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Notes -
Kristi Noem is out as DHS Secretary
Noem is the first Cabinet Secretary to shuffle out of Trump's second admin. Notably, the first Trump admin set records for modern cabinet turnover, and of course Trump is looking to beat those numbers.
Noem faced a number of controversies during her tenure, most of which we argued about at some point, from ICE tactics to ad campaigns given sweetheart deals. Recently she was grilled on a $143mm contract given no-bid to a firm recently created by people tied to the secretary; and allegations she was schtupping her second in command Lewandowski.
Trump says he's appointing her to some kind of sinecure at some new international organization he's creating next weekend.
Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin will replace her. I have to admit, if you had asked me who Markwayne Mullin was, I would have bet $1000 he was a black kid who played defensive line in the SEC, what kind of name is Markwayne anyway?
So what does this tell us about the state of the Trump administration? Turnover is generally bad, but I don't really see why Trump is firing her at this time. I suppose that "When we talk about fraud, we just mean that it should be HERITAGE AMERICANS stealing from the treasury, not Somalis..." is a tough sell? Does this indicate, along with Bovino's ouster, that ICE enforcement is going to take a step back, or change tactics? Combined with the war in Iran, which now will likely last until September according to the Pentagon, does Noem's firing indicate a reshuffling of priorities away from purging immigration domestically and towards classic neocon internationalism
Dogs across the country are very satisfied with this result.
My guess is that it has something to do with that contract. All the other criticisms have been around for some time, and Trump doesn't seem to have been fazed by them. Incidentally, this reminds me of an interaction I had with a Chapter 7 client when I started doing them on the side around 2016. This woman had like 13 credit cards and had absolutely no financial literacy. That isn't exactly uncommon, and in those cases I ended up giving them a crash course on the topic. She told me she wanted to reaffirm a debt, and the following conversation ensued:
Me: You can't just decide to reaffirm a debt. That's up to the trustee. Which debt were you thinking of reaffirming? (I wouldn't agree to help them reaffirm debts except under special rare conditions; the couple I did were on loans for cars that weren't worth a lot of money and had low balances. Otherwise it's almost always a bad idea. Most reaffirmations are for car loans generally.)
Her: I was thinking I should keep the Toys R Us card (reaffirming a credit card debt is almost unheard of)
Me: Why?
Her: Just to have it around in case of an emergency.
Me: There's no such thing as an emergency toy purchase.
To be fair to the woman, I understood her logic: This card only had a balance of like $350 and was the only one that wasn't in arrears. It would haveen trivial for her to keep it and pay it off, and she wanted to have it around in case something unexpected happened and she needed money. It also had a limit of $500 or $1000 or something similarly small, so it couldn't get her into that much trouble. I explained to her that, regardless of the wisdom of the decision or the trustee's willingness to allow it, reaffirming didn't create an obligation to allow her to keep the card, and they would probably cancel it anyway. In fact, they would probably cancel it even if she didn't have a balance on it. In any event, this case was a confidence-builder for me because she ended up doing pretty well. She made a decent income but spent a good chunk of it on credit card bills that were killing her. Once those were wiped out she was able to start saving. She also had what I called The Exacta: She surrendered a newer Nissan Altima and went back to using a 15-year-old Grand Am that had been sitting in her driveway.
Anyway, I bring this up because I busted out laughing and thought of this when I read that Noem said that they didn't put the contract out for bid because of the declared emergency. Sorry Kristi, there's no such thing as an emergency ad campaign.
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