Key Point: “President-elect Donald Trump has picked Noem, a Republican and one of his most ardent supporters, to lead the Department of Homeland Security. … That alarms victims of one of the most serious disasters to affect Noem’s state during her six years as governor. In North Sioux City, whose 3,000 residents live across the Big Sioux River from Iowa, many fault Noem for overseeing a response to the catastrophic June floods that they describe as disorganized, delayed and often simply nonexistent.”

Washington Post: Is Kristi Noem ready to run FEMA? South Dakota flood victims doubt it.

By: Peter Jamison and Isaac Stanley-Becker

• President-elect Donald Trump has picked Noem, a Republican and one of his most ardent supporters, to lead the Department of Homeland Security. If confirmed, she would oversee not only immigration enforcement but an agency that has become increasingly important in a nation battered by frequent fires and floods: the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
  
• That alarms victims of one of the most serious disasters to affect Noem’s state during her six years as governor. In North Sioux City, whose 3,000 residents live across the Big Sioux River from Iowa, many fault Noem for overseeing a response to the catastrophic June floods that they describe as disorganized, delayed and often simply nonexistent.
  
• Although she urged people in a development several miles away to move to safety, Noem did not order or even suggest that residents of McCook Lake evacuate their homes, leaving people to scramble for their lives as the Big Sioux overflowed its banks and tore through their neighborhood.
  
• After spending millions of taxpayer dollars to send South Dakota National Guard soldiers to the Mexico border, Noem did not deploy them to help prepare for the flood or cope with its aftermath. And she waited more than a month to ask President Joe Biden for a disaster declaration, leaving victims without access to federal assistance during a crucial period of recovery and rebuilding.
  
• In late November, five months after the flood, the neighborhood was still a disaster zone; some roads had been repaired, but the jagged remnants of destroyed houses lay untouched. …
• For much of the period before and during the floods, Noem was out of state — first in D.C., where she attended a political conference and sat for an interview on a national television news show, then in Tennessee for a GOP gala. …
  
• Speichinger and her husband grabbed their kids, their dogs and a few possessions and drove out through the water. Some of their neighbors were beginning to panic, but others still had no idea what was happening, and Speichinger said no government officials were present to warn people to evacuate or direct traffic through the inundated roads. …
  
• Noem quickly came under scrutiny for her decision not to deploy the National Guard, which she defended at a news conference two days after the flood. …
  
• Even some within Noem’s party were unsatisfied with this explanation, since she had deployed National Guard troops to Texas to help police the U.S.-Mexico border three times since 2021. …
  
• [T]hree local officials have said they asked Noem for the Guard and were turned down.
• “I asked for them,” North Sioux City Mayor Patricia Teel said at a public meeting on July 1, according to a local news broadcast of the meeting. “I was told at first that they were gone, and they were sending extra law enforcement instead.”
  
• City council member Kodi Benson likewise said in a private Facebook message that the Guard had been requested.