What Kristi Noem's Dog Teaches Us about Project 2025

The False Claim of Necessary Cruelty

I don’t watch the hit television show Yellowstone, even though it is filmed 40 miles from my house. But I’ve picked up enough through cultural osmosis to know the phrase “Take them to the train station,” means a character isn’t going to be around for long.

The “train station”, it seems, is a deep cavern somewhere between the Montana and Wyoming border where the main character, John Dutton, disposes of his enemies.

Living where I do, I’ve seen a crop of city-dwellers and suburbanites buy up Montana land to live out their Yellowstone dreams. Yesterday one was on my flight from Missoula to Phoenix wearing three cowboy hats. We call them Yellowstonians instead of Montanans because the phony lingers on them like smoke after a campfire. Their cowboy cosplay is Wranglers and spotless Ford trucks. They fill local Facebook pages with rants against anglers crossing their private property to access streams, which has always been legal in Montana.

They just don’t understand our way of life.

We have one running for Senate against popular Senator Jon Tester, who is an actual farmer. Despite growing up in an extravagant lake house in suburban St. Paul, Tim Sheehy has branded himself a cowboy, and he has the sprawling vanity ranch to prove it. Sheehy is employing a staffer who is openly racist, and he’s not going back on that.

There’s a familiar narrative to these stories — especially in politics. Like John Dutton, these are tough guys who will do whatever it takes to accomplish their goal, even employing violence to that end.

That was South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem’s defense when she faced backlash for shooting her 14-month puppy, Cricket for being, well, a puppy. Later, her unnamed goat suffered the same fate.

Noem’s version of “the train station” is a gravel pit at a construction site where she dispatched her animals as confused construction workers looked on. She wrote about it — gleefully it seems — in her new memoir, No Going Back, where she attempts to explain what is wrong with American politics through anecdotes about killing defenseless pets.

In the book, Noem states that the country turned a corner in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump and the Republican Party is not returning to the civility of the early 2000s. Republicans have to “get tough” to accomplish their goals and remain in power.

This should worry all of us because Project 2025 attempts to convince the American populace that the freedom of women, people of color, queer individuals, immigrants, trans Americans, and progress are threats. And they will do “whatever it takes” to eliminate that threat.

Noem is pretending. She’s playing into the same cowboy, “tough guy” stereotype as the posers who have moved to Montana, suggesting that shooting her dog was inline with rural values, which is insulting to those of us who actually live in rural America.

Abject cruelty is not a rural value.

I grew up in the country. I live in the country now. We do, at times, have to put animals down. When a raccoon broke into our chicken coop, leaving some of our chickens injured to the point of no recovery, we mercifully ended their suffering. Our chickens weren’t pets (although try telling that to my son), but every country boy and girl knows they matter more than their utilitarian purpose. We would never kill an animal out of frustration, annoyance, inconvenience, or gleeful brutality.

Nevertheless, as countless people pointed out online, Noem failed to do what any one of us would have done were we in her shoes:

• Taking Cricket to the animal shelter

• Attempting to rehome her with another family

• Investing in more training

• Even dumping her on the side of the road would have been more merciful

Noem is demonstrating a Republican willingness to use cruelty and lack of imagination to “get stuff done.” Extremists like Noem want to condition us to believe cruelty is the only way to improve America. They want to normalize violence. Do. Not. Buy it.

As my friend Ryan Busse* says: “Her political brand is simply a veneer – a fake, stylized brand of dangerous Trump Republicanism whose moral roots are about as deep as a bad facelift.”

But there’s a silver lining: The other thing Kristi Noem’s dog has taught us is that bloodthirstiness has its limits. Noem, who was believed to be on the short list for Trump’s VP pick, sank her chances after doubling down on her animal assassination story.

“The worst part of it is that it wasn’t a hit job. She volunteered the information. So, when somebody tells you who they are, believe them,” said New York Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis.

Indeed.

Republicans are telling us exactly who they are and exactly what they want right now in Project 2025. If you believe they will have sympathy for the most vulnerable among us, you’re wrong.

Now if we could just get our friends and neighbors to care as much about the Americans targeted in Project 2025 (educators, librarians, BIPOC, women, immigrants, queer individuals) as they do about Cricket, we will be set.

Onward, Democracy Defenders!

By the way, Ryan Busse is running to replace Montana’s extremist, body slamming Republican Governor Greg Gianforte. Toss him some dollars to help him Take Montana Back!