Noem Can’t Explain Why She Hired 8-Day-Old Company for Ad Campaign

The Department of Homeland Security tapped a little-known ad firm to produce Kristi Noem’s multimillion-dollar ad campaign during the government shutdown last year. But when asked to explain her rationale before a House Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday, Noem was practically speechless.

Reading off a DHS notice, Colorado Representative Joe Neguse noted that the department had identified just four companies “out of the hundreds of thousands of companies in the United States” as potential hires for the campaign.

“One of those is this Safe America Media Company. Where is Safe America Media headquartered?” asked Colorado Representative Joe Neguse.

“I don’t know,” Noem replied.

DHS paid Safe America Media $143 million in no-bid contracts between February and August 2025 to produce a slate of anti-immigrant ads for ICE Barbie. Months later, ProPublica reported that it was unlikely Safe America Media, which was formed just eight days before it won the DHS contract, would have been able to handle a nine-figure government contract.

However, subcontractors are not required to be made public in federal contracting databases, effectively allowing the whopping taxpayer sum to vanish in an untraceable dark-money network. Exactly where and to whom Safe America Media dished out its millions is still unclear, though the consulting company behind one of Noem’s late 2025 videos spilled the beans.

The money from Noem’s agency was funneling directly into the pockets of her friends and allies at the Strategy Group, a group with myriad ties to the ex–South Dakota governor, including having once employed her alleged beau (Corey Lewandowski) and a CEO who is married to Noem’s ex-chief DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.

Safe America Media, meanwhile, has no website, no experience, and quiet contracts. The only substantial evidence that the company actually exists at all is that it shares an address with a property owned by veteran Republican operative Michael McElwain.

“Is there a problem with this contract?” drawled the secretary.

“You want the American people to believe that this is all above board, that $143 million of taxpayer money just happened to go to this one company that doesn’t have a headquarters, doesn’t have a website, has never done work for the federal government before, and is registered apparently or attached to a residence from a political operative, and of course one of the subcontractors of that contract, as you know, is a political firm that’s tied to, to you back when you were governor of South Dakota?” pressed Neguse. “The reason why I ask these questions is because this is taxpayer money.

“Eventually the facts will become public in this regard.”

The House Oversight Committee voted Wednesday to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi over her handling of the government’s release of files relating to Jeffrey Epstein.

Five Republicans joined every Democrat on the committee to approve of the summons: Representatives Tim Burchett, Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace, Michael Cloud, and Scott Perry. The Department of Justice has been under fire from Republicans and Democrats alike for redacting some files relating to President Trump and administration officials, yet leaving victims’ personal information and some explicit photos unredacted.

But recently, the DOJ was found to have removed 47,635 files from its publicly accessible archive, including files concerning allegations against Trump. Plus, Bondi has not acquitted herself well before Congress, having a disastrous hearing with the committee last month where she leveled insults at members of the committee and repeatedly dodged questions about Epstein.

Bondi will now have to sit for a closed-door taped deposition with the committee, not unlike former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Mace, according to PBS Newshour, wants to focus on Jeffrey Epstein. However, there’s a host of other issues with Bondi’s tenure heading the DOJ, including disobeying court orders and mass resignations across the department. Those issues are unlikely to come up in this deposition, though.

If Bondi chooses not to respond to the subpoena, the agency tasked with enforcing it is her own DOJ, meaning that the only thing compelling her to testify is reputation and appearance. Bondi has already ruined the DOJ’s reputation, and made a fool of herself before Congress. What will happen this time?

This story has been updated.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday it was necessary to bomb Iran because President Donald Trump had a “feeling” the foreign nation would attack.

“The president had a feeling, again, based on fact, that Iran was going to strike the United States, was going to strike our assets in the region, and he made a determination to launch Operation Epic Fury based on all of those reasons,” Leavitt said.

Earlier in the press briefing, Leavitt struggled to explain the “imminent threat” posed by Iran that would justify the U.S. and Israel launching this war.

“You listed a long list of grievances against the Iranian government going back to … 1979,” one reporter noted, referring to the beginning of the Islamic Republic’s rule in the country. “Why is it that you can’t say what the imminent threat against the U.S. was that required us to launch this?”

“I reject the premise of your question,” Leavitt replied.

The White House has spent the last two days trying to clean up a viral quote from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in which he admitted Israel had pressured the United States into attacking Iran.

“We knew that there ​was going to be an Israeli action, ​we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we ​didn’t preemptively go after them before they ​launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio said Monday.

Leavitt’s remarks Wednesday—that a new war in the Middle East is based on nothing but Trump’s “feeling”—don’t make things any better.

Karoline Leavitt gave a characteristically petulant response when asked whether the U.S. was involved in an airstrike on a girls’ school in Iran that killed up to 168 people, mostly young children.

Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, southern Iran, was struck Sunday amid the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign on the country. As the Iranian school week lasts from Saturday to Thursday, the building was full of students, and “dozens of seven to 12 year-old girls” were killed in the explosion, The Guardian reported. Unesco described the bombing as a “grave violation” of international law.

Leavitt was asked whether the U.S. had been responsible for the attack.

“Uh, not that we know of, Sean, and the Department of War is investigating this matter,” she replied. “And I would just tell you strongly, the United States of America does not target civilians, unlike the rogue Iranian regime, that … uses propaganda quite effectively. And unfortunately, many people in this room have fallen for that propaganda.”

Leavitt refusing to give a firm answer and instead asserting that the federal government is investigating would seem to contradict her statement that the U.S. does not target civilians. If the investigation reveals that the U.S. were responsible, then we would, in fact, have targeted civilians. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday that the U.S. “would not deliberately target a school.” But unintentionally killing civilians can still be a war crime.

Despite Leavitt’s claims of Iranian propaganda, the bombing was well documented by on-the-ground reporters and civilian cell phone video.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared unable to answer a repeated question during her briefing Wednesday: Is Iran a regime-change war or not?

As President Donald Trump and his administration give shifting explanations of the U.S. decision to join Israel in bombing Iran over the last five days, Leavitt was asked what he really believes.

“You said the Iranian regime is being absolutely crushed. Can you explicitly state then whether or not regime change is a goal of President Trump?” AFP reporter Danny Kemp asked.

“The goals of this operation have been made clear, and the president has said them in his speech,” Leavitt replied. “The stated military options of Operation Epic Fury are as follows: eliminate Iran’s ballistic missile threat, destroy their naval capability, disrupt missile and drone production infrastructure, sever their pathway and end their pathway to nuclear weapons.

“Thus far, this operation has been remarkably successful,” she continued, refusing to comment on whether regime change is indeed a goal. “Again, we’re moving towards complete and total control of Iranian airspace.”

Another reporter followed up on Leavitt’s remarks. “Those four objectives that you laid out do not explicitly include regime change. If those objectives were achieved and the Islamic Republic still existed, would that be an acceptable outcome?”

“That’s a hypothetical question that I’m not going to engage in,” Leavitt replied, still refusing to answer the question.

That the White House press secretary can’t—or refuses to—answer whether the U.S. has embarked on another regime-change war in the Middle East is astonishing, given that the U.S. has been bombing Iran for five days now.

In his video message Saturday, Trump appeared to characterize his end goal as regime change, telling Iranians after he bombed their country: “Take over your government. It will be yours to take.”

On Tuesday, however, Trump appeared to acknowledge that despite the U.S. killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, his plan could totally fail, and the Iranian regime could elect another hard-liner to take Khamenei’s place.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was caught in a white lie Wednesday about a toddler detained by ICE.

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Democratic Representative Ted Lieu showed Noem a picture of a young toddler named Amalia who was detained by ICE, and asked the secretary if Amalia committed a crime. Noem replied, “No, she did not. She is with her family.” 

“The reason she’s with her family is because she almost died in ICE detention until folks brought a lawsuit forcing her release,” Lieu said. 

Noem’s answer ignored the long ordeal that Amalia’s family had to deal with. Her parents, Kheilin Valero Marcano and Stiven Arrieta Prieto, worried that their 18-month-old daughter might die while being held with them at Texas’s Dilley Immigration Processing Center, known for its unsafe and unsanitary conditions despite the fact that ICE uses the facility to detain families. 

While she was healthy when she arrived at the facility, Amalia quickly became sick with pneumonia, Covid-19, RSV, and other serious respiratory issues and was taken to a children’s hospital in nearby San Antonio, Texas. Days later, she was discharged from the hospital after she showed improvement from intensive oxygen treatment. 

She was then sent back to Dilley, despite doctors warning that she was at high risk of infection, and guards there denied her prescribed medication that she was supposed to take every day. Lawyers filed an emergency petition in federal court to have her released, but it took nine more days in Dilley before she was released.  

Noem thought she could get away with saying that Amalia was safely back with her family, but the full story is that being detained by ICE nearly killed her, and only legal action got her released and able to take the medicine she needed. Noem’s stewardship of DHS and the president’s mass deportations have led to widespread misconduct, abuse of immigrants, and even death in some cases. Little Amalia is one egregious case among many that Noem ignores. 

Given the many scandals that have enveloped this country since President Donald Trump began his second term, it’s easy to forget one of the first: Big Don’s call to gerrymander districts in Republican-held states in order to create more congressional seats for the GOP.

Fortunately for Democrats, the president is so unpopular right now that even new districts specifically drawn for Republicans may swing left.

Veteran political strategist Tom Bonier noted Wednesday that Democratic primary voters exceeded their Republican counterparts in four of the five Texas districts that the state legislature redrew last year.

One of these is District 28, which is located on the southwest tip of Texas, and where Democrats outvoted Republicans four to one.

Four to one! The turnout highlights a Southern, largely Hispanic enthusiasm for Democratic candidates that simply wasn’t there during the last presidential election. In Zapata County, also part of district 28, Bonier found that Democratic primary turnout was 143 percent the number of votes Kamala Harris won in 2024.

“It’s hard to overstate how rare it is to see Dem turnout in a midterm primary election exceeding that of a presidential election,” Bonier wrote.

These voters are also mobilizing despite a pronounced funding gap, which will only inspire more Democratic hope for the region. The GOP spent upward of $80 million on Senate primary advertisements in Texas, more than triple the amount spent by Democrats, the advertising analytics firm AdImpact found.

Only Congress has the authority to declare war—but Republican leadership seems content to let Donald Trump do whatever he wants at whim.

The Senate is expected to vote Wednesday on whether to block Trump’s warfare in Iran via a war powers resolution. The bipartisan resolution, introduced by Democratic Senator Tim Kaine and co-sponsored by Republican Senator Rand Paul, would “direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against the Islamic Republic of Iran that have not been authorized by Congress.”

But not everyone in Congress is prepared to seize the legislative branch’s constitutionally appointed authority.

House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Wednesday that restricting his Oval Office ally’s military power through the passage of a war powers resolution “would be a terrible, dangerous idea.”

“It would empower our enemies, it would kneecap our own forces, it would take the ability of the U.S. military and the commander in chief away from completing this critical mission to keep everybody safe,” Johnson said.

The Republican House leader added that Iran had attacked three U.S. embassies in the days since U.S. bombs fell on the country.

“Those are sovereign territories of the U.S. They have declared war on us,” Johnson said. “I don’t believe in the semantics.… We’re not at war right now. We’re four days into a very specific, clear mission and operation—Operation Epic Fury—that has two components, as you know.

“Everybody has explained,” Johnson said.

But nobody in Washington has explained the rationale for going to war with Iran with any modicum of clarity, leaving even those in Trump’s Cabinet confused about the intended messaging. State Secretary Marco Rubio, for instance, had to eat his own words Tuesday evening after the president disagreed with his depiction of the war. Rubio had initially suggested to reporters on Monday that Israel had forced Trump’s hand, forcing the U.S. to strike first due to intel that indicated Iran would retaliate with force against American interests if Israel followed through on its plans to attack.

By the next day, Rubio was stuttering in front of cameras that he had never said anything of the sort. Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., claimed later that day that Rubio’s point-blank comments had been “taken out of context.”

So far, six U.S. soldiers have been killed in the conflict, as have more than 20 Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Eighteen American soldiers have also been seriously injured. More than 1,000 Iranian civilians have been killed, including 176 children, dozens of whom were at a girls’ school in the country’s south.

More than a dozen countries have been roped into the conflict since the U.S. began bombing Iran—including France, the U.K., and Greece—effectively destabilizing the entire region while disrupting global markets and oil production.

Meanwhile, U.S. forces may not be able to keep their defenses up: Military officials have stressed since Sunday that fighting Iran has already drastically depleted America’s missile defense systems.

In a closed-door meeting with lawmakers Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine reportedly said that Iran’s Shahed attack drones had proved a more difficult problem than initially predicted.

One source told CNN that the U.S. has been “burning” through long-range precision-guided missiles over the last four days.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, has questioned U.S. military support for Israel and called it “sort of an apartheid state.” 

Pod Save America podcast host Jon Favreau interviewed Newsom Tuesday at an event promoting the governor’s memoir and asked him, “Do you think, looking down the road, that the United States should consider maybe, you know, rethinking our military support for Israel?”

In his response to the former Obama administration staffer, Newsom took his strongest stance on Israel to date. 

“It breaks my heart, because the current leadership is walking us down that path where I don’t think you have a choice about that consideration,” Newsom said. He criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and referred to the expansion of West Bank settlements having people “talking about it appropriately as sort of an apartheid state.” He went on to criticize Israel’s role in the current war on Iran.

“We’re talking about regime change?” Newsom said. “For two years, they haven’t even been able to solve the Hamas question in Israel.”

Newsom has made no secret of his presidential ambitions, touring the country to increase his national profile. Less than two months ago, he went on conservative commentator Ben Shapiro’s podcast and refused to call Israel’s massacre of Gaza a genocide, saying he was “crystal clear on my love for Israel.”

So what does Newsom actually believe? Does he genuinely believe that the U.S. needs to stop military support for Israel, or is he pandering to reach the voting majority, who, according to a recent Gallup poll, sympathize with Palestinians more than Israelis? With the presidential primaries only two years away, Newsom’s views will face plenty of challenges in what will probably be a crowded Democratic field.  

Roughly two months after their deaths, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem still isn’t ready to publicly acknowledge that Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti were not domestic terrorists.

ICE agents shot and killed the two U.S. citizens in different instances over the course of January. In the immediate aftermath of the dual homicides, Noem and other officials within the Trump administration attempted to spin the narrative of their deaths to quell public backlash. To do so, they smeared Pretti, an ICU nurse who worked with veterans, and Good, an award-winning poet and mother, as “domestic terrorists” intent on killing federal officers.

But time away from the brutal killings has not changed Noem’s tune. In a heated exchange with Representative Jamie Raskin during a House Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday, Noem not only refused to apologize to the Americans’ families for her subordinates’ gross abuse of force, but blatantly sidestepped any attempt to revise her language.

“Madame Secretary, based on what you know today, were Renee Good and Alex Pretti domestic terrorists?” asked Raskin.

“Congressman, what happened in Minnesota in those two incidents was an absolute tragedy,” Noem said.

“Were they domestic terrorists as you said to the country?” Raskin said.

“My condolences to their families, because I know their lives will never be the same after that happened,” Noem said.

“Is that an apology for what you said?” pressed Raskin.

“We, in those instances, offer as much information as we can—” Noem continued.

“Madame Secretary, based on what you know today, were Renee Good and Alex Pretti domestic terrorists?” Raskin repeated.

“As you know, there’s ongoing investigations that are being led by the FBI—” Noem started, before Raskin interrupted to clarify that Noem “did not wait for the investigation” when she made her initial comments.

“You proclaimed they were domestic terrorists at the time. Why did you do that?” asked Raskin.

“And you didn’t wait to attack our law enforcement officers,” Noem spat back. “Our ICE officers and our HSI officers that day risked their lives to protect that scene so the evidence could be used in the investigation. Because those violent rioters that were there—”

“So you’re proud of the fact that you called them domestic terrorists?” Raskin pushed. “Is that what you’re telling America?”

“HSI officers put their lives on the line to protect that scene,” Noem continued.

“Yes, they do,” Raskin agreed, reminding Noem that she “told a lie” about Pretti and Good. “Do you regret that?”

“I offer my condolences to those families,” Noem repeated blankly.

“Based on what you know today, were Renee Good and Alex Pretti domestic terrorists?” Raskin asked.

“There’s ongoing investigations,” Noem said.

“So you still don’t know? You think that’s an open question?” Raskin pressed.

“I would think you would still want there to be open investigations into this situation,” Noem said.

“Well you stated the conclusion two hours after they were killed that they were domestic terrorists. I wanted to give you an opportunity to correct the record, not just for their family but for everyone in America who believes in the truth and fairness and honesty,” Raskin continued. “You know, your acting ICE Director Todd Lyons came before Congress. He said he had no knowledge whatsoever that Alex Pretti and Renee Good were domestic terrorists. None! This is your guy, he said. He admitted that was wrong. Why won’t you do that?”

But Noem would not explain herself. She then had no apparent defense for her agency when Raskin asked her to clarify her position on existing laws that are supposed to prevent federal immigration officers from killing and abusing American citizens.