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.