Ella Langley seemingly removed herself from a thorny back-and-forth between Kacey Musgraves and former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — with one tap of a button.
Literally: When Noem tagged Langley in an X post that was mostly dedicated to disparaging Musgraves — and Musgraves responded with a clapback — Langley appeared to untag herself.
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She didn’t explain the move, and there’s certainly no indication that Langley sided with Musgraves. But it seems as if Langley wasn’t interested in being a part of the drama.
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The whole thing started after James Talarico —the Democratic nominee in the 2026 U.S. Senate race in Texas — shared a photo of himself and Musgraves at a stop on her Middle of Nowhere Tour.
Noem reshared his post, writing, “I’ll take [Ella Langley] over Kacey Musgraves any day.” She tagged Langley’s X handle in her statement, and added, “And if I’m choosin’ Texas, I’ll take [Talarico’s Republican opponent] Ken Paxton over James Talarico.”
Noem’s implication seemed to pit Langley against Musgraves politically. Musgraves has been vocally liberal on some political issues in the past — she recently spoke out against ICE arrests, and hired a mariachi band once detained by ICE to perform with her at three shows.
Meanwhile, Langley hasn’t publicly shared a political stance. Back in 2020, she shared a photo of herself wearing a shirt with “Democrat” and “Republican” boxes, and a third box, checked, that reads “Country Music.”
Musgraves fired back against Noem’s comments with an X post of her own, and it was pretty scathing.
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“I don’t think you have a dog in this fight, but if you did, you would have shot it,” Musgraves deadpanned in response to Noem pitting her against Langley.
Musgraves was referring to an incident that Noem described in her 2024 memoir No Going Back, in which Noem says she personally shot and killed her family’s 14-month-old dog Cricket.
Per the Guardian, Noem wrote that Cricket, a female wirehair pointer, had an “aggressive personality” and proved untrainable despite her efforts to train the dog to hunt pheasants. Noem says that after a failed pheasant hunt and an incident in which Cricket killed several chickens belonging to another family, she realized the dog was “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless…as a hunting dog.”
Noem shot and killed Cricket in a gravel pit, and on the same day, also killed a “nasty and mean” goat that belonged to her family.
Why Did Ella Langley Seemingly Untag Herself in Kristi Noem’s Post?
Fans quickly noticed that Langley was no longer tagged in Noem’s post, and assumed the singer had chosen to remove herself from the conversation as much as possible.
“Ella wants nothing to do with you considering she untagged herself, so,” one user replied.
It’s not clear why Langley would have untagged herself, other than that she probably didn’t want to be involved in the drama. By untagging herself, she would have basically hit “unsubscribe” on the conversation.
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Gallery Credit: Billy Dukes
