WASHINGTON — South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem will be the new secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, the third of President Donald Trump’s nominees to be confirmed.
Noem earned the requisite number of votes from senators Saturday, winning confirmation with a vote of 59-34. Former U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida was confirmed to be secretary of state in a unanimous vote Monday and former Fox News Host Pete Hegseth was confirmed as secretary of defense 51-50 Friday night, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote.
The confirmation votes came on the heels of Trump’s second oath of office and less than a week after the nominees’ respective committee hearings.
More:South Dakota leaders praise Gov. Kristi Noem’s confirmation as Homeland Security secretary
Unlike the controversial Hesgeth, Noem, a Republican, won the support of several Democrats in the otherwise party-line vote. Among them were Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and both of Michigan’s senators, Gary Peters and Elise Slotkin.
As the department’s new head, Noem is expected to play a central role in enacting Trump’s campaign promise to deport unauthorized immigrants en masse.
Noem was in her second term as governor of South Dakota when Trump selected her for the cabinet position.
Who is Kristi Noem?Dog controversy and what else to know about new homeland security head
She first entered state politics in 2006, when she was elected to the 6th District seat in the South Dakota House of Representatives. She represented parts of Beadle, Clark, Codington, Hamlin, and Kingsbury counties in the Legislature from 2007 to 2010, and she worked on agricultural, property tax and gun legislation.
It was during this period that Noem befriended then-state Sen. Larry Rhoden, who was majority leader at the time. Noem would later select Rhoden as her running mate for lieutenant governor, and he stepped up to the governorship Saturday as she resigned to assume her new post.
After her legislative terms, Noem successfully challenged U.S. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin for South Dakota’s single House seat in 2010, which the Democrat had held since 2004. Noem served four terms in Washington.
In 2016, Noem launched her first campaign for governor. She beat Attorney General Marty Jackley in the state’s 2018 Republican primary before narrowly defeating then-Senate Minority Leader Billie Sutton to become the state’s first female governor on Jan. 5, 2019.
Noem was reelected in November 2022 to a second term, beating South Dakota House Minority Leader Jamie Smith with 61.9% of the vote.
Throughout her campaign for and tenure as governor, she’s been a strong ally of Trump, casting doubt on the validity of his loss to Biden in the 2020 election. He endorsed her reelection and she gave him an early endorsement in his 2024 presidential run. She also was rumored to be on his list of potential 2024 running mates.
Noem claims a number of accomplishments as governor. They include:
Noem also has been no stranger to controversy throughout her six years as the chief executive of South Dakota.
The COVID-19 pandemic took off partway into her first term, and she largely took a hands-off approach, eschewing statewide lockdowns, business closures and mask mandates. She also allowed the widely attended Sturgis Motorcycle Rally to continue in 2020 when many large annual gatherings were canceled; a 2021 Oxford University Press study for the Infectious Diseases Society of America directly connected more than 463 cases of COVID-19 to the event, which it said caused “widespread transmission” of the virus across the U.S.
Amid backlash to alleged government overreach during the pandemic, Noem has since touted her response, but she did take some restrictive measures as governor despite her rhetoric. After she declared a state of emergency on March 13, 2020, she recommended in early April that the state’s public schools close for the rest of the academic year and issued an executive order directing people older than age 65 in Minnehaha and Lincoln counties to stay at home.
Noem’s approach to COVID boosted her national image with conservatives and tightened her relationship with COVID-skeptical Trump, who joined the governor at an Independence Day celebration at Mount Rushmore in 2020.
She has had a testy relationship with South Dakota’s indigenous population, and was banned from the state’s Native American reservations on multiple occasions.
The Oglala Sioux Tribe, located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation near Rapid City, banned Noem in 2019 for supporting “riot boosting” legislation related to the Keystone XL pipeline protests — bills that would have allowed the state to sue people for “riot boosting” and create a fund to pay for extraordinary law enforcement costs.
And in May 2024, all nine South Dakota tribes banished Noem from their lands after she made statements suggesting that tribal leaders were “personally benefiting” from Mexican drug cartels, as well as ill-received comments she made regarding the education of Native children. The Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe later became the first tribe to lift Noem’s banishment on Jan. 15.
In another issue, Noem made a campaign promise during her first run as governor to bolster government transparency, but that platform had mostly dissolved toward the end of her time as the head of state. She scaled back on regular news conferences in her second term while prioritizing national outlets over interviews with South Dakota media.
Turnover within state government also became an issue for Noem. She ran through five chiefs of staff, with Mark Miller being the latest to resign in June 2023, according to the Associated Press. Noem did not hire a replacement for that specific position, but Darin Seeley, state Bureau of Human Resources and Administration commissioner, was promoted to chief operations officer, a similar function, in June, according to the Dakota Scout.
Noem’s time as governor included an investigation into whether her daughter, Kassidy Peters, received preferential treatment as she tried to get a real estate appraiser’s license. A legislative panel determined that Peters had, though Noem has pushed back on the panel’s ruling.
She deployed the South Dakota National Guard on several occasions response to natural disasters in the state, including to help residents of Castlewood — her hometown — recover from a tornado in May 2022. And in December 2022, she sent Guard units to haul firewood to communities on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Native American reservations impacted by deadly winter storms.
In a more controversial use of the Guard, she sent South Dakota troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to assist Texas during an influx of undocumented migrants that leaders there blamed on Biden administration policies. Those deployments were scrutinized after she refused to send state National Guard members to aid in the state’s recovery from historic flooding last June, citing “extremely expensive” deployment costs.
She also was on the campaign trail for Trump amid the recovery effort, flying out of state to several conservative speaking engagements on June 22. She returned to hold a midday news conference on June 23 but left that evening for a Republican fundraising event in Memphis, Tennessee, as the worst of the floodwaters were about to hit southeast South Dakota.
More:From photo op to out-of-state flights, Gov. Noem jets around nation as South Dakota floods
But the then-governor worked to secure aid for flood victims from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which she now will oversee as Homeland Security secretary.
In addition to FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security oversees agencies including Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Noem and her workforce of hundreds of thousands is expected to focus heavily on securing the southern border, where Trump has declared a national emergency. She will be working with the president’s border czar, Tom Homan.
And ICE will play a leading role in fulfilling Trump’s pledge to track down and deport millions of immigrants in the country illegally.
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