The beleaguered DHS secretary didn’t need another round of damaging allegations, but she’s facing some anyway.
New Coast Guard allegations add to Kristi Noem’s growing list of troubles
— dharmalee3âŒðŸ‘‘ (@dharmalee3.bsky.social) 2026-02-18T23:17:36.314Z
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/new-coast-guard-allegations-add-to-kristi-noems-growing-list-of-troubles
With this in mind, the Cabinet secretary clearly didn’t need another damaging report, but she confronted one anyway this week when NBC News, citing four sources, reported on Noem’s increasingly strained relationship with U.S. Coast Guard officials. (The Coast Guard falls under DHS, not the Pentagon.)
According to the report, which also has not been independently verified by MS NOW, the relationship between the DHS secretary and Coast Guard reached new depths following a “verbal directive” to shift Coast Guard resources from a search-and-rescue mission to find a missing service member. From the NBC News report:
The tension between some Coast Guard officials and Noem began after a 23-year-old Coast Guardsman went overboard into the Pacific Ocean from the cutter Waesche on Feb. 4 last year, shortly after the Senate confirmed Noem into her role, according to the two U.S. officials, the Coast Guard official and the former Coast Guard official.
The Coast Guard had surged ships and aircraft to the Pacific to find the guardsman. Hours into the search, Noem learned that a Coast Guard C-130 that was supposed to fly detained migrants from California to Texas was among the aircraft over the Pacific looking for the missing guardsman, and she intervened, according to the two U.S. officials and the Coast Guard official.
According to the report, Noem verbally instructed the acting Coast Guard commandant to pull the plane off the search-and-rescue mission so it could instead help with the deportation of immigrants. Adm. Kevin Lunday complied and notified the National Command Center, which ordered the C-130 to fly to San Diego while other aircraft and ships involved in the search continued.
That did not, however, end the matter: Coast Guard officials reportedly scrambled to find other planes that could transport immigrants so that the C-130 to continue searching for the missing guardsman......
He was never found......
But the report concluded that the incident “
left Coast Guard officials with a negative impression of Noem,” which seems understandable given the circumstances.
Highlighting the reporting, Rachel Maddow asked via Bluesky, “How is it possible that Kristi Noem still has this job?” That need not be a rhetorical question.
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