Kristi Noem was fired as DHS Secretary due to self-promotion, including a controversial ad campaign she blamed on Trump, and allegations of an improper relationship with Corey Lewandowski. Her leadership failures and political drama overshadowed Trump's immigration agenda.
Key Takeaways
•Noem's dismissal stemmed primarily from her self-promotion, including a $220 million ad campaign she claimed was Trump's idea, which put him in an awkward position.
•Allegations of an extramarital affair with her de facto chief of staff Corey Lewandowski created significant distractions and damaged her standing.
•Her erratic leadership, including feuds with other agencies and mismanagement, led to bipartisan criticism and overshadowed the administration's immigration agenda.
•Trump replaced her with Senator Markwayne Mullin, aiming to maintain loyalty while removing a source of political drama.
Congressional questions about contracts, ads, and extramarital sex ended her tenure. Brendon Smialowski / AFP / Getty Kristi Noem played “Hot Mama” as the walk-up song for her formal introduction at the Department of Homeland Security headquarters in January 2025. President Trump had put her in charge of his signature campaign promise—the largest mass-deportation campaign in U.S. history—and Noem took a fast, flashy approach to the job. She dressed as a Border Patrol agent and an ICE officer, and rode horseback at Mount Rushmore in ads. She flew to El Salvador and posed in front of a prison cell crammed with tattooed inmates. She made no apologies for aggressive enforcement tactics on American streets, even those that likely broke the law, or for the deaths of two U.S. citizens who opposed her approach.
But it wasn’t the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis earlier this year that finally cost Noem her job today, making her the first ousted Cabinet secretary of Trump’s second term. Instead, it was her self-promotion.
Noem’s standing was already shaky when she went to Capitol Hill to testify this week. On Tuesday, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, a Republican, asked whether Trump himself had approved Noem’s $220 million ad campaign that featured her urging migrants to self-deport. Noem said yes, and defended the ads as “effective.”
The ads “were effective in your name recognition,” Kennedy told Noem, saying that she put Trump “in a terribly awkward spot.” He was implying the commission of a cardinal sin for a Trump Cabinet member: seeking to outshine the president. Kennedy told reporters today that he had spoken with Trump. “Her version of the truth and the president’s version of the truth are decidedly different,” Kennedy said.
Noem had been saying for more than a year that the idea for the ads came from Trump himself. But with public opinion souring on Trump’s mass deportations, the messaging campaign that Noem touted as a success—and the no-bid contracts behind it—had come under suspicion from lawmakers. A person familiar with the decision to fire Noem told us that the president was upset about her attempt to pass the blame for the ad campaign onto him, and for her equivocation on the questions about her alleged romantic relationship with Corey Lewandowski, who has been working at DHS as her de facto chief of staff.
“Replacing Kristi was based on the culmination of her many unfortunate leadership failures including the fallout in Minnesota, the ad campaign, the allegations of infidelity, the mismanagement of her staff, and her constant feuding with the heads of other agencies, including CBP and ICE,” one administration official who requested anonymity texted us. “Kristi’s drama sadly overshadowed and distracted from the Administration’s extremely popular immigration agenda, which will continue full force.”
The White House declined to comment.
Some Republicans had urged the president not to get rid of Noem until next month, after the filing deadline for candidates in her home state of South Dakota. Allies of Senate Majority Leader John Thune and members of Trump’s political team were worried that Noem would gather the necessary signatures to announce a campaign for the U.S. Senate or the U.S. House later this year—and thus create a messy primary contest.
Trump clearly couldn’t wait that long, but he added a provision midway through the Truth Social post announcing Noem’s departure: Her transition out of the office would take place on March 31, 2026—the same day as the filing deadline. Trump said Noem will then serve in a newly created special-envoy role for a White House initiative called the “Shield of the Americas,” and promised to give more details at an event in Doral, Florida, on Saturday.
Noem has been fighting to keep her job ever since federal officers shot and killed Pretti on January 24. Suddenly there were calls for Noem to be removed from office not just among Democrats but among some Republicans. Trump removed her from overseeing deportation efforts in Minnesota and sent Tom Homan, his “border czar,” to take over DHS operations there and clean up the mess. Homan and Noem are political rivals.
White House advisers were upset that Noem, nine days after the shooting, announced that all federal agents in Minneapolis would begin wearing body cameras and that the policy would expand across the country as funding became available. This was a central demand of Democrats, who were then threatening to not fund DHS, but Noem had not tied the concession to the ongoing negotiations. Later, White House aides grew concerned when Noem’s team signaled that it would be receptive to a continuing resolution to fund her department, even though the White House wanted a new bill. (At the time, an aide to Noem denied that the secretary supported continuing funding for the department at previously set levels.)
One Trump adviser mused to us that the sustained Democratic attacks on Noem were actually one of the few things helping her stay in her job, because the president did not want to reward his political enemies with her dismissal.
Another nagging issue for the White House was Noem’s personal and professional relationship with Lewandowski, her alleged paramour. After the 2024 election, Lewandowski had angled to become Noem’s chief of staff, only to face pushback from the president, who worried about the reports of their romantic involvement. (Both have denied any improper relationship.) He joined the department instead as a special government employee.
The arrangement did not prevent rumors from spreading, however, and becoming a major distraction for the department. Noem’s acquisition of new DHS aircraft—and use of a luxury jet with a bedroom—brought additional scrutiny to their relationship. During the hearings this week, Democratic lawmakers tried to force Noem to deny under oath any sexual relationship with Lewandowski. She refused to answer directly, dismissing the questions as “tabloid garbage.” Seated behind Noem was her husband.
Lewandowski is expected to leave DHS with Noem at the end of the month, according to a senior department official who was not authorized to discuss the transition. Noem’s spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, left last month amid bipartisan criticism of DHS’s decision to accuse Good and Pretti of “domestic terrorism.”
On the same day that Trump took away Noem’s authority in Minnesota, the secretary spent more than an hour in the Oval Office with the president, hoping to win back his favor. One focus of that meeting was Noem’s continued frustrations with the pace of the border wall’s construction, which she blamed on Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott. The move appeared to buy her some time, and in the week that followed, Trump privately and publicly praised her leadership of DHS.
Noem had long described her relationship with the president as a close one. She told the audience at a Conservative Political Action Committee dinner in February 2025 that it was Trump’s idea to have her play the lead role in an ad blitz that the department had launched earlier that month. “We had several meetings during the transition, talking about it,” Noem said. She had previously appeared in ads for the group FreedomWorks that had impressed the president, Noem told the audience.
“Those beautiful ads you did about South Dakota,” Noem said Trump told her. “They had Mount Rushmore. I want you to do those for the border.” According to Noem, Trump directed her to launch a “marketing campaign” that would “make sure the American people know the truth of what you’re doing.”
Trump told Noem he didn’t want to appear in the ads. “He said: Nope, nope. I want you in the ads. And I want your face in the ads,” Noem told the audience, adding that Trump instructed her about the first ad: “I want you to thank me. I want you to thank me for closing the border.”
“They will run throughout the world,” Noem said Trump told her, “letting America and the world know it has a new leader.” On Thursday, Trump told Reuters that he had nothing to do with the ad campaign: “I never knew anything about it.”
It’s unclear how Trump’s succession plan at DHS will play out over the next few weeks. The president, in a Truth Social post today, said he would install Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma as the new secretary, but Mullin will have to be confirmed by his peers. The deputy-secretary position at DHS is vacant, and the official next in line to take over as acting secretary is Rob Law, the undersecretary for strategy, policy, and plans. But DHS could change its order of succession to install a different official.
Mullin should not have trouble winning a majority vote; Senate Republicans quickly issued statements supporting his nomination, as did at least one Democrat, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. Although the bipartisan desire to see Noem leave could be an incentive to confirm Mullin quickly, his nomination hearing will give Democrats an opportunity to press him to publicly commit to some of the changes to ICE operations that they are seeking as part of negotiations over DHS funding.
By choosing Mullin, Trump is also taking one of his top congressional loyalists out of the Senate. Mullin played a prominent role in shepherding several of the president’s Cabinet picks to confirmation at the start of his second term. Whether Mullin’s successor in the Senate will back the president as staunchly is unclear: Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, a Republican whom Trump derided last month as a “RINO,” or “Republican in name only,” will appoint a replacement to serve until a special election is held. Under Oklahoma law, the interim senator cannot be a candidate in that race.
Noem thanked the president for appointing her to the new position and, in a statement, rattled through her achievements during her 13-month stint. “We have made historic accomplishments at the Department of Homeland Security to make America safe again,” she said.
Within the department, Noem’s ouster was celebrated by some who viewed her as a self-promoter who ran the department erratically. One official put it this way to us: “Lots of happy people here today.”
