JOBS REPORT: President Trump yesterday fired embattled Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and kicked her to the curb, appointing her to the created job of “Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas,” which he said would be a new security initiative for the Western Hemisphere. This is like his appointment of Don Jr’s former fiancée to be ambassador to Greece, keeping her loyally on the payroll but out of sight.

  Noem was the self-promoting queen of cruelty known as “ICE Barbie” as she led the Trump’s crusade to cleanse America of medium-brown people.  She’s the first cabinet member to be jettisoned by Trump in his current term. 

  Trump said in his social media post announcing the move that he wants Oklahoma freshman Sen. Markwayne Mullin to replace Noem. Mullin won his senate seat in a 2023 special election. As a registered member of the Cherokee Nation, Mullin would ironically be the first native American with the power to throw unwanted immigrants out of the country.

  Noem’s firing came in a week when she fumbled testimony before Congress about the killing of two protesters by her agents, the purchase of a luxury jet with a sumptuous bedroom, a rumored affair with aide Corey Lewandowski, and the award of $220 million Homeland Security advertising campaign featuring herself.  Trump is reported to have been particularly infuriated when Noem said Trump asked for and approved the advertising campaign.

  Mullin said that Noem had “done the best that she could do under the circumstances,” a “and that he hoped to learn from her experience and “build off things that didn’t quite go as planned.”   

BLUSTER BOMBS: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered yet another chest thumping account of US military dominance over Iran saying, “We have only just begun to fight and fight decisively.”

  Hegseth said; “If you think you’ve seen something, just wait. The amount of combat power that’s still flowing that’s still coming, that we will be able to project over Iran is multiples of what it currently is right now.”

  Iran continues to take a pounding today from both the US and Israel.

  In the mode of President Trump, Hegseth also dropped verbal ordnance on preceding administrations declaring, “The dumb, politically correct wars of the past were the opposite of what we’re doing here.”

  Iran has attacked targets in 12 countries in response to getting bombed back to the Mohammed age by the US and Israel, but their resources are dwindling. The defense secretary was accompanied by Adm. Brad Cooper of Central Command who reported that Iranian ballistic missile attacks are down 90 percent, and drones down 83 percent since the opening of hostilities.

  Cooper said that 30 Iranian navy ships have been destroyed and that the country’s ability to re-arm is also being eliminated saying, “We’re not just hitting what they have, we’re destroying their ability to rebuild.”

WAR OF WORDS: In the four years in which Russia has been fighting to take all or part of Ukraine, President Vladinmir Putin has enforced the rule that his invasion must be referred to only as a “special military operation” rather than what it is, a war.

  Here in the US, Pete Hegseth yesterday continued to refer to the war on Iran as “Operation Epic Fury” rather than “The War Against Iran.” The suits at the Pentagon and Republicans in Congress have been laboring to avoid the word “war.” It is a war but it’s undeclared. They “describe a major combat operation,” a “mission,” “hostilities” … anything but “war.”

  “We’re not at war right now,” Speaker Mike Johnson said this week. “We’re four days into a very specific, clear mission — an operation.”

IT’S POLITICAL: Rep. Tony Gonzales, the Texas Republican accused of coercing a staff member into an afair before she killed herself, announced that he would not seek re-election amid calls from both parties for him to leave the House. He said, “After deep reflection and with the support of my loving family …” You know, the usual.

THE REGIME: President Trump published the bullet points of his “Save America Act.”

  They are:

1. ALL VOTERS MUST SHOW VOTER I.D. (IDENTIFICATION!).

2. ALL VOTERS MUST SHOW PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP IN ORDER TO VOTE.

3. NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS (EXCEPT FOR ILLNESS, DISABILITY, MILITARY, OR TRAVEL!).

4. NO MEN IN WOMEN’S SPORTS.

5. NO TRANSGENDER MUTILATION SURGERY FOR CHILDREN.

THE SPIN RACK: “Today Show” host Savannah Guthrie visited colleagues on the set yesterday for the first time since her mother Nancy was kidnapped five weeks ago. There are no breaks in the case. NBC said Guthrie will return to work at some unannounced date. —  Investigators used automated license plate readers and a victim’s vehicle key fob to track the suspect in the murders of three people in rural Utah. In the Four Corners region of the Southwest  yesterday they arrested 22-year-old Ivan Miller of Iowa, who is charged with three counts of first-degree murder officials said. The victims were three women ages 34, 65, and 86.  

THE OBIT PAGE: Juan Jose Valdez, the US Marine who was the last American serviceman to leave Vietnam during the 1975 fall of Saigon, died of pneumonia last month in Tucson at age 88. On that last chaotic day in April when thousands of refugees were lifted away from the US Embassy, Valdez was the final US military passenger. 

  Valdez at the time was a master gunnery sergeant, the senior noncommissioned officer in the detail of Marine security at the embassy. As the last helicopter was taking off with the rear ramp lifting, Valdez fell and had to be pulled in. “A lot of good people got killed, and for what?” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1990. “And when we left, we left with our tail between our legs.”

BELOW THE FOLD: Former President Joe Biden flew from Washington to South Carolina yesterday … on a commercial jet. Accustomed to presidential class travel, he flew business class.

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