Funny spending of federal funds has gained Kristi attention, even - disapprobation. Two links should be enough, perhaps with updating.
March 11, 2026,
DHS IG Launched Probe Into $220M Contract for Noem Ads
March 5, 2026,
Noem handpicked contractors to lead a $100 million ICE recruitment campaign, sources say
Not chump change, so what has it bought? And, from whom? The second item is subheadlined -
The DHS secretary decided the contracts instead of allowing a competitive bidding process, according to three administration officials and internal communications reviewed by NBC News.
Tattletales they used to be called, now "whistleblower" is a favored term. Either way, absent such alert moral individuals, or folks with an ax to grind, things can go unseen and unremediated.
Because of the higher dollar amount, the $220M item first:
The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General has for more than a month been investigating the process in which three businesses received $220 million for an ad campaign encouraging illegal immigrants to self-deport and featuring outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, according to sources familiar with the probe.
[...] A source in the DHS community accused Noem of “retaliating” by not allowing the IG to “work real cases” because she and her top adviser, Corey Lewandowski, could be implicated in the watchdog probe of the ad contracts.
The $220 million ad contract sparked bipartisan Senate scrutiny during a Judiciary Committee hearing last week before Trump fired Noem, who will leave her role by March 31. Trump, who has since openly criticized the ad campaign’s price tag, tapped Oklahoma GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin to replace Noem.
Republican Sens. John Kennedy and Thom Tillis joined Sen. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, in questioning Noem about the ad campaign contract and whether any DHS employee had financially benefited from it. The senators repeatedly pressed Noem on why it was awarded to three companies, including a subcontractor run by Ben Yoho, the husband of former DHS press secretary Tricia McLaughlin.
Image - the spouses, McLaughlin and Yoho -- then continuing the excerpt
https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Yoho-Instagram.jpg
Ad maker Pat McCarthy, also of DMM Media, is best known for producing Trump’s viral 2024 “They/Them” ad targeting then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ support for transgender surgeries for California prisoners. MAGA Inc., the super PAC that spent the most money supporting Trump’s 2024 campaign, hammered Harris in the ads, echoing a Trump campaign ad almost exactly, saying, “Crazy liberal Kamala’s for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
People Who Think is associated with Jay Connaughton, who worked with Lewandowski on Jeff Landry’s Louisiana gubernatorial campaign.
[...] A spokesman for the DHS IG’s office said it could not confirm nor deny the existence of any particular investigation. On its website, however, the IG lists as one of its ongoing projects “an audit of grants and contracts awarded by any means other than full and open competition during fiscal year 2025,” which could perceivably include information about the process in which DHS officials awarded the contracts for the $220 million Noem ad campaign.
That audit, which is congressionally mandated to take place on a yearly basis and apply oversight to all DHS grants and contracts, is currently paused because the ongoing DHS government shutdown has forced the watchdog agency to furlough employees assigned to it. One source, however, said the DHS IG investigation into the Noem ad campaign in question was separate from this audit.
Inspector General Joseph Cuffari in a letter to Congress sent last week accused DHS leadership of having “systematically obstructed” his work, including on a criminal investigation and another into the Secret Service’s failures before and after the 2024 assassination attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The item continues with detail of the obstruction assertion/rebuttal.
From the $100M MSN item:
Typically, multiple companies are allowed to bid on a contract and officials who handle government procurement — not the leaders of departments — decide based on who can do the best job for the lowest price.
[...] In August, then-ICE deputy chief of staff Madison Sheahan threatened the job of an ICE employee for suggesting that the agency consider other contractors, according to internal communications. Sheahan said the contract award was “a decision made by the secretary,” according to internal communications.
Sheahan then called the employee to her office where he was yelled at for overriding Noem by suggesting the contract go to a company that was offering to do the work for a cheaper price, said an administration official who heard the conversation. The employee then acquiesced and agreed to award the contracts to the companies Noem chose, the three administration officials said.
The campaign was rolled out in the late fall and was aimed at hiring 10,000 new ICE officers by running TV ads in select markets, visiting hiring events, as well as marketing to gun owners and former members of the military.
In a statement, a DHS spokesperson said, “Decisions about the ICE recruitment campaign contract were made by the ICE Director’s office. [...]
But the three administration officials said acting ICE Director Todd Lyons’ office was not involved in choosing the contractors for the recruitment campaign and maintained that the decision came from Noem.
The contract for the ICE recruitment campaign was awarded to People Who Think and Safe America Media, two firms that were previously awarded a $220 million ad campaign that encouraged immigrants to self-deport.
Noem was questioned by lawmakers this week over that $220 million ad campaign, and her response incensed Trump, NBC News has reported.
“The president approved ahead of time you spending $220 million running TV ads across the country in which you are featured prominently?” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., asked Noem on Tuesday.
“Yes sir, we went through the legal process,” Noem said. She went on to confirm two more times that the president had knowledge of her decision.
Trump told Reuters on Thursday said he never signed off on the campaign and didn’t know anything about it.
It appears the questionable spending methods were first uncovered by ProPublica, source of the above image, publishing Nov 14, 2025:
Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Secretly Got Money From $220 Million DHS Ad Contracts
The company is run by the husband of Noem’s chief DHS spokesperson and has personal and business ties to Noem and her aides. DHS invoked the “emergency” at the border to skirt competitive bidding rules for the taxpayer-funded campaign.
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.
[...] 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.”
Video ad, Noem on horseback Mt. Rushmore in the distance - OMITTED
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.)
ProPublica fleshes out the history of Noem/Lewandowski/Yoho/Noem, which was long running and involved repeated interactions. The detail serves to cement the closeness of the subcontractor to Noem, who was indirectly contracted via a possibly shell intermediary firm, where the only reason for intermediary usage arguably was to hide things where an insider bit off a big chunk of federal money for zippo real work.
Without any competitive bidding to assure a fair price was at stake.
Next a follow-up letter Sen. Blumenthal sent Noem after under-oath testimony:
https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/03042026_letter_from_senator_blumenthal_to_dhspdf.pdf
Other related letters sent to third persons: here, here and here. Blumenthal may have written more. "Perp mail" I call it, that inference being from online circumstantial evidence.
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Reporting of Yoho responding, online here. Another online report, here. Readers web searching with their favored search engines can find more.
_____________________UPDATE_________________________
Second image of a presumably happy couple from Daily Wire - https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/noem-lewandowski.jpg
FURTHER: Not a pretty picture of anything resembling straight-forward good governing, covered by a UK news source:
‘We can’t find it’: Noem battered over $143M in no-bid contracts to operative-tied biz that doesn’t have HQ or website
FURTHER: AAPC, the American Association of Political Consultants, has an Ethics Page. A code of ethics
AAPC takes adherence to its Code seriously. If you have reason to believe an AAPC member has violated any provision of this code, you may initiate a formal Complaint.
See, also: https://theaapc.org/event_speaker/ben-yoho/ -- and
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DC is a special place. It has special people. People helping people.