Why Did Kristi Noem Get Fired?

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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, which beat the spike in gas prices by loadin’ up dozens of trash bags with sweet, sweet unleaded a week ago. It’s a thing of beauty, seeing them all lined up here in front of us by the fireplace.

There were three politics stories this week: the Iran war, the Texas primaries, and Homeland Security drama. That’s it. The Iran war was (and is) the biggest of all of these, but we’re not leading the newsletter with it. Needs a little seasoning. OK, one other thing happened in politics this week—the Montanans all went nuts—but that’s it. There were four politics stories this week.

Let’s begin with the peculiar set of events that led to the firing of a Cabinet official.

1.

John Kennedy

The moment that finally pushed Kristi Noem out.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had been on thin ice within the administration for some time. The precipitating event that led to her ouster, though—the first such axing of a department head in Donald Trump’s second term—was the way she answered questions from Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy in a Tuesday hearing. Kennedy, who possesses degrees from Vanderbilt, the University of Virginia, and Oxford, can perform an effective I’m just a simple country lawyer routine when he wants to. And in this case, Kennedy, while probing Noem about an expensive DHS marketing campaign that filtered money (on no-bid deals) back to consultants in her orbit, got Noem to say that Trump greenlit the expenditure. This, as Kennedy later told reporters, made the president “mad as a murder hornet” when the two spoke later that day. Trump fired Noem on Thursday.

This is not the response you’d expect when a Republican senator goes after a Trump administration official during a hearing. You’d expect Trump to yell at that senator, and trash him on social media, for daring to so publicly call a member of the Greatest Cabinet Ever Assembled corrupt. Kennedy told a reporter separately that he had given the White House a heads-up days before the hearing that he was going to grill Noem, and we know that Noem has made a lot of enemies in the administration. Perhaps the White House wasn’t just understanding but encouraging of Kennedy’s plan when he reached out.

2.

Markwayne Mullin

Good luck, new guy!

We never thought we’d be sentimental for the first Trump term. But the president’s firing of Noem via social media as she was giving a press conference—while conferring on her the title of “special envoy for the Shield of the Americas” as a goody bag on the way out—takes us back to sunnier days of 2017–18 messiness. Similarly, the Senate GOP found out when Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt read Trump’s post, in which he announced that Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin would be replacing Noem, during lunch. It used to be slapstick gags like this all the way around. We choose to forget the bad parts.

Why Mullin? Not because Mullin, a wealthy plumbing baron from Oklahoma who’s served in Washington since 2013, has a distinguished legislative record. Not because he is on the relevant committees or has been involved in major border and immigration enforcement decisions. We’re not aware of his having any special affinity for the TSA, FEMA, or the Coast Guard. The important thing is that Mullin, who’s had a number of interesting episodes over the years, has been doing a lot of cable news hits since Trump returned to office, and Trump has enjoyed watching them. Here’s an idea for when (it’s probably when, not if) Mullin assumes the job: Since Trump likes watching Mullin on TV, how about an advertising campaign starring himself that costs hundreds of millions of dollars?

3.

Marco Rubio

Why did we go to war with Iran?

The United States has been participating in a rather large war with Iran for a week. Why? What was the imminent threat that required the United States to strike? The administration has cycled through a variety of answers. The most notable may have been from Secretary of State Marco Rubio. At a press conference, he told reporters: “There absolutely was an imminent threat, and the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believe they would be attacked”—by Israel—“they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded.”

These remarks set off a firestorm and, regrettably, sent the sensitive receptors of antisemites abuzz. Trump, when asked whether Israel had forced his hand into attacking, said, “No, I might have forced their hand.” Rubio cleaned up his remarks the following day by saying, “The bottom line is this: The president determined we were not going to get hit first.” It’s all kind of a silly conversation. Did Israel’s timing affect Trump’s? Perhaps. But at the end of the day, Trump attacked Iran because there are a lot of people (hello, Lindsey Graham!) in his orbit who’ve wanted to take out Iran for a long time, and they successfully convinced Trump that this would be a moment of glory for him. We’ll see.

4.

John Cornyn

The Texas Republican Senate primary somehow just got more interesting.

There was a small but critical surprise in Tuesday’s Texas Republican Senate primary results. After narrowly trailing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton heading into primary day, incumbent Sen. John Cornyn ended up leading with 42 percent after votes were counted. The race now heads to a runoff on May 26. Cornyn’s showing provided his supporters with the best argument they’d had yet to persuade Trump to back Cornyn: that he was showing momentum and just needed another little push, and that it would save Republicans a lot of money in the fall if Cornyn won. While it’s not official yet, the argument seems to be working. The Atlantic reported that the president is preparing to endorse Cornyn, the stronger general-election candidate.

Trump confirmed in a post that an endorsement was imminent, adding a twist: The candidate he didn’t endorse needed to “immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE!” This, aside from saving the GOP money and drama ahead of the runoff, would prevent Trump from being humiliated in case his candidate lost. Paxton at first said there was no chance he’d get out of the race should he lose the endorsement. Then, on Thursday, he said he would “consider” it if the Senate agreed to “lift the filibuster” to pass the SAVE America Act, the GOP’s voter-ID and voter-verification law. But as the Surge has explained, time and again, that’s not going to happen. Listen, Ken: Just go for it if Trump endorses Cornyn. A lot of MAGA voters will be upset if Trump does that, and Paxton should harness their rage. Newsletter writers love this primary, and we want it to last forever. STAY IN, KEN! FIGHT!

5.

James Talarico

Now comes the real test.

In a rare jump ball of a competitive Texas Democratic Senate primary, state Rep. James Talarico, the fancy-talkin’ seminarian, defeated #Resistance fighter Rep. Jasmine Crockett for the nomination. This all worked out pretty well for Democrats. Talarico showed particular strength among Latino voters in the Rio Grande Valley, an area where the party suffered catastrophic losses during the Biden years. And though the primary was frequently ugly, Crockett was gracious enough to quickly concede and endorse Talarico.

Talarico’s next 24 hours showed the daunting path ahead, though. First and foremost were Trump’s apparent efforts to negotiate Paxton’s quick exit from the race. But the Surge also couldn’t help but notice old tweets and statements of Talarico’s suddenly resurfacing on Republican accounts the day after the primary, ones in which he, like many liberals, got a bit carried away around 2020. There are some cringe quotes about how “white skin” gives him “immunity” from the “virus” of racism, which all white people carry. Generally, his interpretation of Christianity, in which there’s a nonbinary God who supports abortion, will be a tough sell to Christians who aren’t already solid liberals. But he’s got eight months to figure it out.

6.

Steve Daines

Something in the water in Montana?

Two minutes before the candidate filing deadline in Montana on Wednesday afternoon, two-term Republican Sen. Steve Daines withdrew the reelection bid he had filed a few weeks ago. Right around the same time, Montana U.S. attorney and former state budget official Kurt Alme filed for his candidacy and promptly received the endorsement of Daines, Trump, Gov. Greg Gianforte, and Sen. Tim Sheehy. What we have here is a sleazeball situation. Daines appears to have been staying in the race on paper to keep the primary field clear for his chosen successor, and to prevent Democrats from landing a top-tier recruit for an open seat. (Though it’s Dems’ fault, ultimately, for not being prepared.) When Democratic Rep. Chuy Garcia pulled a similar maneuver last year, the House voted to rebuke him for actions that are “beneath the dignity of his office and incompatible with the spirit of the United States Constitution.” No similar rebukes against Daines are expected in the Senate.

There were two other newsworthy events in the Montana delegation this week, allowing us to make this a Montana Trend Entry. Rep. Ryan Zinke, a former interior secretary in Trump’s first term, announced that he wouldn’t run for reelection, opening up a you-never-know situation for Democrats in the less red of Montana’s two districts. And in a surreal scene, Sheehy joined Capitol Police to help forcibly eject a protester who was disrupting an Armed Services Committee hearing. The protester—a Marine veteran running as a Green Party Senate candidate in North Carolina—said he suffered a broken bone in the process. Why all these Montana men decided to have life crises this week is beyond us.

7.

Tony Gonzales

He will leave Congress (later).

The embattled Texas representative secured 42 percent of the vote against his primary opponent, Brandon Herrera, on Tuesday. (When you think about it, getting 42 percent of the vote while engulfed in a scandal over an affair with a staffer who later took her own life by self-immolation is more than you might expect.) And the day after the primary—with those pesky voters out of the equation for a couple of months—Gonzales finally gave an interview in which he admitted to the affair.

But there’s no runoff with Herrera in Gonzales’ future after all. On Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson and other House Republican leaders asked Gonzales to withdraw from the race, and he did so shortly thereafter. Note, however, that these leaders didn’t also ask Gonzales to resign, for the very obvious reason that the House GOP majority is thin to the point of collapsible. “God has a plan for all of us,” Gonzales wrote on Twitter. And God’s plan for Gonzales is to exploit a narrow House margin to continue collecting a salary through the rest of the year.

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