Noem Out

National Review Online

Friday, March 06, 2026

 

Most people had seen enough, and now President Trump has, too.

 

On Thursday, Trump announced that he had decided to oust Kristi Noem as secretary of homeland security and was nominating Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma to replace her. Hours earlier, our own Audrey Fahlberg was the first to report Trump was contemplating this change.

 

The former South Dakota governor was never well suited to the job, and neither was her partner in running the department, the loose-cannon former Trump consultant Corey Lewandowski. But Trump picked her and, as a practical matter, the two of them anyway.

 

Noem’s greatest interest seemed to be in wearing various DHS uniforms for the cameras. It was a sign of things to come when she used the occasion of the president’s indefensible deportation of alleged gang members to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador to record a tough-sounding video at the facility with shaved-headed prisoners behind her. When you have a hammer, as they say, everything looks like a nail; when you are concerned overwhelmingly with your image, everything looks like a photo opportunity.

 

Being self-promoting is not a rare quality in Washington, of course, but Noem matched it with cringe-making incompetence.

 

In Minneapolis, individuals who were disrupting ICE activity were shot and killed, and instead of describing the events as a tragic mistake, she preposterously went on TV to describe the rabble-rousers as domestic terrorists. DHS also claimed falsely that Alex Pretti, who was shot in January during a clash with law enforcement, was “an individual [who] wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

 

Minneapolis was the beginning of her downfall, although in fairness to Noem, the operation was directly ordered by the president to make an example of the Twin Cities, and the White House encouraged her in her initial blustery statements on the shootings.

 

When it became clear the operation was unsustainable, Trump decided to effectively demote Noem and send border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota. It was telling that Homan, a sober-minded professional, made it obvious that he had no use for Noem. For their part, Noem and Lewandowski were obsessed with sidelining him and other people who knew what they were doing.

 

Her appetite for self-glorification ultimately did her in. During a hearing this week, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana grilled her on a decision to spend $220 million on DHS ads that prominently featured her on horseback, looking like an extra on the set of a spoof Western. The funding of the campaign was subcontracted to allies of Noem and Lewandowski. In a testy exchange, Noem claimed that Trump authorized the ads, which Trump himself subsequently contradicted (this dispute may depend on what the definition of “authorize” is).

 

In Mullin, a one-time mixed martial arts fighter who ran a successful plumbing business, Trump has tapped a loyal supporter with a low national profile and no background in homeland security or law enforcement.

 

Mullin will be a significant upgrade if he brings higher ethical standards to the department’s funding decisions, listens to and empowers the professionals, and endorses Homan’s approach of focusing apprehensions on “the worst of the worst” and ramping up worksite enforcement.

 

He’ll have to learn on the job, but no one will say he has big shoes to fill.