Republican senator calls Noem ‘disaster,’ confronts her over dog killing

In Washington, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem faced sharp questioning on Capitol Hill Tuesday

starting her testimony by blaming Democrats for the ongoing funding fight over her department

Noem told the Senate Judiciary Committee the dispute over DHS funding is harmful to national security

arguing the department is being disrupted even as the administration touts what it calls major immigration enforcement gains

The latest Democrat-led shutdown of DHS is reckless, it's unnecessary, and it undermines the American national security, and it harms the men and women who work at DHS and their families

At a time when we've produced the most secure border in history and removed nearly 3 million illegal aliens from our country, disrupting the department responsible for those gains is indefensible

The most forceful criticism did not come from Democrats. Republican Senator Tom Tillis, who you see here, of North Carolina, delivered a blistering rebuke of Noam's leadership

accusing her department of detaining American citizens and saying immigration enforcement under her watch has been, in his words, a disaster

Watch. We just want numbers. We want 1 a day 6 a day 9 a day because numbers matter right No they don matter Quality matters not quantity quality And what we seen is a disaster under your leadership Ms Noem

a disaster. What we've seen is innocent people getting detained that turn out are American

citizens. I could talk about the culture that's been created here with Stephen Miller aiding and

betting. In one of the most striking moments of the hearing, the Republican senator turned to a

controversial story from Noam's memoir, where she described killing her 14-month-old dog after

calling it untrainable. Tillis used Noam's own story to question her judgment. I train dogs

all right? And you are a farmer. You should know better. You should know that if you're going out

to a hunting lodge and you're putting pheasants out and you're putting dogs out, you don't take

a puppy out there. A 14-month-old dog is basically a teenager in dog years. You decided to kill that

dog because you had not invested the appropriate time and training, and then you have the audacity

to go into a book and say it's a leadership lesson about tough choices. The tense exchange

underscores growing frustration with Noam's leadership, including from some members of her

own party, as you saw, as Congress continues to scrutinize immigration enforcement and the

Minneapolis shootings that left two Americans dead