Donald Trump made his first cabinet-level firing last week when he expelled Kristi Noem. In her one year leading the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Noem sparked widespread criticism for overseeing inhumane immigration policies and avoiding questions about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers’ shooting of protesters in Minneapolis. She even earned the nickname Ice Barbie.
“Good riddance,” Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey wrote on social media about her ousting.
But immigration advocates were not the only critics celebrating her departure. Current and former US disaster response workers, who fell under Noem’s homeland security brief, had also long warned her leadership was undermining the country’s ability to respond to the climate crisis.
“Am I relieved she is gone? Yes,” one longtime official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), the main US disaster response agency, told me hours after Noem’s firing. “You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in Fema who isn’t on that spectrum from relieved to celebratory.”
More on the reactions to Noem’s expulsion after this week’s climate headlines from across the globe.
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In focus
Immediately after Noem’s expulsion, I spoke with several current and former Fema staffers who had long been critical of her leadership.
“We as a nation are in a more dangerous place because of her tenure,” the longtime official told me. “She was such a singularly destructive force and we will be feeling the extent of her incompetence for years.”
A second manager told me that once news of Noem’s dismissal spread through the agency office, “people gathered [and] shared high fives”.
As secretary of DHS, Noem floated the idea of dramatically shrinking Fema or eliminating it entirely, shifting the responsibility for disaster recovery on to states.
“I would say, yes, get rid of Fema the way it exists today,” Noem told CNN early last year. “We still need the resources and the funds and the finances to go to people that have these types of disasters … but you need to let the local officials make the decisions on how that is deployed.”
The agency survived her leadership, but underwent dramatic funding and staffing cuts. Under Noem, Fema also postponed billions in disaster reimbursements, sparking concern and ire from states.
Noem also insisted on personally controlling spending at Fema. As deadly floods overwhelmed Texas last summer, first responders were reportedly unable to pre-position rescue crews or attend to emergency calls because Noem said she had to personally approve all agency spending over $100,000. That moment “probably was really the first time we all realised how bad it was going to be”, one official told me.
Noem said the policy boosted “accountability”, but the Fema manager told me it did anything but that.
“All staff watched in horror while Urban Search and Rescue resources were delayed and call centre contracts lapsed,” the manager said, “knowing these decisions affect whether people can reach help in a timely fashion and, in some cases, whether people live or die.”
The killing of nurse Alex Pretti by ICE officers in Minneapolis in January also cut deep for the manager. “Alex was a dedicated public servant,” the person said. “Watching him blamed and lied about [by] our own leader left many employees carrying profound moral injury, anger, and frustration.”
Michael Coen, a former Fema chief of staff in the Obama and Biden administrations, did not mince any words about Noem.
“Kristi Noem failed,” he told me. “Her micromanagement of Fema eroded [its] capability and withheld critical funding from states and communities across the country.”
I also asked Craig Fugate, who directed Fema between 2009 and 2017, for a response to Noem’s departure. He told me simply: “Change is good.”
Trump has already tapped a successor for Noem, Markwayne Mullin, a Republican senator from Oklahoma. Fema staff told me they are not sure his reign over Fema will be better than Noem’s.
“But boy, Noem being fired is great,” the manager told me. “Celebrate today, get back to work tomorrow.”
Read more:
Good riddance to Kristi Noem. Her replacement won’t be an improvement | Moira Donegan
How Trump’s EPA rollbacks give US states new tools in climate suits
‘The perfect storm’: Trump has left the US less prepared for natural disasters, experts say
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