Trump removes Kristi Noem as DHS secretary after two days of harsh hearings; Markwayne Mullin named as replacement

President Donald Trump said Thursday, March 5, that he is removing Kristi Noem as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and tapping Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) to take over the post at the end of the month. It’s an abrupt Cabinet shake-up that lands one day after Noem’s most punishing round of congressional testimony yet.

Trump announced the move on Truth Social, saying Mullin would become DHS secretary effective March 31, while Noem would be shifted into a new role as “Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas,” tied to a Western Hemisphere security initiative the White House says it plans to unveil this weekend in Doral, Florida.

The timing makes the message hard to miss: a pressure release valve.

Over two days on Capitol Hill, Noem faced withering questions from Democrats and notable heat from Republicans, as lawmakers zeroed in on her department’s most controversial enforcement decisions and on the optics (and alleged process) behind a high-dollar messaging campaign that made Noem the face of Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Noem’s latest stretch of testimony culminated Wednesday, March 4, when she appeared before the House Judiciary Committee for DHS oversight. It was her first time in front of lawmakers since the shooting deaths of two protesters in Minneapolis during an immigration enforcement operation.

Democrats accused the department of excessive force and civil-rights violations, arguing that the administration’s enforcement posture had become “militarized” and unaccountable; Noem rejected that framing and defended her department’s approach.

But the most concrete, document-driven scrutiny centered on money and process specifically, a $220 million border-security advertising campaign that featured Noem prominently, including a scene filmed at Mount Rushmore.

At the House hearing, Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) challenged DHS’s decision to limit competition for the work, arguing the contracting approach looked like a roadmap to waste.

Noem insisted the contract was “done correctly” and “done legally,” and DHS said career officials handle procurement.

The same ad campaign also became a political trap for Noem with her own party because of what she told senators about Trump’s involvement.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) asked whether the president approved Noem spending $220 million on ads in which she is featured; Noem answered yes.

On Thursday, Trump told Reuters the opposite, saying: “I never knew anything about it.”

That contradiction—Noem telling Congress one thing, Trump telling a major wire service another—helped turn a procurement controversy into an intra-White House credibility problem.

And the contracting details were already politically combustible:

Two firms connected to Republican operatives received the awards, including Safe America Media (incorporated about a week before it won a $143 million award) and People Who Think (awarded $77 million), according to federal records.

Noem’s tenure was increasingly engulfed by overlapping controversies. Some policy-driven, some managerial, some personal. But it wasn’t until congressional blowback stopped being partisan and started becoming bipartisan that the President took note.

Noem drew outrage after describing the protesters killed in Minneapolis as “domestic terrorists,” while later accounts—including bystander video cited in reporting—undercut DHS’s early public narrative of what happened.

Fiery rebukes came from both parties, including Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who called her leadership “a disaster” and cited inspector general concerns about oversight being thwarted.

In that context, Trump’s announcement reads like an attempt to end a runaway storyline.

Trump has cast Mullin as a reliable “America First” partner for immigration enforcement and border security, and the White House is clearly trying to frame the transition as continuity of agenda, even as it removes the official who had become the agenda’s most visible spokesperson.

The harder question is whether continuity is possible without change.

Trump advisers had been discussing recalibrating the approach to immigration enforcement as public backlash grew, and Noem’s removal comes amid heightened attention to oversight, contracting, and internal DHS management.

In other words: even if the policy destination stays the same, the administration may be signaling it wants a different driver.

Meanwhile, the ad-contract story is not automatically over just because the messenger changed. The contracting process, subcontracting questions, and competing claims about who authorized what are exactly the kind of issues that can live on through inspector general reviews, congressional inquiries, and follow-on reporting—especially after the president publicly contradicted his own secretary’s testimony about approval.

The bottom line is Noem left after the hearings crystalized something the White House could no longer manage: a DHS secretary facing bipartisan scrutiny, a procurement controversy with messy political optics, and a president now on-record saying he didn’t authorize the signature PR campaign that put her face on the crackdown.