Trump Administration Live Updates: President Ousts Noem as Homeland Security Secretary
“What We’re Covering Today
Kristi Noem Fired: President Trump announced Thursday on social media that he was firing his homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, and wanted Senator Markwayne Mullin to replace her. In his announcement, Mr. Trump said Ms. Noem would move into a previously nonexistent security role. Read more ›
Secretary Under Siege: Ms. Noem’s tenure had been marred by a string of controversies, and she faced intense questioning this week from congressional Republicans, including about a lucrative advertising contract. Mr. Trump on Thursday contradicted her testimony that he had signed off on the $220 million ad campaign.
Markwayne Mullin: It was unclear how quickly the Senate would be able to move to confirm Mr. Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican. Senate Democrats again blocked an effort to end the weekslong shutdown of the departmenton Thursday, and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York said Ms. Noem’s firing did not change Democrats’ demands for restrictions on immigration enforcement. “The rot is deep,” he said.
President Trump fired his embattled homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, on Thursday and announced plans to replace her with Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, after she was grilled by Republican lawmakers this week at congressional hearings on a variety of topics, including her knowledge of a lucrative advertising contract.
Mr. Trump announced the change on social media, along with a new, and previously nonexistent, role for Ms. Noem: special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, which he said would be a new security initiative for the Western Hemisphere.
Noem has finished her remarks at the Nashville conference. She spoke for about 30 minutes and did not address her firing by President Trump.
Mullin said he has not had time to call Noem, whom he considers a friend. “She was tasked with a very difficult job,” he said. “I think she has done the best that she could do under the circumstances.”
But he added that he thought there were opportunities to learn from her tenure and “build off things that didn’t quite go as planned.”
Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, said he would wait and see if his Senate colleague would be an improvement at homeland security but said, “It will be hard to be a downgrade.”
Noem is answering questions from local organizations representing police officers, but they have not asked about her firing. Notably, she is still speaking as if she is leading the Department of Homeland Security. She said she was coming to meet with New York state sheriffs soon.
President Trump said in his announcement that he wanted Senator Markwayne Mullin to start at the end of the month.
There’s quite a split screen playing out as Noem takes questions at a conference in Nashville while Republican senators are backslapping Mullin on the Senate floor in the middle of a vote.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, would not commit to voting to confirm Mullin. And he said that Noem’s firing did not change Democrats’ demands for new restrictions on immigration enforcement in order to fund the Department of Homeland Security.
“This is a problem of policy, not personnel. The rot is deep,” Schumer said. “No one person can straighten this up until the president changes the whole agency, stops the violence, and reins in ICE.”
Senator John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has repeatedly broken with his party on key votes, said he would vote to confirm Mullin. He said it was a “good thing” that Noem was out of the job, and called Mullin a “nice upgrade.”
Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois released a video celebrating Noem’s firing. “Now that you’re gone, don’t think you get to just walk away,” he said. “I guarantee you, you will still be held accountable.”
He established a state commission in Illinois to collect evidence that federal agents broke the law while enforcing Trump’s deportation agenda.
Senator Markwayne Mullin just entered the Senate chamber and spoke briefly to reporters. He said he was excited but did not answer whether he believed he would be confirmed as the homeland security secretary.
Other reporters and I asked Mullin a few times if he wanted the job. He didn’t directly answer but said he would answer questions after the Senate voted.
Perhaps fittingly, senators are voting on a measure related to the bill to fund the Homeland Security Department.
Senators who will need to vote on whether to confirm their colleague Markwayne Mullin, the Republican senator of Oklahoma, to lead the Department of Homeland Security are finding out at the Capitol from reporters that the president has fired Kristi Noem and tapped Mullin for her job.
Republicans are beginning to line up behind Mullin, with Senator Todd Young of Indiana, calling him a well qualified, critical thinker.
Democrats are gratified that Noem is out of the job, but most are declining to say whether they would support Mullin’s nomination.
Senator Gary Peters, Democrat of Michigan, said the personnel change won’t impact Democrats demands to place new guardrails on immigration enforcement. “I don’t think it makes any difference,” he said.
Senator Markwayne Mullin just arrived in a car for Senate votes. He said he had talked to President Trump before the statement went out on social media.
“We’re going to get on the same page, and do what things what we need to do,” he said.
It is unclear how quickly the Senate will be able to move to confirm a new homeland security secretary, given that the chamber is in the middle of a protracted stalemate over funding the department.
Neither Democrats, who are demanding new restrictions on immigration enforcement, nor the White House have suggested they have made progress in negotiating a deal to fund the department.
Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary who was just fired by President Trump, is speaking at a conference in Nashville about federal partnerships with local law enforcement. She has not addressed her firing yet.
Asked if he saw Mullin as an upgrade, Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, said that Noem had done such a poor job as homeland security secretary that it was hard not to see Mullin as an improvement.
Less than an hour ago, Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma told reporters that he had not spoken with the president this week and that he would not engage in hypotheticals.
Department of Homeland Security
Senate Democrats on Thursday blocked for a third time a spending bill to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, insisting that they would not approve the measure without new curbs on immigration enforcement even amid President Trump’s war in Iran.
Twenty days after federal money for the department lapsed, Republicans had sought to pressure Democrats to relent and agree to fund the department without any new restrictions on the agents carrying out Mr. Trump’s deportation drive. They argued that the war in the Middle East made it even more important to fund security agencies, including the Transportation Security Administration and the Secret Service.
The Department of Homeland Security said Wednesday that officials were reviewing a contract for Camp East Montana, a detention center in El Paso that is facing growing scrutiny over its living conditions and is grappling with a measles outbreak.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security said officials were examining the center and that the department conducts rigorous inspections of facilities to “ensure they are meeting our high standards.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday pushed back against allegations that she and her deputies had “systematically obstructed the work” of the department’s inspector general, as he complained in a letter to Congress this week.
“He can have access to anything at the Department of Homeland Security; he can,” Ms. Noem said during testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, her second appearance on Capitol Hill this week.
House Republican leaders on Thursday called on Representative Tony Gonzales of Texas to suspend his re-election campaign after he admitted to a sexual relationship with a staff member who later took her own life.
Mr. Gonzales publicly acknowledged the extramarital affair on Wednesday, a day after he struggled to defeat Brandon Herrera, a hard-line conservative, YouTuber and gun rights activist known as the AK Guy, in his Republican primary. The two are now in a runoff to be decided in May, and was not clear whether Mr. Gonzales would heed G.O.P. leaders’ call to suspend his campaign.“
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