Top Democrats in Congress are plunging into an impeachment fight with Kristi Noem, as even some moderate Republicans say they’ve lost faith in the embattled Department of Homeland Security chief – upping the pressure on the administration over what they see as a complete failure in Minnesota.
In a joint statement Tuesday, the top three House Democrats announced they would soon support a vote to impeach Noem — which they can trigger without any GOP support — unless Trump immediately moved to fire her following the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Alex Pretti.
And two moderate Republicans — Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the outspoken centrist of Alaska, and retiring Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina — told reporters Tuesday they wanted Noem out.
In an extraordinary step for House Democratic leaders, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his team issued a blunt statement threatening impeachment after weeks of trying to steer their members away from such talk, which they saw largely as a distraction given the GOP’s fierce loyalty to the president.
“Taxpayer dollars are being weaponized by the Trump administration to kill American citizens, brutalize communities and violently target law-abiding immigrant families. The country is disgusted by what the Department of Homeland Security has done,” they charged in the scathing statement that painted the pair of recent deaths in Minnesota as an immoral “killing spree.”
Leaders’ thinking changed Saturday night, when federal law enforcement officials fatally shot a second US citizen in Minneapolis in the same month. Democrats now sense a unique opening against Noem, with dozens of Republicans visibly uneasy about the White House’s recent ICE operations and some top chairmen hauling in Trump’s immigration enforcement officials for hearings in the coming weeks.
Even Senate Majority Leader John Thune described the weekend’s deadly shooting as “an “inflection point” on how ICE is being used and declined to say whether he personally had faith in Noem.
Inside the White House, multiple sources said that Noem’s job was not at risk, even though some administration officials were left deeply frustrated this weekend over how Noem — as well as top Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino — handled the fallout from the fatal shooting.
Those frustrations reached the president. Trump spent several hours on Sunday and Monday watching the news coverage of the shooting and was personally unhappy by how his administration was coming across, one official said.
In the hours after the shooting, Noem was in constant touch with a number of White House officials, including Stephen Miller, and briefed them on the “defiant tone” she planned to take, sources told CNN. During that time, she was given guidance on how she should approach the shooting during her later press conference, including a set of talking points on Pretti “brandishing” a gun, sources told CNN.
Sources noted Noem was in lock step with the White House’s posture at the time. But as more videos emerged, the secretary’s rhetoric came under intense scrutiny, prompting Trump to distance himself from Noem and Miller as the administration sought to calm tensions in the state.
Trump told reporters that Pretti was not an “assassin,” a description Miller had used Saturday, and then later said he hadn’t heard rhetoric calling Pretti a “domestic terrorist,” a phrase Noem had used in her press conference the evening after the shooting.
Still, throughout his second term in office, Trump has been more inclined to double down on his officials amid calls for their ouster. The president has expressed frustration over how he and his administration handled impeachment calls and media scrutiny during his first term and told allies and advisers he doesn’t want to give his opponents “a win.”
But Trump’s resolve could be tested.
Democrats’ sharp focus now on impeaching Noem goes beyond a simple up-or-down vote. Jeffries is signaling that he is willing to use the full might of House Democrats to stage high-profile hearings to showcase Trump’s federal immigration enforcement tactics — all ramping up public attention ahead of the November elections.
One year into Trump’s second term, Democrats see the deadly clashes with ICE as the clearest proof yet of the administration’s overreach. And as that national furor builds, Jeffries and his fellow top Democrat, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, are attempting to use their limited powers in Congress to further intensify the public outrage. That includes not just impeachment, but also a critical federal funding deadline this weekend.
Schumer and his Senate Democrats have announced they are withholding their votes for the funding package — which provides money for roughly three-quarters of the federal government — until the White House commits to major reforms of its immigration force. This comes less than three months after the government reopened following a historic shutdown — when Democrats refused to lend votes for a funding deal without a compromise on key health care subsidies.
This time, the party’s base appears even more engaged. The offices of multiple Democratic lawmakers told CNN they were receiving hundreds of calls on the issue in recent days — far more than on the debate over extending enhanced Obamacare subsidies.
And one centrist Democrat, Rep. Tom Suozzi, stunned his colleagues with a statement this weekend that apologized for his vote to fund DHS just days earlier.
Suozzi, who has long embraced border security as part of his platform, issued a statement after Saturday night’s shooting saying he “failed to view the DHS funding vote as a referendum” on ICE’s conduct in Minneapolis.
“I hear the anger from my constituents, and I take responsibility for that. I have long been critical of ICE’s unlawful behavior and I must do a better job demonstrating that,” Suozzi wrote.
But the focus on Noem and DHS does not come without risks for Democrats. Other centrist Democrats are privately anxious about an immigration-focused message — an issue that historically divided their party, according to a person familiar with internal discussions. They don’t believe impeachment will resonate with voters who are far more concerned with rising prices.
Democrats also now have to take the difficult step of coalescing around a list of demands for the Trump administration on the funding bill.
Sen. Chris Murphy, the top Democrat on the spending panel overseeing border and immigration funding, met with Schumer Tuesday night to discuss a set of reforms to DHS that he said “will unite the caucus and I think unite the country.”
On his list, he said, are proposals such as body cameras, independent investigations and an end to “roving patrols” — which he argued could be achieved as part of the spending package.
“We’re talking about important targeted reforms,” he said, stressing that the changes needed to be codified by Congress. “It has to be in law. You can’t trust anything this administration promises.”
As for the willingness by Republicans, Murphy said: “They know where we are and how important this is to us. My sense is, they don’t want to be in a position of defending the status quo. So hopefully we’ll be able to make some progress here.”
But Thune on Tuesday warned Democrats against making changes to the DHS funding bill in the House-passed, six-bill package.
“It’s always a risky proposition if you have to send it back to the House, and nobody knows what’s going to happen over there,” he said when asked about whether he’d split off DHS funding from the larger package the Senate needs to pass.
But as the prospect of another costly shutdown looms, Thune reinforced that conversations are ongoing between Democrats, Republicans and the White House.
“Hopefully those will, you know, get where we need to go,” he said.
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