Trump Is Removing Kristi Noem as DHS Secretary

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that Kristi Noem is out as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security after months of questions around her ability to handle a massive expansion of the agency.

He said Sen. Markwayne Mullin will take her place effective March 31. Noem will take a new post, Trump said.

“The current Secretary, Kristi Noem, who has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!), will be moving to be Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere we are announcing on Saturday in Doral, Florida,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I thank Kristi for her service at ‘Homeland.’”

Mullin told reporters on the Hill he talked to the president and found out about the offer shortly before the statement was released. “It’s an honor to be nominated,” Mullin said, adding he was “excited to get to work, but still have the nomination process to go through.”

At an event with local law enforcement leaders that began just moments after Trump announced her firing on Truth Social, neither Noem nor the attendees acknowledged her ouster. Instead, the outgoing DHS secretary took questions for nearly 25 minutes about how police can best cooperate with DHS, before leaving to cheers.

Noem is the first Cabinet secretary in Trump’s second administration to leave their post.

She has faced a growing list of problems during her short-lived tenure at DHS. Leaked frustrations about her policies at DHS and allegations of inappropriate spending on advertising contracts that feature Noem have escalated tensions between her and Republican lawmakers and the White House, sources told NOTUS.

Corey Lewandowski, Noem’s close aide, has also taken heat in recent weeks over how he has used his own power at the department. Lewandowski is a special government employee who is only supposed to work 150 days per year, though a source told NOTUS he works far more than that and wields considerable influence. Lewandowski is expected to depart the agency, too, according to another source familiar.

The flow of negative headlines and lawmakers’ troubles getting emergency aid quickly also left her with few allies.

“The view among Republicans on the Hill is Secretary Noem is less interested in doing the blocking and tackling of her day job than she is with promoting herself in taxpayer-funded TV commercials,” one senior GOP aide previously told NOTUS.

For months, Republican allies close to the White House and current and former DHS employees have questioned how long Noem would be able to stick around with multiple scandals. One Trump ally told NOTUS they were “not surprised” by the president’s move, calling it “a long time coming.”

The final straw, it seemed, came after Trump reportedly became upset by Noem’s testimony on the Hill this week. Noem testified under oath that Trump had personally approved a $220 million ad campaign featuring her urging unauthorized immigrants to leave. DHS awarded the contract for the campaign to a firm with ties to Noem.

“[The ads] were effective in your name recognition,” Republican Sen. John Kennedy, a close Trump ally, told Noem during a Senate Judiciary hearing. “To me, it puts the president in a terribly awkward spot. I’m not saying you’re not telling the truth, it’s just hard for me to believe, knowing the president as I do, that you said ‘Mr. President, here’s some ads I’ve cut and I’m going to spend $220 million running them,’ that he would have agreed to that.”

Some Republican senators had previously called for Noem’s resignation following the deadly January shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal immigration agents in Minnesota.

Republicans have also been frustrated with FEMA’s response time with federal emergency aid and grant funding to their states.

Early in her tenure at DHS, Noem implemented a policy that required her to personally review all contracts over $100,000 across the department, including at FEMA. Employees said the policy made it much harder to get sizable sums of money out the door.

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who previously called on Noem to resign, confronted her on Tuesday over disaster spending.

“You failed at FEMA,” Tillis said at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. “The Homeland Security Act of 2002 expressly prohibits the secretary of Homeland Security from restricting or diverting FEMA resources from the agency’s mission. Based on your disaster response, the chart that I just showed you, I have reason to believe that you’re violating the law, either knowingly or unknowingly.”

The next day, Rep. Deborah Ross of North Carolina said FEMA funds had “magically” been approved for the state after Tillis’ questioning.

Noem faced strained relationships with some senior administration officials within the White House as well. Noem and Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, did not get along, according to two sources familiar with that relationship, leading to a cascade of reporting of a “bitter feud.”

In his post Thursday, Trump touted Mullin’s work in Congress, first in the House and now the Senate, calling him a “MAGA Warrior, and former undefeated professional MMA fighter.”

“Markwayne will work tirelessly to Keep our Border Secure, Stop Migrant Crime, Murderers, and other Criminals from illegally entering our Country, End the Scourge of Illegal Drugs and, MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN,” the president wrote.

Questions about whether the president would oust Noem swirled around Washington on Thursday.

One MAGA strategist texted NOTUS earlier in the day that they were hearing the president may move to replace her, but cautioned “that woman loves to pull a rabbit out of the hat” to save her position.

Some in the administration, they said, had been concerned about ongoing speculation of corruption, as reported by ProPublica, and said it was just “the tip of the iceberg.”

Trump has largely resisted shaking up his Cabinet in a major way since returning to office. The president, sources familiar with his thinking said, has said that he didn’t want to give the media or Democrats “a scalp,” and succumb to pressure to fire any secretaries. The only other comparable moment in the president’s second term was when he effectively demoted then-national security adviser Mike Waltz to UN ambassador after he accidentally added a journalist to a Signal messaging chat.

Shortly after the president’s announcement on his social media platform, Sen. Roger Wicker said he was having lunch with Mullin, who then abruptly got up and left.

Lawmakers from both parties appeared to welcome the change in leadership.

Rep. Don Bacon called Mullin a “friend” and said the job is not about getting on television. He said Noem was “too incendiary.” He said the DHS secretary’s job “isn’t about getting headlines, it’s about getting work done.”

Sen. John Fetterman, who was one of seven Democrats to back Noem’s nomination, called Mullin an “upgrade” and said he would vote for him. He told reporters he knows Mullin and wants to work with him “for making America more secure.”

“Anybody would be an improvement over Noem. She was a gross recruiting error,” Rep. Steve Cohen told NOTUS.

Sen. John Barrasso, the number two Republican leader, called Mullin a “terrific” senator and said he’s confident he’ll be able to get the votes for his new role. “We’ve been successful at whipping for everybody that the president has nominated, and I expect the same for Markwayne Mullin.”