Former · Jan 2025 – Mar 2026
Kristi Noem
Secretary of Homeland Security
Ranch, the state House, South Dakota’s only member of Congress, then the first woman in the governor’s chair. The border department for the first fourteen months of the term.
- On the file
- 4
- Of 13
- 11
- The building
- Out
Career
Awards, firsts, the work
South Dakota’s lone voice in the House
A farm-and-ranch upbringing, then the state legislature, then the at-large House seat in 2010. For eight years she was the entire South Dakota delegation in the lower chamber. The district is the state.
SourceNational Governors AssociationFirst woman governor of South Dakota
Elected 2018. Re-elected 2022 with the largest vote total in the history of the state, per the department she later ran. She left Pierre in January 2025 for Homeland Security. The firsts are the biography. The vote total is the proof of the floor.
SourceDHSHomeland Security, the 100-day border drop
Sworn January 25, 2025. DHS’s own 100-day tally: daily encounters down 95 percent, Darién Gap traffic down 99.99 percent, a voluntary-departure ad campaign running at home and abroad. The numbers are the department’s. The job was to make the southern border boring again.
SourceDHS, 100 daysEight consecutive months, then the handoff
She ran DHS until March 24, 2026. Markwayne Mullin took the chair. Fourteen months is long enough to own the 95 percent. The portrait stays on the former wall because the first stretch of the term was hers.
SourceDHS