About a week before Trump launched Operation Epic Fury, attacking Iran alongside Israel, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine warned that the lack of support from allies and depleted reserves of interceptors and Patriot missiles would make an attack on Iran risky.
Patty Nieberg of Task & Purpose reported that on February 28, the day the offensive began, Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, wrote to the troops deployed around the Middle East that they were “embarking on a mission of profound consequence,” moving “from deterrence into active combat.” Central Command has reported six American service members killed and eighteen wounded in the operation.
According to U.S. Central Command, which manages U.S. military operations in the Middle East, there are about 50,000 military personnel involved in Operation Epic Fury, 200 fighter jets, two aircraft carriers and bombers, and they are moving more support to the region. Yesterday Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth refused to rule out sending ground troops to Iran.
In his message to Congress yesterday announcing he had taken “military action…against the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Trump wrote: “It is not possible at this time to know the full scope and direction of military operations that may be necessary.”
Today the war continued to widen, leaving hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals in the Middle East desperate to leave. France alone has 400,000 people there. The U.S. has between 500,000 and a million people in the Middle East. The U.S. State Department has urged them to leave but said it could not help, and with airports and airspaces closed, just how they are supposed to do that is unclear. After pressure, the government is now saying it will work on chartering aircraft and using military planes to transport people who want to leave.
Alison Durkee of Forbes reported today that Trump’s military strikes in Iran have already cost U.S. taxpayers more than $1 billion. The three F-15E Eagle jets lost to friendly fire on Sunday cost $90 million each. Transporting troops, ships, and aircraft to the Middle East cost about $630 million. Missiles and weapons systems are also expensive—a drone is about $35,000, and a Tomahawk missile costs millions—and the two aircraft carriers in the region together cost at least $13 million a day. And then there are the costs of operating aircraft, and so on.
Jennifer Scholtes and Katherine Tully-McManus of Politico reported that lawmakers anticipate the administration will ask for supplemental funding for this operation, over and above the more than $150 billion the Republicans provided the Pentagon in their One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the nearly $839 billion in regular funding Congress appropriated in February.
Trump made little effort to present his case for military strikes against Iran to the American people. In his letter to Congress notifying them of his attack, Trump said he had acted under the 1973 War Powers Act, which permits a president to attack another country if there is an urgent threat. But the letter itself doesn’t identify any such urgent threat. It simply said Iran is one of the world’s largest sponsors of state terrorism and that it “continues to seek the means to possess and employ nuclear weapons.”
The Framers of the Constitution placed the power to declare war in the hands of Congress and not in the president above all because they did not trust that much power in the hands of one man. But they also wanted to make sure the American people would have robust debates about the value of the money and lives lost in combat. So determined were they for the American people to have those debates that they put into the Constitution that Congress had the power “[t]o declare War…and…[t]o raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years.”
In Federalist #26, one of the newspaper essays Alexander Hamilton wrote to encourage the ratification of the Constitution, Hamilton explained that people shouldn’t fear the strength of the new government outlined in the Constitution, because the necessity of debating war, alongside the two-year limit on government funding for the military, would force Congress to debate military actions. He expected members of the opposition to attack those in power over military appropriations, so that if those in power were “disposed to exceed the proper limits, the community will be warned of the danger, and will have an opportunity of taking measures to guard against it.”
But Trump has now taken that power away from the people and their representatives. He has launched a military action that by his own admission is not an emergency situation like those anticipated by the War Powers Act, and thus he should have asked Congress for authorization to send troops and money to Iran. Members of Congress, in turn, would then have had to answer to their constituents.
Tonight the U.S. Southern Command, which operates in Central and South America and the Caribbean, posted: “On March 3, Ecuadorian and U.S. military forces launched operations against Designated Terrorist Organizations in Ecuador. The operations are a powerful example of the commitment of partners in Latin America and the Caribbean to combat the scourge of narco-terrorism. Together, we are taking decisive action to confront narco-terrorists who have long inflicted terror, violence, and corruption on citizens throughout the hemisphere.”
Eric Schmitt and Luis Ferré-Sadurní of the New York Times reported that U.S. Special Forces soldiers are advising and supporting Ecuadorian commandos as they conduct raids against drug-related sites run by “designated terrorist organizations.”
About a week before Trump launched Operation Epic Fury, attacking Iran alongside Israel, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine warned that the lack of support from allies and depleted reserves of interceptors and Patriot missiles would make an attack on Iran risky.
Patty Nieberg of Task & Purpose reported that on February 28, the day the offensive began, Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, wrote to the troops deployed around the Middle East that they were “embarking on a mission of profound consequence,” moving “from deterrence into active combat.” Central Command has reported six American service members killed and eighteen wounded in the operation.
According to U.S. Central Command, which manages U.S. military operations in the Middle East, there are about 50,000 military personnel involved in Operation Epic Fury, 200 fighter jets, two aircraft carriers and bombers, and they are moving more support to the region. Yesterday Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth refused to rule out sending ground troops to Iran.
In his message to Congress yesterday announcing he had taken “military action…against the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Trump wrote: “It is not possible at this time to know the full scope and direction of military operations that may be necessary.”
Today the war continued to widen, leaving hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals in the Middle East desperate to leave. France alone has 400,000 people there. The U.S. has between 500,000 and a million people in the Middle East. The U.S. State Department has urged them to leave but said it could not help, and with airports and airspaces closed, just how they are supposed to do that is unclear. After pressure, the government is now saying it will work on chartering aircraft and using military planes to transport people who want to leave.
Alison Durkee of Forbes reported today that Trump’s military strikes in Iran have already cost U.S. taxpayers more than $1 billion. The three F-15E Eagle jets lost to friendly fire on Sunday cost $90 million each. Transporting troops, ships, and aircraft to the Middle East cost about $630 million. Missiles and weapons systems are also expensive—a drone is about $35,000, and a Tomahawk missile costs millions—and the two aircraft carriers in the region together cost at least $13 million a day. And then there are the costs of operating aircraft, and so on.
Jennifer Scholtes and Katherine Tully-McManus of Politico reported that lawmakers anticipate the administration will ask for supplemental funding for this operation, over and above the more than $150 billion the Republicans provided the Pentagon in their One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the nearly $839 billion in regular funding Congress appropriated in February.
Trump made little effort to present his case for military strikes against Iran to the American people. In his letter to Congress notifying them of his attack, Trump said he had acted under the 1973 War Powers Act, which permits a president to attack another country if there is an urgent threat. But the letter itself doesn’t identify any such urgent threat. It simply said Iran is one of the world’s largest sponsors of state terrorism and that it “continues to seek the means to possess and employ nuclear weapons.”
The Framers of the Constitution placed the power to declare war in the hands of Congress and not in the president above all because they did not trust that much power in the hands of one man. But they also wanted to make sure the American people would have robust debates about the value of the money and lives lost in combat. So determined were they for the American people to have those debates that they put into the Constitution that Congress had the power “[t]o declare War…and…[t]o raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years.”
In Federalist #26, one of the newspaper essays Alexander Hamilton wrote to encourage the ratification of the Constitution, Hamilton explained that people shouldn’t fear the strength of the new government outlined in the Constitution, because the necessity of debating war, alongside the two-year limit on government funding for the military, would force Congress to debate military actions. He expected members of the opposition to attack those in power over military appropriations, so that if those in power were “disposed to exceed the proper limits, the community will be warned of the danger, and will have an opportunity of taking measures to guard against it.”
But Trump has now taken that power away from the people and their representatives. He has launched a military action that by his own admission is not an emergency situation like those anticipated by the War Powers Act, and thus he should have asked Congress for authorization to send troops and money to Iran. Members of Congress, in turn, would then have had to answer to their constituents.
Tonight the U.S. Southern Command, which operates in Central and South America and the Caribbean, posted: “On March 3, Ecuadorian and U.S. military forces launched operations against Designated Terrorist Organizations in Ecuador. The operations are a powerful example of the commitment of partners in Latin America and the Caribbean to combat the scourge of narco-terrorism. Together, we are taking decisive action to confront narco-terrorists who have long inflicted terror, violence, and corruption on citizens throughout the hemisphere.”
Eric Schmitt and Luis Ferré-Sadurní of the New York Times reported that U.S. Special Forces soldiers are advising and supporting Ecuadorian commandos as they conduct raids against drug-related sites run by “designated terrorist organizations.”
Without any clear message coming from the White House with regard to the purpose of the Iran war, U.S. military commanders have turned to Jesus, apparently telling American troops that the war is “biblically sanctioned.”
The U.S. joined Israel in striking Iran early Saturday morning. By Monday evening, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, or MRFF, was “inundated” with complaints, receiving more than 110 grievances from U.S. military personnel stationed at dozens of sites across the Middle East, reported independent journalist Jonathan Larsen.
One such note included an anecdote from a noncommissioned officer, who reported that their commander had “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”
The NCO’s complaint was lodged on behalf of 15 troops, including 11 Christians, one Muslim, and one Jew, according to Larsen. The officer stated that such remarks “destroy morale and unit cohesion and are in violation of the oaths we swore to support the [C]onstitution.”
“This morning our commander opened up the combat readiness status briefing by urging us to not be ‘afraid’ as to what is happening with our combat operations in Iran right now,” the NCO wrote.
“He said that ‘President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,’” the NCO continued. “He had a big grin on his face when he said all of this which made his message seem even more crazy.”
It wouldn’t be a stretch to blame some of the blatant constitutional violations on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has repeatedly evoked God and Christian nationalism in his time fronting the Pentagon.
Hegseth has parroted the views of Douglas Wilson, a conservative theologian who advocated for Christian dominance over government and society. He has followed through in practice, instating regular prayer services at America’s military headquarters. He also entered office with several Christian symbols already emblazoned on his skin—a Jerusalem cross and the phrase “Deus vult”—in what Hegseth has described as emblems of the “modern-day American Christian crusade.”
U.S. service members are afforded the religious liberty protections in the First Amendment. They also have a legal right to seek religious accommodations—and the MRFF told Larsen that it has been overwhelmed with complaints about commanders who are apparently tapping into the same sort of Christian nationalism espoused by the Pentagon chief.
“These calls have one damn thing in freaking common; our MRFF clients [service members who seek MRFF aid] report the unrestricted euphoria of their commanders and command chains as to how this new ‘biblically-sanctioned’ war is clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian ‘End Times’ as vividly described in the New Testament Book of Revelation,” MRFF president and founder Mikey Weinstein, a veteran of the Air Force and the Reagan White House, told Larsen.
“Many of their commanders are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100 percent accordance with fundamentalist Christian end of the world eschatology.”
Buried in the cascade of news this week, Sadie Gurman and Caitlin Ostroff of the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that 47,635 files are missing from the Epstein files documents that the Justice Department has made public. A spokesperson for the Justice Department told the reporters that the files were “offline for further review and should be ready for reproduction by the end of the week.”
The news that even the documents that have been released have extensive gaps suggests the department is covering up for individuals involved in Epstein’s crimes, including President Donald J. Trump, whose name appears frequently in the files. We know at least one of the missing files contains allegations that Trump sexually assaulted a thirteen-year-old girl.
Today, in a bipartisan vote, the House Oversight Committee agreed to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify about the release of the Epstein files. By law, the Justice Department was required to release the Epstein files in full by December 19, 2025, with redactions only to protect Epstein’s victims. So far, it appears about half the files have been released, and many are heavily redacted.
The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed Bondi against the wishes of committee chair James Comer (R-KY). Bondi will have to testify under oath.
The Trump administration has been able to articulate neither a clear reason for what Trump calls a “war” against Iran nor a goal to be accomplished by the war that is costing $1 billion a day. On February 19, less than ten days before Trump started bombing Iran, Trump told his “Board of Peace” that “[w]e’ve done the biggest thing of all. We have peace in the Middle East right now.” Today Trump told reporters that if he hadn’t struck Iran, it would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks, a conclusion U.S. intelligence agencies reject.
Trump told reporters today that “we’re doing very well on the war front, to put it mildly,” rating it 15 on a scale of 1 to 10. But Americans stranded in Middle Eastern countries are desperate to get out, and the government has not been able to help them. When asked today why not, Trump answered:
“Well, because it happened all very quickly, we thought, and I thought maybe more so than most, I could ask Marco, but I thought we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked. They were getting ready to attack Israel. They were getting ready to attack others. You’re seeing that right now. And a lot of those missiles that are hitting in those are stationary. Those were aimed there for a long period of time at these other countries. So I think I was right about that. We attacked first, and if we didn’t, it could have been, you know, look, we’re really decimating them. They’re being decimated. And if we didn’t. If we didn’t, and by the way, we have massive amounts of ammunition. We have the high end. A lot of it was given away stupidly by Biden, very stupidly, for free. And I’m all for Ukraine, but they gave away a lot. As you know, when I give away ammunition, everybody pays for it. The European Union is paying for it, then they can do what they want with it, but they are giving it, let’s say, to Ukraine, and it’s okay, but we gave away a lot of high end but we have plenty. But we have unlimited middle and upper ammunition, which is really what we’re using in this war. And we have an, really an unlimited supply. We also have a lot of the very high end stored in different countries throughout the world. With this, we’re literally storing it there, which is actually something that I insisted on in my first term. I rebuilt the military. In my first term, the military is great. A lot of, not unbelievable, amount of of ammunition, or munitions, as they say, were given away to you know, the Wall Street Journal incorrectly covered the story when they said that it was given away to the Middle East, not to the Middle East was given away to Ukraine. Very little was given to the Middle East. Middle East would buy a lot. And some of the nations, because they’re rich, they have a lot, but it was given away to Ukraine and it just should have been done. Look, it’s a war that should have never happened. If I were president, that war would have never happened. But we have a tremendous amount of munitions, ammunition at the upper upper level, middle and upper level, all of which is really powerful stuff.”
Notably, Trump had no answer for why there was no plan to evacuate Americans. Instead, he made it clear he is worried about experts’ assessment that the U.S. is low on high-end munitions and interceptors. According to Ellen Mitchell of The Hill, the U.S. is low on those weapons not because it has helped to supply Ukraine, but because it “blew through 25 percent of its stockpile over just a few days of operations against Iran in June 2025.” And before that operation, the U.S. military used $200 million worth of munitions in three weeks of attacks on the Houthis in Yemen, a bombing campaign that did little to change the Houthis’ behavior.
Despite the administration’s apparent lack of either planning or goals in its attack on Iran, Senate Republicans today refused to rein in Trump’s attack on Iran with a war powers resolution to bring the war to a stop. While some said they were nervous about the apparent lack of a plan for the conflict, others said it was imperative to demonstrate support for the troops by supporting the war, regardless of how we got into it.
Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), who is facing a difficult election in the fall, said: “Passing this resolution now would send the wrong message to Iran and to our troops. At this juncture, providing unequivocal support to our service members is critically important, as is ongoing consultation by the Administration with Congress.”
But the American people are not on board. The war was unpopular with Americans before Trump started bombing Iran, and support for it has dropped since it began. According to G. Elliott Morris at Strength in Numbers, only 34% of Americans support the attack on Iran.
Primary elections that took place across the country yesterday continued the trend of the past year: Democratic enthusiasm is off the charts. In Texas, where Democratic primary voters picked James Talarico over Representative Jasmine Crockett, Democrats turned out in huge numbers, swamping the Republican vote. And Democrats continued the trend of the past year, flipping an Arkansas state house seat from Republican to Democratic. David Nir of The Downballot notes that in more than 90 special elections since Trump took office, Democrats have beaten the results of the 2024 presidential election by an average of 13 points.
But the Texas election also revealed Republicans’ attempts to suppress Democratic voting. Jen Rice of Democracy Docket explains that Texas voters used to be able to vote at any polling place in their county, but in Dallas and Williamson counties, the Republican Party chairs abandoned that system, making it harder for people to vote. Williamson County Republican Party chair Michelle Evans told KUT News in Austin that she could explain why they had made the change, “but at the end of the day, it’s because we can. It’s legal. It’s something we’re entitled to do, and it’s something that our party would like us to do.”
The Texas secretary of state’s office didn’t provide voters in those counties with accurate information of where they should vote, creating chaos. Democratic Party chair Kardal Coleman in Dallas County and the Texas Civil Rights Project in Williamson County filed emergency petitions to give people more time to vote. A district court judge in Dallas ordered Democratic primary polls to stay open two additional hours, saying that “there has been mass confusion as to where…voters were entitled to cast their ballots on election day, and voter confusion was so severe that the Dallas County Election Department website crashed.” A Williamson County judge ordered two polling places to stay open until 10:00 PM.
Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, a Republican who is himself running for the same Senate seat Talarico is, challenged the order, and the Republican-dominated Texas Supreme Court blocked the lower court’s orders. It allowed people who were not in line by 7:00 PM—the original time for the polls to close—to cast ballots, but those ballots were separated from the rest and it is not clear they will be counted.
Emily Eby French of Common Cause Texas told Jen Rice: “We can’t let a small group of conspiracy theorists set the rules for Texas voters anymore. Two individuals controlled the way millions of Texas voters were able to cast a ballot yesterday. The opinions of those two [Republican Party] chairs about countywide voting were based in conspiracy theory, not based in fact, and those conspiracy theories caused widespread panic, confusion and disenfranchisement.”
One such note included an anecdote from a noncommissioned officer, who reported that their commander had “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”
President Donald J. Trump is behaving more and more erratically these days, seeming to think he can dictate to other countries.
This morning, Trump told Barak Ravid and Zachary Basu of Axios that he needs to be involved personally in choosing the next leader of Iran. Speaking of Iranian politicians who are preparing to announce a new leader, Trump told the reporters: “They are wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodríguez] in Venezuela.”
Foreign affairs journalist Olga Nesterova of ONEST reported that in a call with Israel’s Channel 12 this morning, Trump called Israel’s president Isaac Herzog “a disgrace” and demanded Herzog pardon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “today” because Trump doesn’t want Netanyahu distracted from the war with Iran. Trump said Herzog had “promised” him “five times” to pardon the prime minister, and he appeared to threaten Herzog when he added: “Tell him I’m exposing him.”
In a statement, Herzog noted that “Israel is a sovereign state governed by the rule of law” and said the pardon is being dealt with by the Justice Ministry, as the law requires. After its ruling, Hertzog’s office said, he will examine the issue according to the law and “without any influence from external or internal pressures of any kind.”
In a conversation today with Dasha Burns of Politico, Trump insisted that “[p]eople are loving what’s happening” and said: “Cuba’s going to fall, too.”
The most astonishing example of Trump’s international aggression came from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Although Trump initially said he attacked Iran to keep it from acquiring nuclear weapons, Leavitt yesterday explained that Trump joined Israel in a military attack on Iran because Trump had “a feeling based on fact” that Iran was going to attack the United States.
Trump’s assertion of power globally contrasts with increasing setbacks at home.
Since the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs Trump imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) as unconstitutional, the administration has tried to slow walk repaying the $130 billion the government collected under those tariffs. But yesterday, Judge Richard Eaton of the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that companies that paid the tariffs are entitled to a refund.
After the Supreme Court’s decision, Trump immediately imposed new tariffs of 15% on all global trade, using as justification Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. As Lindsay Whitehurst and Paul Wiseman of the Associated Press noted, this is awkward because the Department of Justice under Trump argued in court last year that Trump had to use the IEEPA because Section 122 did “not have any obvious application” in fighting trade deficits.
Today the Democratic attorneys general of more than twenty states filed a lawsuit to stop the new tariffs imposed under Section 122. “Once again, President Trump is ignoring the law and the Constitution to effectively raise taxes on consumers and small businesses,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement Thursday.
The Department of Justice has also quietly backed away from Trump’s demand that it investigate whether former president Joe Biden broke the law by using an autopen to sign presidential documents. Yesterday, Michael S. Schmidt, Devlin Barrett, and Alan Feuer reported in the New York Times that prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., “were never quite clear what crime, if any, had been committed by the Biden administration’s use of the autopen.”
They concluded there was no credible case to make against Biden. The journalists noted that “the failed inquiry has only added to the sense among many federal investigators that Mr. Trump has become increasingly erratic in his desire to use the criminal justice system to punish his political adversaries for behavior that comes nowhere close to being criminal.”
Trump had been so invested in his attacks on Biden over his quite ordinary use of an autopen that he replaced a White House picture of Biden with one of an autopen, so the prosecutors’ shelving that investigation has to sting. Likely even more painful, though, is today’s news that Trump’s hand-picked National Capital Planning Commission has put off a vote to approve the ballroom Trump is proposing to replace the East Wing of the White House that he suddenly tore down last October.
At a Medal of Honor ceremony on Monday, Trump called attention to his ballroom and boasted: “I built many a ballroom. I believe it’s going to be the most beautiful ballroom anywhere in the world.” But the American people do not share Trump’s vision. The chair of the commission said “significant public input” has caused him to delay the vote until April 2. Jonathan Edwards and Dan Diamond of the Washington Post say that of the more than 35,000 comments the commission received, more than 97% were opposed to Trump’s plans for the ballroom.
But perhaps the biggest setback for the Trump administration showed in the testimony of now-former secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem before Congress this week. There, days after Trump launched a major military operation in the Middle East without consulting Congress, angry lawmakers of both parties exposed the lawlessness and corruption taking place in the department under Noem’s direction. But their stance was about more than Noem: her lawlessness and corruption represented the larger lawlessness and corruption of the Trump administration.
Noem testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday and the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. In both chambers, Democrats jumped right to a central feature of the way in which Noem and the administration are setting up the idea that anyone who opposes the actions of the Trump administration is participating in “domestic terrorism.”
They tried to get Noem to walk back her statements that Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both shot and killed by federal agents acting under her authority in Minnesota, were “domestic terrorists.” Noem refused to do so. She has not actually called them “domestic terrorists” but has said they were engaged in “domestic terrorism,” a distinction that reveals the administration’s attempt to criminalize political opposition. Rachel Levinson-Waldman of the Brennan Center explained that “[t]o actually be called a ‘domestic terrorist, an individual must commit one or more of 51 underlying ‘federal crimes of terrorism,’” which involve nuclear or chemical weapons, plastic explosives, air piracy, and so on. Good and Pretti, and the many others administration officials have accused, do not fit that description. But on September 25, 2025, Trump’s NSPM-7 memo claimed that those opposing administration policies are part of “criminal and terroristic conspiracies” and that those who participate in them are engaging in “domestic terrorism.”
Noem refused to back away from the idea that Trump’s opponents are engaging in “criminal and terroristic conspiracies” by, for example, opposing the behavior of federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol. Leaving that definition behind would undermine the administration’s entire domestic stance.
Democrats slammed Noem for her handling of detentions and deportations, ignoring court orders, and detaining U.S. citizens. In the House, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee, said she “turned our government against our people, and…turned our people against our government.”
Republicans also called Noem out. Noem’s poor handling of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has left North Carolina still suffering after terrible storms in 2024, and Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) went after her.
He highlighted a letter from the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), who said the department’s leaders have “systematically obstructed” the work of him and his staff. He identified eleven instances in which the department had refused to provide records and information. In a criminal investigation with national security implications, the department would permit him to access a database only if he revealed details of the investigation of individuals who might be related to the investigation.
Tillis said: “Does anybody have any idea how bad it has to be for the [Office of Inspector General] in this agency to come out and do this publicly? That is stonewalling, that’s a failure of leadership, and that is why I’ve called for your resignation.”
Lawmakers also focused on the corruption in DHS, which now commands more than $150 billion thanks to the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Lawmakers referred to a November 2025 ProPublica story in which reporters traced a $220 million contract for an ad campaign featuring Noem. The contract went first to a brand new small company organized by a Republican operative just days before winning the contract, and then to a subcontractor, Strategy Group, owned by Noem’s former spokesperson’s husband and closely associated with Noem’s advisor and reputed affair partner Corey Lewandowski.
Noem insisted she had nothing to do with the contract award and claimed Trump had signed off on the ad campaign. About the contract, Representative Joe Neguse (D-CO) commented in apparent disbelief: “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?”
Since Noem’s testimony, the Strategy Group released a statement saying it received only $226,137.17 for its work on the ad campaign.
Also under scrutiny was Noem’s purchase of a private plane with a luxurious bedroom in it, which brought up questions about whether, as is widely reported, she is having a sexual relationship with a subordinate. She refused to answer, and insisted Lewandowski had had no role in approving contracts. Joshua Kaplan and Justin Elliott of ProPublica promptly fact-checked her: in fact, Lewandowski has signed off on a number of contracts.
Lawmakers’ indictment of Noem for her extreme partisanship, disregard of the law, corruption, and lying condemned similar behavior from the administration in general. Today Trump told Steve Holland and Ted Hesson of Reuters that he “never knew anything about” Noem’s $220 million ad campaign, suggesting she lied to Congress under oath. This afternoon, just before she went on stage to speak, Trump announced by social media post that he was replacing Noem with Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma.
This is an assertion of power the president does not have: he can nominate Mullin, but the Senate must confirm or reject his appointment.
Apparently unaware she was fired, Noem proceeded to give a speech in which she recited a false quotation from George Orwell, the writer who devoted much of his work to the importance of manipulating language to facilitate authoritarianism, a fitting end to Noem’s career in the Trump administration.
But Noem is not likely to disappear from the news. Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker recorded a video saying: “Hey, Kristi Noem, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Here’s your legacy: corruption and chaos. Parents and children tear-gassed. Moms and nurses, U.S. citizens getting shot in the face. Now that you’re gone, don’t think you get to just walk away. I guarantee you, you will still be held accountable.”
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) was more direct: “Turns out lawlessness is not a winning strategy,” he posted. “See you at Nuremberg 2.0.”
