President of the United States, Donald Trump, has dismissed his National Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, on Thursday after a cascade of scandals, disagreements, and discrepancies with the management of the department that oversees migration agencies such as ICE and the Border Patrol, which, during their deployment in Minnesota, killed two American citizens, causing an angry reaction across the country. Another crack in the administration that is going through its worst moments and is being strongly criticized in Congress (which has a Republican majority in both chambers) and will face even more criticism in the coming days. On the list, Attorney General Pam Bondi, for the handling of the Epstein Case. Or FBI Director Kash Patel, for using agency resources to travel around the U.S. or the world to attend hockey games or concerts of his girlfriend, escorted by federal agents.
"I am pleased to announce that the highly respected U.S. Senator from the great state of Oklahoma, Markwayne Mullin, will assume the position of Secretary of Homeland Security of the United States starting March 31, 2026. The current secretary, Kristi Noem, who has served us effectively and has achieved numerous and spectacular results (especially at the border!), will become Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas, our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere that we will announce on Saturday in Doral, Florida. I thank Kristi for her service at "Homeland"," Trump wrote on his social media.
Noem's management, a former governor of South Dakota who had options to be Trump's vice president, has been plagued by controversies and scandals. But the final blow came after a disastrous appearance in Congress where she was not only criticized for her repeated use of luxury private jets, her alleged extramarital relationship with her chief advisor, her inability to admit that labeling the slain protesters as "domestic terrorists" was a mistake, or for awarding $220 million contracts directly to the husband of a former advisor. But because she made the worst mistake of all: pointing out and exposing the president by saying that he was aware of that advertising campaign awarded without bidding.
Republican politicians had publicly admitted yesterday that Trump was upset and considering her dismissal. And so it happened. "After the hearing, the President of the United States called me, and I'm not going to speak for him, but... you know him. You can ask him, but, in other words... his memories of what happened are different...", said Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana on Wednesday.
Noem is not being fired because Trump, in this term, has chosen a different path. In the first term, high-ranking officials lasted very little, performed poorly, and he went after them, leaving an image of discoordination, division, and amateurism. This time, Trump is acting differently. He had to give up his first candidate for Attorney General because not even his most loyal supporters in Congress considered him acceptable. But he has clung to the others at any cost. And even when he has chosen to demote them, he looks for a dignified way out for them. That's what he did with Mike Walz, National Security Advisor, who was dismissed but to become the ambassador to the UN.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced just days after Trump returned to power the advertising campaign, in which Noem warned migrants to either return to their countries voluntarily or be deported. The key is that a company linked to Noem, led by the husband of her former spokesperson, won the contract, which was awarded by bypassing the bidding process.
Noem also stated in Congress that the contracts were bid among several companies. "My investigation shows that they were not bid," Senator Kennedy responded, explaining how one of the two beneficiary companies, Safe America Media, was formed just 11 days before being awarded the nearly $143 million contract. "Most of the money," according to Kennedy, was subsequently subcontracted to Strategy Group, a company whose CEO is married to Noem's former spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, who also resigned from her position just a few weeks ago.
The company, led by Ben Yoho, also played a significant role in Noem's campaign for governor of North Dakota in 2022, according to a very relevant exclusive from ProPublica, which reported on the advertising contracts in November.
At a political congress around the same time, Noem suggested that the president not only was aware of the decision of an advertising campaign, in which she would have the lead role, but had even asked her for a favor related to it: "'I want the first ad, I want you to thank me. I want you to thank me for closing the border'," Noem said the president urged her. "I said, 'Yes, sir. I will thank you for closing the border'," Noem happily recounted last year. Yesterday, in the Senate, she was pressed to confirm if it had happened that way, even by Republican senators. She has never said that Trump was aware of anything illegal or irregular, but that he approved the idea of making those videos. Hours after her appearance, she lost her job.
The criticisms of Noem in the past year have been endless, both for the amount of that campaign, the methods used, and because it was considered a promotion campaign for Noem, who has been parodied time and time again for her ease in using clothing, uniforms, or the style of the different agencies she oversees to make videos and photos posing. "Barbie Noem" is known in the U.S. for the accessories.
But above all, for her work at ICE and the Border Patrol. There is a very high number of people who have died in federal custody, at least three American citizens killed, hundreds more cases of Americans arrested for their Latino origin. As well as thousands of complaints of all kinds of abuses, violence, inhumane treatment, illegal deportations, hundreds of court orders disobeyed.
Her appearances, like those of last year, have focused on the number of deportations, barely addressing the complaints of abuses, irregularities, errors, and above all, cruelty by the agencies.