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.

We have no idea how many of them they made, but seemingly, the price was not a problem for this product.

[DB: This is a guest post from my Scalia Law colleague Professor Adam Mossoff, reprinting his letter to Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts resigning his position as a visiting fellow at the Foundation. As Adam says, this is a time for choosing on the political right: you either abandon conservatism and stand with Tucker Carlson and nihilism, collectivism, Nazism, and Jew hatred, or you stick up for (conserve, if you will) the American traditions of individual rights, religious and ethnic pluralism, and the rule of law.]

Dear Dr. Roberts,

It is with a heavy heart that I am resigning my Visiting Fellow position in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. My resignation is effective immediately.

Please know that I did not come to this decision lightly, as it has been truly an honor to work for John Malcolm in the Meese Center for the past six years. John represents the best of Heritage, and he has inspired me. I have been tremendously proud of my legal memoranda on intellectual property law and innovation policy, and of the Intellectual Property Working Group that has been my charge. I am even more proud of my chapter on the Copyright and Patent Clause in the new edition of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution, an impressive monograph representing the fruits of a multi-year productive effort by John and his co-editor, Josh Blackmun.

Unfortunately, your October 30 video, and your subsequent interviews, videos, and commentary, have made it clear to me that Heritage is no longer the storied think tank that I was proud to join in 2019.

I waited two weeks to send my resignation notice because I did not wish to act in haste, and I wanted my decision to be the result of a considered judgment, not a reaction based on the passions of the moment. Thus, I have been following closely the follow-on commentary and discussions by you and others, both externally and internally. From these observations, I have concluded that your October 30 video, as confirmed by your subsequent comments, interviews, and meetings, was not a mere mistake; rather, it reflects a fundamental ethical lapse and failure of moral leadership that has irrevocably damaged the well-deserved reputation of Heritage as "the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement" (your words in your October 30 video).

Your October 30 video was indefensible. So were your purported explanations and backtracking in subsequent interviews and social media posts. The October 30 video was worse than a poor choice of words or a mere mistake; it was a profound moral inversion to use the language of ancient antisemitic blood libels, such as "globalist class" and "venomous coalition." It was especially loathsome to use this same language to defend Tucker Carlson.

Tucker is quickly following Candace Owens down the very dark path of Jewish conspiracy theories and defenses of Nazis. (After Candace's "explanation" a couple years ago of Kristallnacht as a burning of communist books and not an attack on Jews, this was the final straw for me and my judgment has been repeatedly confirmed by her in the ensuing years.) Similar to Candace's "just asking questions" strategy, Tucker is increasingly hosting friendly, head-nodding-in-agreement interviews with people who explicitly praise Nazis and are unrepentant in their antisemitic slurs of Jews and Israel, such as his interviews of Darryl Cooper and Agapia Stephanopoulos. Tucker's friendly, smiling interview with Nick Fuentes, an avowed Nazi, was simply the nadir of Tucker's increasing number of friendly interviews with nihilists and antisemites.

In all of these interviews, Tucker has blatantly refused to challenge any of their calumnies, propaganda, and falsehoods, despite your subsequent claim in a follow-on X statement on October 31 that we should "challenge them head on" in open debate. This bears emphasizing: Tucker has never challenged one of these evil guests on his show. For example, in a two-hour interview with Fuentes, Tucker never asked Fuentes a single question about his Nazi views or even his Nazi slur of Vice President JD Vance as a "race traitor" given Vice President Vance's marriage to Usha and their "brown" children (to quote Fuentes). This is neither debate nor critical engagement with ideas with which we profoundly disagree. This is toleration of or agreement with evil ideologies and ideas. This is made even more clear by Tucker's contrary treatment of anyone he deems to be a "zionist." Unlike his interviews of Fuentes, Cooper, Stephanopoulos, and many others, Tucker engages in skeptical interviews with pointed, hard-hitting questions of Senator Ted Cruz and others about their "zionist" or "pro-Israel" positions.

All of this makes it absolutely clear that Tucker gives credence to his millions of viewers that evil ideologies — collectivism, nihilism, and antisemitism — are consistent with conservativism and the America First movement. Tucker's friendly and laughing conversation with Fuentes signals to his millions of young viewers that it is permissible to give a pass to such evil. Even in the best light possible, Tucker makes clear we at least should tolerate such evil, because, as you said in your October 30 video, we should not be "attacking our friends on the right."

This is a massive moral inversion. This is the opposite of what the Heritage Foundation has consistently stood for over many decades in American political discourse: the ideals of the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, our inalienable natural rights, limited government, the rule of law — and the free markets and flourishing society that results from these ethical and political commitments. This is the eminent think tank I first joined.

Although you told us in the townhall last Thursday that you made a mistake in your October 30 video, you have not retracted or withdrawn the video. It remains on your X account with more than 24 million views to date. Thus, it remains unclear precisely and specifically what you regard as your moral mistake and failure in leadership. This is compounded by the mixed messages you have been giving to us and to the world about the lesson you have learned. You have continually reiterated, for example, your claims in your October 30 video that we should not "cancel" our "friends," and that Tucker "always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation." As far as I'm aware, you have not disavowed this claim. But you falsely conflate here the struggle sessions and cancelation campaigns that the woke left inflict on their apostates and heretics with the proper and steadfast moral condemnation of nihilism, collectivism, Nazism, and Jew hatred.

Aristotle observed in his seminal treatise on ethics that, in a choice between truth and friendship, it is to truth that we must always give our primary allegiance. Even with your mixed messages, one thing is clear: By your words and actions, Heritage is wedded to Tucker and everything he has come to represent on the periphery of the Groyper movement created by Fuentes. Instead of the truth, you have chosen a false friend of the American ideals that Heritage has represented.

In the abstract, this profound failing of truth and justice would give me serious pause and I would still ultimately resign, but it's even more pressing today to call out this moral failing and to take a stand. It is still shocking to me that the worst single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, the invasion and attack of Israel on October 7, 2023, has unleashed a tsunami of violent antisemitism that has swept Europe and the U.S. In the past two years, woke Brownshirts have been screaming genocidal slogans in the streets and on university campuses (including my own university). They have been doing much worse than merely screaming slogans like "Free Palestine!" and "From the River to the Sea!"; they've acted in harassing and assaulting American Jews, firebombing and vandalizing homes and business, and murdering American Jews in DC, Colorado, and California. This has never before happened in the U.S.

This nihilism and collectivist bigotry has driven woke leftists into frenzies unseen in the West since the original Nazi Brownshirts terrorized Jews in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, and it has now reared its ugly head on the American political right. Now is the time to differentiate the right from the left, not to join the left in embracing this toxic fusion of collectivism and antisemitism. Since October 7, I have been stating on X: antisemitism is just the tip of the spear of a collectivist and nihilist ideology that seeks the destruction of Western Civilization. Your videos and statements have made it clear that we embrace as "friends" those who embrace and proselytize these evil ideas under the guise of a big tent on the right in which self-proclaimed conservatives can have friendly and cheery conversations with modern Nazis.

To employ President Ronald Reagan's iconic phrase from his justly famous 1964 speech, today is "a time of choosing." Notably, "a time of choosing" is the same adage used by historians and scholars to describe the 1930s when Germany raced headlong from social exclusion of Jews to political and legal discrimination against Jews, and then in the 1940s to the first industrial genocide in human history. The rise to prominence of the same nihilism and antisemitism on both the American political left and right has made it clear that today is again a time of choosing.

You have made clear your choice: endorsement and toleration of false friends of freedom, rights, liberty, and the American ideals of the Founding Fathers, despite their Orwellian claims to the contrary that they are advocates for America First or represent conservativism. Worse than false friends, they have proven to be advocates for the evil ideologies that seek to destroy these achievements of Western Civilization, as represented by the United States of America — what President Reagan beautifully referred to as the "shining city on a hill."

It is one thing for you to make this choice as an individual, but you have made this choice for the Heritage Foundation. I cannot stand by in silence. It is a time of choosing. I choose to resign.

Sincerely,

Adam Mossoff

The post Why I Am Resigning from the Heritage Foundation (Guest-Post by Adam Mossoff) appeared first on Reason.com.

Lina Khan has quickly thrown water on any hopes that she might be a benign force on New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's transition team. The former Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair suggested in a recent interview that she's looking to make sure Mamdani can "unilaterally deploy" ample power as mayor.

Khan is "exploring ways to maximize…Mamdani's executive authority through little-used laws already in place," as Bloomberg put it.

"Exploring ways to maximize executive authority" is a scary enough phrase no matter who the executive in question is. But it's got a particularly chilling ring when applied to Mandami, a Democratic Socialist who has said there's no problem too minor for the government to get involved in, and Khan, who spearheaded some of the Biden administration's worst efforts to disrupt free markets with heavy-handed government intervention, repeatedly tested the limits of FTC power, and attempted to do through an executive agency things that should have been left to Congress.

In a recent interview with Pod Save America host Tommy Vietor, Khan made it clear that she envisions Mamdani's New York City as a place where the mayor can wield ample unchecked power.

"I'm gonna be especially focused on things like 'how do we make sure that we have a full accounting of all of the laws and authorities that the mayor can unilaterally deploy?'" Khan said in the interview, which was taped last week but won't air in full until November 23. She went on to talk about how her time at the FTC taught her there were "unused and underused" powers that she could wield, and she wanted to find out the full extent of authority that would be possible for Mandami as mayor.

With Khan's influence, we can expect the future Mamdani mayoral administration to get creative—and, perhaps, unconstitutional—in its application of existing laws and authorities to enact Mamdani's agenda, which includes things like city-run grocery stores, free child care and bus rides, nearly doubling the minimum wage, and a freeze on raising rents.

Much of Mamdani's agenda would require acquiescence from state government authorities, which may make enacting it a stretch.

Khan apparently isn't phased. "A lot of what he is going to be looking to deliver is going to be requiring working closely with other institutional actors, be it the governor, be it the legislature, but he should also have a lot of ability to do things unilaterally," she told Vietor.

She also seems intent on taking elements of the Biden administration's failed agenda to the Big Apple. "Khan is planning to look at recently-enacted and proposed legislation and regulations affecting algorithmic price discrimination, surveillance pricing and junk fees," Bloomberg reports.

And, of course, no Khan operation would be complete without a little bit of absolutely overreaching antitrust policy.

At the FTC, Khan went after tech platforms and other companies "under novel theories of harm," notes Liz Hoffman at Semafor. "In her new role, Khan has identified an early avenue in a 56-year-old NYC prohibition on business practices deemed 'unconscionable'—a designation expansive enough to delight any regulator."

This could include targeting stadiums for selling high-price concessions, Hoffman reports. (No problem too small for government action, indeed.)

If Khan's influence takes hold, we can expect from the future Mamdani administration not just big meddling in significant aspects of city life but also the sort of low-grade authoritarianism we saw attempted under Biden, who rallied against the way cable bills were formatted and airline ticket fees were displayed.

Using the might power of the state to make stadium hot dogs cheaper is a perfect distillation of the sort of petty populism that Khan has come to be known for—and Mamdani may, alas, be angling to adopt as NYC mayor.

The post How Lina Khan Is Busy Striving To Maximize Mamdani's Power appeared first on Reason.com.