When last we spoke about equal opportunity stupidity, I was praising Kristi Noem’s stupidly brave disregard for the courts and the Constitution. Now to be perfectly clear, there is nothing at all that is easy about fighting for and achieving equal opportunity stupidity. Not only have men been perfecting stupidity for millennia, they have vigorously, even diabolically, obstructed women’s ability to compete.
As we have learned along the highways and byways of our lives, it is always so easy to criticize others. To backseat drive, if you will. So, in the interests of fairness, I want to remind you what Kristi Noem has been doing for us. And since not many of us actually do it, you are forgiven if you imagine protecting the homeland is simple. As these pictures prove, it is obvious how hard Kristi Noem is working. Even on horseback:
When she is not riding with her posse, she is traveling far from home to visit the troops. Then, while there, talking shop with Hamad bin Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa, king of Bahrain, he of the four wives and a clearly forgivable enchant for human rights violations:
So, as you read on, what might appear on the surface to be an irresponsible mistake or two or three and/or malicious slander, Kristi Noem’s slips could merely be the inevitable side effects of an overzealous, hyper-patriotic desire to remove as many violent criminal illegal aliens as possible from our shores—even if they may not actually be violent or criminal or have done anything wrong.
Meanwhile, there is no rest for the wicked. Even now, the competition for most stupid grows more fierce by the day. And clearly men like Donald Trump Jr. are fighting hard not to concede the battle. Just the other day, David Richardson, the new head of Truskmumpia’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) leveled this impressive salvo:
As Reuters reports:
Staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency were left baffled on Monday after the head of the U.S. disaster agency said he had not been aware the country has a hurricane season, according to four sources familiar with the situation. The remark was made during a briefing by David Richardson, who has led FEMA since early May. It was not clear to staff whether he meant it literally, as a joke, or in some other context.
The U.S. hurricane season officially began on Sunday and lasts through November. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast last week that this year’s season is expected to bring as many as 10 hurricanes. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA’s parent agency, said the comment was a joke and that FEMA is prepared for hurricane season.
Now to be fair, as Reuters notes, HHS Secretary Kristi Noem deserves a portion of the stupid points:
The spokesperson said under Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Richardson ‘FEMA is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens.’ …
Richardson’s comments come amid widespread concern that the departures of a raft of top FEMA officials, staff cuts and reductions in hurricane preparations will leave the agency ill-prepared for a storm season forecast to be above normal … Richardson, who has no disaster response experience, said during Monday’s briefing, a daily all-hands meeting held by phone and videoconference, that he will not be issuing a new disaster plan because he does not want to make changes that might counter the FEMA Review Council, the sources said. President Donald Trump created the council to evaluate FEMA. Its members include DHS head Noem, governors and other officials.
[Emphasis added.]
As The Washington Post reports:
The DHS spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the comment was not serious. ‘Despite meanspirited attempts to falsely frame a joke as policy, there is no uncertainty about what FEMA will be doing this Hurricane Season,’ the statement said. ‘FEMA is laser focused on disaster response, and protecting the American people.’
Meanwhile, Kristi Noem is laser-focused on ridding our shores of any and every immigrant she and her DHS and ICE can round up. We have recently witnessed her handiwork here in Great Barrington, once the greatest small town in America. Critical to Noem’s mission is continuing to remind us that those who might be working hard amongst us as gardeners, farm workers, carpenters, cooks, dishwashers, and healthcare workers nevertheless pose a dire threat. She is reminding us that if you are in doubt, check to see if they have a Chicago Bulls hat hidden away in their closet or might have suspicious tattoos of flowers and birds. Just because these folks are polite and have families and you might actually like and respect, doesn’t mean at some point or other they might not decide to join the dreadful Salvadoran gang MS13, or even worse, Tren de Aragua from Venezuela. It is safest to imagine guilty until proven innocent.
As far back as 2018, the clearly woke Biden Department of Justice issued its Justice Manual, and it used to be that DOJ prosecutors wasted a lot of time maintaining a line between indicting those they believed had committed a crime and leaving it to judges and juries to determine guilt or innocence.
But if you are convinced, like Kristi Noem, for example, that putting together that Chicago Bulls hat and suspicious rose tattoo coupled with the fact that the perp had either crossed the border illegally or under the Biden humanitarian exception or is currently engaged in an active asylum claim, why waste time: It is time to go. And Kristi Noem never, not even for a moment, lets legality, let alone empathy, or morality, get in the way of the Truskmumpian mandate to deport and keep deporting. So if a mistake occasionally gets made, don’t let it get you down:
On May 28, 2025 Noem took to X (formerly Twitter) to praise ICE personnel for preventing this illegal immigrant from assassinating Donald Trump:
She then followed up with a more detailed account on the DHS website:
But, but, it is probably fair to say Secretary Noem has been working a bit too hard. As The New York Times points out:
The allegation was chilling. An undocumented immigrant, the Department of Homeland Security said last week, had threatened in a letter to kill the president and then ‘self deport myself back to Mexico.’
‘Thanks to our ICE officers, this illegal alien who threatened to assassinate President Trump is behind bars,’ Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said in a news release that included photos of the immigrant and of the letter, handwritten in blue ink.
Not long after the announcement, the government’s story began to look shaky. Lawyers for the Mexican man, Ramon Morales Reyes, held a news conference proclaiming his innocence. And as detectives in Wisconsin, where Mr. Morales Reyes lived, began looking deeper, they came to believe he had been framed. By this week, Milwaukee County prosecutors had filed identity theft and witness intimidation charges against another man, a lifelong Wisconsin resident. They said that man, Demetric D. Scott, had written several threatening letters that included Mr. Morales Reyes’s name in the return address. Prosecutors said it was an attempt to catch the attention of the Trump administration and weaponize the threat of deportation against Mr. Morales Reyes, who was scheduled to testify against Mr. Scott at a robbery trial next month.
[Emphasis added.]
According to the Associated Press:
Law enforcement officials believe the man, Ramon Morales Reyes, never wrote a letter that Noem and her department shared with a message written in light blue ink expressing anger over Trump’s deportations and threatening to shoot him in the head with a rifle at a rally. Noem also shared the letter on X along with a photo of Morales Reyes … As part of the investigation, officials had contacted Morales Reyes and asked for a handwriting sample and concluded his handwriting and the threatening letter didn’t match and that the threat was not credible, the person said. It’s not clear why Homeland Security officials still decided to send a release making that claim … Morales Reyes works as a dishwasher in Milwaukee, where he lives with his wife and three children. He had recently applied for a U visa, which is carved out for people in the country illegally who become victims of serious crimes, said attorney Kime Abduli, who filed that application.
Even though Kristi Noem was wrong, she and ICE might have won. The Times continues:
On one level, the plan described by Wisconsin prosecutors worked. Top Trump administration officials took notice, and … even with Mr. Scott now facing charges, Mr. Morales Reyes remains in custody, awaiting a hearing before an immigration judge and facing the possibility of deportation. Federal officials said Mr. Morales Reyes had a history of entering the country illegally and an arrest record.
It is obviously not easy to protect President Trump, not easy to distinguish between real and imagined threats. It is one thing figuring out who might have written a letter and quite another to find the man sending a seashell threat. A less adventurous, less stupid MAGAA official might have ignored Donald Trump Jr.’s post on X. But not our newly installed head of homeland security, Kristi Noem:
A threat is a threat is a threat, by land or by sea.
Could it actually be that Comey made the diabolical decision to use non-traditional communication methods to threaten Donald Trump? Not surprisingly, The Washington Post offers another way of looking at the shells:
Since January, federal officials have repeatedly sought to punish opponents for activity traditionally protected by the First Amendment.
After James B. Comey posted a photograph of shells on a beach arranged to spell ’86 47’—a reference to President Donald Trump, the 47th president—the former FBI director said he believed the image was a political message.
The seashell scandal mobilized some of the stupidest minds in D.C., and the women held their own. There was Kristi Noem and Tulsi Gabbard escalating and exaggerating and conflating with the best the men could come up with. The Washington Post explains:
But Trump administration officials quickly accused Comey of something much more serious, saying he had committed a crime and should be jailed. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, who oversees the Secret Service, described the post on Thursday as a ‘threat’ and a call to assassinate Trump. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said on Fox News that Comey should be put behind bars. By Friday, the Secret Service had launched an investigation and interviewed Comey in D.C. FBI Director Kash Patel weakly countered by saying his agency would ‘provide all necessary support’ as part of the investigation.
The Post continues:
Legal experts said in interviews that they doubted Comey’s post would qualify as a genuine threat. Instead, they said, the incident appeared to mark the latest attempt by an administration with a maximalist view of executive power to criminalize or otherwise punish people for speech, protests and other actions traditionally viewed as legally protected in the United States. Since Trump’s inauguration, his administration has on multiple occasions sought to wield the federal government’s expansive power to scrutinize and, in some cases, punish people for things they said or wrote.
Still, if it was up to the women, Comey would be doing time at Sing-Sing.
Nevertheless, perseverance furthers, and as New York Times reporters Alan Feuer and Glenn Thrush explain, Noem’s willingness to resist the demands of multiple judges like Xisnis, Boasberg, Murphy, and Rodriguez is impressive:
Feuer and Thrush write:
Administration officials have either violated orders or used an array of obfuscations and delays to prevent federal judges from deciding whether violations took place. In case after case, the Trump administration has taken a similar approach to the numerous legal challenges that have emerged in recent weeks to President Trump’s aggressive deportation plans. Over and over, officials have either violated orders or used an array of obfuscations and delays to prevent federal judges from deciding whether violations took place. So far, no one in the White House or any federal agency has had to pay a price for this obstructionist behavior, but penalties could still be in the offing. Three judges in three different courthouses who have been overseeing deportation cases have said they are considering whether to hold the administration in contempt.
Noem’s determination not to comply with the instructions of the highest court in the land to return Abrego Garcia to the United States is evidence of her determination to Make American Great Again, Again (MAGAA). Certainly not in the outdated image of our used-to-be ultra-woke pluralistic democracy but according to the wishes of her boss. In his recent post for All Rise News, Adam Klasfield posted a photo of Abrego Garcia few Americans have seen:
On May 27, 2025, channeling Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” Noem filed a motion to dismiss the case Abrego Garcia had brought against the government. Even though several courts had made it clear they could determine the appropriateness and legality of the actions of the executive branch in these matters, Noem once more opted for delay. And foolishly consistent, she once again used stupid arguments that had failed several times:
I. This Court lacks jurisdiction because Abrego Garcia is not in United States custody.
Though Plaintiffs bring four claims in addition to a 28 U.S.C. § 2241 habeas claim, all Plaintiffs’ claims challenge Abrego Garcia’s confinement in El Salvador. Compl. U 75 (‘Defendants’ violation of law … is causing Plaintiff Abrego Garcia irreparable harm with each day that he spends … detained in CECOT (emphasis added); see also id. KK 81, 87, 93, 98. Because Plaintiffs make a core habeas claim, they must bring it exclusively in habeas. But suit is proper only against the immediate ‘custodian’ (the Warden of CECOT) and in the jurisdiction where Abrego Garcia is confined (El Salvador). Plaintiffs admit that Abrego Garcia ‘is being held in custody by the Government of El Salvador.’ Id. U 98. Therefore, this Court lacks jurisdiction to hear Plaintiffs’ claims and should dismiss them.
Of course, Garcia’s team responded:
The government asks this court to accept a shocking proposition: that federal officers may snatch residents of this country and deposit them in foreign prisons in admitted violation of federal law, while no court in the United States has jurisdiction to do anything about it. This court, the Fourth Circuit, and the Supreme Court each rejected that jurisdictional gambit. All three courts unanimously affirmed a preliminary injunction that the government must facilitate the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from El Salvador to the United States …
The facts are simple. In 2019, an immigration judge ordered that Abrego Garcia, a native of El Salvador residing in Maryland, could not be removed to El Salvador. For five years he worked to support his U.S.-citizen family in Maryland. Yet in March 2025, the Government stopped his car, announced his ‘status has changed’ (it has not), and flew him to a prison in El Salvador. The law is just as clear. The Government’s removal of Abrego Garcia to El Salvador— which the Government admits was an ‘administrative error,’ ECF No. 11-3 ¶15—was ‘illegal.’ Noem, 145 S. Ct. at 1018. The Government nonetheless moves to dismiss based on three jurisdictional arguments that this Court already ruled ‘fail as a matter of law.’ ECF No. 31 at 2.
First, the Government argues that no U.S. court could have jurisdiction over Plaintiffs’ claims because they challenge Abrego Garcia’s confinement and therefore must proceed as habeas claims, which the Government contends are not viable because Abrego Garcia is not in U.S. custody. Yet Plaintiffs’ claims arise under federal statutes and the U.S. Constitution, so this Court has federal-question jurisdiction. These claims challenge Abrego Garcia’s removal, not his confinement, so they are not habeas claims. And even if they were, Abrego Garcia remains in U.S. custody because he is detained in El Salvador at the behest of the U.S. Government.
Second, the Government insists that no remedy is available. That argument is incompatible with the Supreme Court’s order that this Court ‘properly require[d] the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.’ Noem, 145 S. Ct. at 1018.
Third, the Government contends that 8 U.S.C. § 1252(g) strips this Court of jurisdiction. But § 1252(g) blocks review only of a limited set of ‘discretionary’ actions. Flying a man to the one country an immigration judge ordered that he could not be removed to is not a ‘discretionary’ action shielded by § 1252(g). This Court’s power to remedy the Government’s illegal removal of Abrego Garcia to El Salvador has been affirmed at every level of the Judicial Branch. The Government’s latest motion offers nothing new. It should be swiftly denied, and the case should proceed without further delay.
[Emphasis added.]
The clock is ticking for Most Stupid 2025, and Trump-friendly FOX warned that time is running out for Kristi Noem and her case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia:
The one-two punch from US District Judge Paula Xinis … [who] granted a request Wednesday from more than a dozen major news outlets and publishers to unseal certain records in the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Salvadorian migrant and alleged MS-13 member who was deported from Maryland to El Salvador in March in what administration officials have acknowledged was an administrative error.
Separately on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis granted a request from Abrego Garcia’s legal team to file a motion for sanctions against the Trump administration. That filing is due June 11, she said in an order … [and] could give plaintiffs new ammo to pursue more formal punishments against the Trump administration if officials are found to have been acting in bad faith or knowingly defying court orders.
[Emphasis added.]
Judge Xinis is not the only judge losing patience with Kristi Noem and the Trump administration. Judge Boasberg, who first dealt with the issue of immigrant prisoners being taken from their confinement in Texas, had ordered DHS to pause their deportation to San Salvador. The New York Times reports:
The Times writes:
A federal judge in Washington ordered the Trump administration on Wednesday to take steps toward giving nearly 140 Venezuelan immigrants who were deported to El Salvador in March under a rarely invoked wartime law the due process that they had been denied. In a sweeping and at times outraged opinion, the judge, James E. Boasberg, compared the expelled men to characters in a Kafka novel. Judge Boasberg also asserted that they were likely to prevail in their claims that President Trump had treated them unfairly by deporting them without hearings to a brutal Salvadoran prison under the expansive powers of the wartime statute, known as the Alien Enemies Act.
The Times continues:
Judge Boasberg did not weigh in on the question of whether Mr. Trump had invoked the act lawfully when he expelled the men, who are accused of being members of the street gang Tren de Aragua, to the prison in El Salvador on March 15. He simply asserted that the White House had stripped them of their rights by not allowing them to contest their deportations before they were flown into the custody of jailers at the so-called Terrorism Confinement Center, also known as CECOT.
Kristi Noem clearly has work to do. Judge Xisnis is weighing whether to hit her and her superiors with sanctions, maybe fines, even the possibility of contempt of court jail time. And Judge Boasberg has thrown Franz Kafka in her face. And she is well aware that there is a stupid race to be won. The men, of course, could care less if she is hobbled.
Now I don’t want to toot my own horn, but is it possible someone had alerted the White House about my last column? And let the boss know that while he was sparring with Elon Musk, Kristi Noem was out-stupiding him? We all know he is a man who takes his stupid seriously. And it is not a stretch to imagine that the thought that Kristi might be several stupid steps ahead of him could drive him mad. It would certainly explain the most recent barrage of stupid he has unleashed. Beginning with the Truth Social repost that Joe Biden has been dead since 2020 and replaced by clones.
Then, the audaciously stupid decision to issue an Executive Proclamation to go after cancer patient Joe Biden for having used an automatic pen to hide his incapacity:
If you ask me, Judge Xinis’ one-two punch pales in comparison to Donald Trump’s. You’ve got a dead Joe Biden replaced with “robotic engineered soulless mindless entities” who somehow have successfully mastered his occasional stammer and managed to use that automatic pen for us all for all those years.
Kristi Noem and the others still hoping to take advantage of the Equal Opportunity Stupidity Initiative should consider this a warning shot. Look at that V-sign Donald is flashing. He is not about to surrender his crown without a fight.
