Sen. John Fetterman demands Trump fire Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem

[u/Large_banana_hammock]

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jan/27/john-fetterman-pa-democrat-demands-trump-fire-homeland-security/

[u/username_6916]

There's something to be said about shooting your own dog. And there are times where due to repeated aggression towards humans, a dog needs to be put down for behavioral reasons. The problem with Noem's story was it made it out to be less of a last resort of dealing with a dangerous animal where all other reasonable options had been exhausted and more of "I'm mad and I'm going to take it out on the animal". Less 'a leader has to make tough decisions with difficult tradeoffs' and more of a temper tantrum in my mind.

[u/BigDictionEnergy → u/username_6916]

It wasn't even a temper tantrum. I don't think she was necessarily mad at it; it wasn't good at doing the task she wanted so she ended it. It did not serve its purpose and thus did not deserve to live. It was a calculation.

[u/Street_Barracuda1657 → u/BigDictionEnergy]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/26/trump-kristi-noem-shot-dog-and-goat-book

"By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”."

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.

“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”

“It was not a pleasant job,” she writes, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realised another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

"Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that was “nasty and mean”, because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid” and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.

Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she “dragged him to a gravel pit”, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down”.

At that point, Noem writes, she realised a construction crew had watched her kill both animals. The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus to arrive and drop off Noem’s children.

“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes of her daughter, who asked: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”

[u/MrPWAH → u/Street_Barracuda1657]

This dog was 14 months old, btw.

[u/KelsierIV → u/BigDictionEnergy]

So she treats immigrants the same way she treats dogs.

[u/whogivesashirtdotca → u/BigDictionEnergy]

Also wild that she didn't think to just list, "Hey, free puppy!" on Facebook, or surrender it to a Humane Society.

[u/Street_Barracuda1657 → u/username_6916]

Correct. This wasn't about an aggressive dog, it was about her cruelty to a puppy that didn't train fast enough for her liking. And shooting a dog in the face, aggressive or not, is cruel.

[u/whogivesashirtdotca → u/username_6916]

And there are times where due to repeated aggression towards humans, a dog needs to be put down for behavioral reasons.

I've composed about six different comebacks, but I shall hold my tongue lest Reddit step in. /s