Over the past several months, I have been fighting a suburban Chicago library that has attempted to censor a local newsletter that I launched.

In fact, back in July, the Freedom of the Press Foundation's U.S. Press Freedom Tracker logged what was happening as an incident in Illinois.

This fight has distracted me from the work that I typically do on press freedom, whistleblowers, and government secrecy. Now, I am finally able to sit down and share this story with international readers of The Dissenter. 

The United States is filled with news deserts, which are defined as communities, “either rural or urban, with limited access to the sort of credible and comprehensive news and information that feeds democracy at the grassroots level.”

One of those communities is the West Chicago suburb where I live, which is known as Elmwood Park. Its population is around 24,000. The village has a newspaper, the Elm Leaves, but it is a prime example of the impact media consolidation has had on local journalism. 

The Elm Leaves is owned by the Pioneer Press, which is owned by Nexstar Media—a media corporation that merged with the Tribune Media Group in 2019. It rarely includes reporting on Elmwood Park. Instead, the newspaper features syndicated coverage of various Chicago suburbs that is written by a handful of reporters. 

Recognizing the lack of a reliable source for news and information in Elmwood Park, I joined with several residents and launched the Elmwood Park Advocate. 

We also reserved a library meeting room to host monthly “Community Conversations,” where residents were invited to talk with us about their shared experiences in the village. Through engagement, we believed our reporting and writing would better reflect life in the neighborhood.

After two “Community Conversations” in June and July, Library Director Michael Consiglio informed the Elmwood Park Advocate that seven or eight people objected to the “process and rationale behind hosting your meetings at the Library.” He then insisted after their opposition that we needed to pay $100 each time that we reserved a meeting room. 

The library director maintained that the library’s meeting room policy said only nonprofits with proof of 501c designation from the IRS are eligible to use the room free of charge. However, I obtained records through the Illinois Freedom of Information of Act that show the library never charged “any meeting room use fees since the adoption of the Library’s current Meeting Room Policy and reservation system in 2023.”

Library Director Seeks Power To Police Journalism And Speech

A public body is not allowed to infringe upon or bar a group from broadly exercising their First Amendment rights just because a very small group of hecklers do not like the idea of that group exercising their rights. This is the rule against the “heckler’s veto.” 

We met with the library director at the end of July. It was conveyed to us that the opposition to using the meeting room stemmed from our perceived association with individuals who had run for library board trustee positions and lost in April. However, the meeting was cordial, and the library director even said no resident should have to pay for a meeting room because we all pay property taxes. So, we were led to believe we could still use the meeting room in August and September for free.

Stunningly, on September 8, the library director unveiled a new meeting room policy. It was presented at a library board policy committee meeting that would have granted him the authority to police speech—not just inside but also outside of the library. 

For example:   

This is blatantly unconstitutional. As the American Library Association has outlined, “To restrict speech, a library must show that (1) it has a compelling state interest and (2) the speech restrictions are narrowly drawn to achieve that end.” 

The library had no public safety or health reason for trying to restrict speech nor was this provision narrowly drawn. It would have applied to “digital” communications, like articles published by my newsletter.

Attorneys for the library advised the library director to make substantial revisions, and I obtained a draft of the policy before it was revised. The report, which I published on September 30, led a number of residents to write to the library director.

“Didn't we just see this free speech fight play out 2 weeks ago with Jimmy Kimmel? Disney, ABC and their affiliates reversed course quickly once they realized that Americans truly believe and honor free speech as a constitutional right,” one resident wrote to the library director.

The same resident declared, “Free speech is the bedrock of our democracy and politicians, village officials and other community leaders need to uphold it at every chance. That includes allowing community groups the right to use legitimate public facilities, like library rooms, free of charge and without recourse to what they may or may not say during their meetings.”

Faced with a bit of a backlash, the library director disingenuously acted like he had never pursued a new meeting room policy. He told multiple residents, “There is no plan to change the current approved policy.” (Which was false. I obtained a copy of the proposed policy through FOIA and reported on it.) 

Another Attempt To Force Us To Pay A Fee (With A Bizarre Twist)

We were allowed to hold our fourth “Community Conversation” on September 20. It had the highest attendance yet, and we discussed immigration. 

But on September 29, Library Director Michael Consiglio informed the Elmwood Park Advocate that the library’s attorneys had reviewed the meeting room policy. Only Elmwood Park government agencies and Elmwood Park-based organizations that are recognized by the IRS as 501c nonprofits are “exempt from paying fees.” 

“This rule applies to all community clubs, cultural organizations, informal advocacy groups, and booster clubs that are not formally registered as nonprofits,” Consiglio added. We would have to pay $100 if we wished to use the meeting room for another “Community Conversation.”

Bizarrely, on October 2, the library director emailed the newsletter and said, “[I]n the interest of maintaining open communication and making sure that your planned meeting can proceed without disruption, I will personally cover the $100 meeting room fee until the Library Board convenes to review the policy and consider any necessary revisions.”

We neither accepted nor rejected the offer. In my opinion, there was an intimidating coerciveness behind this offer: accept my personal generosity or else your newsletter will not be able to use the library’s main meeting room.

Also, it seemed like if we did not accept the offer the library director and library board president could paint us as difficult and unreasonable. But no one involved or associated with the newsletter was responsible for the combination of developments, which led to the library director suddenly insisting that the library must charge meeting room fees. 

The library director “paid” the fee, and we held a fifth “Community Conversation” on October 11. At this gathering, we specifically addressed the fear and anxiety that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations had generated among residents. 

A Plea To Respect Our First Amendment Rights

Everything finally came to a head on October 26. After we reserved a room for November 15, Library Director Michael Consiglio denied the newsletter’s request for a room unless we paid $100. The newsletter appealed the decision. 

On November 10, I stood before the library board policy committee and presented our appeal. 

I urged trustees to interpret “the meeting room policy in a manner that supports the library’s mission and the principle for meeting room use in the Library Bill of Rights.”

The ALA’s Library Bill of Rights, which is part of the policy, says, “Libraries shall make meeting rooms available to groups regardless of the beliefs and affiliations of the group requesting their use or their members.”

Jack Bentley, a community lawyer, submitted a statement on our behalf. “The First Amendment to the Constitution does not only protect the freedom to view, hear, and read library materials. It also protects the freedom for residents to assemble in a meeting room, regardless of their beliefs, affiliations, or speech. That includes the freedom to publish articles about the library without fear of retaliation.”

“To charge the newsletter or any group of residents $100 for meeting room reservations with no apparent budgetary or policy concern backing up that fee is patently violative of your residents’ right to free expression as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” Bentley further stated.

Our case was compounded by the fact that Library Board President Chris Pesko proposed changing the language of the policy so it was much more clear that the library would charge any group or organization without 501c nonprofit status. Even if our appeal was granted, library board trustees could have immediately nullified the decision.

However, something unexpected happened while the library board was discussing the appeal. Library Board Trustee Peter Fosco urged the trustees to spend some more time considering the fees and comparing the fee structure in the policy to other area libraries. He motioned for a “moratorium” on meeting room fees, and the committee temporarily suspended the fee. (An hour later, the full library board voted to suspend the fee, too.)

By suspending the fee, it allowed the library board to avoid a decision that would have added to brewing resentment over how the library has treated our newsletter. It also meant that our appeal was paused, and that we could host our final “Community Conversation of the year on November 15.

I have no idea where this battle goes next, but it has renewed my sense of purpose as a journalist. Each day I spend several hours drafting articles, collaborating with volunteer staff, submitting FOIA requests, challenging FOIA denials, defending our newsletter, etc.

When the Elmwood Park Advocate launched in late May, it had less than 10 views per day. In September and October, we’ve hit 1,500 views and 2,000 views in a day. Our traffic is up over 26,000 percent in the past 180 days, and the number of subscribers that we have has grown by over 3,000 percent during the same time.

For well over a decade, I have written about press freedom, free speech, censorship, secrecy, and even government accountability. I was part of a groundswell of opposition that helped free WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning.

One might think I would stay focused on the national and international issues that were integral to their cases (and I am still committed to these issues). But this has rekindled my passion for journalism. I see traffic spikes on articles and engage with readers in a way that simply does not happen with The Dissenter anymore.

Leading a local newsletter feels incredibly important and impactful, like we're on the frontlines of a fight for access to news and information that every community should be waging right now.

With the government reopening, the dubious panel of vaccine advisors selected by anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy is wasting no time getting back to dismantling the federal childhood vaccine schedule.

A meeting that was scheduled for October but put on hold during the shutdown has already been rescheduled for December 4 and 5. A Federal Register notice Thursday said that the meeting will “include discussions on vaccine safety, the childhood and adolescent immunization schedule, and hepatitis B vaccines.” The announcement was light on information beyond that but indicated that there would be a vote on hepatitis B vaccines.

The panel—the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—is typically composed of preeminent, extensively vetted vaccine experts. But, in June, Kennedy summarily fired all 17 experts on the panel and installed 12 new members, almost all of whom are questionably qualified and espouse anti-vaccine views.

In the most recent meeting in September, the panel had planned to vote on altering the current recommendations for hepatitis B vaccinations but then abruptly abandoned the plan after they realized that the proposed recommendation made no sense and was not based on data.

First try

Hepatitis B vaccines are administered in three doses: the first on the day of birth, the second at 1 to 2 months, and the third between 6 and 18 months. The vaccine protects against a serious liver infection that, when acquired early in life, almost always becomes chronic, leading to liver disease and cancers. With a dose at birth, doctors close any window in which babies are vulnerable to the highly infectious virus, which can be spread from people who don’t know they have it. About 2.4 million people in the US are infected, and about 50 percent aren’t aware of their infection.

Adam Langer, acting principal deputy director of the CDC’s National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention, presented a ream of data at the September meeting. He noted that there are no significant safety concerns about the vaccine, including the birth dose.

Nevertheless, Kennedy’s ACIP members planned to push the first dose back a month. A vote was prepared to recommend not giving a birth dose unless there was “individual based decision-making.” While at first the panel seemed poised to vote in favor of the change, the plan collapsed with basic questioning.

Voting ACIP member Joseph Hibbeln, a psychiatrist, noted: “I’m unclear if we’ve been presented with any safety or data comparing before one month to after one month,” he said. They had not.

“And,” Hibbeln continued, “I’m wondering why one month was selected as our time point and if there are data to help to inform us if there’s greater risk of adverse effects before one month or after one month at all.”

There is no data suggesting that such a move would be more or less safe.

The discussion quickly spiraled from there with an eventual vote of 11-1 to table voting on the vaccine recommendation. According to the Federal Register notice, ACIP will try to take up the topic again. They could revive the vote or attack some other aspect of vaccine recommendations.

Pediatricians fight back

Health experts have blasted Kennedy’s lineup and their attacks on childhood vaccines, including the hepatitis B vaccination schedule. The current schedule “remains the best protection against serious health problems like liver disease and cancer,” the American Academy of Pediatrics emphasized to Ars.

With ACIP’s standing tarnished under Kennedy, AAP has put forth its own evidence-based vaccine schedule for pediatricians to trust. They’ve also been a prominent opponent among medical organizations to Kennedy’s efforts. For instance, in a revised federal lawsuit, the AAP along with other medical organizations is seeking to overturn all decisions made by Kennedy’s ACIP and replace the entire panel with actual experts.

Kennedy’s appointees “lack the credentials and experience required of their role,” and all their votes should be declared “null and void,” the organization said.

AAP President Susan Kressly said that pediatricians are already seeing the effects of having an anti-vaccine activist as the US health secretary, namely “fear, decreased vaccine confidence, and barriers for families to access vaccines.”

“The nation’s children are already paying the price in avoidable illnesses and hospitalizations,” Kressly said. “We urge federal leaders to restore the science-based deliberative process that has made the United States a global leader in public health. Urgent action is needed.”

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If Donald Trump loses his Supreme Court fight over tariffs, the US may be forced to return “tens of billions of dollars to companies that have paid import fees this year, plus interest,” The Atlantic reported. And the longer the verdict is delayed, the higher the refunds could go, possibly even hitting $1 trillion.

For tech companies both large and small, the stakes are particularly high. A Trump defeat would not just mean clawing back any duties paid on imports to the US that companies otherwise can use to invest in their competitiveness. But, more critically in the long term, it would also end tariff shocks that, as economics lecturer Matthew Allen emphasized in a report for The Conversation, risked harming “innovation itself” by destabilizing global partnerships and diverse supply chains in “tech-intensive, IP-led sectors like semiconductors and software.”

Currently, the Supreme Court is weighing two cases that argue that the US president does not have unilateral authority to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Defending his regime of so-called “reciprocal tariffs,” Trump argued these taxes were necessary to correct the “emergency” of enduring trade imbalances that he alleged have unfairly enriched other countries while bringing the US “to the brink of catastrophic decline.”

Not everyone thinks Trump will lose. But after oral arguments last week, prediction markets dropped Trump’s odds of winning from 50 to 25 percent, Forbes reported, due to Supreme Court justices appearing skeptical.

Dozens of economists agreed: Trump’s tariffs are “odd”

Justices may have been swayed by dozens of leading economists who weighed in. In one friend of the court brief, more than 40 economists, public policy researchers, and former government officials argued that Trump’s got it all wrong when he claims that “sustained trade deficits” have “fostered dependency on foreign rivals and gutted American manufacturing.”

Far from being “unusual and extraordinary,” they argued that trade deficits are “rather ordinary and commonplace.” And rather than being a sign of US weakness, the deficits instead indicate that the US has a “foreign investment surplus,” as other countries clearly consider the US “a superior investment.”

Look no further than the tech sector for a prominent example, they suggested, noting that “the United States has the dominant technology sector in the world and, as a result, has been running a persistent surplus in trade in services for decades.” Citing a quip from Nobel Prize winner Robert Solow—“I have a chronic deficit with my barber, who doesn’t buy a darned thing from me”—economists argued that trade deficits are never inherently problematic.

“It is odd to economists, to say the least, for the United States government to attempt to rebalance trade on a country-by-country basis,” economists wrote, as Trump seems to do with his trade deals imposing reciprocal tariffs as high as 145 percent.

SCOTUS urged to end “perfect storm of uncertainty”

Trump has been on a mission to use tariffs to force more manufacturing back into the US. He has claimed that the court undoing his trade deals would be an “economic disaster” and “would literally destroy the United States of America.” And the longer it takes for the verdict to come out, the more damage the verdict could do, his administration warned, as the US continues to collect tariffs and Trump continues to strike deals that hinge on reciprocal tariffs being in play.

However, in another friend-of-court brief, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and the Chamber of Commerce (CoC) argued that the outcome is worse for US businesses if the court defers to Trump.

“The current administration’s use of IEEPA to impose virtually unbounded tariffs is not only unprecedented but is causing irreparable harm” to each group’s members by “increasing their costs, undermining their ability to plan for the future, and in some cases, threatening their very existence,” their filing said.

“The tariffs are particularly damaging to American manufacturing,” they argued, complaining that “American manufacturers face higher prices for raw materials than their foreign competitors, destroying any comparative advantage the tariffs were allegedly meant to create.”

Further, businesses face decreased exports of their products, as well as retaliatory tariffs from any countries striking back at Trump—which “affect $223 billion of US exports and are expected to eliminate an additional 141,000 jobs,” CTA and CoC estimated.

Innovation “thrives on collaboration, trust and scale,” Allen, the economics lecturer, noted, joining critics warning that Trump risked hobbling not just US tech dominance by holding onto seemingly misguided protectionist beliefs but also the European Union’s and the United Kingdom’s.

Meanwhile, the CTA and CoC argued that Trump has other ways to impose tariffs that have been authorized by Congress and do not carry the same risks of destabilizing key US industries, such as the tech sector. Under Section 122, which many critics argued is the authority Trump should be using to impose the reciprocal tariffs, Trump would be limited to a 15 percent tariff for no more than 150 days, trade scholars noted in yet another brief SCOTUS reviewed.

“But the President’s claimed IEEPA authority contains no such limits” CTA and CoC noted. “At whim, he has increased, decreased, suspended, or reimposed tariffs, generating the perfect storm of uncertainty.”

US may end up owing $1 trillion in refunds

Economists urged SCOTUS to intervene and stop Trump’s attempt to seize authority to impose boundless reciprocal tariffs—arguing the economic impact “is predicted to be far greater than in two programs” SCOTUS previously struck, including the Biden administration’s $50 billion plan for student loan forgiveness.

In September, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned justices that “the amount to be refunded could be between $750 billion and $1 trillion if the court waits until next summer before issuing a ruling that says the tariffs have to be repaid,” CNBC reported.

During oral arguments, Justice Amy Coney Barrett fretted that undoing Trump’s tariffs could be “messy,” CNBC reported.

However, some business owners—who joined the We Pay Tariffs coalition weighing in on the SCOTUS case—told CNBC that they think it could be relatively straightforward, since customs forms contain line items detailing which tariffs were paid. Businesses could be paid in lump sums or even future credits, they suggested.

Rick Muskat, CEO of family-run shoe company DeerStags, told CNBC that his company paid more than $1 million in tariffs so far, but “it should be simple for importers to apply for refunds based on this tariff itemization.” If the IRS can issue repayments for tax overpayments, US Customs should have “no problem” either, he suggested—especially since the agency automatically refunded US importers with no issue during a 2018 conflict, CNBC reported.

If there aren’t automatic refunds, though, things could get sticky. Filing paperwork required to challenge various tariffs may become “time-consuming and difficult” for some businesses, particularly those dealing with large shipments where only some products may have been taxed.

There’s also the issue that some countries’ tariffs—like China’s—changed “multiple times,” Joyce Adetutu, a partner at the law firm Vinson & Elkins, told CNBC. “It is going to take quite a bit of time untangling all of that, and it will be an administrative burden,” Adetutu said.

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On Oct. 2, the second day of the government shutdown, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrived at Mount Rushmore to shoot a television ad. Sitting on horseback in chaps and a cowboy hat, Noem addressed the camera with a stern message for immigrants: “Break our laws, we’ll punish you.” 

Noem has hailed the more than $200 million, taxpayer-funded ad campaign as a crucial tool to stem illegal immigration. Her agency invoked the “national emergency” at the border as it awarded contracts for the campaign, bypassing the normal competitive bidding process designed to prevent waste and corruption.

The Department of Homeland Security has kept at least one beneficiary of the nine-figure ad deal a secret, records and interviews show: a Republican consulting firm with long-standing personal and business ties to Noem and her senior aides at DHS. The company running the Mount Rushmore shoot, called the Strategy Group, does not appear on public documents about the contract. The main recipient listed on the contracts is a mysterious Delaware company, which was created days before the deal was finalized.

No firm has closer ties to Noem’s political operation than the Strategy Group. It played a central role in her 2022 South Dakota gubernatorial campaign. Corey Lewandowski, her top adviser at DHS, has worked extensively with the firm. And the company’s CEO is married to Noem’s chief spokesperson at DHS, Tricia McLaughlin.

The Strategy Group’s ad work is the first known example of money flowing from Noem’s agency to businesses controlled by her allies and friends.

Government contracting experts said the depth of the ties between DHS leadership and the Strategy Group suggested major potential violations of ethics rules.

“It’s corrupt, is the word,” said Charles Tiefer, a leading authority on federal contract law and former member of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said that the Strategy Group’s role should prompt investigations by both the DHS inspector general and the House Oversight Committee. 

“Hiding your friends as subcontractors is like playing hide the salami with the taxpayer,” Tiefer added.

Federal regulations forbid conflicts of interest in contracting and require that the process be conducted “with complete impartiality and with preferential treatment for none.”

“It’s worthy of an investigation to ferret out how these decisions were made, and whether they were made legally and without bias,” said Scott Amey, a contracting expert and general counsel at the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight.

The revelations come as the amount of money at Noem’s disposal has skyrocketed. The so-called Big Beautiful Bill granted DHS more than $150 billion, and Noem has given herself an unusual degree of control over how that money is spent. This summer, she began requiring that she personally approve any payment over $100,000.

Asked about the Strategy Group’s work for DHS, McLaughlin, the agency spokesperson, said in an interview, “We don’t have visibility into why they were chosen.”

“I don’t know who they’re a subcontractor with, but I don’t work with them because I have a conflict of interest and I fully recused myself,” she said. “My marriage is one thing and work is another. I don’t combine them.” Her husband, Strategy Group CEO Ben Yoho, didn’t respond to questions.

In a written statement, DHS said, “DHS has no involvement with the selection of subcontractors.” They added that the Strategy Group does not have a direct contract with the agency, saying “DHS cannot and does not determine, control, or weigh in on who contractors hire.” 

Contracting experts said that agencies can and do sometimes require that subcontractors be approved by officials. It’s not clear how much the Strategy Group has been paid.

This is not the first time that the Strategy Group has gotten public money through a Noem contract. As governor of South Dakota in 2023, her administration set off a scandal by hiring the Ohio-based company to do a different ad campaign, paying it $8.5 million in state funds. While the state said the contract was done by the book, a former Noem administration official told ProPublica that Noem quietly intervened to ensure the Strategy Group got the deal. ProPublica granted some people anonymity to discuss the deals because of their sensitivity.

The firm also paid up to $25,000 to one of Noem’s closest advisers in South Dakota, previously unreported records show. (The adviser, 28-year-old Madison Sheahan, now serves at DHS as the second-in-command of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Sheahan didn’t respond to questions about why she was paid.)

The DHS ad that the company filmed at Mount Rushmore has aired during “Fox & Friends” in recent days. Executives from the Strategy Group traveled to the shoot and hired subcontractors to fill out the film crew, according to records and a person involved in the campaign. The ad’s aesthetic sits somewhere between a political campaign ad and a Jeep commercial as Noem tells would-be immigrants to “come here the right way.”

“From the cowboys who tamed the West to the titans who built our cities,” Noem says, as images of Trump Tower in Chicago and Trump raising his fist after the assassination attempt last year flash on the screen, “America has always rewarded vision and grit.” Noem continues: “You cross the border illegally, we’ll find you.”

The ad is the latest in a campaign that Noem debuted in February, just a few weeks after she took charge of DHS. “Any delay in providing these critical communications to the public will increase the spread of misinformation, especially misinformation by smugglers,” the agency wrote, explaining why it was skipping the competitive bidding process normally required for government contracts. The initial ads featured Noem thanking Trump for securing the border.

The contracts total $220 million so far, leading the DHS ad budget to triple in the most recent fiscal year, according to Bloomberg. The lion’s share of ad contracts is typically used to buy TV airtime or spots on social media. Advertising firms make money by taking an often-hefty commission. Federal records show the contracts have gone to two firms. One is a Republican ad company in Louisiana called People Who Think, which has been awarded $77 million. 

But the majority of the money — $143 million — has gone to a mysterious LLC in Delaware. The company was created just days before it was awarded the deal.

Little is known about the Delaware company, which is called Safe America Media and lists its address as the Virginia home of a veteran Republican operative, Michael McElwain. McElwain has long had his own advertising company (separate from the Delaware one), but there’s little evidence that firm could handle a nine-figure federal contract on its own: It reported just five employees when it received COVID-19 relief money a few years ago.

How, where and to whom Safe America Media doled out the $143 million is unknown. Any subcontractors hired to do work on the DHS ads are not disclosed in federal contracting databases. 

The office funding the ad contracts is listed as the DHS Office of Public Affairs, which is run by McLaughlin, contract records show. McLaughlin married Yoho, the Strategy Group CEO, earlier this year. 

In its statement, DHS said the agency does its contracting “by the book” and the process is run by career officials. “It is very sad that Pro Publica would seek to defame these public servants,” DHS added.

Asked about why the agency chose Safe America Media, DHS said, “The results speak for themselves: the most secure border in American history and over 2 million illegal aliens exiting the United States.” McElwain and People Who Think didn’t respond to questions.

Yoho was still in college when he first served as campaign manager for a U.S. congressman. Now, at 38 years old, he’s a national player in the cutthroat industry of political advertising. Federal election records show tens of millions in payments to his firm during the 2024 election cycle, coming from dozens of Republican congressional candidates. And Noem has proved a particularly lucrative client.

Lewandowski brought Yoho into Noem’s inner circle back in South Dakota, according to two people familiar with the matter, putting the young consultant in charge of the ad side of her 2022 gubernatorial reelection campaign. Noem had a more than $5 million advertising budget for the race, records show. After she won in a landslide, Yoho, who has called Noem a friend, came to South Dakota to attend her inauguration ceremony. He sat off to the side of the stage, next to Lewandowski. (Lewandowski didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

By then, Yoho’s next big project with Noem was already in the works. In late 2022, Noem was quietly preparing to launch another sprawling ad campaign — only this time, the money would come from state coffers. The stated goal was to encourage workers to move to South Dakota. The upcoming contract opportunity wasn’t public yet, but Yoho was already involved in planning the campaign, according to records first reported by Sioux Falls Live.

Then on Jan. 12, 2023, Yoho’s company registered to do business in South Dakota under the name Go West Media. The next day, the contract opportunity went live.

Seven companies submitted proposals for the project. Then the pressure from above set in, according to a former Noem administration official involved in the process.

The former official said a top Noem aide told them the governor would be angry if Yoho’s company didn’t win the contract. “He was very direct: ‘She wants to do it,’” they said. Contemporaneous text messages reviewed by ProPublica corroborate that senior Noem administration officials pushed for Yoho to get the contract. Eventually, he did. (In its statement, DHS denied that Noem influenced the process.)

Noem starred in Yoho’s ads herself, dressing up as a dentist, a plumber and a state trooper as she touted her state’s growing economy. Exactly how much Yoho and the Strategy Group made off the $8.5 million deal is unclear. Some of the money was used to purchase spots on Fox News, including one during a Republican presidential debate. Some of the money appears to have gone back to South Dakota — into the bank account of another of Noem’s top advisers.

Sheahan, now the second-in-command at ICE, was paid up to $25,000 by Go West in 2023 for “consulting,” according to a financial disclosure document Sheahan later filed. At the time, Sheahan was serving as both the operations director for Noem as governor and the political director for Noem’s campaign work, according to a copy of her 2023 resume obtained by ProPublica. Her responsibilities included coordinating “daily logistics and operations” for Noem and her team, the resume said. She also managed the “relationship with high level donors” to American Resolve, Noem’s network of outside political groups. 

As his firm received millions from the South Dakota state government, Yoho separately continued to work for Noem in other capacities. He worked under Lewandowski on the publicity campaign for Noem’s 2024 memoir, according to a person familiar with the matter. (The book became famous for including an anecdote about Noem shooting her dog.)

The Strategy Group also received a stream of payments for social media consulting and media production work over the last few years from Noem’s American Resolve PAC. Federal election records show the PAC made its last payment to Yoho’s company this February, a couple weeks after Noem took her post as the head of DHS.

The post Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Secretly Got Money From $220 Million DHS Ad Contracts appeared first on ProPublica.