The Trump administration invented a senior government role for Kristi Noem specifically to prevent her from entering the Senate, according to a new report by PunchUp.
The title of “Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas”—announced on March 5 when Trump publicly fired Noem as DHS secretary—was effectively invented to ensure she missed the March 31 filing deadline for the South Dakota Republican primary, multiple administration sources have told our sister investigative Substack outlet.
This meant that Noem, 54—the first Cabinet secretary ousted in Trump’s second term—could not challenge incumbent Sen. Mike Rounds, 71, whom Trump, 79, had already endorsed.
“It was made up to keep her busy,” one source close to the administration told PunchUp, adding that the White House had privately concluded Noem was such a liability that it needed to “put her out to the glue factory”—inventing a title that kept her on the government payroll and nominally occupied, but stripped of any real power.
Some Trump aides believed Noem retained enough standing and support in her home state to pose a genuine threat to Rounds, the outlet reported. As CNN noted, White House officials had been privately musing about whether she would mount a Senate challenge even before her firing was announced.
To get on the primary ballot, Noem would have needed to collect 2,171 petition signatures and submit them by 5 p.m. on March 31—a deadline she had just 26 days to meet.
Instead, Noem threw herself into the new role as she “felt she had no choice but to show her willingness to toe the president’s line,” PunchUp reported.
By the week of March 20, she was midway through a five-nation swing through Latin America, posing for photographs at government buildings in Ecuador’s capital on March 25—six days before the filing window closed. She was accompanied on the tour by her chief aide and rumored lover Corey Lewandowski, 52.
Trump signed a proclamation formally launching the Shield of the Americas at his Trump National Doral Miami resort on March 7, alongside leaders from 12 nations in what sources described to PunchUp as a hurriedly assembled event.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, 54, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, 45, and Noem all attended, alongside the presidents of Argentina, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Bolivia—Javier Milei, Nayib Bukele, Daniel Noboa, and Rodrigo Paz Pereira, respectively. The region’s three largest powers—Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia—were conspicuously absent, the outlet notes.
The White House also offered no details about the role’s organizational structure, funding levels, staffing, or chain of command.
The plan began to unravel quickly. Sources told PunchUp that the White House panicked when it realized Noem was treating the position as substantive rather than symbolic.
“They didn’t expect her to take it so seriously,” one administration source said.
By March 25, the State Department had made clear that her chain of command ran to Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau—not Rubio—a humiliating reduction in standing that the Beast reported at the time. “Landau has now nuked the whole thing,” a source told PunchUp, in a development confirmed by one of Noem’s close allies.
Noem had brought 10 loyalists with her to her new role, according to an administration official cited by Politico. But within weeks, three of the group—former deputy chief of staff Troup Hemenway, Josh King, and Octavian Miller—were placed on paid leave and then fired. A source told the New York Post the dismissals were tied to their connections to Lewandowski: “They didn’t want any people that would be tentacles for Lewandowski.”
The blunter reality, according to PunchUp’s sources, is that “there is no job” for any of them—and possibly not for Noem either.
The Daily Mail reported last Friday that her time in the role was likely drawing to a close. “This post was intended as a soft landing so it didn’t look like Noem was immediately being fired,” sources told the Mail. “But no one really thinks she should have this job. The State Department was not happy to have her here, and the understanding is that she’s not going to be here for much longer.”
The White House, State Department, and Noem were all contacted for comment. The State Department promised a response but has yet to provide one. The White House asked when PunchUp planned to publish but also offered no further response. Noem’s representative also did not reply.
