Donald Trump went into his second term, according to widespread reporting, with what sources called a “no scalps” policy. No matter how incompetent, politically disastrous or just plain annoying a prominent appointee became, the president would not be firing anyone. The intent was to avoid giving his political opponents the satisfaction, or to make it appear that he had ever experienced an emotion as distasteful as regret. But Trump finally cracked on Thursday and fired one of the most famous members of his Cabinet, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
For the administration’s critics, Noem’s dismissal will be especially pleasing. Since she was confirmed by the Senate in January 2025, the former secretary, even by the low standards set by a Cabinet filled with toadies, has excelled in debasing herself to please her boss. To meet the eye-popping deportation numbers set as goals by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, she turned the Department of Homeland Security into a disaster zone that was as inept as it was lawless.
Noem transformed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to function as an authoritarian secret police, but without the sleek, efficient evil a Hollywood rendering would bestow on the SS.
Noem transformed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to function as an authoritarian secret police, but without the sleek, efficient evil a Hollywood rendering would bestow on the SS. Federal immigration agents were instead slipping on ice or shooting unarmed protesters, all while whining about how persecuted they were. She herself became a public joke because of her over-the-top portrayal of a corrupt apparatchik, complete with her vicious dog-shooting story, ridiculous flattery of Trump and demands for ever-fancier private jets to share with her partner in repression — and adultery, if credible reports are to be believed — Corey Lewandowski.
But if there was one symbol that resonated the most for Noem’s grasps for power, it was her face. The 54-year-old appears to have undergone such extensive plastic surgery in an attempt to mimic Trump’s cartoonish ideas of what is “hot” in a woman that she is both hard to look at and impossible to match to photos of her younger, normal-looking self. Many women in the president’s orbit have adopted what has become known as “Mar-a-Lago face,” a look that includes heavy fillers, cosmetic procedures and caked-on makeup to be visibly appealing to a man who apparently avoids wearing his glasses in public. When a Vanity Fair profile of Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, was published in December, it became notorious for, among other revelations, a photograph of press secretary Karoline Leavitt that appeared to show extensive injection spots for lip filler. (The president, unbothered by the appearance, keeps openly lusting over Leavitt’s “machine gun lips” that “don’t stop.”) But no one has gotten more attention for her dramatic visual transformation than Noem.
In the end, though, Noem could not save herself, and for reasons that are related to why she likely felt the pressure and need to have plastic surgery that most men in her position don’t reckon with: gender. As a woman, the former secretary was far more disposable to Trump than a man in her position. It’s a lesson she should have learned when he passed her over as a potential running mate for the charisma-free JD Vance. The same president who was found civilly liable by a jury for sexual assault, who calls female reporters “piggy” or scolds them for not smiling, who spent over a decade partying with Jeffrey Epstein will be pleased to have a woman to blame for his administration’s hemorrhaging of public support on what was once his biggest issue, immigration.
It would be one thing if Noem were uniquely incompetent. But as bad as her press coverage has been, it is no worse than what many of the men occupying top spots in the administration are facing.
Pete Hegseth has repeatedly confirmed suspicions that he, as a former Fox News host with a rumored drinking problem, isn’t up for the job of defense secretary, from the time his team accidentally leaked confidential battle plans to an Atlantic reporter to his recent tantrum when news outlets published the names and photos of service members killed in the Iran war.
FBI Director Kash Patel is just as comically corrupt as Noem, whether abusing his private jet privileges to hang out with the U.S. men’s hockey team at the Olympics or reportedly diverting agency resources to surround his girlfriend with security like she’s a princess.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick got caught in an obvious lie about his relationship with Epstein, insisting he barely knew the man, when in reality they were business partners who were photographed on vacation together.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to be beloved by Trump, even as he has made dubious claims about childhood diseases, oversaw a purge of medical and science professionals at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suggested that bird flu be allowed to spread unimpeded, falsely linked Tylenol to autism and continues to pursue dangerous and unpopular anti-vaccine policies, despite promising he would leave vaccines alone during his Senate confirmation hearing.
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A telling detail showing the role gender played in Noem’s dismissal is reports of Trump’s dislike of her rumored affair with Lewandowski. It’s unlikely that the president, with his long list of confirmed and rumored adulteries, is experiencing a newfound moral disapproval of infidelity. And despite reports of a tense confrontation following Noem’s congressional hearing on Tuesday, he also seems to like Lewandowski personally. After all, Trump has kept him around for over a decade. But the widespread coverage of Noem and Lewandowski’s relationship in reputable outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and the Atlantic paints the adviser as the secondary person in the relationship. Lewandowski is portrayed in a role that, on the right, is usually reserved for women: as Noem’s support staff, cheering on her presidential ambitions and making sure she has her favorite blanket on the plane. To Trump, who has rigidly hierarchical notions of gender, that probably seems emasculating.
But more than anything else, Noem is in many ways taking the fall for Stephen Miller. While she is morally and professionally responsible for her blunders as secretary, she was also reportedly acting on direct orders from the White House deputy chief of staff, who appears to be the most powerful person in the administration besides Trump.
It’s Miller who set impossibly high arrest quotas for ICE that could only be met with policies Noem enacted, such as targeting people with legal asylum status for deportation or encouraging mass detentions on flimsy grounds that are usually overturned by courts. The blatant white supremacist imagery and rhetoric coming from DHS sounds far closer to Miller’s overheated rhetoric about the evils of diversity than Noem’s more careful language. And it’s Miller who was seen dancing with Noem to “Ice, Ice Baby” at the Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve party.
The Department of Homeland Security’s failures are objectively as much, if not more, the fault of Miller than Noem, but there is no evidence he is paying any price for setting an agenda that was bound to go as badly as it has. To the contrary, the simultaneous announcement of GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma as Noem’s replacement, suggests there will be no scaling back from Miller’s demands on the department should he be confirmed by the Senate. He is a belligerent MAGA foot soldier who has drawn headlines in the past by complaining that teaching kids anti-racism impedes on lessons about Jesus.
Swapping Noem for the Mullin is an even trade, with one notable exception: He’s a man, and she’s not. Like a lot of men who please Trump, Mullin pretends to be a tough guy without actually backing it up. That was always where this was headed, no matter how much Trump-pleasing work Noem did — or had done.
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about Kristi Noem
