KJS DC 4.26

This week, the Trump administration began the process of discarding its first two Cabinet members from the second term. Both are women. (With a third maybe on the way.)

Pam Bondi, Attorney General. Kristi Noem, DHS head.

Before we get to why they’re being pushed out, let’s be honest about how they got in.

Bondi registered as a foreign agent for Qatar in 2019, lobbying Congress on behalf of a government accused of human rights abuses, earning her firm $115,000 per month. Then, as Attorney General, on her first day in office she shut down the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, shut down the DOJ’s KleptoCapture unit targeting Russian oligarchs, and cut back enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act — the very law she had filed under for Qatar. She then wrote the legal memo blessing Trump’s acceptance of a $400 million luxury jet from the Qatari royal family — her former client.

Trump is now frustrated with her handling of the Epstein files. That’s what gets you fired. Not the Qatar conflict. Not the foreign lobbying. The Epstein files.

Add Kristi Noem to the list. The first to go, actually. Fired in March. The pattern started with her.

Noem oversaw a $220 million border security advertising campaign that prominently featured herself — on horseback near Mount Rushmore — with contracts awarded to firms with Republican political ties. Her department’s Inspector General accused DHS of systematically obstructing oversight investigations. ICE agents shot and killed two US citizens in Minneapolis. Noem immediately called them domestic terrorists before any investigation had begun. She lied about it. Repeatedly. On camera.

What got her fired? She told a Senate hearing that Trump had approved the $220 million ad campaign. Trump denied it. He was, in the words of Senator John Kennedy, “mad as a murder hornet.”

She spent a year brutalizing immigrant communities, overseeing the deaths of American citizens, redirecting taxpayer money toward her own promotional videos, and obstructing federal investigators. None of that cost her the job.

Embarrassing the boss in public did.

Here is what the pattern shows.

This administration collects women willing to discard their previous identities — their stated principles, their professional reputations, their documented positions — in exchange for proximity to power. It rewards that transformation completely. And then, when the usefulness ends or the optics sour, it discards them just as completely.

The women who bend the furthest get the biggest titles. And then they get thrown away first.

Bondi and Noem made choices that deserve full accountability. Their records are what they are. But the system that rewarded those choices — and is now punishing them for the mildest deviation from total loyalty — that system is the story.

The bully collects women. Uses them. Throws them away. And calls it leadership.

Now consider what’s apparently about to push Gabbard out — too reluctant to endorse a war she spent years opposing on principle.

So the full picture is the first-out are three women. Fired or nearly fired from the cabinet of a man who collected them for their loyalty and their willingness to perform.
Noem’s offense: telling the truth about who approved her ad spend. Gabbard’s offense: showing a smidge of the conscience she sold to get the job. Bondi’s offense: not being ruthless enough with documents that implicate powerful men. Not the Qatar lobbying. Not the foreign agent registration. Not the ICE killings. Not the $220 million self-promotion.

That’s not irony. That’s a whole system on display.