U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem looks on during Iowa’s Roast and Ride, Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
According to a Friday ProPublica investigation, the Department of Homeland Security invoked a “national emergency” at the southern border to bypass competitive bidding rules for a massive $220 million advertising campaign — a process that ultimately funneled work to a Republican consulting firm with deep ties to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
DHS has defended its ad effort as necessary to confront a “national [border] emergency,” using that justification to bypass the usual bidding rules and fast-track contracts to firms hired to make the ads. One of the most noteworthy, filmed on just the second day of the recent government shutdown, shows Noem sitting on horseback at Mount Rushmore, declaring, “Break our laws, we’ll punish you.”
For this ad, ProPublica found that DHS’s prime contractor brought in the Strategy Group, an Ohio-based political firm that worked extensively on Noem’s 2022 gubernatorial reelection campaign and is run by the husband of Noem’s DHS spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin.
Yet the firm does not appear on federal contracting records, according to ProPublica. Instead, $143 million — the bulk of the ad spending — went to a newly formed Delaware entity, Safe America Media, whose subcontractors are not publicly disclosed. Federal records list the DHS Office of Public Affairs — led by McLaughlin — as the office funding the Safe America Media contracts.
“It’s corrupt, is the word,” said Charles Tiefer, a former member of the Commission on Wartime Contracting, to ProPublica’s Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski. He argued that the Strategy Group’s involvement should trigger investigations by both the DHS inspector general and the House Oversight Committee, adding, “Hiding your friends as subcontractors is like playing hide the salami with the taxpayer.”
DHS maintains that career officials oversee the process and that it “has no involvement with the selection of subcontractors.” McLaughlin, married to Strategy Group CEO Ben Yoho, said she has “fully recused” herself: “My marriage is one thing and work is another. I don’t combine them.”
The post DHS Cited Border ‘National Emergency’ to Bypass Bidding for $220M Ad Push, Reportedly Used Company Tied to Noem Allies first appeared on Mediaite.
