She is a danger to our country

On Friday, February 13th, in the conference room of the well-guarded secret location, Kristi Noem walked up to the podium. She stood directly in front of the large propaganda posters that did their best to convince her fellow Americans that we are all in grave danger of losing our country to “illegal aliens” voting in elections. Nearly an hour late, she rushed through her prepared remarks like an actress who had rehearsed her lines but didn’t quite understand the story beyond the script she was reading. She crossed her hands, looked down at the floor between sentences, and moved quickly through phrases that felt memorized but not owned. It felt less like a national security briefing and more like the opening scene of a campaign ad. And this all came after days of intentionally stoking fear and uncertainty over this leaked visit to Arizona. But this was unlike any press conference she had held before. Not just in what was said, but in the level of paranoia that framed the entire event before she ever said a word.

According to the Arizona Mirror, members of the press were required to RSVP a full day in advance, and the night before, approved journalists were instructed to report to a designated meeting point in downtown Phoenix for what would turn out to be a bizarre staging location outside the area’s main Homeland Security office in Phoenix. Once there, they were swept into a convoy of brand-new 2026 Dodge Durango GTs, so new that some still had dealer window stickers visible. After being driven around for thirty minutes, the press conference location was finally revealed: the Homeland Security field office in Scottsdale.

We soon learned that the secrecy wasn’t about safety; it was about creating the feeling of danger. The convoy wasn’t necessary. It was meant to make a routine press conference look like a classified operation. And the entire production sent a message: this is a crisis, and only the federal government can fix it.

Once the press conference was underway, it was immediately clear that this was another attempt to sway lawmakers and the public into accepting Trump’s voter suppression plan. The whole stage, the buildup around the event, and the propaganda messaging painted a picture of desperation from the administration. But most troubling was what Noem said:

“We’ve been proactive to make sure that we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country.”

That was not part of her prepared speech. It was in response to a reporter’s question. And in that moment, she said the quiet part out loud. Not that we should make it easier for eligible Americans to vote, or protect access, or strengthen participation. But the goal is to ensure the “right people” are voting so the “right leaders” are elected. There was nothing accidental about that phrasing, and there is no innocent interpretation of it. What she admitted, whether she realized it immediately or not, is that this is not about fraud or safeguarding democracy. It is about narrowing the electorate until outcomes can be engineered. It is about deciding who qualifies as the “right” American and shaping the system around that definition.

And once you hear that sentence clearly, everything else she said that day clicks into place.

Because the performance didn’t stop there. She invoked Benjamin Franklin and the Constitutional Convention, warning that republics depend on public confidence. “You know, at the end of the Constitutional Convention in seventeen eighty seven, Benjamin Franklin was asked out on the street by a woman, what kind of a government that we would have. And he replied to her, A republic, ma’am. If you can keep it. And that’s what our job is for two hundred and fifty years. It’s been our American duty to maintain our republic and to make sure that our elections are secure. Republics depend on the confidence of their citizens, that when they vote, that their vote matters, that it counts. And our elections are essential to make sure that that confidence stays there.”

She called Arizona’s elections an “absolute disaster,” despite the fact that multiple audits, court rulings, and independent investigations have found no evidence of widespread fraud. She claimed non-citizens are voting in large numbers, yet when pressed for a single documented example, she could not provide one. “Oh, I’m sure there’s many of them,” she said. That is not evidence. That is insinuation and exactly how authoritarian movements plant the seed of doubt, even when there is no truth to their claims. They make the accusation, provide no proof, repeat it confidently, and then convince the public that only federal authority can “fix” a crisis that does not exist.

We’ve seen this pattern before, not just in our own history, but in democracies that eroded from the inside. It always starts the same way: a manufactured internal threat, and then the centralization of power needed to stop it. This isn’t new. After Reconstruction, Southern lawmakers passed what they called “election integrity” reforms. They introduced mandatory poll taxes, which forced people to pay to vote. And then there were the required literacy tests, where a single mistake meant you couldn’t cast a ballot. They wrote registration rules with traps and technicalities, like making Black voters guess the exact number of jelly beans in a jar or bubbles on a bar of soap. The requirements were different from county to county, and deliberately confusing. The goal was to make the process so difficult and so arbitrary that most Black Americans would give up, be disqualified, or simply be unable to pay.

I remember first learning about these so-called registration questions and being shocked that that actually happened. And now, seeing so many people not recognizing the signs of what’s to come is equally shocking. Because these lawmakers are once again insisting that this is all about protecting the ballot, preventing fraud, and preserving order. Just like they did back then. But what it actually did was strip millions of Black Americans of their right to vote and lock political power into the hands of a shrinking white minority that knew it could not win in a truly open democracy.

And their plan worked. Entire communities were silenced, representation collapsed, corruption deepened, and that system did not correct itself. It lasted for nearly a century until Americans marched, bled, were beaten, and in some cases killed to force the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The architects of those laws defended them as common sense. History remembers them as the men who hollowed out democracy to keep themselves in power.

And now we’re watching the same playbook unfold in real-time. The SAVE Act is being marketed as common sense. “One vote, not more.” But that phrasing itself is manipulative. It implies that someone, somewhere, is voting twice. That hordes of non-citizens are distorting elections, and that American citizens are being “disenfranchised” by phantom criminals. Every accusation plants distrust, and that distrust becomes the justification for federal intrusion into state-run elections, even though the Constitution gives primary authority over elections to the states.

But here’s the thing: the same people who were disenfranchised in the past are going to be hurt once again. It’s a cycle that keeps repeating itself, generation after generation. And the worst part? This isn’t even about stopping undocumented people from voting. They’re not voting. It’s just the latest boogeyman that’s being used to justify voter suppression. Think about it: if elections were really being swayed by enormous numbers of non-citizens voting, how did Trump win in the first place? He can’t have it both ways.

For Trump and his enablers, attacking our elections is a survival strategy. He said it himself not too long ago: “You got to win the midterms because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just going to be — I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.” And he’s right. They will. We will demand they do.

Without some sort of interruption to voting, his odds of avoiding accountability become slim to none. And that reality has his cabinet members, his enablers, and the people quietly working behind the scenes to cement a lasting shift into authoritarianism and fascism running scared. Because this is not hypothetical. Come November, it becomes very real. And he knows it. Losing Congress means investigations. It means subpoenas. It means accountability. So they are doing everything they can to construct a system where losing is nearly impossible.

That’s why the secrecy around Noem’s event matters so much. They want us to believe that our elections are unstable, unsafe, and compromised. And when a government starts staging that kind of spectacle, we need to be paying very close attention. But we also need to acknowledge that none of this is surprising, given that it is coming from Kristi Noem. She has always been transparent about who she is and what she stands for. Friday was not a departure from her record. It was an escalation.

This is the same woman who flew to El Salvador to stand in front of caged detainees for photo opportunities, turning human suffering into campaign content. The same woman presiding over a $38.3 billion expansion of immigrant detention centers while private prison contractors like GEO Group and CoreCivic report record profits, with stock prices surging on the backs of the incarcerated. And every one of those people is being denied due process, in direct violation of the Constitution.

This is the same woman whose department has been described by the Wall Street Journal as operating in “constant chaos,” where senior advisers fire personnel over trivial grievances only to rehire them when operational reality sets in, where leadership is defined by spectacle and confrontation rather than competence. A Coast Guard pilot was reportedly fired because a blanket was left behind on a plane, and then had to be immediately rehired when she realized they had no pilot to fly them home.

And then there is the cruelty. Kristi Noem chose to tell the world in her own book about shooting and killing her own puppy. She did not confess it in shame. She described it as a strength to envy. That story was not forced from her. She volunteered it. Bragged about it. Who does that? What kind of person frames the killing of a defenseless animal as a leadership credential? When someone tells us who they are that plainly, we should believe them.

Even figures within her own orbit hesitate to defend her. Border czar Tom Homan, a man hardly known for restraint or compassion, declined to explain or justify her “right people voting” comment when pressed on national television. “That’s a question for the secretary,” he said. When even your allies will not defend your words, that tells us something.

And then there is Minneapolis and the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Noem publicly labeled their actions as domestic terrorism and falsely claimed they were to blame. Members of Congress have been calling for her impeachment, citing a pattern of smearing victims and amplifying claims that were materially inaccurate.

This is not just ideological extremism. She is reckless with human life. This is what happens when cruelty becomes a brand identity, as it has for her. She is ego-driven, and our country is less safe with her in this position of power.

So what do we do in a moment like this, when so much is on the line and the stakes feel heavier by the day? We refuse to let this bill quietly move forward. We demand that the SAVE Act not be passed. We call our own representatives, and then we call a few outside our district as well. It may feel small and repetitive, but right now the pressure is real. The heat is on our elected officials, and they need to be reminded that this is an election year, that we are paying attention, and that we will remember exactly how they voted when the time comes.

In addition to contacting my representatives, I’m continuing to go line by line through the last two years of my spending, examining every subscription, every recurring charge, everywhere I am spending money. I am not chasing perfection, because perfection is impossible in a system this interconnected. I am practicing harm reduction. Because if enough of us redirect even a fraction of our spending away from corporations that are enabling this administration and toward independent journalists, independent media, evidence-based medical and scientific communicators, and institutions committed to preserving democracy, it compounds and it signals that we are not passive consumers, but active participants. This level of attention to spending takes time, but it is one concrete way we can cast a vote before the election ever arrives, in a language Trump and his enablers understand clearly: money.

And this morning I saw a reminder of how many of us are carrying the weight of this moment. I was driving through town when I noticed a woman standing alone on a street corner with a handmade sign. She appeared to have just woken up, grabbed a Sharpie and a cardboard box, and made a quick sign, after deciding she couldn’t stay home. She looked exhausted. The way so many of us feel lately. But she also looked steady. Like someone who had made up her mind.

Her sign said something about not being tricked or scared into hating immigrants, about remembering that immigrants are what make America great. She was just one person alone on a corner, reminding the rest of us that none of this is normal and that we can’t let ourselves be tricked into believing that our neighbor is our enemy. That real Americans lead with love, not hate. And that is why I still have hope for America, and you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.