Noem’s Firing Shows Public Pressure on Congress Can Work

We need to double down on activating and using our power as constituents

Photo by roya ann miller on Unsplash

On March 5, the American people claimed a win for accountability when President Trump fired Kristi Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security. While it’s just a first step, how this played out shows that public pressure on Congress can still make a difference. We should learn from this and double down.

Members of Congress had grilled Noem at a hearing about a questionable $220 million ad campaign in which she featured prominently, and she said Trump had approved the contract. According to some reporting, this was the precipitating event for her firing. Whether that’s accurate or not, the fact is, Noem might never have faced such questions in Congress were it not for a significant swing in public opinion and public narratives against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

For most of the past year, the Republican majority in Congress has permitted Noem to oversee an increasingly brutal, abusive DHS, despite repeated allegations of mismanagement and corruption. They had no problem approving last year’s Big Beautiful Bill, which made Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a DHS agency, by far the country’s largest—and least accountable—law enforcement agency. When a November 2025 ProPublica story about the questionable $220 million ad campaign contract prompted Democrats to seek a formal investigation, no Republicans joined them.

That dynamic shifted in January 2026 after the brutal DHS killings of protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. The agents’ actions fueled sharp disapproval, including among Republican voters who may have supported the administration’s broader immigration policies but were increasingly uncomfortable with their blunt force implementation.

Noem and White House Advisor Stephen Miller doubled down, accusing the victims of “domestic terrorism,” but video footage contradicted that version of the events. The administration’s failure to launch an independent criminal investigation and actions to block state investigators only worsened public concerns.

Soon not only Democrats but also some Republicans spoke out. Senators Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Thom Tillis (NC) as well as others who have been less prone to disagree with the administration, such as Senators Bill Cassidy (LA) and Pete Ricketts (NE), expressed concern or called for thorough investigations. DHS funding has been on hold in Congress since then, with Democrats demanding reforms.

Meanwhile, organizations like mine saw a marked increase in public mobilization and engagement, with indignant Americans demanding that Congress take action, block DHS funding, and ensure accountability.

The Wall Street Journal added fuel to the fire in February with a major story detailing DHS chaos and mismanagement, and reports that Noem was jetting around the country with advisor Corey Lewandowski (with whom she was allegedly having an affair) on a luxury jet paid for by taxpayers.

This all set the stage for the contentious March 3 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that seems to have been the last straw.

An apparently emboldened Senator Tillis, who is not running for office again, delivered the harshest Republican rebuke of a cabinet member we’ve seen in the last year, in a 10-minute statement that he described as a “performance review.” Senator John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, grilled Noem on the $220 million ad campaign–prompting her to point the finger at Trump.

Noem’s firing does not solve the abusive conduct at DHS, nor does it translate into real accountability for the killings of Pretti, Good, and several others in the last year. Trump’s nominee for DHS Secretary, election-denying Senator Markwayne Mullin (OK), may prove to be just as problematic or worse.

But the firing highlights something extremely important: that the American people still have power and can influence Congress’s actions.

Without the hearing and growing willingness of some Republican senators to speak out, Noem might still be there. Without significant public pressure and reporting, including by more conservative outlets like the Wall Street Journal, those senators might not have felt the need or ability to take a stand.

As we confront an ongoing assault on democratic ideals, we need to use all peaceful tools at our disposal to insist on a government accountable to the people. That includes, of course, litigation and peaceful protest. It also needs to include demanding more from Congress—not just through phone calls, but through strategic, insistent advocacy. And it needs to include work to engage and help ordinary Americans, across ideologies, to use their power, both in the short term, to limit harm, and in the long term, to build something better.

Despair, hopelessness, and cynicism are common today. What we need now is the opposite: courage, hope, and strategic action.