Kristi Noem Finally Lost Trump and Job: $220 Million Ad Campaign, Senate Hearing That Sealed Her Fate, Ist Cabinet Firing of Donald Trump’s 2nd Term

She was confirmed 59–34 by the United States Senate on January 25, 2025. She was the face of the most aggressive immigration enforcement operation in modern American history. She starred in $220 million worth of taxpayer-funded television advertisements. She flew to El Salvador to film warning videos inside the world’s most notorious prison.

She oversaw the deployment of 4,000 federal agents into the state of Minnesota. Two American citizens were shot dead by those agents in January 2026. She called them domestic terrorists. Their own government’s ICE director later said he had no evidence they were.

She refused to retract the statement six times on live television before the United States Congress. And on March 5, 2026 — one day after the most damaging congressional hearing of her career — President Donald Trump fired her. This is the complete story of how Kristi Noem lost Trump, and her job.

Kristi Noem Speaks After Being Fired As DHS Secretary

The Noem DHS Tenure and Firing at a Glance

Kristi Noem Fired Details

President Donald Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday, making her the first Cabinet secretary to leave her post and capping off a tumultuous year in which she oversaw his increasingly unpopular mass deportation agenda.

The firing — announced on Truth Social on March 5, 2026, the day after Noem faced the most bruising two-day congressional hearing in recent memory — was simultaneously shocking and entirely predictable. Shocking because Trump’s second term had been remarkably stable by the standards of his first, which cycled through five DHS secretaries in four years. Predictable because the signs had been accumulating for months: the Minneapolis killings, the FEMA bottleneck, the Lewandowski controversy, the ad campaign that was either $200 million or $220 million depending on who was counting and that may or may not have gone through competitive bidding to a company incorporated eight days before receiving the contract.

Noem’s firing, by far the most prominent dismissal of Trump’s second term, follows months of rumors that she was on the way out.

She was not just fired. She was given a new title — Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas — and a new role focused on Western Hemisphere security. Corey Lewandowski, a close aide and adviser to Noem, is also expected to leave DHS.

The man chosen to replace her says everything about what Trump wanted more of and what he wanted less of. Trump said he would nominate Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin in her place — a former undefeated professional MMA fighter and fiercely loyal first-term senator whom Trump described as “a MAGA Warrior.”

Less drama. More muscle. That is the replacement. This is the complete story of what led to it.

Part One: The Rise — From South Dakota Governor to the Face of Mass Deportation

The Confirmation That Seemed Like a Triumph

When Kristi Noem was confirmed as Secretary of Homeland Security on January 25, 2025, with a 59–34 Senate vote, it appeared to be the beginning of a triumphant chapter in one of the most ambitious political careers in the Republican Party. She had served four terms in the U.S. House, two terms as South Dakota’s first female governor, and had survived multiple controversies — the dog-shooting memoir, the daughter’s appraiser license scandal, the COVID-era lockdown defiance — to arrive at one of the most powerful positions in the federal government.

DHS is not a ceremonial role. It is the department that controls immigration enforcement, border security, FEMA, TSA, the Secret Service, the Coast Guard, and the cybersecurity infrastructure of the United States government. It is, in the context of Trump’s second term agenda, arguably the most important position in the Cabinet after the presidency itself. Giving it to Kristi Noem was a statement of extraordinary trust.

She repaid that trust by becoming the most visible face of the administration’s immigration enforcement agenda — appearing in action-style recruitment videos alongside ICE and Border Patrol agents, traveling to El Salvador to film inside the Terrorism Confinement Center known as CECOT to warn migrants about the consequences of remaining in the United States, and overseeing a series of militarized immigration surges in major U.S. cities, operations that put the most aggressive enforcement tactics on vivid, often violent display.

Senator Tim Sheehy: From Minnesota to the Navy SEALs, Montana Entrepreneur, U.S. Senator, and the Brian McGinnis Capitol Hill Confrontation

Operation Metro Surge: Minnesota

The operation that would ultimately define — and end — Kristi Noem’s tenure as DHS Secretary began in Minnesota in January 2026. Operation Metro Surge targeted the entire state of Minnesota, including Minneapolis and St. Paul. At the height of the operation, there were roughly 4,000 federal agents in the state and White House officials say that there have been at least 4,000 arrests connected with the federal operation.

It was aggressive. It was visible. It was designed to send a message about the seriousness of the administration’s enforcement commitment. And it produced, in rapid succession, two incidents that would become the defining catastrophe of Noem’s tenure.

Part Two: The Deaths That Changed Everything

Renee Good: January 7, 2026

Good, a mother of three children and a poet, was a 37-year-old U.S. citizen killed in separate shootings by federal agents in Minneapolis in January.

Renee Nicole Good was an award-winning poet and a mother. She was present in Minneapolis during Operation Metro Surge — an American citizen in her own city, on her own streets. She was fatally shot by an ICE agent on January 7, 2026.

Within hours of her death, Kristi Noem and other officials within the Trump administration publicly characterized the incident as an act of domestic terrorism — describing Good as someone who had intended to kill federal officers, framing her death as the tragic but necessary result of a dangerous confrontation with a dangerous individual.

There was video. The video showed something different from what Noem described.

Alex Pretti: January 24, 2026

Pretti, an ICU nurse who worked with veterans, was a 37-year-old U.S. citizen killed in separate shootings by federal agents in Minneapolis in January. Their deaths, both captured on video, have led to increased national scrutiny into Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents and the often brutal enforcement tactics they employ against civilians.

Alex Pretti was an ICU nurse who worked with veterans. He was killed by Border Patrol agents on January 24, 2026 — seventeen days after Renee Good.

Two Americans. Both 37 years old. Both killed by federal agents in the same city within the same month. One a poet and mother. One a nurse who cared for veterans. Both immediately characterized by the Department of Homeland Security as domestic terrorists.

In the immediate aftermath of the dual homicides, Noem and other officials within the Trump administration attempted to spin the narrative of their deaths to quell public backlash. To do so, they smeared Pretti, an ICU nurse who worked with veterans, and Good, an award-winning poet and mother, as “domestic terrorists” intent on killing federal officers.

The backlash was immediate. National. And it did not stop.

Noem faced criticism in recent weeks over her handling of ICE operations in Minneapolis after the killings of Good and Pretti by federal law enforcement. She was removed from leading operations in the state following the scrutiny, and Border Czar Tom Homan was sent in to take over.

Being removed from leading the operation in your own department. Replaced by the border czar. That is not a minor personnel shuffle. That is the first sign that the White House had lost confidence in Noem’s management of the situation that was doing the most damage to the administration’s public standing.

Austin Mass Shooting at Buford’s Bar on 6th Street: Everything We Know — The Attack, the Suspect, the Victims, and the FBI Terrorism Investigation

Part Three: The Ad Campaign — $220 Million, No Competitive Bidding, and a Company Founded Eight Days Before Getting the Contract

The Self-Deportation Campaign

In the congressional hearings Tuesday and Wednesday, lawmakers questioned Noem about the $200 million ad campaign she oversaw that urged anyone in the U.S. illegally to deport voluntarily. The ad campaign, which was conducted mostly in English, featured Noem. According to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm, DHS has spent almost $80 million to air the ads since the start of 2025, not including the cost of production.

The concept of the campaign was straightforward: use advertising to encourage undocumented immigrants to leave the United States voluntarily rather than face deportation by force. The execution was something else entirely.

Kristi Noem featured prominently in the ads — sleekly produced, action-style videos that showcased her alongside federal agents, delivering warnings about the consequences of remaining in the country without documentation. The ads ran across television markets nationwide. They were visually sophisticated and professionally produced. And they cost an extraordinary amount of money.

Depending on the accounting, the total cost of the campaign was somewhere between $200 million and $220 million in taxpayer funds.

The Competitive Bidding Problem

Colorado Rep. Joe Neguse accused the Department of Homeland Security of fraudulently granting a $143 million advertising contract to a company with ties to Secretary Kristi Noem’s political allies. Noem’s department was infused with $170 billion, money granted by Congress that has since sparked questions over where and how it is being spent.

Democrats and Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, questioned whether the contracts went through a competitive bidding process and whether Noem’s associates unfairly benefited from the process. Noem argued that bids for the ads were properly submitted, but Kennedy said his research shows “you did not bid them out” and, in one instance, chose a company that was formed “11 days before you picked them.”

Eleven days. The company that received a contract worth tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money was incorporated eleven days before receiving it. Rep. Joe Neguse noted that the media company is affiliated with a former political director of the National Republican Congressional Committee. He said it’s registered to a political operative in Virginia and was incorporated eight days before the contract went out.

Eight days or eleven days — the discrepancy in the reporting is itself less important than the underlying reality: a company with no apparent operational history, affiliated with Republican political operatives, received a massive government contract to produce advertisements starring the head of the agency that awarded the contract.

Sen. John Kennedy — a Republican from Louisiana, not a Democratic critic — was pointed in his assessment. “Well, they were effective in your name recognition,” Kennedy said after Noem defended the ads as being “extremely effective.” “It troubles me. A fifth to a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayer money, when we’re scratching over every penny.”

The Claim That Ended Everything

But the ad campaign’s cost and contracting questions, damaging as they were, were not the final blow. The final blow came from Noem’s own testimony.

Noem’s termination was largely due to her claim in testimony to a Senate panel on Tuesday that Trump personally approved the $220 million taxpayer-funded ad campaign about DHS immigration enforcement.

Noem told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that Trump approved the multimillion-dollar ad campaign.

Not so, according to the White House. “POTUS did not sign off on a $220 MILLION dollar ad campaign. Absolutely not,” a White House official told NBC News on Thursday.

Trump told the Reuters news agency on Thursday, “I never knew anything about” the ad campaign.

Sen. John Kennedy told reporters Trump was “mad as a murder hornet” when the two men spoke after the hearing.

Mad as a murder hornet. That is the image of the President of the United States after his DHS Secretary told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he personally approved a $220 million advertising campaign featuring her face. “That really upset POTUS,” a White House official told the news outlet, referring to Noem’s testimony.

When you blame the president for your own decision in front of the Senate — and the president immediately and publicly denies it — your career in that administration is over. The only question is timing.

Part Four: The Hearing — Two Days That Sealed Her Fate

Tuesday, March 3: The Senate Judiciary Committee

Noem appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 3, 2026, for her first congressional hearing since the Minneapolis killings. It was supposed to be an oversight hearing about DHS operations. It became a four-hour reckoning.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., during the hearing Tuesday where Noem was testifying, called her leadership of DHS a “disaster.” “We’re an exceptional nation,” Tillis told her that day. “And one of the reasons we’re exceptional is we expect exceptional leadership. And you have demonstrated anything but that.”

Thom Tillis is a Republican senator from North Carolina who voted to confirm Kristi Noem. He called her leadership of DHS a disaster on live television. Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — both of whom voted to confirm Noem — demanded her resignation in January. At the March 3 Senate Judiciary oversight hearing, Tillis called Noem’s tenure “a disaster” and threatened to block all of Trump’s nominations until she answered his questions.

On the Minneapolis killings, senator after senator pressed Noem to retract her characterization of Renee Good and Alex Pretti as domestic terrorists. Senator after senator was refused.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar criticized Noem for the deaths of Pretti and Good, saying: “So your agents, not only their actions resulted in the deaths of two innocent American citizens, but they repeatedly violated my constituents’ First Amendment rights to assemble. You say you believe in the Second Amendment right to bear arms, but Alex Pretti was criticized repeatedly by officials in the Administration for having a lawful permit to carry and having a gun. Your agents violated the Fourth Amendment rights of my constituents by ramming through doors of innocent people’s homes, innocent citizens’ homes, without any kind of a warrant, and violated the Fifth Amendment right to due process. So, as I’ve shared with my colleagues, if you believe in federalism, in freedom, and in liberty, you should be horrified by what the Department of Homeland Security did in Minnesota.”

Wednesday, March 4: The House Judiciary Committee

The second day was worse.

The committee’s ranking member, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., asked Noem more than six times why she branded Good and Pretti as domestic terrorists and if she stood by her statements. Noem called the killings “an absolute tragedy” and offered condolences to the victims’ families. However, she repeatedly refused to walk back her rhetoric, pointing to the ongoing investigations into their killings.

The exchange between Raskin and Noem was extraordinary in its length, its intensity, and its ultimate futility. Raskin asked the same question six times. Six times Noem declined to answer it directly.

“Madame Secretary, based on what you know today, were Renee Good and Alex Pretti domestic terrorists?” asked Raskin. “Congressman, what happened in Minnesota in those two incidents was an absolute tragedy,” Noem said. “Were they domestic terrorists as you said to the country?” Raskin said. “My condolences to their families, because I know their lives will never be the same after that happened,” Noem said.

Raskin reminded Noem that her own acting ICE Director Todd Lyons had testified to Congress that he had no knowledge whatsoever that Alex Pretti and Renee Good were domestic terrorists. “This is your guy,” Raskin said. “He admitted that was wrong. Why won’t you do that?”

Noem’s own ICE director had already admitted the domestic terrorism characterization was wrong. She still would not.

“You told a lie about them,” Raskin charged. “You said that they were domestic terrorists. Do you regret that?” “I offer my condolences to those families,” Noem replied.

Condolences are not retractions. Six times the question was asked. Six times condolences were offered. The word “retraction” never came.

The TSA PreCheck Debacle

The Minneapolis killings and the ad campaign were not the only institutional failures that came up during the hearings. Just days before the hearing, Noem and her top adviser Corey Lewandowski made the decision to temporarily suspend TSA PreCheck amid the partial government shutdown — which later had to be reversed after the White House stepped in.

Suspending TSA PreCheck — the trusted traveler program used by millions of American air travelers — is not a minor operational decision. It is the kind of decision that disrupts millions of people’s lives immediately and visibly. The fact that it had to be reversed by White House intervention is the kind of detail that tells a president everything he needs to know about whether his DHS Secretary is making sound operational judgments.

“Kristi’s Drama Overshadowed the Agenda”

By the evening of March 4, 2026 — hours after the House hearing ended — NBC News reported that Trump had grown frustrated with Noem and had begun considering replacements. The next morning, the decision was made.

An official summarized the White House’s view plainly: “Kristi’s drama sadly overshadowed and distracted from the Administration’s extremely popular immigration agenda, which will continue full force.”

That single sentence is the complete explanation for everything that followed. The agenda is not the problem. The drama is the problem. And Kristi Noem had become the drama.

Part Five: The Firing — Truth Social at Noon

Trump’s Announcement

Trump wrote on Truth Social: “I am pleased to announce that the Highly Respected United States Senator from the Great State of Oklahoma, Markwayne Mullin, will become the United States Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS), effective March 31, 2026.” He added that Noem, who he said “has served us well,” will take over a new role called “Envoy for The Shield of the Americas,” describing the position as one that will lead “our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere.”

The language is classically Trumpian in its particular combination of praise and dismissal. She “served us well.” She had “numerous and spectacular results.” She is being given a new role with a grand title. The word “fired” does not appear. But the meaning is unmistakable: the head of the most powerful domestic security agency in the United States federal government is being moved to a newly invented diplomatic position that did not exist before the moment she needed to be removed from the one she had.

The Nashville Speech She Did Not Cancel

Noem did not acknowledge her departure as DHS Secretary in her remarks at an event with local law enforcement in Nashville immediately after Trump’s announcement.

She was in Nashville, Tennessee, delivering the keynote address at the Sergeants Benevolent Association Major Cities Conference, when Trump posted his announcement on Truth Social. She took the stage. She spoke to the room full of law enforcement officers. She did not mention that she had just been fired. She talked about leadership. About breaking down silos between agencies. About making good decisions.

The optics of a Cabinet secretary continuing to deliver a keynote speech minutes after the president has publicly announced her replacement are unusual by any measure. But Kristi Noem has never been a person who shows the wound in public. She posted thanks to Trump on X later that day, listing her accomplishments and expressing enthusiasm for her new role. “In this new role, I will be able to build on the partnerships and national security expertise I forged over the last 13 months as Secretary of Homeland Security,” she wrote.

Thirteen months. The entire arc of her DHS tenure — from January 2025 confirmation to March 2026 firing — compressed into thirteen months.

Lewandowski Goes Too

Corey Lewandowski — the former Trump campaign manager, the DHS “special government employee” who functioned as Noem’s de facto chief of staff, the man at the center of the blanket incident, the affair allegations, the shadow authority at DHS — is also leaving with her. Lewandowski, who was one of the first staff members on Trump’s 2016 campaign for president, faced scrutiny from lawmakers over his role at the department, including over whether he had the power to approve grants and contracts. When Noem goes, Lewandowski goes. The two had been linked professionally and personally throughout her DHS tenure, and whatever the exact nature of that connection, the institutional disruption it caused followed both of them to the door.

Part Six: The Replacement — Markwayne Mullin

The Former MMA Fighter Who Will Run DHS

Mullin, a former MMA fighter, served for a decade in the House before he won a 2022 special election to the Senate. Trump described him as “a MAGA Warrior, and former undefeated professional MMA fighter” who “truly gets along well with people, and knows the Wisdom and Courage required to Advance our America First Agenda.”

Markwayne Mullin is 47 years old, an Oklahoma Republican, and the only Native American in the United States Senate. He is a former professional MMA fighter — literally an undefeated combat athlete — who transitioned from business to politics and has been one of Trump’s most loyal Senate allies. He is not a policy specialist in immigration or homeland security. He is a loyal, disciplined, tough-in-the-ways-Trump-values presence who will execute the agenda without generating the “drama” that cost Noem her position.

Mullin told reporters after the president’s announcement Thursday that Noem “was tasked with a very difficult job” and “performed the best she can do” under the circumstances. “I think there’s an opportunity to build off successes and there’s also opportunity to build off things that maybe didn’t go quite as planned.”

Things that maybe didn’t go quite as planned. That is the diplomatic summary of two Americans killed, a $220 million ad campaign under investigation, FEMA bottlenecked, TSA PreCheck suspended and reversed, and a Senate hearing that made a Republican senator call the whole thing “a disaster.”

Part Seven: The Reactions — From Minneapolis to Capitol Hill

Minnesota: “Good Riddance”

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey posted “Good riddance” after news of Noem’s firing broke. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said on X that it was “good she’s gone,” but stressed that DHS needs a “complete overhaul.”

U.S. Sen. Tina Smith released a statement saying: “Firing Kristi Noem will not bring back Alex Pretti. It will not bring back Renee Good. It will not make Minnesota whole again after the horror and devastation wrought upon us by Operation Metro Surge.”

Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy said: “Good riddance to Kristi Noem, whose cruelty and corruption is a reflection of the mission that sent her to Minnesota. She lost a job title and access to a private jet. Minnesotans lost their freedom, lost family members, and Renee Good and Alex Pretti lost their lives.”

Democrats: Change in Person Is Not Enough

“Kristi Noem is gone. Good riddance,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said at a news conference, adding that “a change in personnel is not sufficient” to reopen DHS. “We need a change in policy that has to be bold, dramatic, transformational and meaningful,” he said.

Sen. Chuck Schumer said in a social media post that “the problems at DHS go much deeper than any one person.”

FEMA: The Damage Beyond Immigration

The damage was not limited to immigration enforcement. She bottlenecked FEMA’s Hurricane Helene disaster relief by requiring her personal approval on expenses over $100,000, cycled through three acting FEMA administrators, and presided over mass cuts to that agency’s workforce.

Requiring personal approval on FEMA disaster relief expenses over $100,000 — during an active hurricane relief operation — is a bureaucratic constraint that translates directly into delayed aid to American families in crisis. Three acting FEMA administrators in thirteen months. Mass workforce cuts at the agency responsible for responding to natural disasters. The immigration story was the loudest one. The FEMA story was arguably the one that touched more American lives.

Part Eight: The Legacy — What the Thirteen Months Actually Produced

What She Will Claim as Accomplishments

Noem’s own accounting of her tenure focuses on what the administration would call historic border enforcement results: the reduction in illegal border crossings, the massive increase in deportations, the ICE hiring surge, and the operational capacity she built for the administration’s mass deportation agenda. As secretary, Noem oversaw the start of a hiring surge to bring on thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and the proliferation of Border Patrol agents as enforcers throughout the country.

By the administration’s own metrics — the number of arrests, the number of deportations, the deterrent effect on border crossings — there are genuine results to claim. The border numbers changed during her tenure. The enforcement infrastructure expanded. The deportation pipeline was built and operated at a scale that previous administrations had not attempted.

What History Will Record

History, however, will not record Kristi Noem’s DHS tenure primarily through the lens of enforcement statistics. It will record it through the lens of two American citizens — a poet and mother, and an ICU nurse who cared for veterans — shot dead by federal agents in Minneapolis in January 2026. And it will record the DHS Secretary who called them domestic terrorists within hours of their deaths and refused six times on national television to retract that characterization even after her own ICE director said it was wrong.

“Minnesotans will never forget the terror that Kristi Noem unleashed upon our state. Firing her is just the first step to ending the lawlessness that she oversaw at DHS,” Rep. Betty McCollum said.

That is not the legacy Kristi Noem wrote on the side of the $220 million taxpayer-funded ads that featured her face. But it is the legacy that the facts of her tenure have written regardless.

The First But Not the Last

Noem is the first Cabinet secretary to leave during Trump’s second term. Trump’s termination of Noem was largely due to her claim in testimony to a Senate panel on Tuesday that the president had personally approved a $220 million ad campaign — a claim the White House immediately and publicly denied.

The lesson is as old as the Trump administration itself: you can survive controversy, you can survive bad press, you can survive calls for your resignation from members of your own party. What you cannot survive is being the person who made the president look bad. And what you absolutely cannot survive is telling the United States Senate that the president approved something the president says he never heard of.