Chaos at DHS

the powers behind the empty suit known as Kristi Noem are far more dangerous

A note from my friend Richard G. motivated a deep dive into the issues raised by a New York magazine about his horrific mess.

As the article exposes, the real story behind Kristi Noem’s abrupt elevation to Secretary of Homeland Security isn’t really about Kristi Noem at all. It’s about the figures who trail behind her, whisper in her ear, and effectively wield the apparatus of American domestic security as their own weapon: particularly Corey Lewandowski and Madison Sheahan.

And if the American public understood just how deeply dangerous that arrangement is, they would already be in the streets demanding it be stopped. Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s perennial hatchet man, and Sheahan, Noem’s ideological protégé and political enforcer, represent a fusion of ruthless operative and pliant loyalist that turns DHS into precisely the sort of tool of personal vengeance and authoritarian social control it was never supposed to become. With DHS under their shadow grip, the department risks transforming from a flawed but nominally constitutional security agency into a cudgel of one-party dominance and unbridled executive retribution.

Lewandowski has always been the archetype of unfiltered Trumpism in its purest, ugliest form: belligerent, abusive, contemptuous of institutional restraints, and utterly devoted to imposing power by intimidation. His name pops up every time Trump needs someone to break rules in broad daylight and then sneer at anyone who dares to object. That this man now enjoys proximity to one of the most powerful Cabinet positions in the country is not an accident—it is the inevitable logic of a presidency and a movement that no longer even feign respect for the guardrails of democracy.

DHS is a uniquely dangerous perch for someone like Lewandowski over which to have influence, because it fuses intelligence-gathering, law enforcement, and immigration enforcement under one roof. Within its bureaucracy lies the raw capability to surveil, detain, and punish—an irresistible arsenal for a political operator whose instincts have always been toward control and suppression rather than governance.

And then there is Madison Sheahan, Noem’s loyal companion and gatekeeper. While Lewandowski provides the bluster, the muscle, and the Trumpian aura of menacing loyalty, Sheahan provides an equally dangerous element: subtlety. Sheahan has cultivated a reputation for running interference around Noem, ensuring her boss remains insulated from oversight while policy and appointments are steered toward loyalty tests rather than competence. This is exactly the kind of quiet, behind-the-curtain manipulation that makes authoritarian capture of an agency achievable.

DHS is not seized in a frontal assault; it is rolled into submission through personnel decisions, procedural manipulation, and the careful silencing of dissent. That is Sheahan’s domain. Together, Lewandowski and Sheahan represent the brute force and the knife in the dark. Seen in that light, Kristi Noem is not an independent Cabinet official; she is the cipher through which these two wield their influence.

Make no mistake: the threat here is not hypothetical. DHS has already proven during the eight months of the second Trump regime that it can be politically weaponized—deploying camouflaged federal agents onto American streets, targeting migrants as scapegoats for political ends, and even pushing the department’s intelligence division into compromising situations in service of Trump’s allies.

Imagine now, under Noem’s hollow stewardship, the prospect of Lewandowski and Sheahan directing its machinery—not to protect the homeland in any meaningful sense, but to surveil political opponents, harass immigrant communities, and amplify fear as a governing tactic. They have both the incentive and the ideological zeal to do it, and no demonstrated restraint to hold them back.

If it wasn’t chilling enough that DHS now listens to the whispers of Trump’s most notorious hatchet man and Noem’s personal fixer, consider the broader implications of what they are engineering: a Homeland Security Department that no longer even pretends to balance national safety with constitutional liberty. Lewandowski brings scorched-earth loyalty to Trump and a proven track record of contempt for law. Sheahan brings ideological rigidity and slavish devotion to Noem’s political ascent.

Together, they hollow Noem out as a leader and turn DHS into their laboratory of repression. The Secretary of Homeland Security is supposed to serve the Constitution; instead it’s now a puppet throne for two unelected and unaccountable operatives whose only allegiance is to Trumpism and their own power. It is the domestic security nightmare scenario: the nation’s most sprawling internal security network yoked not to national defense, but to personal power and partisan intimidation.

Americans should understand that what is unfolding is not just another Trump-world palace game, not just another cast shuffle of delinquents and opportunists orbiting the administration. This is a direct threat to the integrity of the nation’s democratic order. Lewandowski and Sheahan are not merely influences on Noem—they are Noem, in practice. Her department is their department. Her powers are their powers.

And now, their reach extends into every facet of domestic security, from the Border Patrol to counterintelligence. Allowing them this proximity to power is functionally the same as handing DHS itself to people who see it not as an institution entrusted to protect the American people, but as a weapon to crush and control them. That is not homeland security—it is authoritarianism with a badge. And it is happening right now, in plain sight.