PIERRE, S.D. – South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem defended herself from social media criticism Sunday after she shared a story about killing her dog after a hunting trip.
In an excerpt from her new book, Noem described shooting and killing her 14-month-old wirehaired pointer, “Cricket,” due to poor behavior. The story garnered mass criticism online, including a viral response from Democratic governors, who mocked Noem by sharing photos with their own pets.
Noem defended her decision to kill the dog and to share the story, saying it shows constituents that she is “authentic, willing to learn from the past, and [doesn’t] shy away from tough challenges.”
In the story shared in her book, first reported by The Guardian, Noem wrote that Cricket chased away pheasants during a hunting trip, ruining the hunt, and that it later attacked a local family’s chickens.
“I hated that dog,” she wrote, adding that Cricket was untrainable, dangerous, and worthless as a hunting dog.
She then led Cricket to a gravel pit on her property and shot it, writing it was “not a pleasant job” but it “had to be done.”
Noem wrote that she also then killed a “nasty and mean” male goat that smelled and liked to chase her children. Because it jumped when she first shot at the goat, she needed two shots to “put him down.”
The criticism comes as Noem is under consideration to be former President Trump’s running mate. The governor is reportedly a finalist on a shortlist for the vice presidency.
The Democratic National Committee, in its response, also called out other comments from Noem that they deemed extreme, including defending her state’s abortion ban when asked about 10-year-olds forced to give birth. It highlighted times that she has praised Trump, including when she said in September she would be his running mate “in a heartbeat.”
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – The Sioux Falls Police Department is investigating a large, single-vehicle crash in Sioux Falls on Saturday morning that left two minors dead and five others injured.
According to authorities, at 6:08 a.m., emergency personnel responded to a crash at the intersection of East 18th Street and South 2nd Avenue.
A Dodge Durango SUV was traveling east and lost control, colliding with a tree and a house on the northeast corner.
Police said the vehicle was occupied by a minimum of seven area juveniles.
Two occupants were found dead on the scene.
The remaining five occupants were transported to area hospitals with severe injuries.
Several occupants were reportedly not wearing seatbelts and vehicle speed appeared to be a contributing factor.
Due to the ages of the occupants, police did not provide further information on those involved.
SOUTH DAKOTA (Makenzie Huber, South Dakota Searchlight) – Three South Dakota counties will ask voters during the June 4 primary if they should ban the use of tabulator machines in future local elections.
If the measures pass, the auditor’s offices in each county would have to hand-count ballots in the Nov. 5 general election and thereafter. The votes – in Gregory, Haakon and Tripp counties – were forced by citizen-initiated petitions at the county level.
Petitioners say they want to ban tabulators because they’re concerned about election security and integrity.
State law allows citizens to petition their local governments to put a proposed law to a public vote. The petitions require signatures from 5% of registered voters in a jurisdiction.
The auditors in each county are now working to educate their citizens on the election process, including the accuracy and safety of tabulators, and highlighting the potential financial consequences of hand-counting ballots.
“More than anything, I want my county to be educated about how our elections run,” said Stacy Pinney, Haakon County auditor.
Similar petitions are circulating in 35 counties, according to South Dakota Canvassing, the nonprofit that helped organize the statewide effort. Petitions have been rejected in counties including Lawrence and McPherson, where some county officials cited legal problems with the petition language. Meanwhile, Fall River County is the only county in South Dakota that will hand-count ballots during the primary election.
In Haakon County, Pinney plans to hold three town halls ahead of the June 4 primary to answer county residents’ questions. The final town hall will coincide with her statutorily required public test of the tabulator machines. She’ll also present to the local high school’s senior government class about the election process.
Pinney said many county residents don’t know there’s a resolution board that handles votes cast aside by a tabulator when those votes need further study for voter intent. She added that some people aren’t aware they can ask for a new ballot if they make a mistake.
In Haakon County, the cost of the general election without hand-counting will already be about $10,000 to $15,000, Pinney said.
If the ballot initiative passes, Pinney expects she’ll need 10 extra people to hand-count ballots. That can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 more, she estimates.
Julie Bartling, Gregory County auditor, said if her county’s tabulator ban passes, she’ll have to break up the south-central county’s three precincts into six or 10 precincts to have manageable ballot amounts for hand counters.
That will cost the county $5,000 to $8,000 more – assuming she can convince poll workers who’ve already been working 12-hour days to stay longer and hand-count ballots.
“A lot of people think hand-counting is cheaper, but it really isn’t,” Bartling said.
Bartling said some people think different ballots can be used, but, by law, the county has to use the same ballot whether it hand-counts or uses machines. For Gregory, the tabulator machines cost less than $2,000 each election to use, Bartling said.
Tripp County Auditor Barb DeSersa said she’ll have to find another 65 people to hand-count ballots if the measure passes. DeSersa oversaw Tripp County’s 2022 general election hand-counting effort, when it was the only county in South Dakota to hand-count all its ballots.
DeSersa was awake for 40 hours straight between Election Day and the day after in 2022, with a significant amount of that time supervising volunteers hand-counting ballots. Several races had to be recounted by volunteer counting boards – sometimes three or four times that night.
If the ban passes, she won’t have poll workers hand-count, and she’ll have five hand-count volunteers per precinct rather than three. The extra two will be “onlookers to ensure everything is done correctly,” DeSersa said.
Tripp and Gregory counties will each conduct a post-election audit of all cast ballots after the primary, rather than the state-required 5% audit.
“I’m anxious for the post-election audit because I want people to know that their automated counting machines are accurate,” Bartling said. “They’re counting correctly and the post-election audit will show that and prove it.”
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Kathleen Shannon, Greater Dakota News Source) – Rates of suicide among young people have increased by about 36% in roughly the last two decades and the surge has caught the attention of federal policymakers.
The Biden administration has a new National Strategy for Suicide Prevention and a Federal Action Plan, highlighting the need for a coordinated approach to prevention and equity in treatment and research. It follows the Bipartisan Policy Center’s launch of a youth mental health task force in January.
Val Demings, co-chair of the Youth Mental Health and Substance Use Task Force and a former member of Congress from Florida, said in Sioux Falls last week rural communities face unique mental health challenges.
“For example, having access to care, the affordability of care, removing the stigma,” Demings outlined. “You may be in a substandard educational setting. You may also have substance abuse, addiction in the household. And so we have got to, as a nation, deal with the social ills that cause decay in certain communities in the first place.”
A big focus of the task force is a link between suicide and increased use of technology and social media. The U.S. Surgeon General said young teens who spend more than three hours a day on social media are at double the risk of mental health struggles, including depression and anxiety.
Technology can also be used to help deliver health care services in rural places. In 2021, the Helmsley Charitable Trust launched a virtual crisis care program in South Dakota, equipping law enforcement with iPads, so they can connect people with mental health professionals by video.
Walter Panzirer, trustee of the trust, has seen positive results.
“We had a 75% reduction of transports to the mental health facilities,” Panzirer pointed out. “They were able to get care at home, locally; 25% of the calls were for youth.”
People living in rural places are almost twice as likely to twice as likely than those living in large cities, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency said South Dakota had the fifth-highest suicide rate in the country in 2021 at over 200 deaths.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, contact the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.
AMES, IA (Mark Moran, Iowa News Service) – Environmental scientists in Iowa are starting to analyze data they collected with a research balloon during the recent solar eclipse. The mission was part “cool factor,” part high-tech research project.
Matthew Nelson, director of the Make to Innovate program at Iowa State University, and a team of seven eclipse chasers trekked to launch their high-tech balloon in Carbondale, Illinois, the only place in the country in the path of the total solar eclipse both this year and in 2017. At an altitude of 95,000 feet, the craft studied the atmospheric effects of the eclipse, but Nelson said there were also less scientific reasons at play.
“One, there’s the cool factor,” Nelson explained. “It’s really kind of an interesting effect and it looks spectacular. I mean, you can see the whole round shadow as it moves across the ground. It’s very much like seeing the eclipse itself. It’s kind of one of those surreal types of things.”
Beyond recording video of the shadows, the balloon collected highly technical atmospheric and solar data, which Nelson is starting to study. Video from the balloon, and its flight path, are online.
Nelson noted the balloon was monitoring atmospheric pressure, humidity levels, temperature and solar radiation during the eclipse, things they do not typically have the chance to study.
“We can measure some of the solar flares, and stuff like that, when the bulk of the sun is blocked out like that,” Nelson stressed. “It’s a unique opportunity to see what can we learn from these eclipses.”
Once the balloon had done its job and was beginning to return to Earth, it detached from the high-tech gear, ascended well beyond its “cruising altitude” and popped. Nelson was able to collect the gear, which landed safely, thanks to a parachute.
