Donald Trump Is the Worst DHS Secretary in History

Posted on by David Kurtz

Kristi Noem Was a Mere Cipher

I found myself going from indifferent to slightly confounded by the reaction to President Trump’s firing of Kristi Noem as DHS secretary.

In the old days of a less homogenous Republican Party, a change of cabinet secretary might mark a shift toward or away from one alliance or another. It might stress an internal party tension point along regional, cultural, or ideological differences. It might usher one coalition into power and another out. It might represent a policy change or a tonal adjustment.

Even back then it wasn’t likely to matter that much, but if you were into nuance there were things to sort through. Now, with the Republican Party in lock step with a Trump White House that micromanages every department and agency, the identity of which particular reality TV cast member (literally in the case of Sean Duffy at the Transportation Department) occupies which position in the cabinet is without much real meaning.

Noem is out. Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin is in. But there is an endless supply of other figureheads for Trump to name to nominally run DHS, while he and Stephen Miller via Tom Homan pull the strings from the West Wing. The mass deportation operation for which no one is more responsible than Donald Trump grinds on mercilessly and lawlessly.

Is Noem the worst DHS secretary in history? As with Pam Bondi’s historically bad run as attorney general, it feels like an inapt point. They are ciphers, meant to fill a TV role cast by Trump and to respond to his every whim and impulse, not run giant organizations or make independent decisions. Donald Trump is the worst DHS secretary in history, and worst attorney general and … you get the point.

There is a tendency in news coverage to reward Trump by covering the action — a firing — rather than his failure on every level. It results in a weird herd-like dynamic where everyone piles on to reject the obviously foolish person who was fired and thereby associate themselves with the powerful actor who did the firing. Which is, well, insane here and in the many other instances of Trump’s serial firings of officials who do exactly what he said in the way that he directed it done for the reasons he articulated.

In some ways I shouldn’t be surprised. This is a guy whose entire political persona is rooted in performative firings on a reality TV show. That formula resonates for a lot of Americans, as much as I wish it were otherwise.

The mass deportation operation is Trump’s singular political obsession for his entire time in national politics. It would have happened with or without Kristi Noem. It will continue until Trump and Trump alone decides otherwise.

The Kafkaesque Brutality

A Colombian reporter working in the United States while seeking political asylum here was detained in Nashville this week and quickly shipped off to Louisiana for allegedly missing two meetings with ICE, one of which was cancelled by the January ice storm and the other of which she claims ICE told her she didn’t have to attend.

‘Christian Nations Under God’

Addressing representatives of countries in the Western Hemisphere yesterday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth let his white nationalist flag fly:

The Latest From the Middle East …

Before we dive into the news, a reminder that Iran is much larger than most Americans realize. Comparing it to European countries as a frame of reference, only Russia and Ukraine occupy a larger land area. Iran’s population is larger than those of Germany, the UK, France, Italy, and Spain.

  • U.S. military investigators “believe it is likely” that the United States was responsible for Saturday’s strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran, Reuters reports, citing two unnamed U.S. officials. The NYT’s own analysis indicates the school building was severely damaged by a precision strike that occurred at the same time as U.S. attacks on an adjacent naval base operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
  • The U.S. sinking of the IRIS Dena (an Iranian frigate, not a destroyer, as I described it earlier this week) has complicated relations with third countries. It has caused consternation in India, from where the ship was returning (unarmed, the Iranians say) after joint military exercise that included U.S. participation. Three Australian nationals were embedded with the U.S. military aboard the submarine that sank the Iranian warship.
  • Israel launched an assault on Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut.
  • Four Democrats joined the House GOP majority to block a war powers resolution that would have asserted some congressional independence from President Trump.

Florida Bar Investigates Lindsey Halligan

In a letter to an advocacy group that had filed a complaint against former interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, the Florida Bar said an investigation of her was already pending. The NYT first obtained the letter, which offers no details about the investigation.

Jan. 6 Never Ends

  • House Republicans are pressing the Trump DOJ to bring criminal charges against Trump I White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson, who became the star witness of the Jan. 6 Committee’s hearings, CNN reports. In recent days, Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) made a bogus criminal referral of Hutchinson case to the Justice Department, accusing her of lying in her congressional testimony.
  • Virginia Democrats have passed a bill that Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) is expected to sign that would bar schools from teaching that the Jan. 6 attach was a peaceful demonstration or that there was massive fraud in the 2020 election.

2026 Ephemera

  • TX-Sen: President Trump is poised to endorse Sen. John Cornyn (R) for re-election in the GOP primary runoff against state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R).
  • TX-23: While the dark sex scandal around Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) dragged out for weeks, the end came rather quickly. On Tuesday, he was forced into a runoff in the GOP primary. On Wednesday, the House Ethics Committee opened an investigation into Gonzales, and he admitted to the affair with a former staffer who took her own life. On Thursday, the House GOP leadership yesterday called for him to end his re-election campaign, which he finally did late last night.
  • MT-Sen: TPM’s Kate Riga on Montana Sen. Steve Daines deceiving voters and gifting his seat to his chosen GOP heir.

Jeffrey Epstein Watch

The Trump DOJ has released previously withheld FBI interviews with a woman who alleges that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1980s after being introduced to him by Jeffrey Epstein. The woman claims she was between 13 and 15 years old when Trump hit her after she bit his penis when he attempted to force her to perform oral sex. The White House called the allegation  “completely baseless” and attacked the credibility of the unnamed accuser.

‘Low Rhythm Rising’

One of the biggest surprises in writing Morning Memo has been the response I’ve gotten from occasionally dipping into music. I’ve said before, but I cannot emphasize enough, how remedial of a music fan I am. Embarrassingly so. It’s been a lifelong gap in my personal development. But summoning the courage, at the risk of public mortification, to share a little of what I like, has yielded remarkably rich interactions with MM readers.

Case in point: When I was in Nashville last week covering the Abrego Garcia case, a MM reader reached out and invited me over for a tour of the Country Music Hall of Fame’s new exhibit on Muscle Shoals. “I know you’re a music guy,” he said. Rather than raise a protest, I just let that misimpression go and dove into the experience.

The exhibit really landed with me, indulging in nostalgia as you would expect, but without flattening the complexities of that time and place. The curators collected way more memorabilia than I would have expected still existed, including the piano that was used at FAME Studios for most of the 1960s and on which Aretha Franklin famously played her first hit:  “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You).” To set the vibe, a lot of faux wood grain is used to evoke the cheap midcentury paneling that was inside the studios.

The exhibit reaches well beyond the narrowest definitions of country music to draw out how the Muscle Shoals influence threads across musical genres, generations, and racial divides. It maps the influence like a family tree that shows the Muscle Shoals musical DNA still persisting decades after it first emerged in the northwest corner of Alabama.

If you can’t make it yourself, here’s a good peek at what you’re missing:

Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.

Top DOD Official in Charge of the ‘Golden Dome for America’ Project Has Financial Ties to Contractors

Posted on by Allegra Kirkland

This article first appeared at ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Thousands of companies are jockeying for billions of dollars in Defense Department contracts to build a shield designed to intercept and destroy missiles launched against the United States.

But amid the intense competition, a handful of firms have an important inside connection.

At least four of the companies awarded contracts so far are owned by Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm founded by billionaire Steve Feinberg, who until last year ran the company and is now the deputy secretary of defense — the second-highest-ranking official in the Pentagon.

Feinberg oversees the office in charge of the Golden Dome for America project, which is modeled on Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.

Continue reading “Top DOD Official in Charge of the ‘Golden Dome for America’ Project Has Financial Ties to Contractors” →

Iran Wars and Affordability Don’t Really Go Together

Posted on by Josh Marshall

The Friday jobs report just came in and it recorded a major downward miss. The U.S. economy lost 92,000 jobs in February and unemployment ticked up. It’s always important to remember that these reports are fairly noisy on a monthly basis and, especially recently, they’ve been subject to major revisions. Having said that, a lot of politics and economics commentary for the last month or two has been based on other single-month reports which are ripe for narratives but don’t necessarily tell us a lot. The political calculus is perhaps clearer than the economics one. The White House needs a good macro-economic trend to come into focus pretty quickly. Because from an electoral standpoint you need several months of favorable or at least “moving in the right” direction numbers in order for those shifts to show up in public attitudes.

Continue reading “Iran Wars and Affordability Don’t Really Go Together” →

Gonzales Drops Reelection Bid After Admitting to Sexual Relationship with Former Aide

Posted on by Emine Yücel

Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) dropped his reelection bid Thursday night, just a day after publicly acknowledging he had an affair with a former staff member who later died by suicide.

“After deep reflection and with the support of my loving family, I have decided not to seek re-election while serving out the rest of this Congress with the same commitment I’ve always had to my district,” Gonzales said in a late-night social media post.

Continue reading “Gonzales Drops Reelection Bid After Admitting to Sexual Relationship with Former Aide” →

Very Interesting Speech

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Here’s another video I recommend to you, following up on the shipping one from last night — but on a different topic. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-RI) office sent out the video this afternoon. It’s a speech the senator gave on the Senate floor today. It’s about Trump, Russia and Jeff Epstein. Among other things, it reminds us of how Bill Barr bamboozled most of the U.S. press into thinking the Mueller investigation came up empty on Donald Trump’s collusion with Russia. But this is a broader story. The speech runs almost an hour long. But it’s worth it. There’s so many details in the speech it defies easy summary. The best overview is to think of all the ways Donald Trump was and is connecting to the Russian government and the oligarch para-government. Whitehouse then shows that Jeff Epstein is right there at almost every point of contact. It’s a mix of old information, new investigating and a pretty close analysis of emails in the Epstein Files that wouldn’t really jump out at you on their own but become quite interesting when lined up with other outside information which places them in context. Whatever that “thing” is, Epstein is just as tied up in it as Trump —mand at a lot of points he seems to be a connecting tie. You can watch the speech after the jump.

Continue reading “Very Interesting Speech” →

Noem Performs On Stage Minutes After Being Fired 

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

Maybe the Horseback Rides Across Mount Rushmore Were Worth It

While social media was lighting up with reactions to President Trump’s Truth Social firing of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, she was on stage speaking to local law enforcement.

She did not mention her firing, and some wondered if she was even aware of it; Fox News later reported that Trump had called her shortly before making his post announcing she was being replaced.

Standing before a wall of flags at the Sergeant Benevolent Association Major Cities Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, Noem fielded questions and/or obsequious flattery from assembled officials.

At one point, she mentioned an upcoming event appearance she has with Trump; it’s unclear whether she will attend as DHS secretary or in her new, fantastical sounding role: Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas. Trump said he’d swap in Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) “effective March 31, 2026.” It’s unclear how that’ll work, too, since DHS secretary is subject to Senate confirmation. 

“We’ll have a big agreement that I’ll be there with him on Saturday with the Department of War and the Department of State on how we’re going to go at the drug cartels and drug trafficking in the entire Western Hemisphere,” she said on stage.

She posed for a photo after a standing ovation, cheerily waving at the crowd as she exited stage right — on her way to her new job demotion.

Trump has been facing pressure to fire Noem for months, but it was her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that reportedly sealed Noem’s fate. Not because she dodged questions about sending ICE to polling places in the fall nor because she didn’t say anything as Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) compared her DHS leadership to the time she killed her own dog with a gun. Trump was reportedly incensed that she threw him under the bus when Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) asked her if Trump had signed off on “spending $220 million running TV ads across the country in which you are featured prominently.”

So upset, in fact, that he spoke to Reuters on the phone to set the record straight:

“I never knew anything about it,” the Republican president told Reuters in a phone interview.

This all comes against the backdrop of new reporting from NBC News today, revealing that Noem handpicked the contractors for a $100 million ad campaign to recruit more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, a process that usually involves multiple bidders and is typically handled by other officials, not department heads.

But in return, Noem successfully fashioned herself as the face of the most unpopular and dystopian moments of Trump’s second term. Maybe the horseback rides across Mount Rushmore were worth it.

— Kate Riga and Nicole LaFond

Noem Firing Doesn’t Move Dems

Noem’s firing won’t have any impact on congressional Democrats’ protest of a DHS funding bill. Republican efforts to try to bully Democrats into funding the department now that Trump has launched a war in Iran — or at least make them look bad about it — failed this week, when measures to fund DHS failed in the House and the Senate. Democratic leadership confirmed as much, as well.

“A change in personnel is not sufficient, we need a change in policy,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said at a press conference Thursday.

“The problems at this agency transcend any one person. The rot is deep. The president has to end the violence and rein in ICE,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said.

— Nicole LaFond

Trump Is Not Happy With Paxton

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton hinted in a Twitter post on Thursday that he might not drop out, even if Trump endorsed Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), a clear rebuke of President Trump who just announced that he would endorse someone in the primary race soon and warned whoever he doesn’t pick that they better drop out.

“Well, that’s bad for him to say,” Trump told Politico this morning when they informed him that Paxton wouldn’t commit to dropping out. “That is bad for him. So maybe, maybe that leads me to go the other direction.”

In a post around noon on X, Paxton then said he would only “consider” dropping out if Republican leadership in the Senate changed the filibuster rules so that it can pass the SAVE America Act, a sweeping voter suppression bill that cleared the House last month. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has repeatedly said that there’s no appetite for such a maneuver in the Senate even though Trump really wants them to go nuclear and force Democrats to engage in a talking filibuster to block it. Thune has also been lobbying Trump to endorse Cornyn, so Paxton has some loaded beef with the guy.

“I would consider dropping out of this race if Senate Leadership agrees to lift the filibuster and passes the SAVE America Act,” Paxton wrote.

“The truth is clear: No one has been more loyal to Donald Trump than me — fighting the stolen 2020 election, being in Mar-a-Lago when he announced his 2024 campaign, and standing with him in NY in the face of lawfare,” he continued. “For the good of our country and for the good of passing President Trump’s agenda, I am determined to help him get this done.”

The social media post was obviously designed to remind Trump of Paxton’s fealty but also to remind Trump that he is mad at Thune about the filibuster. It may backfire.

— Nicole LaFond

In Case You Missed It

About that 11th hour retirement from Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT): Five Points on the Montana Senator Trying to Deceive Voters and Gift His Seat to Chosen Heir

Catch up on Emine Yücel’s coverage of the war powers resolutions that went before Congress this week: Republicans Expected to Use Their Majority to Block House War Powers Resolution Today

Morning Memo: Trump Flails to Take Down Biden Over Autopen Pardons

New edition of The Franchise from Khaya Himmelman, out today: Of Course the Notoriously MAGA Georgia Election Board Was Involved in the Fulton County Raid

Kate Riga: JD Vance Is Caught Between a War and a Hard Place

Is anyone surprised? Gonzales Admits to Sexual Relationship With Former Staffer After Weeks of Denial

Yesterday’s Most Read Story

A Humiliating Reversal for the Sad-Sack Trump DOJ

What We Are Reading

Why a Democratic Congressman Is Supporting Trump’s War with Iran

Proton Mail Helped FBI Unmask Anonymous ‘Stop Cop City’ Protester

Warren Davidson is a rare hard-line Republican questioning the Middle East war

Republicans Expected to Use Their Majority to Block House War Powers Resolution Today

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has been stridently against efforts by House Democrats and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to place any constraints on President Trump and his ongoing military assault in Iran since the president first declared his war intentions over the weekend. Johnson claims that the U.S.’s actions thus far have been defensive, despite the fact that the Trump administration has taken out Iran’s regime leadership and provided no clear evidence of an imminent threat to the continental United States.

Reps. Massie and Ro Khanna (D-CA) will force a vote on a war powers resolution on Thursday, in an attempt to rein in Trump. Like a similar resolution in the Senate on Wednesday, most Republicans are expected to vote against it, except Massie and potentially one other Republican. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was the only Republican to support a resolution in the Senate.

House Republicans are also using Trump’s war in Iran to try to spin the narrative and pressure Democrats to help end the ongoing Department of Homeland Security shutdown. Democrats have been demanding reforms to rein in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the wake of two recent killings of U.S. citizens by ICE agents.

As Republicans try to bully the Dems into funding the agencies under the DHS umbrella without any reforms — claiming it is dangerous and irresponsible to leave them unfunded during a time of elevated threats at home — the House voted on the largely unchanged DHS funding bill Wednesday afternoon. A final vote will take place Thursday afternoon.

Follow along below:

Noem’s Fall

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Humiliation is Donald Trump’s calling card. It’s the other side of domination. It’s an expression of domination. When I heard the news today of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s ouster, which has certainly been telegraphed for weeks, it seems exquisitely Trump that he allowed her to go to Capitol Hill and get pressed on the entirely predictable question of whether she is having sex with her notional top aide — Corey Lewandowski — when she had only one day left on the job.

JD Vance Is Caught Between a War and a Hard Place

Posted on by Kate Riga

Vice President JD Vance already had a perilously thin tightrope to walk. 

As the 2028 frontrunner, he has three years to figure out how to stay in complete lockstep with President Trump (anything less is heresy) while also somehow carving out his own lane —  particularly if the administration continues its popularity nosedive. 

Continue reading “JD Vance Is Caught Between a War and a Hard Place” →

We Need You To Become A Member

Posted on by Josh Marshall

We’re on Day Three of this year’s Annual TPM Membership Drive. It’s simple. If you’re not already a member we need you to sign up and become a member of our community.

That’s what allows us to publish this site for you every day. There’s no big corporation behind us that makes this possible. It’s just our readers. And we need our active readers to become members. Please click right here and join us.