City of Criminals? Spare Us, Kristi Noem. L.A. Balances a $14B Budget. You Can’t Even Fund a Prison Without a Loan.

June 17, 2025

Kristi Noem thinks Los Angeles is a “city of criminals.” That’s rich—coming from a governor whose entire state has fewer people than our parking tickets.

And they way she treated Senator Alex Padilla yesterday shows she will treat anyone like a criminal. 

Last week, Noem took a break from shooting puppies in her political memoir to parachute into a Fox News segment, where she called Los Angeles a “train wreck” and a “city of criminals,” citing ICE raids and her apparent belief that anyone holding a leaf blower or sewing a hem in the garment district must secretly be a cartel kingpin. The irony? She made those remarks while overseeing a South Dakota state budget barely scraping past \$7 billion—half of what Mayor Karen Bass juggles every year in L.A., often while the city is literally on fire.

Let’s get this straight. In 2023, Los Angeles reported 30,574 violent crimes—on a base population of 3.8 million. That’s a rate of roughly 795 per 100,000 residents. Not ideal, sure. But in that same year, crime across L.A. actually dropped: aggravated assaults, rapes, shootings—all trending downward. And homicides? Down 14% in early 2024. You know what we call that in the budget world? A return on investment.

Meanwhile, South Dakota, with its population of 880,000, logged 2,626 violent crimes in 2023—yielding a rate of 289 per 100,000. Lower, yes, but also not surprising when the most dangerous place in town is probably a combine harvester. And yet, while South Dakota struggles to fund basic services (Gov. Noem is scrambling to cover \$2 billion in projected prison upgrades), she has the audacity to lecture Los Angeles—a city with more people, more complexity, and more economic output in one freeway interchange than South Dakota produces in a fiscal year.

Here’s the kicker: most of the so-called “criminals” ICE has been targeting in L.A. are working. They’ve been here for years. They wash your cars, fold your laundry, staff your hospitals, sew your clothes. They pay taxes, raise kids, and send them to school. If being poor and brown is now the new standard for military deployment, then Kristi Noem’s South Dakota better start watching its own trailer parks.

Bass, for all her challenges, is managing a nearly \$14 billion budget shortfall while still keeping public safety afloat, expanding housing programs, and pushing back against federal overreach. Noem? She’s proposing a prison budget ballooning past \$600 million while warning about the dangers of Los Angeles like she’s never left the set of *Yellowstone*.

Let’s be clear: Kristi Noem didn’t call in Marines because L.A. is dangerous. She did it because it’s useful theater. And if rounding up dishwasher dads and sewing-machine moms under the cover of a Marine deployment is her idea of leadership, then it’s no wonder South Dakota can’t afford its own infrastructure without an IOU from Washington.

Keep your budget lectures and your boot-stomping slogans to yourself. And please keep your lying, anti-democratic butt out of our city.