Who is Kristi Noem? Early Life, Career, Controversy, Husband & Net Worth
Kristi Noem ( born on November 30, 1971) is the eighth United States Secretary of Homeland Security. She was a Republican who served as South Dakota’s 33rd governor from 2019 to 2025 and represented the state’s at-large congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 2011 to 2019.
On March 5, 2026, Trump announced that Noem would be dismissed as Secretary of Homeland Security, effective March 31, 2026.
This came in the wake of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing the day before, in which Noem was chastised for her handling of the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, her relationship with advisor Corey 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 department use.
Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma senator, has been nominated her replacement by President Trump. Noem is the first Cabinet member to be removed during Trump’s second term.
Kristi Noem Biography
Kristi Arnold Lynn Noem, one of Corinne and Ron Arnold’s four children, was raised on a farm in Hamlin County, east-central South Dakota. Arnold, a senior in high school in 1990, was crowned Snow Queen at the South Dakota Snow Queen Festival.
She made appearances throughout the state, and in a 2011 interview with the Aberdeen News, she stated that the experience gave her her “first opportunity to sit in an interview, to speak in public.” She also participated in rodeo queen competitions as a teenager.
Arnold initially attended Northern State University (NSU) before transferring to South Dakota State University. In 1992, she married Bryon Noem, a high school classmate who had obtained a finance degree from NSU.
Two years later, her father died in a farming accident, and she dropped out of college to take over the family farm with her husband; her older siblings had moved out of state, and her younger brother was still in high school. Kristi Noem is an avid hunter and has erected a hunting lodge on the property.
Career
After her siblings returned home and took over much of the farm operations, Noem entered politics. She was elected to the South Dakota House of Representatives in 2006 and began serving the following year. In her second tenure, she was appointed assistant majority leader. I
In 2010, she ran for South Dakota’s sole seat in the United States House of Representatives. On the campaign trail, Noem emphasised a balanced budget, criticised federal restrictions, and promised to promote the interests of regular South Dakotans.
She unexpectedly won the Republican primary, and the influential conservative website the Drudge Report later declared her triumph as “another Republican star is born.”
In the fiercely contested general election, she defeated Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, the three-term Democratic incumbent. By this point, she and her husband had three children, and he was running an insurance company.
Noem took office in 2011 and rapidly established herself as a key player in the party. In acknowledgement of her growing prominence, she was chosen to serve as a liaison between new Republican members and House leadership.
Noem continued to support traditional conservative ideas, including expenditure cuts and efforts to reduce the power of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
She was reelected to the House three times, and while in Congress, she completed her college education, receiving a B.A. in political science in 2011. In 2016, Noem announced her candidacy for governor of South Dakota.
Despite her desire to become the first woman to hold the position, she did not emphasize her gender during the campaign. The Republican primary was especially heated and costly. Despite winning, Noem’s use of negative commercials alienated several members of her party, and the Democratic candidate, state Sen.
Billie Sutton, led the polls briefly. In the 2018 general election, however, Noem won with 51 percent of the vote to Sutton’s 47.6 percent. She was sworn into office the next year.
During her first tenure, Noem helped pass laws boosting high-speed broadband access and started an anti-methamphetamine initiative. In 2020, during the COVID-19 epidemic, she declined to close state businesses or impose a mask mandate. South Dakota had the third-highest COVID death rate that year, but it was also one of two states with lower unemployment rates in 2020.
Noem also rejected US President Joe Biden’s executive order, which required most private firms to require COVID immunisations or tests for their employees. She issued her own executive order, reinforcing South Dakotans’ rights to medical and religious exemptions from the federal law.
During this time, Noem began posting more frequently on Twitter (now X), sometimes with a loud, hostile tone. A video of her shooting a pheasant to show “how we do social-distancing in [South Dakota]” went viral in 2020.
The following year, The Washington Post said that Noem appeared to be heavily influenced by Trump, “from her frequent social media and video postings to her regular Fox News appearances and her penchant for jumping into controversy on social issues.”
Also in 2021, The New York Times mentioned her as a possible presidential candidate in 2024. The newspaper described her as “the only female Trump ally echoing the former president’s trigger-the-left approach” among the “upper tiers” of the candidate field.
Noem’s popularity grew, but so did the controversies surrounding her. It was discovered that in 2020, after her daughter’s application for a real estate appraiser licence was recommended for denial, Noem requested a meeting with the licensing agency’s director. The director later stated that she had felt “intimidated” throughout the encounter.
Noem’s daughter got her licence four months later, and the director was allegedly persuaded to retire later that year.
In 2023, Noem’s administration was sued by a nonprofit that offers social assistance and support to transgender South Dakotans after the state terminated a contract with the organization that sponsored a community health worker. The following year, South Dakota agreed to a settlement that required the state to apologise and give the organization $300,000.
Despite predictions that Noem would run for president in 2024, she did not enter the race. “The fact is,” she stated in a 2023 Fox News interview, ” no one else could win “as long as Trump’s in the race.”
Noem was later touted as a possible running mate for Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee, and he stated in February 2024 that she was one of six candidates he was considering. However, she appeared to fall out of favour in the following months.
This was largely ascribed to her second memoir, No Going Back (2024), which drew bipartisan condemnation. Her story about tragically killing a 14-month-old hunting dog she was having problems training drew special attention. In July 2024, Trump chose U.S. Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate.
After winning the election, Trump named Noem as his pick for Homeland Security Secretary. The Senate confirmed her on January 25, 2025, by a vote of 59 to 34. She later resigned as Governor of South Dakota.
Noem has been the public face of the Trump administration’s immigration campaign, including turning up to ICE raids in protective gear. During a press conference in June 2025 on the deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles, Noem’s protective detail pushed California Sen.
Alex Padilla to the ground and briefly detained him as he attempted to question Noem. She later said that she did not know who Padilla was.
Controversy: Trump fires Kristi Noem as homeland secretary, announces replacement
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the White House officer in charge of monitoring President Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportations, was sacked by the president on March 5, just after senators questioned her about her department’s high spending.
The issue was a $220 million Homeland Security advertising campaign featuring Noem prominently. The former cabinet secretary claimed Trump approved of the advertisements, but the president denied it.
But Noem has become a very unpopular figure in recent months, as people throughout the country have taken to the streets to oppose the Trump administration’s harsh immigration enforcement and the violence that has resulted, including the shooting deaths of two US citizens in Minneapolis.
Trump has chosen Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Oklahoma, to succeed her, the president revealed on social media. Noem may be out of the DHS, but he will stay in Trump’s sphere.
The president named her as special envoy for The Shield of the Americas, his campaign to combat narcotics trafficking in the Western Hemisphere.
Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom seized on President Donald Trump’s sacking of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on March 5, just minutes after taking the stage at The Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Kristi Noem Husband
She married Bryon Noem in 1992 in Watertown, South Dakota. They have three children. Noem’s family continued to live on a ranch in Castlewood, South Dakota, after she relocated to Washington, D.C. to take up her congressional seat in 2011.
Kristi Noem Net Worth
Kristi Noem’s net worth is expected to be between $4 million and $5 million as of 2025-2026.
Social Media
X: @KristiNoem