Trump Finally Fires Kristi Noem, Replaces Her With MAGA Senator

Kristi Noem has officially been ousted as homeland security secretary after her disastrous display defending her monthslong mismanagement of the agency overseeing Donald Trump’s horrific deportation scheme.

Trump announced Thursday that Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin would replace Noem beginning at the end of March. Not only does Trump not have the authority to appoint Mullin as permanent secretary, but the MAGA Republican isn’t even eligible to serve as acting secretary according to laws that govern Cabinet-level vacancies.

The president congratulated Noem on her “numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!)” and declared that she would be reassigned as special envoy for “the Shield of the Americas,” a made-up international security initiative that has yet to be announced.

Noem’s stint as head of DHS truly fell apart this week after she crumbled during back-to-back hearings before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees. In addition to repeatedly lying under oath, Noem couldn’t explain away a $220 million border security ad campaign starring herself—that Trump now claims he did not approve.

The so-called “ICE Barbie” flailed when asked about her semi-public affair with DHS adviser Corey Lewandowski, paying millions to a company that had only existed for a week, and lying that a U.S. citizen shot by federal agents was a domestic terrorist. All in all, it was a calamitous pair of appearances—and they cost her Cabinet position.

“The Shield of the Americas” is a term used by the Trump administration to describe its foreign policy for the Western hemisphere. The administration is slated to host the Shield of the Americas summit with select Latin American leaders in Miami on Friday, and will formally announce the initiative the following day.

Reports were already circulating earlier Thursday that Trump had begun reaching out to Republicans in search of a possible replacement for Noem—and Mullin’s name popped up as a top contender.

Mullin has repeatedly gotten into the news this week for offering flimsy defenses of Trump’s illegal military campaign in Iran. Mullin was called out for referring to the U.S. aerial bombings as a “war,” even though they were not authorized by Congress (he then said that was “a misspoke”). He was also slammed for waxing poetic about the “smell” and “taste” of war, even though he has never served in the military.

Shortly after delivering an awkward keynote to the Major Cities Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, Noem released a statement thanking Trump for her new made-up title. “The Western Hemisphere is absolutely critical for U.S. security. 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 on X.

This story has been updated.

Update: President Trump announced Wednesday that he is nominating Senator Markwayne Mullin as the next DHS secretary.

Donald Trump is upset enough with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that he’s reportedly considering Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma or Senator Steve Daines of Montana as the potential next DHS secretary. 

The National Review reports that the president is floating Mullin’s name in private discussions, after Noem said in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday that Trump approved of a $220 million DHS ad campaign heavily featuring her and filmed in part at Mount Rushmore. Mullin told the conservative magazine Wednesday that he hasn’t spoken with the president.

“I haven’t talked to him about the hearing at all, I can’t help you there, I’m sorry,” Mullin said in a hallway in Capitol Hill.

The White House has also contacted Daines’s office, according to NBC News. The senator announced Wednesday that he is not seeking reelection this year. Meanwhile, Fox News contributor and former Republican Representative Jason Chaffetz has told Trump that he is interested in the position, and in joining the administration in general. 

With DHS partially shut down since February 13, Noem is under increased scrutiny from Republicans as well as Democrats. Before she involved the president, Noem’s ad campaign was already receiving criticism over the fact that an eight-day-old company run by the husband of former DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin got the contract despite not even having a website. 

Noem also had a rough House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday, where she was asked about her all-but-confirmed affair with top aide Corey Lewandowski. Democratic Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove called out Noem’s “judgment and decision-making” and accused her of a conflict of interest as well as risking national security. Noem’s only response was that bringing up the rumored romance was “garbage” and “offensive.”  

It’s telling that Noem’s mismanagement of DHS and the many illegal actions committed by federal agents under her purview aren’t the reasons why her job is in peril. Democrats have been pushing for her impeachment for those reasons for weeks, but now she might lose her job just because she made Trump mad. 

President Trump has declared that he wants to essentially handpick Iran’s next leader, an extremely bleak yet unsurprising development in this regime-change war.

“They are wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodríguez] in Venezuela,” Trump told Axios in an eight-minute phone interview Thursday, emphasizing that Mojtaba Khamenei, the most likely successor to his recently assassinated father, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, was “unacceptable.”

“Khamenei’s son is unacceptable to me. We want someone that will bring harmony and peace to Iran,” Trump said, also mentioning that the younger Khamenei coming to power would bring the U.S. back to war on Iran “in five years.”

This confirms previous reporting that the Trump administration thinks toppling a nearly 50-year regime that seems prepared for a dragged-out war will be some simple plug-and-play situation, and that the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and subsequent deals with his successors in Venezuela can be a direct template for Iran, even though it was a wildly different event.

Trump has previously confirmed that even if Iran did have someone like Delcy Rodríguez in Venezuela, they were long dead.

“The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates,” he said on Sunday. “It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead.” He said the same on Tuesday, as well.

This claim displays the confidence the Trump administration has that the Iranian government will simply capitulate.

This story has been updated.

Seriously, what is it with Republicans and their Nazi-loving group chats?

A group chat started by Abel Carvajal, the secretary of Miami-Dade County’s Republican Party, for conservative college students at Florida International University quickly devolved into a breeding ground for moral depravity, the Miami Herald reported Wednesday.

Carvajal said he created the group after Charlie Kirk was killed in September. Members of the group chat made violent and racist remarks about Black people, using variations of the n-word more than 400 times, as well as using slurs when discussing Jewish and gay people, and regularly called women “whores.”

Dariel Gonzalez, a former board member of FIU’s College Republicans, was responsible for a large chunk of racist and antisemitic comments. “Ew you had colored professors?!” he wrote at one point, adding that he personally refused “to be indoctrinated by the coloreds.”

Gonzalez also used slurs to discuss Jewish people. “You can f–k all the k—s you want. Just don’t marry them and procreate,” he said.

Ian Valdes, the president of FIU’s chapter of Turning Point USA, responded, “I would def not marry a Jew.”

In another message, Valdes called for a “moratorium on immigration” unless it was a person from a first-world country, before clarifying: “Yeah I obviously mean whites.”

Valdes renamed the group chat from “Uber R—s Yapping Inc.” (using a slur to refer to people with mental disabilities) to “Gooning in Agartha.” “Gooning” refers to the ritual of continual masturbation performed by some internet-poisoned individuals, and “Agartha” is a mythical civilization at the center of the earth, where white nationalists have imagined a white master race originates.

In the chat, Valdes described Agartha as “esoteric nazism essentially,” and Gonzalez described Agartha as “Nazi heaven sort of.”

At one point, Gonzalez wrote a message that simply said: “Total negro death.”

William Bejerano, who once tried to start a pro-life group at Miami-Dade College, then launched into a lengthy n-word-laced tirade of ways to kill Black people, including crucifying, beheading, exterminating, and curb-stomping. Students for Life in America previously published an essay in which Bejerano decried limits on free speech at his school—but has since removed it.

Carvajal occasionally participated in the conversation, and even deleted others’ messages, but never shut the group chat down. He even recruited some of the group’s extremist members to serve as committee members in the Miami-Dade GOP, sources told The Floridian.

“Had I known and had I seen some of these messages I would have called the police,” Carvajal told The Floridian. Asked if he would resign, Carvajal said: “No. Of course not. Of course not, for you know, for a chat where the messages that were stated were not mine.”

Florida International University told the Miami New Times that the heinous group chat is the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation.

Last year, leaders of the Young Republicans were discovered participating in another group chat that included slurs and praise for Hitler.

These forums filled to the brim with racism, antisemitism, rape jokes, and other filth are becoming the norm for a new generation of conservatives fueled by the white nationalist musings of people like Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, and Kirk.

Despite expressing frustration over Donald Trump’s war with Iran, some Democrats are still considering voting to boost military spending by billions of dollars.

At least four Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee haven’t ruled out additional funding for the Department of Defense: ranking member Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Senators Gary Peters of Michigan, Tim Kaine of Virginia, and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan.

“I need to know the goals and the plan … I don’t rule anything out,” Slotkin told Politico. “I mean, we’re in it.”

“We have to look at what they need,” Reed said. “Some of it might be to fill in critical issues and other theaters of war they’ve taken things from.”

Defense and intelligence officials told Congress this week that the Pentagon may soon ask for emergency funding, but didn’t say when or how much it would need, although Politico reports that the White House is considering asking for $50 billion. But while some Democrats are open to new military funding, seven Democrats are needed to overcome a filibuster—and many others are not only skeptical of additional funding but outright hostile to the idea.

“Good luck. What Democrat is going to vote to fund an illegal war? I don’t think—with the exception of one Democrat—there will be any votes for it,” said Senator Chris Murphy Wednesday, likely referring to Senator John Fetterman, who was the lone Democrat to vote against a war powers resolution Tuesday requiring Trump to seek Congress’s approval for further military action in Iran.

Democrats in the House also scoffed at the idea of funding the war in Iran further.

Representative Pete Aguilar of California said he has “a duty and a responsibility to help protect this country” but is “incredibly skeptical” of giving emergency military funding for Trump. “It’s going to be pretty hard to move me off of a ‘no,’” he said.

“I mean, you lie to us, don’t consult us and then expect us to send more taxpayer money to a war that we shouldn’t have started with no plan and no answers,” said Representative Pat Ryan of New York, a military veteran. He called the $50 billion figure “outrageous.”

Several Senate Democrats left a Tuesday classified briefing on Iran aghast at the lack of planning by the administration, openly accusing the White House of lying, and worrying about whether ground troops would be deployed. To fund the war would require their concerns to be addressed, but even then, it won’t change the fact that Trump started a dangerous war on a whim.