Kristi Noem Literally Runs Out of House Hearing to Avoid Dem Questions

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem abruptly ended her time before the House Homeland Security Committee Thursday, angering lawmakers by stepping away from the hot seat to attend a highly anticipated meeting on the future of FEMA.

Except that meeting never happened.

The FEMA hearing was scheduled to take place at 1 p.m. Noem was reportedly informed at 12:26 p.m. that it had been canceled, a DHS spokesperson told The Hill.

Just minutes before receiving that notification, Noem told the committee, “I have to actually leave this hearing early, because the FEMA Review Council is giving their report today on suggestions for changes to FEMA.

“I have to co-chair it, but I will be leaving soon to have to go do that,” she mentioned while responding to a question about FEMA’s distribution of funds.

Noem left shortly afterward, before Democratic Representative Julie Johnson had a chance to grill Noem herself. In response, Johnson made a comment that summed up her caucus’s collective reaction to the ICE captain’s time on Capitol Hill.

“I’m just going to take the position that she was scared of my questions,” Johnson quipped.

But rather than return to the hearing, which continued for a couple more hours, Noem simply … left.

It’s not a good time for Noem to be scurrying away from her responsibilities. In a drastic turn of events, Donald Trump is reportedly considering replacing Noem with outbound Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, a decision that would make Noem the first person to be pushed out of Trump’s second-term Cabinet.

Three former DHS officials with ties to the current staff said that the changeover could happen “really soon,” giving the term-limited Youngkin a future in Washington.

Trump established the FEMA council by executive order in January, around the same time that he pitched it would be better to do away with FEMA altogether in favor of handing disaster money directly to the states. The council is co-chaired by Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem didn’t deny that the Trump administration was illegally deporting people with ongoing asylum cases.

Noem spiraled out during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing Thursday, after Representative Dan Goldman pressed her on the government’s efforts to deport lawful asylum-seekers. There have been mounting reports that asylum cases are being routinely dismissed by immigration judges, and the asylum-seekers are then taken into ICE custody for expedited removal.

The New York Democrat asked Noem whether she agreed that asylum was a lawful pathway to citizenship and that immigrants with ongoing asylum applications were legally in the country. Noem agreed asylum was “a lawful pathway.”

“So, if your department then deports anyone with an ongoing asylum application, you are violating the law, correct?” Goldman asked.

Noem immediately became defensive. “Joe Biden left us with a [inaudible] five billion cases backlogged,” she replied, attempting to dodge the question.

“I’m not asking about Joe Biden, I’m asking you a specific question,” Goldman said. “If your department deports anyone with an ongoing asylum application, you are violating the law, correct?”

But Noem continued to speak monotonously throughout the lawmaker’s repeated requests to answer the question, claiming that the Biden administration had “greatly violated” the asylum law.

“Why are you filibustering? Why can’t you answer the question? It’s a simple question,” Goldman asked, but the secretary continued to rant that the “asylum program was broken under the last administration.”

Clearly, Noem had no intention of openly copping to breaking the law—but Goldman said her artless obfuscation did it for her, since yes was the “obvious answer.”

“If you don’t like the asylum system, you change the asylum law. Bring it to us. We’ll work with you. I think it needs to be changed. But you can’t just decide that you’re not gonna follow the law—and asylum is a law—and deport people with ongoing applications. Unfortunately, that is exactly what’s happening,” Goldman said.

ICE attorneys at immigration hearings are increasingly asking immigration judges to dismiss asylum cases, and the Trump administration has instructed judges to grant quick dismissals. At the same time, the Trump administration has purged dozens of immigration judges and sought to recruit so-called “deportation judges” to help ramp up the government’s soft ethnic cleansing.

Health care bills are going to skyrocket next year after the Senate voted down a bill that would have extended subsidies for the Affordable Care Act on Thursday.

The bill needed 60 votes to pass, but only four Republicans broke with their party and voted to extend the subsidies that millions of Americans rely on: Senators Josh Hawley, Lisa Murkowski, Dan Sullivan, and Susan Collins, resulting in a total of just 51 votes in favor. Every single Democrat in the Senate voted to extend the subsidies, while Montana Senator Steve Daines, a Republican, did not vote.

President Trump said last month that he was against extending the subsidies “because the ‘unaffordable care act’ has been a disaster.” But the real disaster is just beginning.

Health care premiums have already gone up in several states, and lower-income states, including Republican-run states like Mississippi, Tennessee, and South Carolina, stand to suffer the most. Many Americans will likely drop their ACA health care plans, meaning that an estimated four million Americans could be without health care coverage.

Here are the 48 Republican senators who voted to end the subsidies and increase premiums:

1. Jim Banks (Indiana)
2. John Barrasso (Wyoming)
3. Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee)
4. John Boozman (Arkansas)
5. Katie Britt (Alabama)
6. Ted Budd (North Carolina)
7. Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia)
8. Bill Cassidy (Louisiana)
9. John Cornyn (Texas)
10. Tom Cotton (Arkansas)
11. Kevin Cramer (North Dakota)
12. Mike Crapo (Idaho)*
13. Ted Cruz (Texas)
14. John Curtis (Utah)
15. Joni Ernst (Iowa)
16. Deb Fischer (Nebraska)
17. Lindsey Graham (South Carolina)
18. Chuck Grassley (Iowa)
19. Bill Hagerty (Tennessee)
20. John Hoeven (North Dakota)
21. Jon Husted (Ohio)
22. Cindy Hyde-Smith (Mississippi)
23. Ron Johnson (Wisconsin)
24. Jim Justice (West Virginia)
25. John Kennedy (Louisiana)
26. James Lankford (Oklahoma)
27. Mike Lee (Utah)
28. Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming)
29. Roger Marshall (Kansas)
30. Mitch McConnell (Kentucky)
31. Dave McCormick (Pennsylvania)
32. Ashley Moody (Florida)
33. Jerry Moran (Kansas)
34. Bernie Moreno (Ohio)
35. Markwayne Mullin (Oklahoma)
36. Rand Paul (Kentucky)
37. Pete Ricketts (Nebraska)
38. Jim Risch (Idaho)
39. Mike Rounds (South Dakota)
40. Eric Schmitt (Missouri)
41. Rick Scott (Florida)
42. Tim Scott (South Carolina)
43. Tim Sheehy (Montana)
44. John Thune (South Dakota)
45. Thom Tillis (North Carolina )
46. Tommy Tuberville (Alabama)
47. Roger Wicker (Mississippi)
48. Todd Young (Indiana)

* This article originally misidentified Mike Crapo’s state.

Yet another musician has joined the choir of voices refuting the White House’s latest string of ICE advertisements.

SZA torched the Trump administration for using her music in a pro-ICE ad, claiming that the blatant intellectual property theft was really just a transparent bid to rage-bait artists into giving the violent campaign more attention.

“White House rage baiting artists for free promo is PEAK DARK … inhumanity +shock and aw tactics,” SZA wrote on X Wednesday. “Evil n Boring.”

The White House published a Christmas-themed montage of ICE arrests Monday set to SZA’s track “Big Boy,” focusing on the song’s reprise “it’s cuffing season”—which, in the context of the song, refers to falling into short-term relationships during the cold winter months. Not ripping people away from their families and forcing them into modern-day concentration camps.

“WE HEARD IT’S CUFFING SZN,” the White House captioned the post alongside a chain emoji. “Bad news for criminal illegal aliens. Great news for America.”

The 36-year-old R&B singer was responding to a kindred comment by her former manager, Terrence “Punch” Henderson, who said that the White House’s efforts to “provoke artist[s] to respond in order to help spread propaganda and political agendas is nasty business.”

But the platinum record-producing duo aren’t alone in their opinion. The White House has also stolen tracks from Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter for similar purposes, earning the ire of the pop music spectrum in the process.

Last week, Carpenter seemingly won her own standoff with ICE after the White House deleted another brutal arrest montage that stole her song “Juno.”

“This video is evil and disgusting,” Carpenter responded to the White House video in a comment that received 1.8 million likes and more than 163 million views—roughly half of the U.S. population. “Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda.”

The FBI’s branch and operations director couldn’t answer basic questions about the Trump administration’s designation of antifa as a terrorist organization at a congressional hearing Thursday.

Michael Glasheen was testifying before the House Committee on Homeland Security, and told Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson that after antifa, a political designation and movement that stands for “anti-fascism,” was designated by President Trump as a domestic terrorist organization, “that’s our primary concern right now.”

Antifa is “the most immediate violent threat we’re facing on the domestic side,” Glasheen said, prompting Thompson to ask, “So where is antifa headquartered?”

Glasheen was tripped up, and tried to say, “What we’re doing right now with the organization—” before Thompson cut him off and firmly asked, “Where in the United States does antifa exist, if it’s a terrorist organization and you’ve identified it as number one?”

“We’re building out the infrastructure right now,” Glasheen replied. This did not satisfy Thompson.

“So what does that mean?” asked Thompson. “You said antifa is a terrorist organization. Tell us as a committee, how did you come to that? Where do they exist? How many members do they have in the United States as of right now?”

Glasheen couldn’t offer anything concrete, saying that the answers to Thompson’s questions are fluid, and that it was “ongoing for us to understand that, the same no different than Al Qaeda and ISIS.”

Thompson pressed further, saying that he merely wanted to know the makeup of antifa, and Glasheen tried to deflect, saying that investigations are active, almost shrugging to say he didn’t know, allowing Thompson to illustrate the point he was trying to make.

“Sir, you wouldn’t come to this committee and say something you can’t prove, I know. I know you wouldn’t do that. But you did,” Thompson concluded.

The truth is that Trump’s targeting of antifa is spurious. Antifa is not anything close to a centralized group but rather a movement or ideology opposing fascism. Trump only designated it as a terrorist organization to go after any left-wing opposition to himself or his far-right allies. Thursday’s hearing made it quite clear that Glasheen, a career FBI official who has worked under multiple presidents, knows all of that. The question is how far the rest of the federal government is willing to take that lie.