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.
Being fully fired might have been more of a kindness, as it would have freed her up to carve a new path — or at least write a tell-all book. Meanwhile, Noem made enemies of the lawmakers whose states rely on the disaster aid that she’s curtailed and hamstrung through her aborted attempt to dismantle the Federal Emergency Management Agency. DHS’ inspector general recently said the department “systematically obstructed” his work during her reign. She’s reportedly taken to flying around the country in a plane purchased for deporting immigrants alongside Lewandowski. And she reportedly questioned DHS staffers under polygraph exam for potentially leaking her behavior to the media, a baffling choice for someone who seems so obsessed with public perception. And yet, reportedly it was none of that that doomed Noem. It was instead her willingness to defend herself when pressed by putting Trump in the hot seat. When asked about her $220 million dollar ad campaign, Noem told senators Tuesday that the president himself had signed off on the expenditures. Trump denied doing so in an interview with Reuters and reportedly was unhappy with being used as a cover. Blaming Trump for taking an unpopular action is a one-way ticket to excommunication in the best of times, let alone when he’s spent months considering her fate and weighing potential replacement. True to form, Trump’s Truth Social post announcing her departure cast her as an afterthought compared to his effusive praise for her replacement, Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla. Noem, Trump said, would be instead shunted to the soon-to-be-announced “Shield of the Americas” security initiative as special envoy. Being fully fired might have been more of a kindness, as it would have freed her up to carve a new path — or at least write a tell-all book. Instead, Noem finds herself powerless and tethered to the man whose coattails she hoped to ride no matter how much devastation she caused in his name. She leaves behind a department less poised to handle threats like terrorism and cyberattacks it was hastily cobbled together to address and a less secure homeland overall. Noem’s transformation into a MAGA darling may have gotten her the job, but it was her lack of competence in even the narrowed scope she was cast in that ultimately doomed her.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House. 
