Kristi Noem

Early life and education

Noem was born Kristi Lynn Arnold to Corinne and Ron Arnold on November 30, 1971, in Watertown, South Dakota, and raised with her siblings on the family ranch and farm near the town of Hazel. She has Norwegian ancestry and is a descendant of Ephraim Wilson, who fought in the American Revolutionary War. Noem was crowned South Dakota Snow Queen on January 13, 1990, when she was a senior at Hamlin High School in Hayti.

Noem attended Northern State University from 1990 to 1994 but did not graduate. In March 1994, her father was killed in a grain bin accident and Noem left college early to run the family farm. Her daughter, Kassidy, was born weeks later, on April 21, 1994. She added a hunting lodge and restaurant to the family property. Her siblings also moved back to help expand the businesses.

Noem subsequently took classes at the Watertown campus of Mount Marty College and at South Dakota State University, and online classes from the University of South Dakota. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in political science from South Dakota State University in 2012 while serving as a U.S. representative. The Washington Post dubbed her Capitol Hill's "most powerful intern" for receiving college intern credits from her position as a member of Congress.

South Dakota House of Representatives (2007–2011)

In 2006, Noem won a seat as a Republican in the South Dakota House of Representatives, representing the 6th district, comprising parts of Beadle, Clark, Codington, Hamlin, and Kingsbury counties. In 2006, she won with 39% of the vote, and received $6330 in direct contributions to her campaign. In 2008, she was reelected with 41% of the vote.

Noem served for four years, from 2007 to 2010. She was an assistant majority leader during her second term. During her tenure, Noem was the prime sponsor of 11 bills that became law, including several property tax reforms and two bills to increase gun rights in South Dakota. In 2009, she served as vice chair of the Agriculture Land Assessment Advisory Task Force. Senator Larry Rhoden chaired the task force, and later served as her lieutenant governor. During her tenure, she joined the Civil Air Patrol as a "state legislative member".

U.S. House of Representatives (2011–2019)

In 2010, Noem ran for South Dakota's at-large seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. She won the Republican primary and defeated incumbent Democrat Stephanie Herseth Sandlin in the general election. Noem was reelected three times, serving in Congress until 2019.

Tenure

The 2011 House Republican 87-member freshman class elected Noem as liaison to the House Republican leadership, making her the second woman member of the House GOP leadership. According to The Hill, her role was to push the leadership to make significant cuts to federal government spending and to help Speaker John Boehner manage the expectations of the freshman class. In March 2011, Republican Representative Pete Sessions of Texas named Noem one of the 12 regional directors for the National Republican Congressional Committee during the 2012 election campaign.

On March 8, 2011, she announced the formation of a leadership political action committee, KRISTI PAC. Former South Dakota Lieutenant Governor Steve Kirby is its treasurer. Noem was among the top freshman Republicans in PAC fundraising in the first quarter of 2011, raising $169,000 from PACs.

In August 2010, while running for Congress, Noem indicated on a questionnaire from the Christian Coalition of America that she would vote to ban in-vitro fertilization and embryonic stem-cell research.

Noem co-sponsored legislation that would federally ban abortion. In 2015, she co-sponsored a bill to amend the 14th Amendment to define human life and personhood as beginning at fertilization, federally banning abortion from the moment of fertilization, without exceptions. She also voted for a bill to ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Noem has expressed skepticism about the scientific consensus on climate change. In 2022 she said she believes "the science has been varied on it, and it hasn't been proven to me that what we're doing is affecting the climate."

Noem has said that the U.S. needs an "all-of-the-above energy approach" that includes renewables like wind and ethanol while still realizing the need for a "balanced energy mix" that ends American dependence on foreign oil.

Noem supported the Keystone XL Pipeline and supports offshore oil drilling. She co-sponsored three bills that she argued would reduce American dependence on foreign oil by ending the 2010 United States deepwater drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico and reopening sales on oil leases in the Gulf and off the coast of Virginia. In 2011, she sponsored a measure to block Environmental Protection Agency funding for tighter air pollution standards for coarse particulates.

Governor of South Dakota (2019–2025)

Elections

In November 2016, Noem announced she would run for governor of South Dakota in 2018 rather than seek reelection to Congress. She defeated South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley in the June Republican primary, 56 to 44 percent, and Democratic nominee Billie Sutton in the general election, 51 to 48 percent.

In November 2021, Noem announced she was running for reelection as governor. State Representative Steven Haugaard, a Republican, announced he was running against Noem. In February 2022, House Democratic Minority Leader Jamie Smith announced he was seeking the Democratic nomination.

In the Republican primary in June, Noem defeated Haugaard, 76% to 24%. In the general election, she defeated Smith, 62% to 35%. Despite predictions of a competitive race, Noem flipped 17 counties that had previously voted Democratic and set a record for the most votes received by a candidate for governor in South Dakota.

Tenure

Noem was sworn in as South Dakota governor on January 5, 2019. She is the first woman to hold that office.

Noem is anti-abortion. She has been lauded by the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List and said she intends to maintain her 100% anti-abortion voting record.

In 2019, Noem signed bills restricting abortion, saying they would "crack down on abortion providers in South Dakota" and that a "strong and growing body of medical research provides evidence that unborn babies can feel, think, and recognize sounds in the womb. These are people, they must be given the same basic dignities as anyone else."

Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, South Dakota became one of the first states to enact trigger laws banning abortions. Noem defended South Dakota's abortion ban, which only allows exceptions in cases in which the mother's life is in danger. When asked about the case of the 10-year-old child abuse victim who traveled from Ohio to Indiana to receive an abortion, Noem said she would not support changing the law to allow exceptions for rape victims, explaining that she did not "believe a tragic situation should be perpetuated by another tragedy".

Noem proclaimed 2024 the "Freedom for Life Year", promoting anti-abortion laws. In April 2024, she announced that she had reversed her support for a federal ban on abortion, saying she believed abortion law should be determined at the state level, and continued to support South Dakota's law banning abortion except to save the life of the pregnant patient, without exceptions for rape or incest.

Noem is a vocal opponent of subsidized child care. Her administration rejected $7.5 million in federal funding for free summer meal programs for low-income residents and defeated multiple attempts to provide school lunches for eligible students. In 2023, Noem said, "I just don't think it's the government's job to pay or to raise people's children for them".

While running for governor in 2018, Noem made government transparency part of her platform. In her first State of the State address she pledged to "work toward building the most transparent administration South Dakota has ever seen".

Secretary of Homeland Security (2025–2026)

Nomination and confirmation

On November 12, 2024, President-elect Trump selected Noem to serve as Secretary of Homeland Security in his second term. The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs held a confirmation hearing for her on January 17, 2025. The committee advanced her nomination in a 13–2 vote on January 20. On January 25, the Senate confirmed Noem by a vote of 59–34, with seven Democrats voting to confirm.

Tenure

After resigning as governor of South Dakota, Noem was sworn in on January 25, 2025, by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as Secretary of Homeland Security, with Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry holding the Bible.

In the early morning of January 28, Noem joined multiple federal law enforcement agencies, including United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to lead a raid on undocumented immigrants in New York City. Her department posted a video of the raid on X that showed an apparent arrest.

After the 2025 Potomac River mid-air collision, Noem deployed U.S. Coast Guard resources for search and rescue efforts.

One of Noem's first acts in office was to rescind an 18-month extension of temporary protected status for about 600,000 Venezuelans who had fled Nicolás Maduro's authoritarian regime. In March, she revoked legal protections for 532,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who had settled in the U.S. since 2022.

In February, CNN host Dana Bash interviewed Noem about the new administration's policies and the Department of Homeland Security, including the use of Guantanamo Bay to detain migrants, which Noem said would be temporary. Noem also told Bash that she was comfortable with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) having access to sensitive data, saying that it was identifying waste, fraud, and abuse. She added, "information he [Elon Musk] has is looking at programs, not focusing on personal data and information."

In April, The Washington Post reported that Noem and acting Social Security Administration commissioner Leland Dudek had instructed the Social Security Administration to falsely list over 6,000 living immigrants in its database of dead people.

On April 20, 2025, Noem's purse was stolen from a D.C. burger restaurant. It contained her government access badge, apartment keys, $2,000–3,000 in cash, her passport, and blank checks. The incident raised various concerns, including about her Secret Service detail presence.

Deportation of U.S. service members and veterans

During a December 12, 2025, committee hearing, U.S. Representative Seth Magaziner asked Noem how many U.S. veterans DHS had deported. She replied that they had not deported any. He then showed, via Zoom, Purple Heart recipient and green-card holder Sae Joon Park, who had been deported during her tenure as Secretary. Magaziner said Park had "sacrificed more for this country than most people ever have."

Park legally immigrated to the U.S. from South Korea when he was 7, grew up in Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, and enlisted in the U.S. Army after graduating from Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks in 1988. He was deployed to Panama in 1989 during Operation Just Cause and wounded by enemy gunfire. After leaving the Army, Park suffered from PTSD, and his family's business burned to the ground during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. He moved to Hawaii, and in 2009, he was arrested for attempting to buy cocaine. Federal authorities allowed Park to stay in the U.S. as long as he made regular check-ins, which he did until June 2025, when he was told to self-deport or be deported by DHS officials. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Park had an "extensive criminal history" and had been given a final removal order, with the option to self-deport. Representative Delia Ramirez has since called for Noem to resign or be impeached due to her statements to Congress and wants a Congressional investigation into possible violations.

Criticism over use of Coast Guard resources

The Coast Guard has said that several of Noem's actions and directives have caused strain between it and DHS, especially downgrading search and rescue, a core USCG mission to secondary to ICE deportation missions. This began in February 2025, when Noem told the National Command Center to divert a USCG C-130 Hercules from a search and rescue mission for a coast guardsman who had gone overboard. The USCG commander in San Diego sent two C-27 Spartans to Texas for the deportation mission and kept the C-130 on the search. DHS has denied that it ordered the aircraft to suspend the search.

During Noem's tenure, more than 886 USCG flights were redirected to deportation missions transporting 9,805 migrants in fiscal year 2025. The Coast Guard called the flights routine and a typical use of multi-mission aircraft.

Noem's advisor Corey Lewandowski also fired a USCG pilot during a mission because Noem's blanket had been left on another aircraft. DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin denied that the incident took place. Lewandowski reportedly entered the aircraft flight deck while the plane was still climbing but not yet at 10,000 feet, which is widely considered unsafe behavior.

Noem was criticized for living rent-free in the Coast Guard Commandant's residence at Joint Base Anacostia–Bolling. She had taken occupancy of the waterfront home after the previous resident, Coast Guard Commandant and Four Star Admiral Linda Fagan, recently fired by President Trump, had been given only three hours' notice on February 4, 2025, to vacate the residence. DHS officials said that Noem was paying fair market value for the temporary use of the residence but provided no documentation to substantiate that claim.

Criticism over ICE-related actions

In January 2026, there were widespread protests over United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) actions in Minneapolis, actions that then DHS Secretary Noem strongly supported. On January 7, 2026, Renée Good, a U.S. citizen, was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. The killing sparked massive protests in Minneapolis and in cities across the country, including Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. Marches in Minneapolis prompted the closing of public schools and the deployment of more police officers. Federal agents used tear gas and pepper spray against protesters; an eyewitness to the shooting said, "People in our neighborhood have been terrorized by ICE for six weeks."

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, along with the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to halt ICE deployments. The incident intensified national debate over immigration enforcement and renewed calls to abolish ICE. Dakota tribal leaders protested ICE's questionable detention of five Dakota citizens in Minneapolis. On January 24, during a protest demonstration, two ICE agents killed Alex Pretti, a U.S. citizen and ICU nurse for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Noem defended the killings of Good and Pretti by federal agents before any investigation began, which led some lawmakers to call for her resignation or impeachment, and caused several political analysts to question the blaming of victims and the exoneration of federal agents. Vice President JD Vance strongly supported Noem and the aggressive immigration enforcement operations by ICE.

In January 2026, Noem made "unfounded claims" that Alex Pretti, the U.S. citizen shot dead by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers during protests against ICE in Minneapolis, had committed an act of "domestic terrorism". On January 14, Representative Robin Kelly introduced three articles of impeachment against Noem. She alleged Noem had obstructed congressional oversight of ICE facilities; violated public trust regarding arrests and the use of force; and engaged in self-dealing by awarding the contract for a $200 million taxpayer-funded recruitment campaign to the husband of Tricia McLaughlin. As of the filing, 70 representatives had signaled their support for the proceedings.

Misuse of funds, questionable dealings, and re-appointment

In March 2026, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump was preparing to fire Noem amid fallout from a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing a few days earlier in which she was criticized for her handling of the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, her relationship with Lewandowski, the use of more than $220 million in government funds on TV advertisements, and the additional use of more than $300 million on three private luxury jets that were to be retrofitted for use by the department. One of the aircraft was a luxury-configured Boeing 737 MAX 8 that officials said might also be eventually used for deportations. The New York Times reported that another of her private jets had its own bedroom and 18 seats.

According to political analysts, Trump decided to fire Noem from DHS after her congressional hearing in which she said Trump had approved the $200 million-plus government-funded DHS advertising campaign that prominently featured her. On March 5, Trump announced that he had reassigned Noem to a new position, "Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas", and that he would nominate Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin to succeed Noem at DHS. Mullin was sworn in on March 24. Noem was the first Cabinet official to leave her post during Trump's second term.

Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas (2026–)

In March 2026, Noem was appointed Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas, a US-led regional security organization focused on coordinating efforts to combat organized crime, drug trafficking, and illegal immigration throughout the western hemisphere. She is responsible for coordination between US agencies and foreign counterparts on intelligence sharing, border security, and drug trade operations, and has also represented the US in several multilateral discussions and bilateral engagements across the region.

Relations with Ecuador

As Secretary of Homeland Security, Noem made multiple visits to Ecuador and developed a working relationship with President Daniel Noboa. Agreements were made to cooperate on efforts against transnational organized crime, and intelligence sharing was discussed.

Since her appointment as Special Envoy, Noem has prioritized Ecuador as a regional partner, visiting it for the first time in her new capacity on March 25, 2026. During this visit, Noboa awarded Noem the National Order of Merit in the grade of Grand Cross, one of Ecuador's highest civilian honors, in recognition of her role in strengthening cooperation between the two nations.

Through her ties with Noboa, Noem expanded US operational involvement in Ecuador as part of a wider initiative targeting Latin American drug trafficking. In March, United States Southern Command initiated joint operations with the Ecuadorian Armed Forces to attack "narco-terrorist" organizations operating in the country, including bombing operations against alleged cartel training camps near the Colombian border associated with the Comandos de la Frontera (a dissident FARC group). These operations used aircraft, drones, and ground assets. On March 19, Noem introduced the first permanent US Federal Bureau of Investigation office in Ecuador. Agents work alongside Ecuadorian authorities on investigations of drug trafficking and money laundering.

Presidential endorsements

2020 presidential endorsement

In 2020, the Trump-Pence ticket carried South Dakota, receiving 261,043 votes to 150,471 for the Biden-Harris ticket. Noem was initially designated one of Trump's three presidential electors for South Dakota, but later withdrew.

Noem has claimed that the 2020 presidential election, in which Biden defeated Trump, was marred by widespread voter fraud; no evidence supports this claim. On December 8, 2020, Noem tacitly acknowledged the outcome of the election when she referred to a "Biden administration" during her annual state budget address, but even after Biden was inaugurated in January, she still refused to accept that the election was "free and fair".

After the U.S. Capitol was attacked by a pro-Trump mob on January 6, 2021, disrupting the counting of the electoral votes formalizing Biden's victory, Noem spoke out against the violence, saying: "We are all entitled to peacefully protest. Violence is not a part of that." One day after calling for peace and reconciliation in the aftermath of the assault on the Capitol, Noem called the two newly elected Democratic senators from Georgia, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, "communists" in an op-ed for The Federalist, prompting criticism from South Dakota Democrats.

2024 presidential endorsement

Noem endorsed Trump in the 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries in September 2023, at a rally hosted for him in Rapid City, South Dakota. Trump invited her to appear with him at a March 2024 rally in Vandalia, Ohio.

During Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, commentators suggested that Noem was a potential running mate for Trump. In September 2023, when asked on Newsmax if she would agree to serve as Trump's running mate, Noem responded that she would "in a heartbeat". At the February 2024 CPAC conference, Noem tied with Vivek Ramaswamy as attendees' top choice for Trump's running mate, with each receiving 15% of the vote in a straw poll. Also that month, Trump acknowledged that Noem was one of the names on his shortlist to be his running mate. In March 2024, CNN reported that Noem was one of four people Trump had shown increased interest in selecting as his running mate.

In April 2024, insiders said that her odds of being selected as Trump's running mate had waned due to her stance on abortion and the revelation in her book No Going Back that she shot and killed her pet dog and a goat. It was noted that "additions, subtractions and the emergence of dark-horse candidates remain possible", but on June 5, NBC News reported that Noem was no longer on Trump's shortlist of running mates.

Autobiographical debates

In April 2024, pre-release excerpts of Noem's second autobiography, No Going Back, were widely debated, criticized, and condemned. In the chapter "Bad Day to Be a Goat", Noem recounts that she brought her family's 14-month-old female wirehaired pointer, Cricket, along for a pheasant hunt with guests at her family's hunting lodge. Expecting Cricket to emulate the older, trained, dogs on the hunt, Noem instead felt that Cricket ruined the hunt by "chasing all those birds and having the time of her life". After the dog killed several chickens that day, Noem decided Cricket was "dangerous" and "untrainable", and shot the dog dead in a gravel pit. She then killed her family's male goat, which she said was "disgusting, musky, rancid".

Noem initially responded that "tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm", and later said the incident occurred 20 years ago and that "the fake news ... put the worst spin" on the story, as Cricket was a "working dog" that "came to us from a family who had found her way too aggressive ... a responsible owner does what they need to do". The story led to bipartisan criticism of Noem, and doubt that Trump would choose her as his vice-presidential running mate intensified. A fundraising dinner for Noem in Colorado scheduled for May 4 was canceled after the group and the hotel hosting the event received death threats.

Later in the memoir, Noem wrote of imagining herself becoming president in 2025, taking over from Biden, and that the first thing she would do would be to "make sure Joe Biden's dog was nowhere on the grounds ('Commander, say hello to Cricket for me')", in an apparent suggestion that Commander be killed. Months earlier, Commander had been moved out of the White House after having bitten Secret Service agents and others on over a dozen occasions. In an interview, Noem said that Biden was "accountable" and called for him to "make a decision" on "what to do" about Commander.

Noem also falsely claimed in her memoir to have met the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, writing, "I'm sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I'd been a children's pastor, after all). Dealing with foreign leaders takes resolve, preparation, and determination." Her spokesperson said the claim was an error and would be expunged from the book's future editions. Noem also wrote in the book that she was once "slated to meet with French president Emmanuel Macron", but called off the meeting because he made a "very pro-Hamas and anti-Israel comment to the press"; the French government responded that it had neither invited Noem nor had any record of a scheduled meeting with her.

Personal life

Marriage

Kristi and Bryon Noem married in 1992, in Watertown, South Dakota. They have three children and four grandchildren. In 2011, when Noem moved to Washington, D.C., after her election to Congress, her family continued to live on a ranch near Castlewood, South Dakota.

In September 2021, conservative media outlet American Greatness reported that Noem was having an extramarital affair with political operative Corey Lewandowski. Noem called the report a "disgusting lie", saying, "these old, tired attacks on conservative women are based on a falsehood that we can't achieve anything without a man's help." In September 2025, New York magazine reported that the romantic relationship between Noem and Lewandowski was ongoing, and that Lewandowski played a significant role in running the Department of Homeland Security, acting as Noem's "de facto chief of staff".

In 2026, Axios reporter Marc Caputo received a tip that an online sex worker wanted to go public about Bryon Noem engaging in bimbofication role play. The Daily Mail reported that Bryon sent $25,000 to sex workers, telling them that he enjoyed "huge, huge ridiculous boobs". The Mail published a photograph depicting Bryon wearing tight pink shorts and a peach crop top while using balloons to simulate breasts. A representative for the Noem family said Kristi was "devastated" and that the family had asked for privacy and prayers. The outlets LGBTQ Nation and Them wrote that Bryon's alleged cross-dressing stood in contrast with Kristi's history of opposition to drag entertainment and queer and trans rights.

Religion and public image

Noem is a Protestant. As of 2018, her family attended a Foursquare Church in Watertown.

In August 2024, at the South Dakota State Fair, Noem and her sister, Cindy Grantham, were inducted into the Daughters of the American Revolution by State Regent Katherine Tarrell.

In March 2024, Noem shared a video in which she identified herself as South Dakota's governor and promoted a cosmetic dentist business that she said helped her after she lost her front teeth in a biking accident years before: "I love my new family at Smile Texas!" Noem has since become one of the most prominent examples of so-called "Mar-a-Lago face", a cosmetic surgery trend among conservative women, also known as "Republican makeup".

In June 2026, Noem joined the Canadian mineral exploration firm NovaRed Mining as an adviser.

Memoirs

Noem, Kristi (2022). Not My First Rodeo. New York: Twelve. ISBN 978-1538707050.

Noem, Kristi (2024). No Going Back. Nashville: Center Street. ISBN 978-1546008163.