WASHINGTON, D.C. - When threat levels are at their highest due to the situation in Iran, President Trump ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at 1:40 p.m. March 5 in a Truth Social post and named Republican U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma as her replacement. 

The announcement instantly set off political chain reactions in Washington and in Oklahoma, at a moment when DHS is shut down, and ICE does not have a permanent director.

Sen. Mullin cannot take the job without Senate confirmation, and his hearing would be held by the Senate Homeland Security Committee. The committee is chaired by Sen. Rand Paul, whom Mullin recently labeled “a freaking snake,” creating a combustible backdrop for testimony that will help determine whether Trump’s pick can take control of the sprawling agency.

If Mullin leaves the Senate for DHS, Oklahoma will have an open U.S. Senate seat and will need an election to fill it. That contest would begin under the state’s closed partisan primaries, where party registration determines who can vote. 

In Oklahoma’s 2026 primaries, no recognized political parties have authorized Independent voters to participate, narrowing the primary electorate that will shape the race’s early, decisive stage before the seat is contested in November 2026. 

As IVN has reported, Vote Yes 836 staff and volunteers recently filed over 200,000 signatures with the Oklahoma Secretary of State’s office in support of State Question 836, marking a major milestone for the citizen-led campaign to bring open primary elections to Oklahoma. The effort requires 172,993 valid signatures to be successful.

The scramble for Senate seats is already intensifying after Sen. Steven Daines of Montana said just yesterday that he will not run for reelection, adding another seat to the November 2026 map.

Trump’s move to fire Noem followed a punishing stretch for her and DHS. After two deadly shootings of U.S. citizens by immigration agents and a government shutdown of the department, calls grew for Noem’s firing and, in some corners, impeachment. House Speaker Mike Johnson added to the sense of impending upheaval when he told a leadership retreat last weekend that changes were coming at DHS.

Noem’s critics accuse her of prioritizing personal visibility over departmental stewardship. They point to a headline-grabbing immigration crackdown and to a massive ad push featuring her, including imagery of her on horseback at Mount Rushmore. 

In a hearing this week, Sen. John Kennedy pressed Noem about the $220 million ad campaign, and she said the president approved it, but Kennedy appeared to catch her in a falsehood, suggesting that the president had not signed off on a multimillion-dollar public relations effort centered on her.

"I never knew anything about it," Trump told Reuters, shortly before firing Noem.

Questions about image making extended to Noem's trip to a secret facility. Noem arrived by helicopter, toured the site, and had staff photograph the visit throughout, including aerial shots of the flight. The images later appeared on social media and were promoted in a DHS press release, a sequence described by the Wall Street Journal as the sort of thing that could cost a typical federal employee their job without the rarely granted authorization.

Other management controversies piled up. A reported $1.5 billion in public assistance and mitigation grants for Puerto Rico stalled in Noem’s approval process. DHS spent tens of millions on polygraph testing, including exams administered to employees she did not trust. She also fired and later rehired her pilot after he left her blanket on a different plane.

Noem’s week on Capitol Hill made matters worse. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, who is not running for reelection, lashed into her over enforcement results, saying, “Why am I disappointed with Secretary Noem? We just want numbers. We want 1,000 a day, 6,000 a day, 9,000 a day. And what we've seen is a disaster under your leadership, Ms. Noem...with Stephen Miller aiding and abetting.”

Tillis also invoked Noem’s memoir to attack her judgment:

“I read your book last week and honestly, some of the parts of it impressed me...but the passage when you talked about killing a dog that was 14 months old. You should know better. You don't take a puppy out there. You decided to kill that dog....You say it's a leadership lesson....Those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment, not unlike Minneapolis....”

Noem was also shown an enlarged photo of the $72 million-leased jet she had been using and was pressed to respond.

Lawmakers also confronted Noem about elections. She was evasive when asked to rule out DHS monitoring of polling places. When Sen. Chris Coons asked whether she would direct ICE agents not to be at election sites, Noem did not answer directly and instead asked, “Do you plan on illegal aliens voting in our elections?” It is already illegal for a noncitizen to vote in a federal election. 

Noem also defended labeling Minneapolis protesters’ actions as domestic terrorism, saying she relied on information from agents on the ground, even though the heads of two immigration agencies said last month it did not come from them.

New reporting this week further intensified the spotlight. Three reporters viewed a classified finding and an inspector general letter concluding that Noem created security vulnerabilities at U.S. airports and that DHS had “systematically obstructed” the watchdog’s work, including 11 alleged instances of blocking information tied to an inquiry described as criminal.

The conflict centered on Noem’s July decision to let passengers keep their shoes on at screening checkpoints even if they were not enrolled in TSA PreCheck.

A classified November report found that some TSA full-body scanners cannot scan shoes and concluded the change introduced “significant” risk, with some White House officials made aware. After Noem’s office was briefed, officials elevated the classification level and blocked public release, according to people familiar with the matter.

DHS disputed the inspector general’s claims, and a spokeswoman said, “The decision to end the shoes-off policy, the spokeswoman added, was made after 1,000 tests and risk assessments, including those conducted under the Biden administration.” The inspector general’s office said it conducted covert tests but could not discuss details because the findings were classified.

Even as the controversies mounted, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump still backed Noem, adding, “Our homeland is undoubtedly safer today than it was when the president took office last year.” Trump’s 1:40 p.m. Truth Social post ended that line of defense and handed the next chapter to Mullin and a newly opened Senate seat in Oklahoma.