Puppy Murderer Kristi Noem Banned From Every Tribal Land in Her State

All nine tribal nations of South Dakota have officially banned the state’s Republican governor (and puppy murderer) Kristi Noem from their lands.

The Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe moved to ban the governor following a meeting on Tuesday as an act of solidarity with eight Oceti Sakowin tribes that had done the same in response to inflammatory comments Noem has made about Indigenous communities since January, ICT News reported.

Noem has repeatedly accused South Dakota’s tribes of “personally benefiting” from Mexican drug cartels, falsely alleging “the cartels are using our reservations to facilitate the spread of drugs throughout the Midwest” in March. Noem also lashed out at Indigenous families, claiming systemic poverty is a matter of parental failure—a tired conservative talking point long used to justify inequality they create. “Their kids don’t have any hope,” Noem said without evidence in March. “They don’t have parents who show up and help them.”

Peter Lengkeek, chairman of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe that banned Noem last week, stated: “We do not have cartels on the reservations. We have cartel products, like guns and drugs. But they pass over state highways getting to the reservation. So, putting us all together like that and saying that all tribes are involved in this really shows the ignorance of the governor’s office.”

The Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe repeatedly met with representatives for Noem ahead of its vote on Tuesday, according to ICT News. In a press release announcing its decision, the tribe indicated Noem’s administration is drastically underinformed:

The Executive Committee calls on the governor to reconsider the effectiveness of the liaisons she has appointed and whether or not they truly have an understanding of the issues affecting tribal nations as well as their ability to foster a cooperative relationship between the Tribes and the State of South Dakota.

On Friday, as the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe met with representatives of Noem’s office, Noem held a press conference to address her being banned from the eight Oceti tribal lands and reiterated her cartel conspiracy.

“I ask them right back, ‘Why have they not banished the cartels? Why have they not banished the cartel affiliates?’” Noem said. “Why have they only focused their attention on me, who has offered them help, and not gone after those who are perpetuating violence?”

A vast majority of illicit drugs that enter the United States come from legal ports of entry—and not with migrants as Republicans insist—yet Noem has refused to give up the goat, instead throwing communities systematically oppressed by U.S. colonialism for 500 years under the bus for cheap political points.

The tribes have requested Noem apologize for her remarks and cease making future inflammatory statements against them. Until then, Noem is banned from visiting over five million acres of South Dakota—more than 10 percent of the state.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis won her primary election in Georgia Tuesday night and immediately sent a message to the man her office is prosecuting, Donald Trump.

“I am just so humbled and so grateful to the citizens of Fulton County who made this possible. Tonight, they delivered a strong and powerful message: They want a district attorney who believes everyone deserves to be safe and everyone is entitled to some dignity,” Willis said in her victory speech.

“And it’s a message that’s pissin’ folks off, but there is no one above the law in this country, nor is there anyone beneath it,” Willis added in a pointed jab at the former president.

Willis’s victory in the solidly Democratic county is good news in the face of Republican efforts to thwart her prosecution of Trump and his allies for their attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Willis was accused of appointing former special prosecutor Nathan Wade, with whom she had a personal relationship, to the case for financial gain—and the Trump campaign sought to have her thrown off the entire case. A Georgia judge ultimately ruled in her favor, provided that she replace Wade.

The rest of Willis’s speech didn’t focus on the case against Trump, instead highlighting her efforts to lower crime and thanking her supporters and local law enforcement. But she did allude to the attacks against her both in Georgia and the U.S. at large.

“All the attacks in the world can’t stop us. And they will not stop us. This is a fight for safety. It’s a fight for justice. But most, it’s a fight for the rule of law. And we are just at the beginning of this fight,” Willis said.

“Nobody is supporting me but the people of Fulton County,” Willis added.

Right now, however, the case against Trump and his more than a dozen co-defendants is in limbo, as the Georgia Court of Appeals reviews an appeal seeking to overturn the order keeping Willis on the case. Similarly, federal charges against the Republican presidential nominee are also stalled in Washington, D.C., and Florida, thanks to the efforts of a Trump-appointed judge and the Supreme Court’s decision to review the issue of presidential immunity. It seems that Trump’s ongoing hush-money trial may be the only sure avenue to see him face some kind of accountability.

Recently unsealed court documents suggest that prosecutors in Donald Trump’s classified documents case have even more damning evidence that he tried to obstruct the government’s attempts to retrieve the documents.

According to supporting documentation for a motion filed by Trump’s legal team, the government subpoena for Mar-a-Lago’s security footage seemingly led Trump to try to cover up the relocation of the classified documents. Trump was notified of the subpoena in a June 2022 call with one of his attorneys, which probably prompted Trump to tell staffers to evade security cameras when moving boxes thereafter—or so concluded the district judge who oversaw the grand jury in the case.

“The government has provided sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the June 24, 2022 phone call may have furthered the former president’s efforts to obstruct the government’s investigation,” Judge Beryl Howell wrote in a 2023.

The damning detail is just one of many revelations that have come out of hundreds of pages of court documents that were unsealed Tuesday. Howell’s opinion also described how four more documents with classified markings were discovered on Trump’s property, stashed away in his bedroom, even months after the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.

Howell also found that prosecutors provided sufficient evidence that Trump had “intentionally concealed the existence of additional documents” in order to mislead the government and impede the FBI’s investigation.

Trump faces 42 felony charges in the case related to illegally retaining national security documents and conspiracy to obstruct justice. But the judge overseeing the case has been dragging her feet for months. Judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely delayed the trial earlier this month, purportedly over issues about how to handle classified evidence. Legal analysts worry that these delays could be the Trump-appointed judge’s way of surreptitiously dismissing the trial altogether.

After the defense rested in Donald Trump’s hush-money trial on Tuesday, Trump took to the cameras to denigrate the judge presiding over his case, issuing a blatantly racist dog whistle as a desperate last line of defense before closing remarks next Tuesday.

“The judge hates Donald Trump,” Trump said, creepily referring to himself in the third person. “Just take a look. Take a look at him. Take a look at where he comes from.”

Trump was obviously noting that Judge Juan Merchan was born in Colombia, a claim that bears little weight outside the minds of racists hunting for a reason to oppose Merchan’s pretty lax efforts to deter Trump from using his platform to launch harassment and threats at jurors, key witnesses, and family members of those involved in the trial.

Merchan immigrated to the United States from Colombia when he was 6 years old and grew up in the same borough as the bloviating former president—albeit on opposite sides of the wealth spectrum. Trump was raised in the affluent suburban neighborhood of Jamaica Estates, while Merchan grew up in Jackson Heights, one of the most diverse neighborhoods in New York City. Merchan—who is roughly sixteen years Trump’s junior—immigrated to Queens when Trump was about 22 years old.

The comments echoed past attacks on another judge—Gonzalo Curiel—who in 2016 Trump claimed couldn’t be impartial in overseeing a federal fraud case against Trump University (remember that?) because the Indiana-born judge was “of Mexican heritage.” Trump’s 2016 comments were clearly understood to be racist, with conservatives widely criticizing them at the time. Former Ohio Governor John Kasich, who in 2016 ran against Trump, denounced the attack, writing on X (formerly Twitter), “Attacking judges based on their race &/or religion is another tactic that divides our country. [Donald Trump] should apologize to Judge Curiel & try to unite this country.”

“I couldn’t disagree more with what he had to say,” Mitch McConnell said at the time of Trump’s attacks against Curiel. “I don’t agree with what he had to say. This is a man who was born in Indiana. All of us came here from somewhere else.”

Eight years of racist bloviating and winks to white supremacists later, Republicans are silent on Trump’s dog whistles against another “certified Trump hater” judge, focusing instead on dressing like Trump to help him violate his gag order.

Donald Trump is falsely claiming that President Biden was prepared to kill him during the FBI’s search for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago—a nefarious lie given that Trump wasn’t even at the residence on the day of the search.

In a Truth Social post on Tuesday evening, the former president said that after his hush-money trial adjourned for the day, he learned that “Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE.”

A former president claiming their successor tried to kill them is unprecedented, according to The Washington Post. It’s no secret that law enforcement will come armed when enforcing a search warrant. But the FBI has already testified that it chose to search Mar-a-Lago on a day that Trump would not be there in order to prevent any conflict.

So why make such a post? The former president is probably trying to distract from the news Tuesday from an unsealed legal opinion that classified documents were found in his bedroom at Mar-a-Lago four months after the FBI’s initial search.

Trump faces 42 felony charges in his classified documents case related to willful retention of national security information, corruptly concealing documents, and conspiracy to obstruct justice. But the judge in the case, Trump appointee Aileen Cannon, seems to be stalling the trial on purpose. Earlier this month, she ordered a stay on Trump’s legal requirement to give the government advance notice of which classified materials will be discussed—but offered no expiration date for the reprieve.

Cannon faces a growing backlash due to her handling of the case, with online petitions calling for her removal or recusal from the case. Even some of her clerks have quit because of her conduct, as well as for creating a hostile work environment. At least one potential witness, former Mar-a-Lago worker Brian Butler, has publicly come forward and criticized Cannon’s handling of the case.

Trump’s federal cases have already been delayed thanks to the Supreme Court, which is currently deciding whether Trump, as a former president, enjoys legal immunity. Some believe that state-level charges against the Republican presidential nominee, whether in New York or Georgia, are the only prospects for him facing real justice.