President Donald Trump is replacing Kristi Noem, the embattled secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), due to mounting concerns about her performance, including from many Republicans.
In a Thursday Truth Social post announcing her successor—Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin—Trump thanked Noem for her service and said she would serve as special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, a new security initiative that has yet to be formally unveiled. But the face-saving appointment does not change the fact that Trump has effectively fired Noem as DHS head.
The president had good reason to do so. Noem was the face of the administration's increased efforts to deport illegal immigrants, not by working with local law enforcement in amenable jurisdictions—the plan preferred by border czar Tom Homan—but by dispatching Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to engage in showy, maximally disruptive confrontations with immigrants and citizens alike. For Noem and Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and the architect of this approach, the optics were what mattered: They wanted ICE to police blue cities like Minneapolis, regardless of the practical ramifications.
What followed was disaster: American citizens, including Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were killed during altercations with ICE agents. Instead of waiting for all the facts to come in, Noem led the charge in acquitting law enforcement and assigning total blame to the deceased. She asserted that Pretti had approached ICE with his gun drawn with the intent of committing violence, and was thus engaged in domestic terrorism; this was a flagrant lie, and one of many she told over the course of her tenure.
Noem also enjoyed misusing taxpayer dollars and taking trips on a luxurious Boeing 737 MAX jet, where she shared a private cabin with her very, ahem, close adviser Corey Lewandowski. The DHS finally decided to acquire the plane outright for $70 million.
When Noem appeared before a Senate hearing earlier this week, she was grilled by Sen. John Kennedy (R–La.) about spending $200 million in advertising to boost her own image and name recognition. When Noem insisted that the president had approved this spending, Kennedy accused her of trying to embarrass Trump. She also fielded numerous questions from Democrats about her relationship with Lewandowski, saying that suggestions they were having an affair are merely "tabloid trash," though she did not directly contradict them.
One or all of these things bothered Trump enough to finally pull the plug. Noem has just become the first Cabinet secretary in the second Trump administration to lose her job.
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