Kristi Noem Must Be Impeached
Members of Congress have a constitutional duty to remove this gangster from office.
Bruce Springsteen used the first great protest song of 2026, his “Streets of Minneapolis,” to deliver a blistering condemnation of the violent assault that a strike force of 3,000 masked and armed agents of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has waged on Minnesota’s largest city. The American bard describes how, during the first weeks of January, Minneapolis became “a city aflame…’neath an occupier’s boots” and recounts that “there were bloody footprints where mercy should have stood and two left to die on snow-filled streets: Alex Pretti and Renee Good.” Springsteen was not merely mourning; he was calling out the Trump administration’s propagandistic distortion of the truth about Pretti, an intensive-care nurse with the Department of Veterans Affairs, gunned down by Border Patrol agents on January 24, and Good, a poet and mother of three, shot in the head by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent on January 7. And the Boss excoriated “Noem’s dirty lies.”
The lies told by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, including wildly unfounded assertions that Good and Pretti committed acts of “domestic terrorism,” have inspired widespread demands for accountability for the most dangerously dishonest of Donald Trump’s miserable cast of cabinet appointees. There is plenty of competition for the “worst of the worst” title in Trump’s cabinet. But Noem’s attempts to defend the indefensible, her personal and official scandals, her mismanagement, and above all her outrageous and propagandistic lies about Good and Pretti are not merely shameful. They are impeachable.
Members of Congress, no matter their political affiliation, must recognize a constitutional duty to remove this gangster from the position of public trust that she has so flagrantly abused. The will of the people is already clear. Trump and Noem thought they could intimidate the public into quiescence. But tens of thousands of Americans have filled the streets of Minneapolis and cities across the country to demand the abolition of ICE because they have chosen to believe their own eyes, as opposed to Noem’s lies.
The arguments against Noem are now so stark that even senior Republicans are making the case for her removal, with North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis raging against “the incompetence of the leader of the [Department of] Homeland Security,” adding, “She doesn’t know how to lead, how to de-escalate. She’s exposing ICE officers to dangerous situations; she’s exposing US citizens to deadly situations.” Even as Trump tried to distance himself from some of Noem’s most extreme statements and policies in late January, the president’s response to Tillis and to Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, another Republican who’s said the secretary should go, was to call the senators “losers” and announce that Noem would be staying because “she’s doing a very good job.”
With Trump digging in, it falls to members of Congress to act. Many Democrats have done just that, as part of the most significant accountability movement yet seen during the year of chaos that Trump and his noxious inner circle of aides, such as Stephen Miller, have unleashed. In addition to tentative calls from Republicans for Noem’s resignation or firing, a robust movement to impeach the cabinet secretary has attracted support from over 180 House Democrats as of February 2. Supporters of impeachment have rallied around a resolution sponsored by Representative Robin Kelly (D-IL) that indicts Noem for obstructing the congressional oversight of detention facilities operated by DHS; for “using her position for personal gain while inappropriately using taxpayer dollars”; for “using her position to circumvent the Federal contracting process and [funnel] Federal funds to her friends’ businesses”; and for “repeatedly [violating] the Immigration and Nationality Act, the First and Fourth Amendments of the United States Constitution, and due process rights of American citizens by directing [ICE] to make widespread warrantless arrests, forgo due process, and use violence against United States citizens, lawful residents, and other individuals.”
The resolution notes that, in the case of Renee Good, “despite video showing the officer on the side of the vehicle while firing and the vehicle was moving away from the officer on the second and third shots, Kristi Lynn Arnold Noem is claiming publicly that the officer was in danger and in front of the vehicle when he fired.” That lie points to the most compelling argument for Noem’s removal: She is a determined propagandist who seeks to distort the truth, undermine investigations, and divide Americans. And all the evidence suggests that she intends to keep lying to the American people, the media, and Congress.
None of the House members who propose to impeach Noem are naïve. They know that the full constitutional promise of the impeachment power has been undermined by Senate Republicans who have refused to hold members of their own party—including Trump himself—to account. And they know that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) will do everything in his power to thwart accountability for Trump and his appointees—just as he did during the fight over the release of files regarding the convicted child-sex offender and longtime Trump associate Jeffrey Epstein. But the anger over Noem’s reckless actions and scorching dishonesty has momentum, which could force congressional action in much the way that US Representatives Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) ultimately did in their fight for the release of the Epstein files.
Khanna has emerged as an ardent supporter of Noem’s impeachment because “she’s presided over agents who are killing American citizens.” The California representative includes Noem’s impeachment on a list of steps that, he says, must be taken to rein in ICE and DHS. “Congress is not powerless. Democrats must unify around an actual agenda,” argues Khanna, who urges opposition to future DHS funding, a repeal of the multiyear $75 billion in funding for ICE that Congress approved last year, investigations and prosecutions of ICE agents who have broken the law, and a strategy to “tear down and replace ICE with an agency that has oversight.”
To that list, we would add formal action by Congress to bar ICE agents from interfering with the 2026 midterms.
We understand that some will ask why Noem’s impeachment should be a priority with so many threats to be addressed and so many other members of the Trump administration who merit removal (including Trump himself). Our answer is that this is an accountability movement that has gained traction, has the potential to attract at least some Republican support, and above all will send a message to the whole administration that, to quote Springsteen, “We’ll remember the names of those who died on the streets of Minneapolis”—and the lies that have been told about Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and all the others who have died on Kristi Noem’s watch.
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