Kristi Noem’s tenure atop the Department of Homeland Security ended abruptly Thursday after months of speculation about her future. Noem spent years crafting herself into the perfect avatar of political womanhood in the age of MAGA ascendance. Noem now finds herself plummeting back toward Earth, relegated to a sinecure position that keeps her beholden to President Donald Trump, but far removed from the lofty heights of power and influence that she’d reached.
There is little to praise of Noem’s time at DHS that isn’t likewise damning. She successfully positioned herself to be the figurehead of the president’s central policy, the mass deportation of millions of immigrants while their rights were summarily trampled. And she oversaw a massive influx of funding for her still burgeoning department, even as she reportedly micromanaged spending it with the controversial assistance of her rumored paramour slash chief advisor, Corey Lewandowski. (Both have repeatedly denied having a relationship, despite numerous reports to the contrary.)
There is little to praise of Noem’s time at DHS that isn’t likewise damning.
An absurd focus on style over substance is a hallmark across the Trump administration, but Noem took that disparity to another level. For years, Noem has placed burnishing her own image over the work of governing. She transformed herself into a national figure, while governor of South Dakota, using the position as a megaphone for parroting the Trump agenda in hopes of going viral. Once tapped to lead DHS, she quickly became a laughingstock for her camera-ready appearances, including her trip down to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador to appear in front of incarcerated men while wearing a $50,000 Rolex.
Just months into the job last year, she already appeared over her head at the sprawling department she managed. As I wrote at the time: “As homeland security secretary, Noem wields powers that range all the way from immigration to natural disaster relief to cybersecurity. It would be a lot of responsibility for one person who is supremely well-versed in all those areas. Noem is not that person.” She did little to make up that ground in the time since, instead whipsawing from crisis to crisis, many of her own making, especially those contained internally within DHS.
The most generous read of Noem’s focus on appearances is that it was in some ways preordained. Her power was always limited in some ways by the authority White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller holds over immigration policy. While she held the purse strings to the billions of dollars funneled towards DHS last year, Noem was in many ways little more than a figurehead for Miller’s vision. But even if we were to judge her solely on that role, there were far more missteps than successes.
It was Noem who signed off on a farcical, English-language ad campaign urging self-deportation for undocumented immigrants. It was Noem who repeatedly defied court orders to release detainees like Kilmar Abrego Garcia that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement arrested in their sweeping raids. It was Noem who joined Lewandowski in tapping Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino to lead the aggressive deportation operations that ran amuck in city after city. It was Noem who callously smeared dead Americans as “domestic terrorists” after agents under her authority shot and killed them in Minneapolis. All of this has helped tank Trump’s approval rating on immigration, once considered his top issue.








