Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is barely showing up for her new job at the State Department, fueling speculation in Washington circles and beyond that she may be on her way back to South Dakota.
A new report reveals four of her DHS staffers who followed her over to State for her new job as special envoy to the Shield of the Americas, which critics have called a made-up job anyway, have been put on administrative leave by the White House.
The Daily Mail, citing anonymous sources within the agency, reports that Noem’s former deputy chief of staff, Troup Hemenway, ex-deputy general counsel Giovanna Cinelli, and junior staffers Josh King and Octavian Miller are all on leave.
The sources identified by the news outlet as senior State Department officials said Noem only held one meeting the week of April 6, and it was a virtual one.
They also told the outlet that with the staffing cuts and no apparent direction at the new Shield of the Americas initiative, they wouldn’t be surprised if Noem’s soft landing after her firing as head of DHS turns into a hard reality check.
“This post was intended as a soft landing so it didn’t look like Noem was immediately being fired,” the agency source said.
Noem was terminated in a social media post last month, in President Donald Trump’s first Cabinet shake-up of his second term.
And MSN readers had quite a bit to say about not only her departure but her situation at the State Department.
“Noem’s new job was about saving face for Trump. It saved Trump from having to say, ‘Wow, I really screwed that up. It turns out that experience and knowledge matter after all,” this reader pointed out.
Another was considerably more blunt about Noem’s political future:
“Noem’s not the first person to experience an end to her political career and certainly won’t be the last as a result of their association with Trump. I’m confident that all of Trump’s current cabinet members will be considered political/personal pariahs by the end of Trump’s term.”
MSN reader Robert Wright also weighed in, making a pointed observation about the Noem situation.
“I honestly thought this envoy role was just a ceremonial consolation prize, but it turns out you’re still expected to show up, hold meetings, and at least pretend to take the job seriously. Even symbolic positions require you to demonstrate that you can do the work.”
Another reader, Dr. Midnight, sarcastically summed it up this way: “I guess hiring incompetent people for jobs they are unqualified for and then giving them new jobs they are also unqualified for when they screw up in their prior job, all the while being paid by taxpayer dollars, is more of that draining the swamp thing Trump promised he’d be doing.”
“Many will disagree, but I firmly believe this woman was made to be a sacrificial lamb that was done to take political heat off the white house,” Carl Griffin wrote. “A system that she was once a darling in turned on her and ate her up. That’s the state of ALL politics in this nation today, left and right. No wonder good people have no desire to run for any office.”
What seemed to seal Noem’s fate after months of turbulence at DHS over deadly immigration raids and eyebrow-raising responses to growing public concerns about the brutal crackdown wasn’t the shooting deaths of two Americans in Minneapolis in January by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, but her congressional testimony in early March.
Noem, the first woman elected governor of South Dakota in 2018, told lawmakers Trump had approved the costliest government advertising campaign in the past decade, except for COVID-19 and military recruitment, which the president quickly denied before publicly firing her on social media.
The $220 million ad features Noem riding a horse dressed up like a cowgirl in full makeup in front of Mount Rushmore, and since her testimony, a congressional investigation found she even gave herself a $60,000 signing bonus to boot, The Hill reported lawmakers said in late March.
The staging alone of the former Republican congresswoman for the campaign, which tried to convince undocumented migrants to self-deport, cost taxpayers thousands of dollars for hair, makeup and horse rentals.
Most of the money is still unaccounted for.
