Kristi Noem looked straight into the camera this week, seated before Congress, and refused to admit the obvious that the infamous photo of Kilmar Abrego Garcia with MS-13 tattoos inked across his knuckles was fake. She was repeatedly asked to acknowledge it and deflected with a long spiel each time. It didn’t matter that the image had been digitally altered, debunked, and disavowed by independent analysts. Noem wasn’t there to tell the truth. She was there to prove her loyalty. And so she did.
This is what it means now to be a rising star in the Republican Party. You don’t need ideas. You don’t need ethics. You just need to show that you will follow Donald Trump off any cliff, dragging the truth and the Constitution behind you like deadweight.
Noem’s refusal wasn’t a mistake. It was a demonstration. The lie wasn’t the problem. Admitting the lie would have been. We are witnessing the final stage of a dangerous transformation, the hollowing out of public figures into walking vessels of obedience, devoid of moral independence or civic duty. The worst part? Many Americans are starting to accept it. Shrugging it off. Tuning it out. “Just politics,” they say. But this isn’t politics. This is the death of accountability.
The ethical rot on display this week is not just about Kristi Noem. It’s about an entire generation of Republican officials who have traded conscience for careerism, public trust for proximity to power. They know the truth. That’s what makes it worse. There was a time when people lied because they thought they could get away with it. Now they lie because they know they will be rewarded for it.
This didn’t start with Noem, but it’s worth remembering how we got here. When Trump said Article II of the Constitution gave him “the right to do whatever I want as president,” few pushed back. When he claimed he won the 2020 election after exhausting every legal avenue, elected Republicans echoed him. When he incited a mob on January 6 and stood by while they stormed the Capitol, many of those same Republicans voted to acquit him. Each time, the price of honesty got higher. Each time, more officials fell silent. Or worse, more became believers.
And now we have Kristi Noem, not just a governor angling for attention, but the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, a position charged with protecting the nation from threats foreign and domestic, sitting in front of Congress like a marionette mouthing whatever nonsense she thinks will curry favor with the MAGA base. The image of Garcia with the MS-13 tattoos was a fabrication. A grotesque manipulation of a young man’s image, used as propaganda. And even faced with the truth, she could not say it. She could not bring herself to acknowledge a lie.
Because to do so would risk breaking faith with Trump, and breaking faith with Trump is the only sin left in today’s Republican Party. This is no longer about Trump. It’s about the people willing to abandon everything, truth, decency, their oaths, for his approval. And it’s about the rest of us, watching this ethical desert expand and asking is there a bottom to this? I’m afraid there isn’t. Not unless we insist on one.
The public has become so inundated with scandal, contradiction, and outrage that it becomes numbing. The same people who once recoiled from a politician caught in a lie now scroll past headlines of fabricated photos, constitutional defiance, and open authoritarian rhetoric without pause. It’s not that people don’t care. It’s that they’ve lost the expectation that anything will be done about it.
But here’s the thing. Every time we let this pass we move the goalposts. Every time a lie goes unchallenged, it becomes part of the new normal. The danger isn’t just that politicians like Noem are hollowed out. It’s that we let ourselves be hollowed out too. That we become too tired to fight for truth. That we stop demanding it. That we adjust to the dark.
That’s how democracies die, not with a bang, but with a shrug.
There is still a way back. But it’s not through clever talking points or waiting for the next election to fix it all. It’s through the difficult, often thankless work of calling it what it is. Of holding our leaders accountable. Of refusing to be gaslit by people who think their power is more sacred than the truth.
If your representative can’t say a fake photo is fake, then they are not just dishonest. They are unfit. If a cabinet secretary cannot speak a simple truth under oath, then no office in the land is safe from corruption.
We’re not in the danger zone. We’re in the collapse. And the people who still have the courage to name that collapse, who call out the Kristi Noems of the world for what they are, are the only thing standing between this democracy and the abyss.
Disclaimer: Jim Powers writes Opinion Columns. The views expressed in this editorial are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Polk County Publishing Company or its affiliates. In the interest of transparency, I am politically Left Libertarian.
