Pressure Mounts on Kristi Noem After Two Republican Senators Call on Homeland Security Secretary To Resign

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is increasingly under pressure following the shooting death of Minnesota nurse Alex Pretti, with two Republican senators who voted to confirm her now saying that she should resign. Democrats on Capitol Hill say they will not vote to fund Ms. Noem’s department until concrete steps are taken to rein in DHS agents who are carrying out President Trump’s mass deportation operation. Ms. Noem has become the public face of Mr. Trump’s aggressive immigration agenda, which has grown increasingly unpopular in recent months. She and other top officials — including Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller — quickly came out just hours after Pretti was killed to proclaim that he was actively trying to harm law enforcement officers before he was disarmed and killed on Saturday. On Tuesday, two Republican lawmakers — Senator Thom Tillis and Senator Lisa Murkowski — said Ms. Noem must do the responsible thing and step down from her position. They say that Ms. Noem is incapable of bringing down the temperature in the wake of Pretti’s death. “What she’s done in Minnesota should be disqualifying. She should be out of the job,” Mr. Tillis told reporters on Tuesday. “I mean really — it’s just amateurish. It’s terrible, it’s making the president look bad on policies that he won on.” Mr. Tillis went on to criticize Ms. Noem for her “incompetence” in the role. “These people are amateurs. They’ve got to deescalate there and treat these communities with some respect,” the North Carolina senator, who is retiring, said. “I think the president needs to look at who he has in place as the Secretary of Homeland Security,” Ms. Murkowski, who, like Mr. Tillis, voted to confirm Ms. Noem, told reporters Tuesday. “I would not support her again and I think it probably is time for her to step down.”“You have a secretary right now who needs to be accountable to the chaos and some of the tragedy that we have seen,” Ms. Murkowski said. The Department of Homeland Security referred the New York Sun to the White House when asked for a comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Mr. Trump says that he plans on keeping Ms. Noem in the role, despite criticism she has received. On Tuesday morning as he was leaving the White House, the president was asked if he would fire his Homeland Security secretary. “No,” he responded curtly. Several deeply conservative lawmakers — nearly all of whom have declined to offer even the most tepid criticism of the Trump administration this past year — say there must be a full investigation, despite administration officials’ claims that Pretti was a “terrorist.”Senator Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, a conservative who is locked in a surprisingly close re-election race this year, called Pretti’s death a “horrifying situation.”“My support for funding ICE remains the same,” Mr. Ricketts wrote on X. “But we must also maintain our core values as a nation, including the right to protest and assemble. I expect a prioritized, transparent investigation into this incident.”The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Mike Crapo — one of the architects of Mr. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act — called Pretti’s death “a tragedy.” “I support a full and impartial investigation into the events leading up to the death of Alex Pretti,” Mr. Crapo wrote on X, pushing back on claims by Trump administration officials, including FBI director Kash Patel, that Pretti did not have the right to legally carry a firearm at a protest. “His family, law-abiding citizens exercising their Second Amendment right and the trust of the American people deserve a fair process.”As Republicans raise concerns about Ms. Noem’s response to Pretti’s death, Democrats are preparing for a fight over DHS’s annual budget. The department must be funded by Friday night, or it will shut down.Even though the writing of the annual DHS spending bill was bipartisan and on track for final passage, Pretti’s death has Democrats prepared to fight back. In order to advance spending bills to final passage, Senate rules require that 60 lawmakers vote in favor of ending debate. As of Tuesday, nearly every Senate Democrat has promised to vote against ending debate, meaning that a shutdown is increasingly likely. The DHS spending bill is currently wrapped up in a larger spending package with five other bills, and despite Democrats’ demands that the DHS part be stripped out and debated separately, Republicans say all six bills will come to the floor as one legislative item.

Pressure Mounts on Kristi Noem After Two Republican Senators Call on Homeland Security Secretary To Resign

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