South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem delivers her 2025 State of the State address to lawmakers at the Capitol in Pierre on Jan. 14, 2025. (Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight)
By: Makenzie Huber
PIERRE, S.D. (South Dakota Searchlight) – South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem used her State of the State address on Tuesday to say goodbye.
Noem is expected to resign sometime after President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, if the U.S. Senate confirms her as Trump’s secretary of Homeland Security. She had been scheduled for a confirmation hearing on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., but it’s since been postponed to 9 a.m. Eastern time on Friday.
She focused her speech at the Capitol in Pierre on what she wants to achieve at the federal level, while also touting achievements from her six years as the state’s first female governor.
“What kind of country do we want to leave to our families?” Noem said. “I want to leave them a state and nation that is even safer, stronger and freer than the one that I grew up in.”
Noem said there is an “invasion” of undocumented immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border causing a flow of illicit drugs into the country and South Dakota, adding that she’s deployed the South Dakota National Guard multiple times to the border.
While her imminent resignation will mean a change in leadership in the state, she expects Lt. Gov. Larry Rhoden to “lead this state just as I would,” she said.
Noem has served as a conservative Republican, focusing on business-friendly investments, Second Amendment rights and anti-abortion efforts — all of which she touted in the “top 10 list” that she used as the structure for her speech. She also focused on South Dakotans’ personal freedoms, business expansions, infrastructure projects in the state and initiatives to invest in prenatal and maternal health care.
While touting her administration’s responses to natural disasters, Noem announced the awarding of her Governor’s Award for Heroism to a group of state and local authorities for risking their lives and going “above and beyond” during the June Big Sioux River flooding in southeastern South Dakota.
The speech was light on policy goals for the 100th legislative session, Brookings Republican Sen. Tim Reed said after the speech. Tuesday was the kickoff for the session, which continues through March 13.
Reed said the state is “out of focus on how we make sure that we’re open for business.” There has been a push against some infrastructure investments in the state, including against carbon pipelines (a prefiled bill would ban their use of eminent domain) and against data centers with huge electricity demands to handle computing in the artificial intelligence age.
Legislators should ask, “How do we grow our economy to make sure we start to have more revenue?” Reed said, adding that investments in education are a key piece of economic growth.
Fireworks will return to Rushmore, Noem says
Noem did make a few announcements, including her pledge that “we will once again move forward with planning to return fireworks to Mount Rushmore” for a celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday in 2026.
Noem worked with then-President Donald Trump to bring fireworks back to Mount Rushmore in 2020, at a show Trump attended. The National Park Service had stopped fireworks displays at the national memorial in 2010 due to wildfire concerns, litter from the fireworks and drinking water contamination from fireworks chemicals, and has stopped them again during the presidency of Joe Biden.
Noem also announced a $200,000 one-time grant to help transfer the Keep Farmers Farming program, which helps with estate and transition planning for farmers, from First Dakota National Bank to the South Dakota Ag Foundation. Noem said the money from the Governor’s Office of Economic Development will also help to market and grow the program.
Noem’s proposal to create education savings accounts, which she mentioned in the speech after unveiling it last month during her budget address, has divided educators and lawmakers in the state.
Senate Majority Leader Jim Mehlhaff, R-Pierre, told South Dakota Public Broadcasting after the speech that the program will strengthen South Dakota’s education system because it’ll increase competition among private and public schools.
House Minority Leader Erin Healy, D-Sioux Falls, said the $4 million program would take away funding that could go toward public education.
Noem said her administration has made efforts to pay public school teachers “what they deserve,” yet South Dakota remains 49th in the nation for teacher pay, and she only proposed a 1.25% increase for public school funding in her budget address.
“Our teachers deserve to be paid fairly,” Healy told South Dakota Searchlight. “We can’t recruit the best until we start paying them more.”
Governor gives bat to Rhoden
In Noem’s goodbye, she passed the baton — or rather the bat — to Lt. Gov. Larry Rhoden, gifting him a literal baseball bat. She said it should hold up better than “those gavels you love to shatter at this podium.” Rhoden has broken two gavels in recent years while presiding over official legislative functions.
She also gifted lawmakers smaller replicas of the bat, meant to remind them that they’re all “at bat now.”
“To the people of South Dakota,” Noem said, “thank you for the incredible honor of serving you as state representative, as congresswoman, and now as governor. Thank you for trusting me and for working with me to accomplish incredible things.”
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