Noem Out at DHS

Faith Noem more. It was never quite clear what, exactly, Kristi Noem brought to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) when President Donald Trump appointed her. 

She was a self-promoter with a penchant for obvious lies. Under her watch, immigration enforcement agents killed two Americans in Minnesota, prompting a massive backlash. Noem not only lied about the victims, she also lied about her lies during congressional testimony. Noem-a gusta! 

Noem, the former governor of South Dakota, had few if any relevant credentials before being appointed to run the DHS—unless you count bragging about shooting her dog, which, admittedly, was the same energy she brought to the federal security apparatus. How was this supposed to work? What was her appointment supposed to accomplish? It never really made much sense. 

Trump’s thinking appeared to be something along the lines of: 

• Step 1: Tap Noem to run the DHS.  
• Step 2: ???? 
• Step 3: Immigration policy solved.

Call it the underpants Noem theory of immigration enforcement. 

Trump gave Noem the boot yesterday. This followed congressional testimony in which she said, under oath, that Trump approved a $220 million DHS marketing blitz featuring Noem. Trump was reportedly angered by Noem’s statement, and he has since said this isn’t true. If so, that would be perjury on Noem’s part. In her defense, Noem has been saying this for at least a year. 

Noem was let go with a few nice remarks from President Trump and an appointment to a new gig, special envoy for the Shield of Americas. What, exactly, is the Shield of Americas? No one can say for sure. I can’t prove that it’s a fake, made-up, face-saving appointment. But it sure looks like a fake, made-up, face-saving appointment. Apparently, there’s a Shield “summit” at a Trump golf club this weekend. 

Noem also sparked controversy by flying in a taxpayer-funded sex plane. I’m sorry—the copy desk insists I refer to it as an alleged adultery airplane. We do not officially know if there was any sex. It’s all alleged! But Noem has long been rumored to be having an affair with her deputy, Corey Lewandowski. And when questioned about their relationship, she has not flatly denied it.

Affair or no, Americans paid for it. As Eric Boem recently wrote, the pair flew on a private jet with a private cabin in the rear, costing taxpayers $70 million. Possibly, they were just playing a miles-high game of Catan. (Lewandowski is expected to leave the DHS with Noem.) 

Even ignoring the more salacious allegations, and the Rolex she wore to a brutal foreign prison, there is simply nothing positive to say about Noem’s tenure at the DHS. 

As Billy Binion wrote in a rage-inducing (but correct) social media thread yesterday, Noem smeared Americans killed by their own government as “domestic terrorists,” threatened to have people jailed for filming law enforcement, and lied over and over and over again to the public. Her department also lied repeatedly to the courts about immigration enforcement.   

If there is an upside to her time atop Homeland Security, it’s that her misrule brought attention to the rotten nature of the DHS, an agency created in the wake of the 9/11 attacks that never should have existed. 

Interestingly, Trump himself seems to be kinda-sorta backing off the harshest, Stephen Miller-style immigration rhetoric, although who knows how long that will last. 

TRUMP: “You gotta lighten up on this, they might have come into our country illegally but they’re good people and they’re cheap workers. They’re working now on farms, in luncheonettes and hotels. We’re just focused on getting the murderers out.”

So much for mass deportations. pic.twitter.com/SeDUSn5F36

— Stew Peters (@realstewpeters) March 5, 2026

It’s good that Noem is gone. If only the DHS were abolished too. 

Mullin his options. Sadly, although Trump ousted Noem, he immediately replaced her with a new nominee: Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R–Okla.). 

Mullin has been an aggressive public supporter of Trump, pushing back against reporters who ask critical questions. Trump reportedly enjoys watching Mullin on TV, which is how you get top jobs in the Trump administration. 

I can’t imagine, however, that he enjoyed this particular moment, in which Mullin described America’s bombardment of Iran as a war—and then immediately insisted that it was not, in fact, a war: 

Mullin: This is war

*moments later*

Raju: You concede this is war?

Mullin: We haven’t declared war.

Reporter: You just said it’s a war.

Raju: You’re not conceding it’s a war?

Mullin: We haven’t declared war. pic.twitter.com/ujIBd3yRIx

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 3, 2026

Trump, for his part, has called the Iran attacks a war on multiple occasions, including yesterday, when asked about the possibility of domestic terror attacks—the sort of domestic attacks that Mullin, atop the DHS, is now nominally in charge of preventing. 

Might the lives of Americans be at risk because of this dubiously justified war of choice? Trump responded with what amounted to a rhetorical shrug emoticon. 

“I guess,” Trump said. “Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.” Hear me out, but…maybe that’s a reason to not go to war? 

Iranian leadership problems. One of the people who has already died in this war is longtime Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Khamenei presided over a brutal authoritarian regime for nearly 50 years, and in the days since his death, it has not been clear who, exactly, is going to replace him—partly because many of the plausible replacements have also been bombed. 

Now, Trump is saying he wants input on the next leader. It very much seems like the president is trying to replicate the strategy he ran in Venezuela, but on a much larger, much more deadly scale.

Trump’s desire for leadership input raises a question: If it’s a war that involves bombing the existing regime into oblivion and letting the American president have a say in who comes next, can we officially call it a regime change war? 

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Scenes from Washington, D.C.: Lone Star, the “National Beer of Texas,” is now available in the District of Columbia, because beer is a flat circle.

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QUICK HITS

• A Venezuelan state-owned mining company finalized a deal to sell millions in gold to the United States. 
• Republicans who are skeptical of foreign intervention are not happy with Trump. 
• An expansive, expensive war might not be great for the economy. 
• Is Tucker Carlson’s new merch drop a sign he’s going to run for president? 
• There was apparently a sold-out meet-up of OpenClaw users in New York this week. OpenClaw is an AI agent platform that allows AI agents to take over just about every aspect of your digital life, including email, finances, and other sorts of personal information. It’s amazing and terrifying and weird and probably the future. According to one report, everyone at the meetup of enthusiast power-users thought their systems weren’t entirely secure. AI agents built presentations in real-time, and, according to the report, the heavily male room “had 2021 crypto energy.” 
• Some people are saying XBox as we know it is dead. Maybe. Definitely, definitely…maybe. But the next-generation console, which will play P.C. games, looks pretty nifty. Does this mean I’ll finally be able to play Fallout: London as a console gamer? 

The post Noem Out at DHS appeared first on Reason.com.

Source: https://reason.com/2026/03/06/noem-out-at-dhs/