Senate confirms Kristi Noem to head Trump’s DHS
Noem was approved in a 59-34 vote. She is a four-term congresswoman who was first elected governor of South Dakota in 2018, becoming the state’s first female executive. She’s been a stalwart Trump supporter in recent years, appearing with the incoming president at multiple rallies across the country.
Noem advanced out of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Monday in a 13-2 vote as one of the less controversial nominees in the Trump 2.0 cabinet.
She was reportedly on Trump’s shortlist for vice president but fell out of favor after she received criticism for a memoir that included dubious foreign policy claims and a story about shooting her family’s 14-month-old puppy because of unruly behavior.
In announcing her nomination, Trump said that Noem “has been very strong on border security,” citing the fact that she sent the South Dakota National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border multiple times to prevent illegal border crossings.
Her role might be more limited than previous secretaries, however, as Trump also said that she “will work closely with ‘Border Czar’ Tom Homan to secure the border.” Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to Trump during his first administration, is also poised to take on an expanded role as homeland security advisor and White House deputy chief of staff for policy.
Less than a week into his presidency, aspects of Trump’s border priorities are already being carried out.
Noem, in her confirmation hearing to head DHS, argued that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — housed within the department — needs to be reduced in scale and realigned to not address misinformation and disinformation threats.
The cyber agency has historically enjoyed bipartisan support from members aligned on the notion that cybersecurity is a national security concern and shouldn’t be mired in politicization. But Republican claims that its misinformation efforts have targeted conservative voices in the past two years are setting the agency on a course for potentially far-reaching reevaluation with Noem now set to take over DHS.
“CISA’s gotten far off-mission. They’re using their resources in ways that was never intended,” she said in testimony.
“The misinformation and disinformation that they have stubbed their toe into and meddled with should be refocused onto what their job is, and that is to support critical infrastructure … to have the resources and be prepared for those cyberattacks that they will face,” she said, calling out recent Chinese cyber intrusions into critical infrastructure.
“CISA needs to be much more effective, smaller, more nimble, to really fulfill their mission, which is to hunt and to help harden our nation’s critical infrastructure,” she added.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and leading into the 2020 election, the agency had regular contact with social media platforms to inform them of misinformation- or disinformation-laced content, crafted or amplified by foreign adversaries or other home-grown entities.
But it began chilling communications following a July 2023 Missouri-originated lawsuit alleging that the Biden administration’s efforts to flag disinformation violated First Amendment rights and suppressed politically conservative voices.
Many of those views centered around COVID vaccine efficacy, as well as Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. The case was kicked up to the Supreme Court, which ultimately sided with the Biden administration on the matter last year.
The Trump-era reduction vision for CISA has expanded throughout the broader DHS, where the administration this past week purged members across its advisory boards, including a cybersecurity oversight panel that was in the midst of probing a sweeping Chinese hack into multiple U.S. telecommunications providers and their wiretap systems.
The hacking unit, dubbed Salt Typhoon, accessed the communications of high-value political officials close to Trump and Vice President JD Vance. Noem is likely to have a say in who staffs that panel, dubbed the Cyber Safety Review Board.
Brian Harrell, a former DHS assistant secretary in Trump’s first term, praised Noem’s confirmation to helm the department, saying that “in addition to securing the border, and keeping fentanyl out of our neighborhoods, she has also signaled that she will be focused on China’s cyber-espionage and hacking campaigns against U.S. companies.”
“As we march closer to a telegraphed Taiwan invasion by China, the CCP will increase attacks on US telecommunications, energy, and financial systems. DHS must anticipate this,” he added.
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