Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem appears to have taken her cue from President Donald Trump with a new request for her own private jet.
The U.S. Coast Guard made a last-minute change to its 2025 budget to secure a $50 million new plane for Noem, Illinois Rep. Lauren Underwood revealed in a Wednesday hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security.
“I was horrified last Friday when we received a last-minute addition to your spend plan for Fiscal [Year] ‘25: A new $50 million Gulfstream 5 for Secretary Noem’s personal travel coming from the Coast Guard budget,” Underwood told acting Coast Guard Chief Admiral Kevin Lunday. “She already has a Gulfstream 5, by the way. This is a new one.”
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Underwood asked Lunday whether he had received any request or communication from the top levels of the Homeland Security Department or the Trump administration regarding a new plane for Noem, but the admiral evaded the question.
“Meeting the needs of our Coast Guard men and women that are doing frontline operations is my top operational priority, and it’s a top operational priority of the secretary,” he said. “She’s been clear with that to me, and I know she testified to that effect before the subcommittee last week.”
Lunday explained that the Coast Guard operates two military long-range command and control aircraft in its fleet. The older one is “approaching obsolescence and the end of its service life” but provides a crucial service to Coast Guard leaders and Noem, he added.
“This aircraft is necessary to provide… secure, reliable, on-demand communications and movement to go forward, visit our operating forces conducting the missions, and then come back here to Washington to make sure we can work together to get them what they need,” he said.
But Underwood was dissatisfied with the response.
“I just want to note that I didn’t hear the admiral answer the question about whether he was directed to purchase this new Gulfstream 5,” she said. “And I just want to note that as I conclude my time.”
Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told the Daily Beast that the current Gulfstream is over 20 years old and outside of its service life, “well beyond operational usage hours for a corporate aircraft.”
“This is a matter of safety,” she said in a statement. “Much like the Coast Guard’s ships that are well beyond their service life and safe operational usage, Coast Guard’s aircraft are too. This administration is taking action to restore our Nation’s finest maritime Armed Service to a capable fighting force.”
In her own budget hearing on Wednesday, Noem was grilled by lawmakers over her “many photo ops and costume changes,” which have earned her the nickname “ICE Barbie.”
The Homeland Security secretary has so far cosplayed as a firefighter, an immigration agent, and even a helicopter pilot in her trips around the country to oversee the implementation of Trump’s sweeping deportation blitz.
“I don‘t need to wear costumes to show how tough I am,” Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell told Noem mockingly.
But Noem has remained unfazed by the criticism of her glamorous looks while enforcing controversial immigration policies: “Every day I wake up and there’s new criticisms,” she told Fox News last month. “It’s something different every single day, so I try not to pay attention to the noise.”
Lavish jets have been a touchy topic for the government since President Trump announced that he planned to accept a $400 million plane as a gift from Qatar.
Though both Democrats and Republicans have raised security and ethics concerns, Trump insists that the U.S. should have the “most impressive” aircraft.
In a Tuesday interview aboard Air Force One on his way to the Middle East, Trump noted that his plane is “much smaller” than the ones owned by royalty from the region.
“It’s much less impressive—as impressive as it is,” Trump said. “We’re the United States of America, I believe that we should have the most impressive plane.”
“Some people say, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t accept gifts for the country.’ My attitude is, why wouldn’t I accept the gift? We’re giving to everybody else?”
