Star Tribune
Home fashioned like a silo and farmhouse near Duluth lists for $840K
“I love the house because I built it how I wanted it,” she said. “There’s so many cute and special things about it, and we made it our own.”
The home is so unique, an in-person tour is the only way to capture it’s beauty, said listing agent Tom Henderson.
“There was so much love and thought put into it at the time of build, from the the way it was set on the property to capture the [south sunlight] exposure for winter, allowing the passive solar sun energy to fill the great room with light and thermal heat,” he said, “to the way the home was designed for possible generational livability.”
Perhaps the biggest labor of love: placing every penny glued to the home’s front entry floor, an 8,000 coin installation that took Smith many hours hunched over to individually glue each coin. With the help of her two children, Smith sorted the pennies so the shiner ones comprised a star and more tarnished ones made a circle around it.
A coin from the Bahamas is in the very center, a stowaway found in one of the penny stacks purchased from the bank. Smith installed a copper-colored ceiling to match.
There are copper accents around the house as well, like the copper sink in the kitchen.
Shortly before 6 p.m., two people got out of a car with guns — a pistol and a fully automatic rifle — and fired at least 42 rounds into a crowd and hit “no less than nine people,” the charges read. ShotSpotter technology detected at least 28 shots fired within 1½ seconds.
Surveillance video from “various sources” helped investigators identify the car and track it to Butcher’s guardian as the owner. Three days after the shooting, investigators saw Butcher get in the vehicle outside the home of his brother and drive away. Undercover officers tailed Butcher, and the State Patrol attempted to stop him, but he sped off and was not pursued.
Six months later, Butcher was arrested after he showed up at HCMC to be treated for a gunshot wound he suffered during a burst of gunfire near the 1300 block of W. Lake Street in the Uptown area.
Now, SoDak’s capital, Pierre, is approximately 1,100 miles from the Mexican border and some 589 miles from America’s best border crossing — Minnesota’s Northwest Angle. But what Noem lacks in qualifications, she more than makes up for in unhesitating, unquestioning, uncritical capitulation to Trump’s every whim. And Homeland Security will be the agency tasked with those mass deportations Trump promised on the campaign trail.
The infuriating idea that random rich guys could move American troops around like pawns on a chessboard if they threw enough money at a politician prompted Congress to ban the use of private funds for interstate guard deployments. A law that didn’t need to exist before Noem came along.
Her attempt to cover up the fact that she rented out 48 National Guard troops for a billionaire’s pet project cost South Dakota $42,000 to settle a lawsuit with the watchdog group that blew the whistle. The funds covered the legal costs to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington after the South Dakota National Guard stonewalled their request for public records on the stunt deployment. Those records also showed that even after the billionaire chipped in, South Dakota taxpayers had to pay an additional $500,000 for the deployment.
For five years, Kristi Noem placed Donald Trump’s wishes above the needs of her own state. This is her reward.
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R) to serve as his homeland security secretary, picking another loyalist for a crucial role after he campaigned heavily on fortifying the border.
The selection was confirmed by people familiar with the choice who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a decision not yet made public. Spokespeople for Trump’s transition team and Noem did not respond to requests for comment.
As homeland security secretary, Noem would lead a sprawling federal bureaucracy with a $60 billion budget and more than 230,000 employees.
The role is key to Trump’s domestic policy agenda, especially given his pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and impose a crackdown at the U.S.-Mexico border. Noem is the latest high-profile choice related to border security that Trump has made since defeating Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential election a week ago.
As well as customs, border and immigration enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security oversees the response to natural and man-made disasters, anti-terrorism work and cybersecurity. It also houses the Secret Service, which has been under scrutiny for months after the attempted assassination of Trump at a campaign rally this summer.
Trump took steps Monday toward his campaign promises to close the border to migrants and deport undocumented immigrants on a massive scale with two senior appointments to the incoming White House.
Trump announced that Tom Homan, former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, would serve as “border czar,” in charge of border security as well as deportations. Former speechwriter and campaign adviser Stephen Miller — who helped develop policies during Trump’s first administration, including the ban on travel from Muslim-majority countries and the separation of families at the border — is expected to become a deputy chief of staff.
Noem, a farmer and rancher, has served as South Dakota governor since 2019. She previously served as the state’s at-large member of Congress and in the state legislature.
