They Knew Noem Was Unfit— Or Should Have— And Voted For Her Anyway… Now What?

The Banality Of Confirmation— Never About Qualifications, Always About Obedience To Trump

On January 25, South Dakota extremist Kristi Noem was confirmed as Secretary of Homeland Security by the Senate, 59-34, with half a dozen Democrats avoiding the balloting. That said, every single Republican plus John Fetterman (D-PA), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Andy Kim (D-NJ), Gary Peters (D-MI), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) voted for confirmation.

Now, not quite half a year later congressional Democrats are calling on her to resign over her ICE lies and over her incompetence in the way she handled the deadly flooding in Texas. Should any senators ge surprised by a report saying that “As the floods hit the Central Texas, FEMA officials told CNN they couldn't deploy the Urban Search and Rescue crews in response to urgent requests from authorities at the epicenter of the disaster. Noem didn’t authorize FEMA’s deployment of the teams until Monday, more than 72 hours after the flooding began, sources told the paper.” That tragedy could have as easily been in Maine, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Nebraska... anywhere.

I agree, Noem should resign but she won’t unless Trump tells her to— and he won’t. And what about the senators who were remiss in their jobs and who voted to confirm her? How hard would it have been to determine her unfitness for this job, even before the deaths of as many as 300 Texans she failed?

It should have been obvious to anyone doing even a cursory vetting of Noem’s record that she was not qualified to run the Department of Homeland Security. Her tenure as governor of South Dakota was marked by culture war pandering, cronyism and disdain for federal authority— hardly the profile of someone prepared to lead one of the nation’s most complex and sensitive executive agencies. Her frequent rhetoric about “states’ rights” and her embrace of radical anti-immigrant views should have raised red flags for any senator  who believes DHS should be guided by competence, professionalism and a commitment to the rule of law— not by grievance politics and personal loyalty to Trump.

Long before her confirmation vote, there were warning signs aplenty. Noem’s botched COVID response, her abuses of state funds, her infamous killing of a family dog she deemed inconvenient, her alignment with extremist militia movements, and her open contempt for the federal government she was now being asked to help lead— all of it was public knowledge. She had no experience with emergency management or national security, no understanding of the scale or scope of DHS’s mission, and no track record of administrative competence. Her appeal to Trump’s base may have made her a reliable surrogate, but it didn’t make her a qualified cabinet secretary. Any senator or Senate staffer who was surprised by her indifference to a rapidly unfolding natural disaster in Texas wasn’t paying attention.

And yet 59 U.S. senators voted to hand her the keys to DHS anyway. These senators were complicit, not hoodwinked. They prioritized political expediency, bipartisanship theater or personal ambition over public safety. Whether they voted for her out of fear of right-wing backlash, a desire to appear “reasonable” or some transactional calculus about their own reelection prospects, the result is the same: they failed their constituents and the country.

Those senators who cast a vote to confirm Noem are not just guilty of poor judgment, they’re responsible for helping install an unfit ideologue at the head of one of the most critical departments in the federal government. The consequences of that decision are now tragically evident in the lives lost in Texas, and in the lies told to Congress about ICE’s abuses. It is not enough to call on Noem to resign. The senators who enabled her rise must also be held accountable—by the press, in the case of Democrats by their colleagues and most of all, by voters.

If the Senate is to be anything more than a rubber stamp for authoritarian appointments, it must reckon with this failure. Otherwise, the next disaster, whether natural, political or both, will again be met with delay, dishonesty and deadly consequences.

So why, when presented with a nominee like Kristi Noem— a governor with a record of cruelty, dishonesty, and gross administrative failure— did John Fetterman, for example, fold? This wasn’t a murky procedural vote buried in the fine print. It was a high-profile confirmation for this critical Cabinet role, and the evidence of Noem’s unfitness was out in the open. Fetterman didn’t have to go digging to find it. The ICE lies, the glorification of authoritarian border policies, her callousness during the pandemic, and her cozying up to the worst actors in the MAGA orbit were all public. Fetterman has since joined the calls for Noem to resign. But it’s not enough to call for accountability after the damage has been done. He, and others who voted to confirm her, had a chance to prevent this— and they blew it. If Democrats want to claim the mantle of the party of competence and compassion, then their senators have to do more than vote with their guts or for headlines. They need to do the work of vetting nominees and standing firm against cynical appointments, even when that means breaking from bipartisan charades.

And what about Republicans like Pete Ricketts and Joni Ernst, who voted to confirm Noem knowing full well what kind of political creature she is sincee they’re both cut from the same cloth? Ricketts, a billionaire heir turned hard-right ideologue, governed Nebraska with a blend of austerity, anti-immigrant rhetoric, and culture war posturing. He didn’t just ignore the growing climate crisis, he actively worked to suppress climate data and environmental planning in his state. So it’s no surprise he’d support a DHS secretary who delayed a federal response to a historic flood. That’s what Republican governance has become: cruelty and deflection. Ricketts didn’t just tolerate that vision; he championed it. His vote for Noem wasn’t a lapse in judgment— it was ideological consistency.

Joni Ernst, meanwhile, has made a career out of pushing a phony folksy image while voting in lockstep with the worst excesses of Trumpism. She talks a big game about accountability and national security, but when faced with a nominee whose résumé includes no real homeland security experience and a history of publicly fantasizing about using federal force against immigrants and protesters, she signed off without hesitation. The same senator who once claimed she’d “make 'em squeal” in Washington didn't utter a peep of concern about putting Kristi Noem in charge of FEMA, ICE, and the Border Patrol.

Both Ricketts and Ernst voted not just for a nominee— they voted for an all too typical Republican Party worldview in which power is wielded to punish enemies, reward allies and disregard human life when it’s politically inconvenient. Noem’s bungled response to the Texas floods wasn’t a failure of implementation; it was a feature of the system these senators helped build— a system where competence is expendable and cruelty has literally become the point.