Kristi Noem deserved to get axed. After ignoring thousands of stories of officers detaining American citizens in violent, indiscriminate, unconstitutional roundups, posing for a gleeful photo-op at a hellacious El Salvadoran prison, labeling American protesters as domestic terrorists, and lying under oath multiple times, Democrats and even many Republicans lauded her exodus. Still, in what was a brief, volatile tenure as Secretary of Homeland Security, Noem transformed the agency charged with the protection of the American people into a theater for performative cruelty. Now, as the door hits Noem on the way out, it is important to note that her ouster was not a triumph of ethics or the law or even a sudden recollection of what competence looks like. Despite no lack of legitimate grounds for dismissal, most sources say the final straw was a $220 million ad blitz, possibly complicated by an alleged affair with her adviser. But who among Trump’s inner circle doesn’t come with a laundry list of wasteful spending and personal embarrassments? The rest of the Cabinet is chock full of unqualified Trump-loyalists demonstrating incompetence so regularly that in any other era they would have all resigned or been canned long ago. Given the purported reasons Noem was ultimately fired, and where the conversation has lingered since, to the untrained eye, it seems like Noem may have been the first to get the boot, at least in part because she’s not a man.
There’s nothing Noem did that another member of the cabinet or Trump himself couldn’t top. Consider the shameful tenure of our Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, who engaged in intimate business deals with Epstein years after Epstein’s first conviction, and even planned family vacations to his private island. While Noem is fired for a $220 million ad buy, Lutnick remains the face of American business, despite once being in business with a convicted sex trafficker and lying about it. And our wannabe-fraternity-pledgemaster Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is, if possible, an even greater liability. Hegseth breached security protocol in his second month on the job and oversaw a record $93 billion of spending in a single month, $9 million going to king crab and lobster tails, and $15 million to ribeye steaks. More gravely, in his zeal to project “lethality," Hegseth gutted civilian harm mitigation programs by 90 percent; shortly thereafter, on his watch, in what is the most devastating single military error in modern history, the U.S. fired a Tomahawk missile into a school full of children, killing at least 168 children and 14 teachers. Noem may have turned federal agents against American civilians (which is not why she was fired), but Hegseth is committing war crimes around the globe.
The man in charge is the worst offender of bad acts and bad optics, of course. Noem got flak for purchasing new private jets with DHS funds, but Trump has seemingly gotten away with his own airplane scandal: accepting a $400 million Boeing “flying palace” from the Qatari royal family in what is widely regarded as bribery. And while Noem’s spending habits don’t look great, Trump spent over $71 million in taxpayer funds on golf trips in 2025 alone, and even used his clemency authority to absolve criminals of $1.4 billion. He’s forgiving criminals and gifting them billions while holding Noem’s feet to the fire over $220 million–it’s hard not to smell the sexism.
Trump has a well-documented capacity for mercy, but women don’t seem entitled to the same redemption arc. Perhaps the best evidence of this is that in one year, Trump has pardoned over 1,800 people, approximately 85-90% of them men (because Trump has issued mass pardons for broad groups, it is difficult to calculate exactly). On that note, it’s worth mentioning that the only person convicted of Epstein-related charges in a sex trafficking scheme involving 1,000 victims, the only person this Justice Department seems willing to punish over the files, is Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell is guilty, of course, of numerous crimes. But you can’t help but notice a staggering disparity in accountability: she rots in a cell while the Justice Department continues to be stubbornly uncooperative when it comes to exposing, let alone investigating, let alone prosecuting, the network of powerful men who were in cahoots with Epstein for decades. But that’s just it. Women get punished, men are protected and forgiven.
Why is Noem gone while Hegseth and Lutnick remain? To be clear, there is plenty of culpability to go around, and Kristi Noem’s firing is well warranted, but we should be wary of the justice, or lack thereof, that removed her. Because when Noem did so much that was unconstitutional, to harp on her unprofessionalism feels insufficient–not only in holding her accountable but also because we’re simply not harping on the egregious unprofessionalism of the men around her in the same way.
Trump and his cronies seem too eager to give their men impunity while they sacrifice the women, and we must call it out. The Noem conversation need not center on her personal life or her ad campaign, because she was sending people to gulags without due process…and also because we’re not talking about Hegseth’s personal life in the same way, and he may have started the next World War. We must ensure our critiques are rooted in the right things. Ultimately, we must treat every unqualified, incompetent, and dangerous member of any administration with the same scrutiny we gave Noem. And when there’s already so much to judge her for, we don’t have to judge her with a double standard, too. If we want accountability and justice applied equally by our leaders, then we must apply it equally ourselves.Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.
