The Firing of Kristi Noem

The dismissal of the Director of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem on March 5, 2026, was a bittersweet moment. It comes just after a congressional grilling where she was torn apart by that near-extinct bird of bipartisanship for her innumerable examples of incompetence, abuse, constitutional laws broken, and corruption. Even prior to her firing by Donald Trump (something that came to her attention secondhand), she had articles of impeachment submitted against her, which I think are important to push through given the scope of the crimes.

Among the articles of impeachment introduced to the House on 01/14/2026, there were three main categories: 1) Obstruction of Congress, 2) Constitutional violations of American citizens, and 3) Corruption for personal benefit.

Elected congresspersons have been prevented from entering DHS facilities on at least five separate occasions outlined in the impeachment articles. It is their legal right to do so, and they do not have to provide 7-day notice – an invention that was dictated by Noem herself and not in any binding legal document.

The second section on constitutional violations goes for the jugular, but in a strangely bloodless legalese. I reproduced some of it here so you can see just how egregious it is. “Kristi Lynn Arnold Noem has repeatedly violated the Immigration and Nationality Act, the First and Fourth Amendments of the United States Constitution, and due process rights of American citizens by directing Immigration and Customs Enforcement to make widespread warrantless arrests, forgo due process, and use violence against United States citizens, lawful residents, and other individuals.”

If you will permit me this tangent, yes, the initials of her name spell KLAN and I cannot imagine a more on-the-nose arrangement. I am genuinely surprised she has not worn monogrammed shirts. Certainly, she had done nothing to dismiss this as a twist of fate. If anything, it looks like she has actively worked hard to live up to her name.

The impeachment articles provide select examples as evidence for their accusations. In the DHS initiative in Chicago in September 2025, Operation Midway Blitz, ICE engaged in a premeditated violent crackdown on protestors exercising their right to protest the illegal and brutal tactics used by ICE. This is just a single example of gratuitous First Amendment rights violations, but I think it is emblematic. Additionally, it was declared on the DHS website prior to the commencement of the operation, speaking against this being an operation that just spiraled out of control. No, unfortunately, this was entirely premeditated. It should be noted that the vast majority of people arrested during these operations had no criminal record at all.

In September of 2025, ICE raided 7500 S. South Shore Drive in Chicago. While allegedly looking for gang members, ICE invaded the apartments of residents without any warrants. A judge in Illinois ruled against the government in many of these cases where no probable cause or warrant was produced.

This is not an exhaustive list and just two instances from a single city in the fall of 2025. The Congressional Oversight Committee that interviewed Noem over two days at the beginning of March 2026 had far more to say, and I have linked an article below that expands on this further.

Her level of corruption has been less than Trump by far, but still massively egregious. And if this were normal times (and the media were not complicit), the following story would have been the front-page of the New York Times: “Secretary Noem used taxpayer dollars to fund a $220 million ad campaign for recruiting ICE agents. Kristi Lynn Arnold Noem used the “national emergency” declared at the southern border to bypass the normal contract process, which includes competitive bidding, to award multi-million-dollar contracts to Republican-led ad agencies.” Awarding contracts to your friends so they can kick it back to you. Tale as old as time.

So what? She has been fired. Justice was served, right? The reason this is not over is because she is not in prison yet. Until these people are held accountable, we can expect it again because there are no consequences for it. Politicians cannot be expected to do the right thing. The second, and I think more concerning situation, is that Noem was by no means the only unfit person in Trump’s Cabinet. There is rampant corruption and law-breaking. There are pending articles of impeachment of the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, over her obstructionism of Epstein files release. Tom Homan has been credibly accused of bribery that has gone uninvestigated. Pete Hegseth has been called to answer for his war crime policies with the “double tap” of Venezuelan boats destroyed with the survivors murdered as they floated in the flotsam and most recently with ordering the attack on a defenseless Iranian vessel. Trump is choosing Cabinet members that are bereft of morals with no respect for the Constitution to push his agenda. He is breeding scapegoats. Noem has been under fire for months, and she was not even fired because of any of the above-mentioned scandals and decisions. The cited reason was for the $220 million-dollar ad campaign she greenlighted which seems awfully trivial in comparison to things like calling two American citizens murdered by her own agents “domestic terrorists” before any kind of investigation had been started. He had her push every boundary, break every law, and when he had squeezed every drop out of her, he discarded her and will give her a cushy sinecure to keep her mouth shut. Trump is deliberately choosing these people to push his fascist agenda forward, and then when the heat gets so bad that there is too much resistance, he cuts them loose. I am glad that Noem is fired but this level of corruption is rampant in the GOP and there is absolutely no shortage of candidates that will happily go goose-stepping into the DHS position. The Republican tapped by Trump to take over the DHS is Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin. Meet the new boss – same as the old boss. The man whose first name is underlined red by Microsoft Word is a self-proclaimed MAGAt and has been entirely on board with the DHS boilerplate under Trump. He will likely be worse than she was. And when the heat grows too hot and the clamor for his dismissal grows to a fevered intensity, he will be cut loose too, and it the cycle will repeat.

These people are just the diseased limbs of an infested tree. It will not end by cutting them off. It only ends when the whole thing is pulled up, roots and all. One way of limiting the spread of this is to go after the Cabinet members when they are cut loose. Noem needs to be prosecuted immediately for her clear crimes. She needs to be charged at a state level wherever possible in a blue state (other than Colorado) to prevent Republican governors from caving to Trump demands to pardon them. If these criminals in the Cabinet see that their sovereign cannot save them, they may think twice about acquiescing to all of Trump’s demands.

References:

The impeachment of Kristi Noem articles as submitted to Congress:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-resolution/996/text

Cory Booker catches Kristi Noem lying under oath:

https://newrepublic.com/post/207283/cory-booker-kristi-noem-lying-under-oath

Warrantless Searches:

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2026-01-22/immigration-officers-assert-sweeping-power-to-enter-homes-without-judges-warrant-memo-says

Kristi Noem’s attack on First Ammendment with Operation Midway Blitz:

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/09/08/ice-launches-operation-midway-blitz-honor-katie-abraham-target-criminal-illegal

https://www.wbez.org/immigration/2026/02/20/operation-midway-blitz-effects-latino-neighborhoods-pilsen-little-village-southeast-side

Trump firing Kristi Noem and the manner he did it:

https://abcnews.com/Politics/trump-privately-expresses-frustration-noem-after-senate-hearing/story?id=130794961