The Transformation Of U.S. Secretary Of Homeland Security Kristi Noem

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Kristi Noem may have accidentally found her way into politics in 2006, but she has built quite an impressive career since then. After spending four years in the South Dakota House of Representatives, representing the state's 6th district, Noem was elected to the US House of Representatives in 2010. After four terms there, she reached even higher, becoming her state's first female governor before ending up in the White House in 2025 under President Donald Trump.

Along the way, she has stirred up plenty of controversy with her policies and garnered even more criticism with her private actions, including all the times Noem shamelessly showed off her wealth. There have also been numerous rumors about Noem we can't ignore, from affairs to plastic surgery. One of the most buzzed about topics, though, has been her evolution from a young ranch hand on her family farm to one of the most powerful politicians in America. Here's your look inside the transformation of U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

Kristi Lynn Noem was born on November 30, 1971, in Watertown, South Dakota. Her family owned and ran a large plot of land split between a farm and a ranch. The operation was helmed by patriarch Ron Arnold who bought the property when Noem was around 12 and soon, she was taking part in a wide array of activities and chores. Speaking with Readelysian Magazine, Noem noted she was a tomboy as a child and loved nothing more than tagging along with her father whom she dubbed a "cowboy." "My favorite thing to do every day was to spend time with him," she recalled. "He was always outside working or hunting [and] we enjoyed chasing cows, driving tractors, and working together." Indeed, it's a passion that was ingrained so deeply, it's remained with her. As she told CBN News in 2022, she still lives on her dad's ranch and has many of the same hobbies. "I love to chase cows and sit in tree stands hunting," she enthused.

Noem further opened up about those early years in her 2022 memoir, "Not My First Rodeo: Lessons from the Heartland." As she recalled, her father expected her to be up for any challenge or task he might throw her way. While doing work around the ranch, for example, he would get frustrated if she didn't have the correct tools ready without his asking. And when she was still in junior high, he tasked her with driving a semi-truck home all by herself. "His only advice: 'Make your corners wide,'" she wrote.

Kristi Noem has made no secret of her love of firepower. As Governor of South Dakota, she signed multiple pro-Second Amendment bills into law and as Homeland Security Secretary, she proudly posed with an assault rifle in a promo video. Speaking at a National Rifle Association (NRA) event in 2023, Noem revealed these beliefs stretch back to her childhood, as she was brought up surrounded by firearms. "We had a gun cabinet in our living room," she said. "We had a shotgun hanging in the back window of every single pickup and tractor."

She herself was allowed to use firearms from an early age as most of the family's vacations were hunting trips. "As soon as we were old enough to ride a horse, [Dad] would take us hunting," she told the crowd. According to Noem, these outings shaped her into the person she is today. Perhaps the most memorable instance occurred while hunting elk in Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains when she was at most 10 years old. She and her father were miles away from their campsite when he gave her a surprise assignment, proclaiming, "Kristi, hunt your way back to camp." He then left Noem to fend for herself. Ultimately, she succeeded and later learned her dad had actually been behind her the whole time. "He made me stronger," she enthused, noting that exercises like this one gave her the skills to eventually become the first female governor of her state.

You wouldn't know it by looking at her today, but Kristi Noem used to struggle with insecurity. Her self-doubt peaked around age 13 or 14 and became so pronounced that her mother, Corinne Arnold, actually felt the need to intervene. "She thought at the time that I could potentially be suicidal because I had such a poor self-image," Noem opened up to Readelysian Magazine. Arnold turned to the Bible, reading a life-changing piece of scripture to her young daughter. "[It] talked about how God saw me instead of how I was viewing myself, which was as weak and vulnerable," Noem recalled. "I believed the words she read." At that moment, she decided to begin working towards silencing the doubt and fear and embracing her potential with confidence.

Noem continued, "I saw myself as someone who could not accomplish a lot." Then, following the heartfelt conversation with her mother, she chose to do things differently and soon found herself on the opposite side of the coin. "I set a pretty high standard for myself," she noted of her time at South Dakota's Hamlin High School. Indeed, not only was she the editor of the school newspaper, but she also found time to be the National Honor Society president, play both basketball and volleyball, and act as a cheerleader for the boys' basketball and football teams.

Kristi Noem met her husband, Bryon Noem, while they were both students at Hamlin High School in Hayti, South Dakota. Given that Noem was two years older, his introduction to his future bride actually came in a roundabout way. "He was a friend of my brothers," Kristi told Readelysian Magazine. That didn't stop her from developing a crush, but she did choose to keep it to herself until he graduated and left for college. When Bryon would come back to visit his family, the two began spending time together, but it was a slow burn. "He was very shy," Kristi recalled. "He wouldn't even talk to me in public. He would follow me home at night and we would end up talking at my house or sitting in the driveway." This private courtship went on for a few months before they would take the next step in their relationship. "It was probably a backwards 'country' way to start dating," she quipped.

Whatever you call it, it worked and, in 1992, when she was just 20 years old, they tied the knot. Bryon would go on to get a degree in business finance from Northern State University, eventually landing a job as an insurance agent at a local bank before buying the whole division and transforming it into Noem Insurance. At the same time, Bryon supported his wife's foray into politics, proudly adding First Gentleman of South Dakota to his resume in 2019.

There are numerous tragic details about Kristi Noem's life, but perhaps the most heartbreaking was the sudden death of her father, Ron Arnold, at age 49. A 22-year-old Kristi was off at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota, and eight months pregnant with her first child, Kassidy Noem, when Arnold died suddenly in a horrific farming accident. After falling into a grain bin, "Dad was buried alive underneath tons of cold, damp corn," she wrote in her memoir. Kristi dropped everything and returned home to run the ranch, later telling CBN News that she ultimately made the business her top priority.

Even so, the farm nearly went bankrupt due to the estate tax she had to cover following Arnold's death. "It took me 10 years to pay off those taxes and it made me angry," Kristi shared. And so, she chose to take her dad's sage advice — "Kristi, we don't complain about things, we fix them" — and do something about it. "People ask how I got involved in government and politics, it was because of that tragic situation," Kristi told Fox News in 2022. "It made me start showing up and getting involved in policies that really do, tragically, crush families."

Kristi was determined to change the tax law and fight for the best interests of farmers and ranchers, first joining the South Dakota House of Representatives in 2006, then working her way up to Congress in 2010. While there, Kristi was also finally able to finish her schooling, earning a bachelor's degree in political science from South Dakota State University in 2011.

Despite her close bond with her father, Kristi Noem had a big argument with Ron Arnold as a teen which ended with her stopping work on the ranch. Writing about the altercation in her memoir, "Not My First Rodeo: Lessons from the Heartland," Noem recalled telling her father, "I can't take it anymore; I can't do anything right for you." Rather than trying to find common ground, Arnold told Noem to find work elsewhere. That's exactly what she did, landing a gig at a vacuum cleaner store before going off to college. However, as soon as her father died in 1994, she rushed back to take over the family ranch.

It's where she would remain until 2010 when she was elected to Congress and had to move to Washington, D.C. "It was the first time in 20 years that any of us had left the ranch, to do something different," Noem told Readelysian Magazine. "I was bought out of the family business but kept land and some equity." She went from being outdoors every day to sitting in meetings around the clock and, ultimately, she missed her roots too much. Noem decided to run for office in her home state and, in 2019, she was elected as the first female governor of South Dakota. It was a position she would hold until 2025 when she was sworn in as the Secretary of Homeland Security.

When Kristi Noem became a mom for the first time at age 22, she was trying to process the grief of losing her father and figuring out how to run the family farm, all while taking on the brand new challenge of motherhood. "All I knew to do was what my dad would have done and that was work and take care of business," she told CBN News. Luckily, her mom stepped in to help, simultaneously showing a young Kristi the ropes of parenthood.

Nowadays, looking back at Kassidy Noem's birth in 1994, Kristi sees it as a turning point for the better. "Kass gave Bryon [Noem] and I purpose," she wrote on Instagram. "I have always loved being her mom." The pair then welcomed daughter Kennedy Noem in 1997 and son Booker Noem in 2002. While always being encouraged to pursue their own passions (Kassidy, for example, runs a Pilates studio), all of Kristi Noem's three kids grew up ensconced in politics. "They are very smart and know the policies better than almost anyone," she told Readelysian Magazine. Indeed, she would often take them to Washington for a week at a time and get them involved in all aspects of her career, recalling, "They sat in meetings with me and answered the phones in the office."

In 2024, Kristi Noem published a second book, titled "No Going Back: The Truth on What's Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward," which focused on her life in politics. It was meant to paint her in a flattering light, but the tome soon thrust Noem into the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Yes, Kristi Noem has done plenty of controversial things over the years, but her written confession that she had shot and killed a dog sparked a new level of criticism. As Noem explained, she had adopted a 14-month-old wirehair pointer named Cricket from a family struggling to deal with what she claimed was an aggressive personality. Noem's goal was to teach Cricket to hunt pheasants, but the pup was overly excited and scared the birds away. She said that after he apparently killed a local family's chickens and bit Noem, she took him to a gravel pit and shot him. "I hated that dog," she wrote. "I realized that I had no choice — Cricket was untrainable." She also shot a family goat at that time.

Backlash was swift, but Noem fought back, telling Sean Hannity that the story was actually meant to illustrate her ability to make tough decisions as a politician. "This was a working dog, it was not a puppy, it was a dog that was extremely dangerous," she argued. "I had a choice between keeping my small children and other people safe or a dangerous animal, and I chose the safety of my children."

In January 2025, President Donald Trump nominated then-South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem for the prestigious role of Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Just five days later, she was confirmed by the Senate with a 59-34 vote and quickly sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas at his home. In her new role, Noem became responsible for various immigration and border-related issues, as well as natural disaster relief. In a letter to DHS staff, which she sent out shortly after her swearing in, Noem promised, "I will work to keep the more than 330 million American citizens safe and secure in our great nation." She shared a similar sentiment during a March appearance on "Face the Nation," proclaiming she would stop at nothing to keep America safe. "The authorities that I have under the Department of Homeland Security are broad and extensive and I plan to use every single one of them," she vowed.

Since taking office, Noem has been a controversial Homeland Security secretary, stirring up plenty of criticism, as she's always done. She's been dubbed "ICE Barbie" and has faced legal challenges over her deportation practices, been mocked for having her high-end purse stolen, and been taken to task for allegedly accepting $80,000 in undisclosed cash while governor.

In May 2025, Kristi Noem returned to her home state to accept an honorary degree in public service from the Dakota State University in Madison, South Dakota. Donning a cap and gown, she received her diploma, then told graduates about her own college experience. "I was a non-traditional student," she said, noting she didn't get her actual degree until after a 15-year hiatus. Noem also shared five lessons she would like to have told her younger self, starting with some inspirational words: "The world needs what you have to offer."

Despite her best efforts to empower and encourage that year's grads, there were plenty of protesters who didn't want to see Noem recognized. "I was genuinely scared for the massive amounts of international students that we have on campus," a student stated to the South Dakota Searchlight. Others pointed to her controversial decisions as DHS secretary with one protestor telling Dakota News Now that Noem didn't deserve the honor, stating, "she's currently right now violating the constitution, deporting people to foreign detainment centers without any due process."