Finally, justice for little Cricket. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who boasted in her 2024 book that she shot her 14-month-old puppy for misbehaving, became the first Trump cabinet secretary fired in his second administration. She was quickly replaced by almost-certain-to-be-just-as-bad Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, but we can afford to enjoy a few rare moments of happiness over Noem’s downfall.

It’s unlikely Cricket factored into Trump’s decision today—it was probably the cumulative effect of Noem’s two-day humiliation by Congress, plus the way she botched Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis and forced the administration to at least draw down if not remove her henchmen. But Cricket got a moment of vindication Tuesday when retiring North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis, a known dog lover, loudly berated the DHS secretary for cruelly shooting her puppy, whom she hadn’t adequately trained, and then citing it as an example of her leadership steeliness in her book.

Now, Tillis could have learned about the Cricket murder before voting to confirm the plainly unqualified Noem last year. But his anger on Tuesday reflected what he’d come to realize: Noem cited that as strong leadership, and it was the same leadership and terrible judgment that led her to falsely defend the murders of Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti as a strike against “domestic terrorism,” and to allow her agents to detain legal immigrants, and even some US citizens.

“You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time in training,” Tillis told Noem. “And then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it’s a leadership lesson about tough choices?

“But my point is, those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment—not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis,” he continued. “We’re an exceptional nation, and one of the reasons we’re exceptional is we expect exceptional leadership, and you’ve demonstrated anything but that.”

Even I hadn’t made the connection between her Cricket cruelty and her cavalier approach to human suffering as DHS secretary—and I wrote about Cricket’s murder when her book came out.

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Tillis wasn’t the only Republican visibly incensed by Noem’s corrupt leadership. Louisiana Senator John Kennedy was likewise irritated by her slandering Good and Pretti in early remarks. Kennedy was also angered by reports that she had funneled a $220 million ad campaign, designed to boost Noem’s sexy cowgirl image, to a company run by one of her former top aides. Apparently, Trump was angry when she said multiple times that the president had approved the contract; he told Kennedy and others he’d known nothing about it.

Noem also faced questions about her hiding-in-plain-sight affair with her chief of staff, Corey Lewandowski, and the couple’s using a luxury jet with a fancy hot-sheets queen-sized bed for their travel. Noem, who is married, didn’t quite deny the rumors about her also married chief of staff, but she chided Democratic Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-CA) for asking her if she “had sexual relations with Corey Lewandowski.” She replied, “I am shocked we’re going down and peddling tabloid garbage in this committee.” But Florida Representative Jared Moskowitz pressed her. “I really think you need to say the word ‘no’ into the record so that you can clear that up,” Moskowitz said.

Noem replied, “I think the ridiculousness of this and the tabloids that you are quoting and referencing are insane,” and then added, “This has been something that I’ve refuted for years, and I continue to do that,” she added. Nobody seemed convinced. (On MSNOW Thursday, after Noem’s firing, Moskowitz sported a “JUSTICE FOR CRICKET” button; how can I get one?)

But Trump didn’t fire her over an affair, of course. Her job has been hanging by a thread since he banished her Customs and Border Patrol “commander at large,” Greg Bovino, he of the Nazi greatcoat and penchant for tear-gassing innocent protesters himself, and replacing him with “border czar” Tom Homan. Homan is no bleeding heart, but he did curtail the worst of the Minneapolis violence and quickly announced an agent drawdown (which is still not complete).

Even so, the about-face on Operation Metro Surge was the first defeat for Trump in the 14 months of his second term, and has provided a model for other communities to resist federal cruelty. (Credit where it’s due: Minneapolis learned a lot from activists in Chicago and Los Angeles, in Portland, Oregon and Lewiston, Maine. Minnesotans have been training national activists on the lessons of their crusade for the last week, at the awful Whipple detention center.)

But between the televised murders of two innocent American citizens and the cruelty of agents captured on video daily, the operation was a black eye for an administration that values optics above all. Trump doesn’t mind tough-guy optics, but he does mind incompetence. Endless videos of hapless ICE agents slipping and falling on Minneapolis’s famously icy midwinter streets, or giving up and letting detainees go (there wasn’t enough of that, but there was some), gave a Keystone Kops feel to what was in fact a brutal community assault that no one should minimize.

Things won’t get reliably better until the Santa Monica sadist, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, joins Noem in the unemployment line. (Actually, Trump gave her some kind of Nazified new title, “Envoy for The Shield of the Americas,” to lead “our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere.”) But it feels good to see someone in this administration pay a price for cruelty and incompetence. I wonder if her “Shield” job comes with the use of the luxury jet, and a sinecure for Lewandowski.