On the menu today: Kristi Noem is departing as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, finally exorcising one of the biggest liabilities of the Trump administration. Noem racked up an impressively unimpressive record in her roughly two years in the national spotlight, and she has no one to blame but herself. Meanwhile, a new report indicates that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is attempting to help the Iranians target our forces in the conflict in the Persian Gulf. Read on.
Exit to the Garden, Noem
The headline on the January 26 edition of the Morning Jolt newsletter was, “Kristi Noem, Growing Liability for the Trump Administration.”
A few days later, Tom Bevan, co-founder of RealClearPolitics, speaking on his publication’s podcast, concluded, “It’s clear now that Kristi Noem was the worst pick, the worst mistake of Trump’s second term. She had no experience. [Border czar Tom] Homan is a professional. He’s been doing this for 35 years.”
I wrote that day, “There’s good reason to believe Trump made some cabinet picks because the individuals had been loyal to him, and he felt a need to reward them. And these are the picks that are turning out the worst. Noem is the most glaring example now.”
Now, that comment had been over Noem’s response to the shootings in Minnesota. This was separate from the news articles reporting Noem and her, er, longtime right-hand man Corey Lewandowski “frequently berate senior level staff, give polygraph tests to employees they don’t trust and have fired employees — in one incident, Lewandowski fired a U.S. Coast Guard pilot after Noem’s blanket was left behind on a plane, according to people familiar with the incident.”
What got Noem dismissed Thursday was a completely different scandal, and yesterday morning our Audrey Fahlberg was ahead of the curve on the impending end of Noem’s time running DHS:
President Donald Trump is privately furious with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for suggesting in her Senate Judiciary Committee testimony on Tuesday that he gave advance approval of a taxpayer-funded $220 million ad campaign contract that was subcontracted to one of her allies, National Review has learned.
The president is frustrated that the embattled cabinet secretary repeatedly suggested under oath that the president was aware of the multi-million-dollar ad campaign — which featured Noem prominently — and approved its release before the agency greenlit the contract, according to a source familiar with the president’s thinking.
“The president approved ahead of time you spending $220 million running TV ads across the country in which you are featured prominently?” Republican Senator John Kennedy asked Noem during Tuesday’s hearing.
“Yes sir, we went through the legal processes–” Noem said.
“Did the president know you were gonna do this?” Kennedy interjected.
Noem answered again in the affirmative multiple times.
“I’m not saying you’re not telling the truth. It’s just hard for me to believe, knowing the president, as I do, that you said, ‘Mr. President, here’s some ads I’ve cut, and I’m going to spend $220 million running them,’ that he would have agreed to that,” Kennedy said. “I don’t think Russ Vought” at the Office of Management and Budget “would have agreed to that,” he added.
These frustrations have prompted the president to privately express his openness to replacing her, according to a person familiar with the matter. One name he has begun floating this week as a potential replacement: Oklahoma’s junior U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin.
You can watch the 60-second DHS ad here. Featuring Noem on horseback at Mount Rushmore and a lot of stock footage, it is utterly indistinguishable from a campaign ad. As Axios put it in October, “The most expensive political ad campaign of the year is being run by the Department of Homeland Security.” For perspective, in 2025, the campaign of Virginia Democrat Abigail Spanberger spent $28.4 million on TV ads, or just under 13 percent of the DHS spending. Except Spanberger spent her donors’ money, and Noem spent ours.
If that ad campaign had been a television series, it would have ranked among the most expensive series of all time. That’s the total amount in Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love’s contract extension in 2024, when he became the highest-paid player in NFL history to that point. DHS could have bought anywhere from 770 to 880 Lamborghinis for that sum, depending upon the model.
Now, if you’re skeptical that President Trump would approve a $220 million ad campaign, the president told Reuters that he knew nothing about it.
Now, it’s possible Trump is lying, but this statement passes the smell test. You figure that any president, even one as idiosyncratic as this one, doesn’t spend a lot of time reviewing the budgets and content of the Department of Homeland Security’s advertising campaigns. And if Trump didn’t approve of the ad campaign ahead of time, Noem is A) lying to Congress while under oath and B) making her boss look bad. And even if the president did approve of the advertising campaign ahead of time, he clearly didn’t want her announcing that to the world. Cabinet secretaries are not supposed to pass the blame up to their bosses.
I hope no one will be offended if I contend that Noem is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. She was always an odd pick for DHS secretary; as Bevan noted, as a former governor, representative, and state house representative, she had no experience in law enforcement. As a governor, she did spend $8.5 million in state funds for an ad campaign featuring herself, using the same firm as the one for DHS, The Strategy Group. The Strategy Group’s CEO, Ben Yoho, is married to Noem’s chief spokesperson at DHS, Tricia McLaughlin.
During her time on the national stage, Norm kept struggling with problems that she herself had created.
In her own 2024 memoir — ironically entitled No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward — she claimed to have met North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un; when people noted there was no evidence of that, she said the anecdote shouldn’t have been in the book but also added, “I’m not going to talk about my specific meetings with world leaders.”
Well, the reason people are asking you about it is because you wrote about it in the book.
That book is also where the public learned about Noem shooting her own 14-month-old wire-haired pointer named Cricket. You can groan about all the dog puns and John Wick jokes since then, but this wasn’t the result of some Richard Thornburg-style unethical reporter snooping around in Noem’s life; she chose to tell us this story, apparently because she thought it would impress people.
Once at DHS, Noem seemed to think she had stepped into a role in the performing arts. From the NR editorial today:
Noem’s greatest interest seemed to be in wearing various DHS uniforms for the cameras. It was a sign of things to come when she used the occasion of the president’s indefensible deportation of alleged gang members to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador to record a tough-sounding video at the facility with shaved-headed prisoners behind her. When you have a hammer, as they say, everything looks like nail; when you are concerned overwhelmingly with your image, everything looks like a photo opportunity.
Being self-promoting is not a rare quality in Washington, of course, but Noem matched it with cringe-making incompetence.
And then there’s the way Noem and Lewandowski get around:
The pair have lately been using a luxury 737 MAX jet, with a private cabin in back, for their travel around the country, according to people familiar with the matter. DHS is leasing the plane but is in the process of acquiring it for approximately $70 million. DHS has previously used other planes through the Coast Guard or other agencies for the secretary’s use.
While Noem was spending taxpayer money to travel on a luxury 737 MAX jet, she was reportedly holding up the authorization of funds on actual administration priorities:
Rodney Scott, the commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, has told administration officials that Noem and Lewandowski have mismanaged the construction of the border wall, another of Trump’s top immigration priorities, according to people familiar with the matter. The project received a $46.5 billion infusion from Congress in 2025 that must be spent by 2029.
One of the contracts, for bulk steel, sat on Noem’s desk for approval for so long that from the time the deal was struck in December until it was signed Feb. 10, the price of steel went up more than $100 million, some of the people said. A senior administration official said Noem blamed Scott for the wall’s delay in a conversation with Trump earlier this year.
Nobody has done more to harm the career and reputation of Kristi Noem than Kristi Noem.
Lord Acton wrote, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Allow me to add, “If you are not that smart, gaining power does not make you any smarter. It just gives you higher-profile and more consequential opportunities to show people that you’re not that smart.”
Let us also note that in just five months, President Trump has had high-profile splits with three Republican women who had previously been known as staunch loyalists: former Representative Majorie Taylor Greene, former representative and gubernatorial candidate Elise Stefanik, and now Noem.
Oh, and before we move on from DHS, right now the U.S. government and its allies are on alert for potential Iranian sleeper cells.
This morning, approximately 100,000 employees of the Department of Homeland Security reported to work, knowing their last full paycheck arrived on Valentine’s Day. Many received a partial paycheck for time worked before DHS funding ran out February 14.
If these guys are risking their necks while out hunting Iranians on our soil, paying them seems like the least we can do, you know?
Russia Is Our Enemy, and Don’t Let Anyone Tell You Otherwise
For a long, long time, many voices on the right, including myself, have attempted to make clear that Vladimir Putin and the Russian government are de facto enemies of the United States and its people and a cancerous force for evil in this world, and that any talk that Putin is a defender of Christian values or a potential American partner is absolute nonsense. (Ask any Ukrainian Protestant minister about how Russia defines “Christian values.”)
The good news is that most Americans agree with us. In April 2025, Gallup found that half of Americans see Russia as an enemy, 38 percent see it as a competitor, and 9 percent see it as a partner. The bad news is that the same survey found 12 percent of Republicans see Russia as a partner and 16 percent have a favorable view of Russia.
Late last month, YouGov found that “61 percent of Americans sympathize more with Ukraine, compared to only 3 percent who sympathize more with Russia; 22 percent who take neither side.” The most pro-Russian demographic in that survey was self-identified MAGA Republicans, but even among that group, the pro-Russia segment was only 7 percent.
Pro-Russian sentiment on the American right is a small minority, but it is a loud and insufferable one.
I mention all this because this morning, the Washington Post reports that Russia is assisting Iran in its efforts to kill Americans:
Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East, the first indication that another major U.S. adversary is participating — even indirectly — in the war, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence.
The assistance, which has not been previously reported, signals that the rapidly expanding conflict now features one of America’s chief nuclear-armed competitors with exquisite intelligence capabilities.
Since the war began Saturday, Russia has passed Iran the locations of U.S. military assets, including warships and aircraft, said the three officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
Now, the pro-Russian crowd will argue that the Post is an unreliable source, or that these unnamed “three officials familiar with the intelligence” must be deep-state neocons who are attempting to disrupt the natural friendship between the U.S. and the imperialist authoritarian totalitarian autocracy ruled with an iron fist by the former KGB lieutenant colonel.
Or some will argue that because the United States is giving targeting information to the Ukrainians — including targeting information for energy infrastructure within Russia — then it is perfectly fair for the Russians to give targeting information to the Iranians.
And indeed, you can argue that it is “perfectly fair,” or at least comparable to our actions in response to the unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But if you do that, you can’t argue that Russia isn’t an enemy of the United States anymore.
Just think: There are some Americans who think we should be neutral between the country trying to help the Iranians kill our people and the country that’s selling us interceptor drones to protect our forces. This is a form of refusing to take your own side in a fight.
As bloggers used to say during the global war on terror, “They’re not anti-war, they’re on the other side.”
ADDENDUM: In case you missed it yesterday, Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico needs to perform better than any recent Democratic statewide candidate, while hoping that he takes on state AG Ken Paxton and that Paxton performs worse than any recent GOP statewide candidate. That’s not impossible, but it is a tall order.