Kacey Musgraves had some choice words for Kristi Noem after the former secretary of homeland security dissed her appearance with Texas’ Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate James Talarico.
The “Middle of Nowhere” singer brought out the candidate during her concert at the American Airlines Center in Dallas on Saturday. The appearance followed Talarico’s nearly two-week absence from the campaign trail due to an illness.
Noem tweeted a picture of the country singer and the politician, pitting Musgraves against the rising country star Ella Langley.
“I’ll take Ella Langley over Kacey Musgraves any day,” tweeted the Republican. “And if I’m choosin’ Texas, I’ll take Ken Paxton over James Talarico.”
Musgraves scorched the conservative politician right back.
“I don’t think you have a dog in this fight but if you did you would have shot it,” the country singer wrote on X.
The Grammy winner is a proud Texan, and her latest album paid homage to TexMex and the Mexican-American experience in her home state. Noem served as the governor of South Dakota from 2019 to 2025 and has no political ties to Texas.
She does, however, have a reputation for killing her dog. She wrote about killing her 14-month-old puppy Cricket in her 2024 memoir “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward.” In the same book, she described shooting and killing a family goat.
Recent polls in the 2026 Texas U.S. Senate race show a tight contest between the Democratic state representative and Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, with Talarico holding a narrow lead.
Paxton has been endorsed by President Donald Trump but has his own political controversies. He was impeached by the Texas House in 2023 on abuse of office and corruption charges (though he was later acquitted by the Texas Senate).
Talarico has made the rounds on late night talk shows, but some of those appearances have been forced off the broadcast networks by Chairman Brendan Carr and the Federal Communications Commission. His interview on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” became the late night show’s second most-viewed video of 2026, despite not being able to air on linear television.
