Democrats Just Ran a Republican-Style Messaging Campaign Against Kristi Noem
Maybe the party tactics are changing?
Iran is still going to be a topic in congressional communications next week. Outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem probably won’t be.
Plenty of people will go through the scandal and mismanagement narratives surrounding Noem’s time at DHS. But from where I sit, something else is interesting: the communications strategy that congressional Democrats deployed against her.
Democrats sustained a level of coordinated rhetorical pressure that Democrats do not usually maintain, but Republicans often do.
Starting in 2026, Democratic members of Congress began steadily increasing their public criticism of Secretary Noem through official e-newsletters to constituents.
Congressional Democrats turned up the rhetorical heat against Secretary Noem in nearly every state where Democrats have a member in the delegation.
It took 10 months and 26 days from her appointment until Rep. Ramirez (D-IL) went public with her plans to files articles of impeachment. After that, several other Democrats followed suit.
The notable thing here is that Democrats do not usually run these kinds of sustained communications campaigns. But Republicans do and usually with much higher volume.
When Joe Biden was president, calls to impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas began on Aug 6, 2021, just six months after he was sworn in on February 2, 2021.
That communications pressure campaign ramped up quickly and stayed consistent. In 2024, Republicans had sent more than 800 e-newsletters mentioning Mayorkas, culminating in a successful impeachment vote in the House.
There were also Republican-led campaigns calling for the removal of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, both of which generated higher message volume than Democrats produced against Noem.
There were also calls to remove General Mark Milley. Those messages were less numerous than the Noem communications campaign, but House Republicans used far more vivid imagery in those messages.
Although Democrats focused on Noem in a way that resembles past Republican messaging campaigns in terms of volume, they did not adopt one tactic Republicans sometimes use: doctored or modified imagery.
Here are just a few examples of images Republican members sent to constituents in official newsletters while calling for General Mark Milley’s removal.
While the internet has been full of images mocking Kristi Noem’s appearance through derisions about plastic surgery, hair extensions, hats, clothing, and more, none of the official newsletters sent by Democrats used modified images.
Most simply referenced Noem by name in text, which tends to be the style of Democratic communicationss.
Those that did include images typically used photos of Noem testifying before Congress. The image Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) sent on January 16, 2026 comes closest to the more confrontational/cartoon-ish visual style I sometimes observe from Republican senders when they call for impeachment or resignation.
When Democrats complained about Noem they focused on violations of the Hatch Act when Noem made a video for DHS to play in airports blaming Democrats by name, the spending of $200 million on two private jets, the furloughing of employees at the Office of Detention Oversight, demeaning the work of local law enforcement officers, the deployment of tear gas and other munitions on citizens, out-of-control masked ICE agents, DHS iconsidering hiring private contractors, essentially bounty hunters, to locate, surveil, and report on immigrants for profit, being unqualified for her job, killing her 14-month-old puppy, Cricket, after declaring the dog “aggressive,” “untrainable,” and “less than worthless” as a hunting companion, pepper spraying one-year-olds and deporting U.S. military veterans, failing to provide detainees with Privacy Release Form 60-001, mismanaging the Federal Emergency Management Agency, labelling Ms. Renee Good as a domestic terrorist and barring the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension from participating in the investigation of Ms. Good’s death, cruelty, lies, and her lack of understanding of our complex immigration system, and more.
In the end Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) called Noem’s tenure a “14-month horror show,” and the overall efforts of Congressional Democrats provides an example in how a minority party can use official communications to isolate a Cabinet official until they become a liability even to their own President.
Thanks for an interesting analysis
Someone needs to reign in the MABGA movement that is trying to Make American Billionaires Great Again