have been weakened, considerably.” Until recently, Noem had been widely considered to be a potential running mate for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

But Schaff said it’s too early to tell what it all means for Noem long-term. He said she is popular in South Dakota, and it would be naive to count her out in future races, such as a U.S. Senate race in the eventuality of a retirement by Sen. John Thune or Sen. Mike Rounds. Thune is 63 years old, Rounds is 69 and Noem is 52.

“Rounds and Thune won’t be there forever,” Schaff said.

Meanwhile, Dan Ahlers, executive director of the South Dakota Democratic Party, said the negative news is unlikely to end Noem’s career, given that past scandals have not seemed to hurt her. Those scandals have included published allegations of an affair with former Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski, accusations of misusing the state airplane, and allegedly intervening to help her daughter earn a real estate appraiser’s license.

“These things don’t end any of these Republican politicians’ careers anymore,” Ahlers said. “They end up raising more money and smelling like roses.”

Noem went on “Hannity” on Fox News on Wednesday and blamed “fake news” for the fallout from the dog and goat stories. This weekend, she’s scheduled to attend a Trump campaign donor retreat in Florida, according to Politico. Sunday, she’s scheduled to appear on “Face the Nation” on CBS.

“We’ll get into the controversies surrounding her upcoming memoir,” said a Friday tweet from the show.

South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on Facebook and Twitter.

Since Gov. Kristi Noem’s disclosure of her farmyard killing spree, everybody’s been focused on Cricket.

That’s understandable. Cricket was a 14-month-old dog. It’s easy to imagine her head jutting out of a pickup window, hair and tongue blowing in the wind. Like many dogs, Cricket probably had a personality and other human-like qualities that we so often attribute to canine companions.

Noem shot and killed Cricket on some undisclosed date years ago for being bad at pheasant hunting and good at chicken hunting. The moral, Noem wrote, is that leaders deal with problems immediately. That makes her a “doer,” she claimed, not an “avoider.”

That’s pure bunk, as millions of people have pointed out in an avalanche of criticism since The Guardian obtained an early copy and revealed some of the contents of Noem’s ironically named memoir, “No Going Back.” The relevant pages have since been shared with South Dakota Searchlight, which requested an advance copy but was ignored; the book’s official publication date is next Tuesday.

Again, the focus on Cricket makes sense, because we can all see that Noem could’ve taken the dog to a shelter and given it another chance at life.

But if you’ll hear me out, I want to tell you why Cricket’s fate is the wrong place to focus your attention.

If you really want to understand Kristi Noem, you need to consider the goat.

‘I spotted our billy goat’

After Noem made the death march to her farm’s gravel pit, where she shot Cricket, she was apparently still in an uncontrollable rage.

“Walking back up to the yard, I spotted our billy goat,” Noem wrote.

The nameless goat’s only sin in that moment was being in Noem’s field of view.

Noem blames ‘fake news’ for backlash against her killing a dog and goat

In the book, Noem tried to justify her snap decision to kill the goat by writing that it “loved to chase” her children and would “knock them down and butt them,” leaving them “terrified.” The animal also had a “wretched smell.”

But apparently none of that had been a big enough problem to do anything about it. Not until Noem got angry enough to kill a dog and decided she needed to kill again.

Noem says she “dragged” the goat to the gravel pit, “tied him to a post,” and shot at him. But the goat jumped when she shot.

“My shot was off and I needed one more shell to finish the job,” she wrote.

She studiously avoided saying she wounded the goat with the first shot, but that’s the implication.

“Not wanting him to suffer,” she added — apparently experiencing her first twinge of feeling, after saying that killing the dog was not “pleasant” — “I hustled back across the pasture to the pickup, grabbed another shell, hurried back to the gravel pit, and put him down.”

The goat story not only reflects a disturbing lack of self-control, but also raises a question of law.

The crime of animal cruelty

Noem has defended her shooting of the dog, citing legal justification for her actions. She’s likely referencing a state law that exempts from the definition of animal cruelty “any reasonable action taken by a person for the destruction or control of an animal known to be dangerous, a threat, or injurious to life, limb, or property.”

Cricket killed a neighbor’s chickens and “whipped around to bite” Noem when she intervened; therefore, by Noem’s logic, her killing of Cricket was legally defensible. She’s probably right, legally speaking.

What Noem’s shot heard around the world says about her approach to problems

But what about the goat?

Sure, it chased children, butted them, and smelled bad. “So, a goat,” Stephen Colbert deadpanned during his Monday monologue on “The Late Show,” speaking for everybody who’s ever been around goats. If those traits meet the legal definition of “dangerous, a threat, or injurious to life, limb, or property,” killing any goat would always be legally justified.

In reality, what Noem did to the goat — dragging it to a gravel pit, tying it to a post, shooting at it once, leaving to get another shell, and shooting it again — sounds an awful lot like the legal definition of animal cruelty. That definition in South Dakota law is “to intentionally, willfully, and maliciously inflict gross physical abuse on an animal that causes prolonged pain, that causes serious physical injury, or that results in the death of the animal.”

Alas, cruelty to animals is a Class 6 felony, and lower-class felonies like that carry a seven-year statute of limitations in South Dakota. We don’t know exactly what year it was when Noem shot her dog and goat. She gave a clue in the book when she wrote that her children came home on the school bus the day of the killings and one of them asked, “Where’s Cricket?” Noem didn’t say how she responded, and all of her children are now grown.

If that was more than seven years ago, the goat killing is probably not prosecutable. But no prosecution could do more damage to Noem’s reputation and career than she’s already done to herself by writing about her animal bloodthirst.

As Noem wrapped up her bloody tale in the book, she wrote that being a leader is often “messy” and “ugly.”

In her case, it certainly is.

South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on Facebook and Twitter.