Donald Trump has removed Kristi Noem as secretary of homeland security, ending a tenure marked by the fatal shooting of two US citizens by immigration agents, reports of a personal relationship with a senior adviser, and mounting criticism from members of his own party.
Trump announced the change Thursday in a post on Truth Social, saying Senator Markwayne Mullin, a Republican from Oklahoma, would assume leadership of the Department of Homeland Security from March 31. Noem was offered a consolation posting as special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, a security initiative Trump said he intended to unveil over the weekend.
It was the first significant cabinet dismissal of Trump’s second term.
Mullin, reached by reporters shortly after the announcement, struck a notably personal note. “Because it happened quick, I had to call my dad,” he said, describing it as humbling for “a little kid from west Oklahoma” to be asked to serve in the president’s cabinet.
Noem, for her part, did not address the firing publicly while it was breaking. She was speaking to a gathering of police officials in Nashville at the time and did not raise the subject from the stage. She later thanked Trump on X and pointed to her record at the department.
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Democrats were considerably less restrained. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries offered a two-word assessment — “good riddance” — before clarifying that her departure would do nothing to resolve the standoff over DHS funding. The department has been operating in a partial shutdown since mid-February, when Senate Democrats blocked a spending bill over the conduct of immigration agents. Jeffries said the problem was institutional, not personal. “A change in personnel is not sufficient. We need a change in policy.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was similarly unmoved, saying the underlying dysfunction at the agency ran too deep for a single personnel change to address.
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Among Republicans, the reaction was more telling for what it revealed about the erosion of Noem’s standing within the party. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a reliable administration ally, offered measured praise while acknowledging the obvious: “I think it was time for a change.” Thom Tillis of North Carolina, one of the few Republicans who had called openly for her resignation, had been threatening to obstruct Senate business unless she responded to a series of oversight questions, accusing her of impeding her own department’s inspector general.
Noem’s trajectory at DHS had been deteriorating for months. She became one of the most visible figures of the administration’s immigration enforcement drive, appearing frequently on conservative media and in DHS promotional content as agents fanned out across American cities. But the operation also produced two shooting deaths — Renee Good and, weeks later, Alex Pretti, both US citizens killed by federal agents in Minneapolis. Rather than acknowledge any institutional failure, Noem publicly labelled both individuals domestic terrorists, a characterisation that clashed with the documented facts of their involvement in anti-ICE protests and drew bipartisan condemnation.
Running alongside that controversy were detailed reports of disorder inside the department. The Wall Street Journal published an account in February describing a leadership environment in which Noem and Corey Lewandowski — a former Trump campaign manager serving as her senior adviser — made little effort to conceal what was reported to be a personal relationship, despite both being married. Staff were said to have been berated and subjected to polygraph tests. The pair had been travelling on a luxury Boeing 737 Max fitted with a private cabin, a jet the department has been attempting to procure for roughly $70 million for use in deportation operations. In one documented episode, Lewandowski dismissed a Coast Guard pilot for leaving a blanket of Noem’s aboard a plane, then reversed the decision when it emerged there was no one else qualified to fly them home.
When she appeared before the House and Senate judiciary committees earlier in March, Noem declined to withdraw the domestic terrorism labels and dismissed questions about her relationship with Lewandowski as tabloid gossip. Republican senator John Kennedy used the hearing to question why DHS had directed $220 million to a firm connected to Noem’s former spokesperson for advertising in which she featured prominently.
Noem had once been floated as a potential running mate for Trump ahead of the 2024 election, before an admission in her memoir that she had shot and killed a dog she owned effectively ended that conversation.