Is this why Kristi Noem's DHS has taken its eye off the ball?

The normally high-minded Wall Street Journal normally leaves gossip and tittle-tattle to America’s downmarker supermarket magazines – but might one piece of eye-popping reportage this week explain why the Department of Homeland Security has taken its eye off the ball of late?

Under the headline “A pilot fired over Kristi Noem’s missing blanket and the constant chaos inside DHS”, an in-depth piece by three Journal reporters (just one fewer than it took to uncover Watergate) suggests that a closer-than-usual relationship between secretary Kristi Noem and her top adviser Corey Lewandowski has been at the heart of the department’s disarray.

“Noem and Lewandowski’s close relationship had already made Trump and his top advisers uncomfortable,” the paper reports, adding that: “Lewandowski had initially wanted to formally serve as Noem’s chief of staff, but Trump rejected the idea due to reports of a romantic relationship between the two – which he has continued to bring up, officials say”.

It reports how, after photos of Lewandowski showed him going back and forth between his apartment and Noem’s across the street last year, Noam moved into a government-owned waterfront house on a military base in Washington that is provided to the leader of the US Coast Guard. “Lewandowski also spends time at the house,” it mischievously adds.

“Lewandowski and Noem, who are both married, have publicly denied the reports of the affair, but people said they do little to hide their relationship inside the department,” the Journal goes on. “The DHS spokeswoman said the department ‘doesn’t waste time with salacious, baseless gossip’.”

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The “missing blanket” in the headline refers to a bizarre alleged incident in which Lewandowski fired a US Coast Guard pilot after Noam accidentally left a blanket behind on a plane. The pilot was initially fired and told to take a commercial flight home when Noam and Lewandowski reached their destination, but was eventually reinstated “because no one else was available to fly them home”.

A DHS spokeswoman did not address the episode but said Noam had “made personnel decisions to deliver excellence”.

In other Kristi Noem sanity news, the WSJ reported that the secretary closely monitored how her national profile compared with other administration officials, particularly White House border czar Tom Homan, who Trump has just put in charge of ICE operations in Minnesota.

“Noem routinely berated staff if she saw Homan on TV and kept track of both their appearances to make sure she was on TV more than him, according to people familiar with the matter,” the Journal reported.

All fun and games at the DHS, then! Meanwhile, two completely innocent civilians remain dead after being shot in cold blood by ICE agents under Noem and Lewandowski’s leadership.