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Kristi Noem: A Case Study in the GOP Tilt Toward Ostentatious Fascism

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yesterday

Everywhere you look, there is news that one can scarcely believe is emanating from the United States of America, and I think you know the subject matter to which these news items all refer. In Arizona, a 3-year-old child was forced to act as her own lawyer in immigration court, because the nonprofit that would normally provide her defense saw most of its federal funding cut. A Christmas parade on the east side of Santa Barbara was canceled out of fear that ICE agents would crash it. Adelita Grijalva, the new congresswoman from Arizona, said she was pepper-sprayed by ICE agents in a Tucson restaurant. The Department of Homeland Security tweeted out a photo of masked and camouflaged agents; it photoshopped some Santa hats and Christmas-light leis on them and appended the caption: “YOU’RE GOING HO HO HOME.”

That vile piece of work may or may not have been personally approved by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, but assuming she at least saw it, it surely gave her the warm-and-fuzzies in much the same way that warm dog’s carcass once did. She is a genuinely sick and cruel person. Naturally, in Trumpworld, that typically means you’re in like Flynn. But the last few days have brought some fresh reporting that Noem, against all odds, might be on her way out.

Why? Because she’s been too sadistic even for Donald Trump and Stephen Miller? Please. She’s probably not sadistic enough for Miller. No, the problem appears to be that Trump, depending on who was the last person he spoke to about it, seems to think that Corey Lewandowski, Noem’s longtime, ah … amanuensis,........

© New Republic