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I know: Kristi Noem’s self-dealing taxpayer-money shuffle is old news. When I originally sat down to write this, it began, “This morning, ProPublica published a story [ [link removed] ] . . .” The good news is that I always planned to write about more than the sweetheart deal that Noem gave her friends courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. Also, I really like “High-Plains Grifter” as a title. I just couldn’t abandon it. The other good news is that antibiotics knocked out the sinus infection that made my face ache like it was being filled with expanding foam. The bad news is that the antibiotics have loosened things up so I sneeze quite often and have also acted as a powerful laxative. It is a dangerous combination.
For those who missed it or who have forgotten about it amidst the daily Trumpster fires and Epstein-file news spasms of the past week, Propublica’s story was about a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) political advertisement shot at Mount Rushmore on October 2nd. The ad was part of a DHS ad campaign that has so far awarded $220 million via two no-bid contracts: $77 million to People Who Think, a Republican ad agency in Louisiana, and $143 million to Safe American Media, a Delaware LLC that got the contract on its eighth day of existence.
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The contracts were exempted from the usual competitive bidding process because, like everything else since January 20th, it was an emergency. The Department of Homeland Security wrote, “Any delay in providing these critical communications to the public will increase the spread of misinformation, especially misinformation by smugglers.”
So spake the fiend, and with necessity,
(The tyrant’s plea,) excus’d his devilish deeds.

-John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IV, Lines 393-394
(Weird how these lines about Satan have been apropos so often this year.)
The ads have been run on Fox and Friends in order to reach the maximum number of immigrants, who famously love the show and are never busy working during its time slot.
The Mount Rushmore ad is the most incestuous part of Kristi Noem’s rustling of taxpayer money for her friends. The notecards connected by red string on your conspiracy-theory corkboard would contain the following:
$143 million contract awarded to Safe America Media on its eighth day of existence.
Safe America Media subcontracts the Strategy Group for the Mount Rushmore shoot.
The Strategy Group’s CEO, Ben Yoho, is married to DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Tricia McLaughlin.
Kristi Noem’s top advisor at DHS, Corey Lewandowski, has substantial ties to the Strategy Group.
According to former officials from the Noem administration when she was Governor of South Dakota, in 2023, she steered $8.5 million of South Dakota taxpayer money to a subsidiary of the Strategy Group for a “Freedom Works Here” ad campaign [ [link removed] ] starring Kristi Noem.
The Strategy Group paid “up to $25,000” to Noem adviser Madison Sheahan.
Sheahan is now Deputy Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a nice gig to have in your twenties.
The DHS ad campaign stars Kristi Noem, of course, with plenty of inspirational cuts to Donald Trump. That the ads look more like political campaign ads than public service announcements comes as a surprise to no one.
Similar fraud, waste, and abuse is happening all across the Trump administration. I happen to be interested in the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). ARTnews reported [ [link removed] ] that grants equaling nearly ten percent of the NEH’s total budget were awarded to two grantees.
A $10.4 million grant went to Tikvah, a conservative Jewish organization. The NEH advisory council that once screened applications for academic rigor rejected Tikvah’s application because it was vague and too focused on advocacy. Luckily for Tikvah, Trump fired most of the advisory council at the beginning of the government shutdown, and he loves those who don’t do their homework.
Another $10 million was awarded to the University of Virginia for a project celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, which we all hope will be better than the U.S. Army parade on Trump’s birthday.
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According to ARTnews, acting NEH Chairman Michael McDonald also has personal control of “chairman’s grants” that do not require any review for scholarly or other merit. A program titled “Meritocracy vs. Equity: The Declaration of Independence in Tension With Critical Race Theory and D.E.I.” received $30,000 of that money. These people are absolutely shameless.
Not many of us pay attention to NEH grants. They don’t stick out like the provision Republican senators slipped into the spending bill allowing some of them to sue the Department of Justice (DOJ) for $500,000 if the DOJ accessed their phone records as part of the January 6 investigation. Donald Trump has also asked for $230 million from the DOJ for all of his pain and suffering. But God help you if you need SNAP benefits.
The problem for Republicans during the shutdown was that Americans took note of how their health insurance premiums were about to skyrocket, and the problem for Republican senators wanting $500,000 of taxpayer money was that Americans also paid attention to their attempt to enrich themselves through that provision in the spending bill. Even House Republicans were aghast, but that was mainly because the provision included only senators. How dare they?!
I am heartened that drawing attention to these things seems to have made a difference. Capturing attention is one thing, though, and keeping it is quite another. We can’t stop calling out the lies and the corruption. We can’t stop pointing at the abuses, cruelty, and injustice.
And when the time comes, we must hold people accountable.
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