Noem Spent $286K In Taxpayer Cash To Impress Trump. He Fired Her Anyway.

Former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem charged American taxpayers $286,137 to

produce a Mount Rushmore ad campaign — including $20,000 in horse rentals and a $60,000 "signing bonus" to a firm with ties to Noem. Trump fired her anyway. Now Senate investigators are publishing her receipts.

Senate Democrats Peter Welch and Richard Blumenthal released an itemized

expense list on March 23, 2026 detailing Noem's DHS ad campaign costs:

$107,405 in labor to The Strategy Group Company, $60,000 in a "signing

bonus" to the same company, $52,599 in production costs, $20,000 in horse

rentals, $3,781 for hair and makeup, $500 to Magic Makers Inc. (a magic

store in Sioux Falls, SD), and $41,852 in other vendor costs. The total

comes to $286,137 in taxpayer money for a single ad filmed at Mount

Rushmore. Noem admitted during a Senate hearing to knowing the recipients

of the contracts.

The $286,137 production bill is only part of the story. DHS awarded over

$200 million in total contracts for the ad campaign to firms with ties to

Noem. When Senators Welch and Blumenthal opened a formal investigation and requested documentation, The Strategy Group Company provided only "partial responses." The senators have urged all companies involved to disclose how taxpayer funds were used and whether anyone at DHS personally benefited from the contracts. Senator Welch called it "waste, fraud, and abuse."

This is the Trump extraction machine in line-item form. The same administration running DOGE austerity cuts against veterans, education, and

public health was simultaneously cutting $60,000 signing bonuses to

connected firms for a vanity commercial no one asked for. Trump fired Noem

before the full bill was public. Now the bill is public — and the investigation into where $200 million went is still open.

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