This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

During the year she spent leading the US Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, Kristi Noem faced a torrent of criticism. Lawmakers from both parties assailed her for lying about the shooting of protestors in Minneapolis and spending millions of dollars on television commercials. Government audits concluded that she “systematically obstructed” investigations and created security risks at airports.

Now she has become the first cabinet-level official fired by President Donald Trump during his second term. After a combative hearing last week, during which Noem seemed to mislead Congress about whether Trump approved her ad spending, the president fired her.

As DHS secretary, Noem also raised eyebrows for an unprecedented degree of control over staffing and spending at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. She paused most FEMA payments, leading to extensive delays for disaster recovery, and sought to slash the agency’s on-call workforce by thousands of employees. She also expressed a desire to downsize or eliminate the agency entirely, shifting the burden of disaster relief onto the states.

A growing number of critics and experts believe that Noem’s interference with FEMA may well have been illegal. This week, two Senate Democrats released a report alleging that Noem’s blanket freeze on FEMA payments violated federal law. At the same time, lawyers for a federal workers’ union argued to a federal judge in California that Noem’s workforce cuts also violated the law. In both cases, critics pointed to legislation passed after Hurricane Katrina, which prohibits DHS from interfering with FEMA.

“I have reason to believe that you’re violating the law, either knowingly or unknowingly,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican representing North Carolina, during his questioning of Noem.

“I think Congress never anticipated [that] what has happened would happen, or they........

© Mother Jones